alt Hacker NewsI think it’s better to reevaluate what voters’ interests are instead of throwing up our hands and assuming they just don’t understand what’s good for them.
My wife’s much younger half siblings are in their early 20s. They come from middle or lower middle class backgrounds in a secondary or tertiary city in Oregon. The one who is mixed race is MAGA, and the one who is white shares her pronouns on Zoom so I assume she leans liberal. But I’ve never heard them talk about the economy the way you’re talking about it (“boot in their neck”). Their parents aren’t rich, but they’ve been able to afford to give them some runway to launch, and both have gone into healthcare fields (one into occupational therapy, the other into nursing). Their lives are pretty comfortable and I don’t think they see politics through the perspective of some 1930s West Virginia mine worker like you do.
There is too much to unpack here. Perhaps you'd like to make your point in something other than identity politics anecdotes and personal attacks?
If you don't like my phrasing of "boot on their necks", feel free to substitute your own when constructively responding to the point. The frustrations that have led to Trumpism are certainly palpable and understandable, so don't feign like I'm using hyperbolic language out of nowhere.
But no, in general I am comfortable modeling Trump's second term as a complete self-own on the part of voters - regardless of whether they've realized it yet, or ever will. As a libertarian who partook in both red and blue tribe media and was both sidesing through 2020, I have not come to this conclusion lightly. There has simply been no way I've been able to steelman it.