I know, it's tough to gauge. I think that he's a toddler emotionally and a first-grader intellectually.
Case in point: "I'm the least racist person you'll ever interview."
Outside of children on elementary school playgrounds, no one says things like this. But this is standard for him. "I am the best [insert whatever you'd like] ever," or "No one can [insert whatever you'd like] as well as I can." How do Trump supporters justify their support for a petulant child? Is it some Biblical thing: "And a snot-nosed brat shall lead them"?
No, I think this article sums it up best:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/01/03/will-conservatism-end-in-nihilism/#.WlOe0r05cEA.facebook
Now, I know people here don't like to read more than three sentences at a time so by those standards this article is ten times longer than "War and Peace" (that's a very long book published long ago for those of you who are against education--in the Enlightenment sense of the word. Sorry, you don't know what the Enlightnment is, do you? Damn. It's tough to explain anything to people who have so few points of reference available to them.).
I shall compromise and quote a few noteworthy paragraphs that can help us all understand why Trump's followers continue supporting him:
"Conservatives manage to see themselves as appointed by divine will to be the ones on top, but they simultaneously view it as a burden of natural leadership which they carry out with same noblesse with which Maistre’s hangman went about his God-appointed task. This attitude also explains the need for a despised underclass on a permanent basis; otherwise working-class Republicans would have no one to look down upon, and might cast envious eyes upward."
...
"Donald Trump did not hijack American conservatism; in him it reached its logical culmination. The defining characteristics of post-1980 conservatism—its authoritarianism; denigration of reason and education; obsession with power at all costs; Manichean, black and white thinking; apocalyptic, religious fundamentalist mentality; paranoia and sense of being besieged even when in power; and gangsterish deceit, bad faith, and lack of principle, whether practiced by a transparent swindler like Trump or a supposed intellectual like Newt Gingrich—must lead to nihilism and mindless destruction.
"But Trump did not fall from the sky upon an innocent American people. Public suspicion and cynicism toward government, other groups in society, and democracy itself, have been steadily growing since the 1960s. While this would have happened in any case (and a little cynicism about what any government is up to can be healthy), the intensity of the suspicion and cynicism has been stoked at every turn by conservative propagandists, to the point where these feelings have congealed into paranoia and nihilism.
...
"In 2006, in the middle of George W. Bush’s second term, psychologist Robert Altemeyer wrote 'The Authoritarians' as a layman’s guide to the trends he saw. His description of religious fundamentalists, the core of the Republican base, is even more relevant in light of Trump and Roy Moore:
'They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites.'
[This is the most accurate description of HROT conservatives I have ever read]
...
"As one voter told a pollster, he voted with his middle finger. A more succinct expression of nihilism is hard to find."
Case in point: "I'm the least racist person you'll ever interview."
Outside of children on elementary school playgrounds, no one says things like this. But this is standard for him. "I am the best [insert whatever you'd like] ever," or "No one can [insert whatever you'd like] as well as I can." How do Trump supporters justify their support for a petulant child? Is it some Biblical thing: "And a snot-nosed brat shall lead them"?
No, I think this article sums it up best:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/01/03/will-conservatism-end-in-nihilism/#.WlOe0r05cEA.facebook
Now, I know people here don't like to read more than three sentences at a time so by those standards this article is ten times longer than "War and Peace" (that's a very long book published long ago for those of you who are against education--in the Enlightenment sense of the word. Sorry, you don't know what the Enlightnment is, do you? Damn. It's tough to explain anything to people who have so few points of reference available to them.).
I shall compromise and quote a few noteworthy paragraphs that can help us all understand why Trump's followers continue supporting him:
"Conservatives manage to see themselves as appointed by divine will to be the ones on top, but they simultaneously view it as a burden of natural leadership which they carry out with same noblesse with which Maistre’s hangman went about his God-appointed task. This attitude also explains the need for a despised underclass on a permanent basis; otherwise working-class Republicans would have no one to look down upon, and might cast envious eyes upward."
...
"Donald Trump did not hijack American conservatism; in him it reached its logical culmination. The defining characteristics of post-1980 conservatism—its authoritarianism; denigration of reason and education; obsession with power at all costs; Manichean, black and white thinking; apocalyptic, religious fundamentalist mentality; paranoia and sense of being besieged even when in power; and gangsterish deceit, bad faith, and lack of principle, whether practiced by a transparent swindler like Trump or a supposed intellectual like Newt Gingrich—must lead to nihilism and mindless destruction.
"But Trump did not fall from the sky upon an innocent American people. Public suspicion and cynicism toward government, other groups in society, and democracy itself, have been steadily growing since the 1960s. While this would have happened in any case (and a little cynicism about what any government is up to can be healthy), the intensity of the suspicion and cynicism has been stoked at every turn by conservative propagandists, to the point where these feelings have congealed into paranoia and nihilism.
...
"In 2006, in the middle of George W. Bush’s second term, psychologist Robert Altemeyer wrote 'The Authoritarians' as a layman’s guide to the trends he saw. His description of religious fundamentalists, the core of the Republican base, is even more relevant in light of Trump and Roy Moore:
'They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites.'
[This is the most accurate description of HROT conservatives I have ever read]
...
"As one voter told a pollster, he voted with his middle finger. A more succinct expression of nihilism is hard to find."
