I mean in their actual self-interest rather than, say, what they have been made to believe is in their self-interest.

> Deindustrialization and Nikefication in the past several decades isn't "rational" long-term behavior either.

Maybe, but I was responding to "They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice."

There's an implication here, and in a subsequent reply that people voting against their interests is "[t]he go to midwit rationalization for every electoral loss", that people exercised free will when they voted.

This is plainly incorrect, because free will quite clearly does not exist. No one has ever shown the kinds of violations in the laws of physics that would be required for free will to exist.

Since free will does not exist, there is simply no a priori reason to believe that people voted in their interests. People's voting decisions, like everything else they do, are out of their control. To the extent that they vote in a particular way that's good or bad for them, it's driven purely by luck and circumstances.

It is this a priori belief that people vote or act in their own interests that's the real "midwit rationalization".