[alluro2]

Trump is, inevitably, in the comments a lot.

And I'm just surprised when people still react to what he does as "unbelievable", "illegal" etc... I get it, but it's weird how persistently people still try to frame Trump's actions into moral, legal, historical, cultural, responsibility or any other framework.

He is someone who was born into wealth in the worst way possible, and was never - ever - subject to any moral restrictions, material consequences, or requirements that depend on any positive qualities, effort or success.

In those conditions, his bullish way of behaving always got him what he wanted in the moment, without any downsides or counter-weight that would regulate it. Time after time, he was given proof - by us, the society - that there are no consequences, or they are just so unimpactful, and that he can continue doing what he does. There is no framework that he needed to adhere to.

He was then placed into practically the same position within the government - being able to do whatever he wants and benefits him (directly, or through benefitting his posse), and there will be no material consequences of any kind. If he comes up to any inconvenient restrictions put in place before, they can just be removed first.

And that's it, that's what he's been doing all along. He doesn't have any higher interests, any ulterior motivation, or ambitions - in every situation, he just uses it to get something for himself in that moment - even if openly solely to be able to brag that he did it - and he makes himself look big by lying or belittling others, and that's it. Just a very simple unrestricted narcissist, on grander scale.

Their behavior is quite simple to understand and predict. It's just that they can rarely be SO up there, so unrestricted, that people still seem to struggle to not try to tie him to norms and frameworks.

[9dev]

I concur, Trumps motivation is easy. That of his voters, not so much. They knew what they would get; it was on plain display for them to see.

Every single last one of them is guilty of everything that happened and will happen.

[vkou]

The motivation of the voters becomes a lot more understandable when you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

This congress and POTUS is, in fact, a good representation of their values, and they aren't ashamed of it.

(You could have given them that benefit in 2016, and somewhat in 2020, but definitely not in 2024.)

[alluro2]

Their motivation seems clear from what they voted, and what they're cheering for - they want to be able to behave without consequences in the same way as well.

Blame others (dems, libs, immigrants, races, religions...) for everything that's wrong, screw the "government" whenever possible, "grab them by the ***", and treat others and the world in the same way Trump can.

It's the same in every autocracy - the leader is providing an outlet for the immoral / suppressed / forbidden thoughts, actions and feelings - they either live vicariously through him (even if they are worse off, but that's blamed on others), or can now do some of that stuff because of him.

[an0malous]

The root cause of the current political environment is income inequality and endless funding for wars. The people who support Trump are losing the economic game and had no better representative. The reality is that both parties are owned by the investor class and support foreign funding for wars. Until we as a society figure out that the left vs right struggle is just a distraction from the investor vs labor struggle, we will never fix this problem. Note how everyone in this thread is blaming Trump and the conservative party when the Kamala and the liberal party would likely be doing the same thing, because they both support Israel and the IDF and cover up their war crimes.

All this stuff about trans rights and gun rights and freedom of speech and other random culture war issues are just a tool to keep the labor class divided. The root cause is wealth insecurity, it won’t automatically solve the other problems but it’ll turn down the temperature. I wish people would wake up to this and stop fighting their neighbors when they’re both on the same team.