I would agree. The explanation I have for it in the US is tribalism. Thats it. I'm an immigrant to the US and feel like I have an outsiders perspective. I find that American's suffer a from a severe case of Proportionality Bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_bias when they think about American Politics. They think that because Trump has had a large effect on American Politics, there has to be larger forces at play. "He's some kind of political genius", "He's playing 3D chess", "There is some kind of unexplained magic to his words" etc etc. It's much more basic than that, he found a way to speak to the baser parts of one of the tribes and turn them against the other tribe.He makes his tribe feel good and promises to get the other tribe who are very bad people. It's amazingly and shockingly basic.
It is both incredibly simple and readily apparent. What is interesting/amusing is how the further up the right-wing food chain you climb the closer you get to people who you _know_ understand the difference and can see what is happening and what is being said, but who will deny and justify for the sake of eliminating the cognitive dissonance between their own reasoning and what the leader of their tribe is saying.
Here on HN if is almost funny to watch the different flavours of Trumpkin try to explain and justify themselves. You have the hard-core believers who only barely manage to keep the racism and xenophobia in check but can still throw out a dog whistle all the way to the ones who probably once thought of themselves as principled conservatives but who are reduced to simple projection when presented with facts ('no, we are not the ones driven by fear and anger, it is the left...') As unpleasant as the Trump experience has been, one of its few benefits has been to let the truly cretinous among us feel like they have permission to drop the mask and show us who they really are.
While I'd agree Trump has indirectly revealed the priorities of many, let's take care not to permanently label people.
I was on the right most of my life and hated Trump. Yet he seemed to be the least worst for many single issue voters. Thankfully forums like this helped challenge my worldview enough to overcome the indoctrination of my youth. Now my entire perspective had flipped.
Everyone has the capacity to change. And that's much more likely to happen in a welcoming and curiosity friendly environment than an echo chamber.
As they say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis. There is a lot of variation in political opinion that I enjoy and solicit and I enjoyed having some honest conservatives as friends, but to support Trump four years ago is bad and to support him today is unconscionable. I am happy to write-off those who spent the past year supporting trump and do not care if they have the capacity to change because as far as I and a lot of other people are concerned they decided to sit at the table with the Nazi.
This sums it up. Trump took low participation voters and made politics sport for them. The slogan "make libs cry again" - it's not about what he can do for them, it's about how he can hurt "the other". That his supporters identified with him so much every attack against him they felt was an attack on them.
The rabid cult of personality that popped up around him has been highly disturbing to watch. Decking everything out in shirts, hats, flying his name as a flag, painting your house with his name, covering your vehicle with flags. The non-stop rallies and campaigning even after he was elected.
And no, before someone trys to compare, it was not like that with Obama. People were excited about him but it did not become an everyday identity alongside a never-ending campaign.
