I just want a 'dear leader' like the fascists have, is that so wrong?
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I can not figure out how people see him as charismatic. His voice grates my ears, he’s objectively ugly, wears poorly fitting clothing, and half them time when he’s speaking you can’t understand what it is that he’s trying to communicate. Like when people say he’s charismatic, it feels to me like they might as well say “have you met this pus filled boil? It’s so charming”.
Just imagine you're a fish and he's a shiny thing. That's all the neural complexity happening in the minds of people that find Trump charismatic.
Or a better exercise: turn on a Fox News interview with a democrat and listen with a wet towel over the speaker so all you hear is tones, not words. Imagine you're a stray dog- all you hear is 'strength' and 'weakness' of human vocal tones. Anyone that isn't an approved conservative voice will sound frustrated and exasperated while the conservative sounds confident and self-assured. Ignore the words, hear the tones- that's what Trump's 'charisma' is- biological manipulation of mammalian instincts. Biden doesn't have that power because his target audience is humans that try to defy their animal nature. Trump can speak directly to the human animal.
He studied pro wrestling. He perfected the heel.
See the movie “Man in the Moon” about Andy Kaufman for context.
Loved that movie. Kaufman laughing when he realized the guru-cancer extraction thing was a con is the spice of life.
Dang. That is a deep cut.
I had forgotten about that. Maybe I blocked it out.
It is a great movie.
Well said.
Several other Lemmings have reported that playing Trump speeches for their MAGA relatives at 1.5x speed breaks the spell. The hypnotic effect vanishes, and all that they hear is the words, which are drivel.
Well, considering how he is it shouldn't be surprising that the people who think he's charismatic are universally the worst kind of people you could imagine.
Nobody who isn't an absolute fucking shitbag thinks he has any redeeming qualities. Well, correction: he does have some redeeming qualities, such as being fairly old and unhealthy meaning he'll probably die soonish, although not soon enough.
This will sound contrary at first but please bear with me.
My mother, and one of my brothers think Trump has 'charisma'. They voted for him twice and I assume will do so again though I've stopped asking for the sake of our relationships. They are not 'bad people' in any personal sense. In close proximity they would very literally give a you the shirt off their back if you needed it no matter your race, nationality, or religion. Their problem is extending that charity to anyone outside their immediate vicinity. They will casually dehumanize in the abstract, but in person they are sincerely and demonstrably humanitarians.
They simply cannot extrapolate morality outside their own experience, they can only interpolate between. So when they see an actual human with a need they can recognize, they are compelled by their morality to provide. They just lack the capacity to extend that humanitarianism to people they hear about on the news.
It's easy to dismiss them as 'bad people' and assume we're just categorically 'better' because we can extrapolate morality and they can't, but I can't do that because I love my family for the good I've seen in them and I can't hate them just because they can't see as far as I can.
I don't have any specific advice, just encouraging you to think of 'conservatives' as specifically limited, but still fully 3-dimensional human beings with a form of compassion we can potentially connect with rather than cartoonish villains or rubes.
That's not to say that applies to all 'conservatives'. Some are just plain sociopaths, instigators, or opportunists, but if you cast a wide net over people that identity as 'conservatives' you should be aware you'd find a lot of them would treat you with dignity and respect- they just don't know how abstract that dignity and respect to people they haven't actually met.
Considering I'm not cis, I severely doubt that. So far nearly every conservative I know (except for literally one person) has gotten much worse over the years, with one "moderate" going as far as saying to my face that the world would be a better place if gender minorities didn't exist and that we're all pretending anyhow.
I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but conservatives can get fucked and the majority of them are horrible people. The ideology they support is downright psychopathic, and if they had their way I wouldn't have human rights.
Well now you're categorically judging strangers based on an identity another stranger (me) told you about them so I'm inclined to believe you're just as limited as them.
There’s a difference: a trans person isn’t a threat to Trump supporters. Trump supporters are, quite literally, calling for the death of trans folks. Your family may not be part of that, but as a trans person if I see a MAGA hat I’m forced to assume they mean me harm. For the same reason that women often don’t feel safe around men.
Well you can get fucked too for all I care. I'm under no compulsion to respect people (meaning conservatives) who support an ideology that would absolutely have me murdered if they had their way.
I didn't even mention respecting them, just trying to help you recognize their individual humanity but I know when you're hurting it's easy to dehumanize everyone you associate with your pain. You're more like them than you want to admit.
Fuck, man, if they were a Jew and talking about people who were voting for Nazis, would you say the same?
Fact is that conservative ideology in the modern day is overWHELMINGLY centered around dehumanization of GSMs, amongst others; and Trump's particular brand of snake oil doubly so. It's not 'categorically judging strangers' off some random attribute; it's judging strangers based on the company they want to run the country, which is not exactly an irrelevant category to consider.
You may be right about your family treating everyone with dignity and respect. But speaking purely as a matter of logic and likelihood, the other poster is absolutely right to doubt that.
But think about the Nazis' individual humanity! My parents are Nazis and they're good people!
My dad’s the same way, you put it into words perfectly. It sucks because like that would be so wonderful to have backing up good causes but they just can’t for some reason.
My dad genuinely believes that the Conservative party leader is a good dude that “I know and I can talk to” simply because he lives in that guy’s riding the dude did some door-to-door stuff a long time ago. Because he’s seen him in person it’s far too difficult to question the guy’s shitty policies and behaviour.
I genuinely don’t even know if it’s kindness or not. It’s such a strange thing to me, to be nearly unable to be mean to someone you’ve seen in person and yet so profoundly dismissive to someone else just because you can’t concieve of their life as being “real” without having them right in front of yo- oh, maybe that’s it.
I don't think any fascist leader would fit conventional standards of attractiveness.
I think that's part of what drew them into fascist thinking, the idea that being "the great leader" would make da wahmenz respect them finally.
I don't think it's a coincidence fascism came into existence so soon after women's rights did. The autonomy and personhood of women is something the fascist inherently contempts, and their ability to say no is something the fascist resents above everything else, the idea that there's work they have to do to earn a woman's trust and respect instead of just being able to buy her off her father once he's successful enough.
This is related to but not entirely the same as the impulses behind the cries of family values among the American christian right. That is more about the idea of literal patriarchy than the individual grievance some incel has with the break with it.
Patriarchy is the mythologized past that fascism seeks to return to in a frustrated reflex to the idea that the fascists have been "cut off" by moves away from patriarchy when they "did everything right." They view it as the same kind of frustration as people who studied at university only to find themselves stuck in minimum wage work, because they feel the same entitlement to control over a family unit from being a good little christian boy that a student feels to some promise of a career for completing four years of specialized study.