Smart people helped him be the candidate.

People who didn't mind that he is a racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, bigoted philandering malignant narcissist grifter made him president.

Intelligent lawyers degraded themselves to make it happen again.

I do think trying to backdate the idea that intelligent people are behind Trump's rise because supposedly intelligent people are now on the Trump train for their own expedient reasons ignores that the beginning of the Trump movement was grounded in his explicitly bigoted and racist proclamations.

It's not like he came down the escalator with any pitch to intelligent people. Appeals to hatred, bigotry, conspiracy theories and racism were a key plank of how he drove his candidacy from the very beginning. Enough Americans chose this revolting human being as their avatar to make it happen. Twice.

Nobody was conned by intelligent people: they went along with the racist carnival huckster.

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throw0101d an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> People who didn't mind that he is a racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, bigoted philandering malignant narcissist grifter made him president.

It's not that they "didn't mind", but many probably were happy that he was those things:

> If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.

> If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.

> If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.

> It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.

[…]

* Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

	▲	trashb 9 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> But he carried a buffet of them You could argue that the buffet was so large that combined with confirmation bias people often didn't see or believe the statements at the other side of the buffet. Allowing the convincing of opposite groups to both offer support. This is very different from "traditional" politics where often one group is supported and the other fought.
	▲	dofm 7 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It's not that they "didn't mind", but many probably were happy that he was those things. I think many of them were determined not to vote for a Clinton, or a woman, or that particular female Clinton, and they casually brushed off the very evident problems with his character to vote for him. There are also moderate, supposedly principled Republicans who you would think would vote for a hawkish conservative Democrat over a revolting malignant narcissist philandering racist bigot and crook, but no. So no, I think "didn't mind" is the right phrasing for the people with selective morality who pushed him over the edge to elected. They are negligent, immoral people who don't really have a problem with any bigotry not directed at them. They didn't pay it any attention. Not their problem, don't mind it. All the evidence is "didn't mind" won it for him again, right? He wasn't going to come for the law-obiding immigrants, just the bad ones, etc. etc.

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GolfPopper an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I was in college in the run-up to Trump's election. I knew a lot of left-leaning people who were very tired of the neo-liberal status quo, and who were willing to put their time and money into making Obama's promised but undelivered change into something real. And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!"

It's a sucker's game, and the voters on both sides of the spectrum get taken again and again and again. "Sure, Our Politicians are Bad, but the Other Side's Politicians are Much Worse!" Voting for the lesser evil for decades is just taking the scenic route to Hell as a country.

Meanwhile, no matter who's in charge, there's always just enough votes in Congress for military spending and corporate bailouts, but never enough votes for any sort of significant populist economics or meaningful regulation that might push back against the billionaire/big corporation stranglehold on the country and government. (President Obama, with a working Democratic majority, delivered... a national health care plan designed by the right-libertarian Cato Institute and pioneered at the state level by his Republican opponent Mitt Romney.)

	▲	dofm 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!" And that would have been the correct choice. Because he's not just the worst person to be president, he was very clearly, even in 2015, among a small handful of the worst people with any kind of following to ever run for the job (maybe not as bad as David Duke, at least as bad as Lyndon LaRouche). It's really simple: if there are two candidates with a chance of running for the job and only one of them is very evidently a malignant narcissist, you pick the other one. Regardless of their policies! Trump was easily identifiable as erratic, self-centred and profoundly dangerous and that has been borne out. (You'll get no argument from me that Mitt Romney got a raw deal both from timing and from the old school of political rough-and-tumble, especially seeing as he's often to the left of Gavin Newsom)