Trump went from the “because you’d be in jail” guy I loved to this “letting Hillary get away with her crimes is barely scratching the surface of everything I can do to fuck the concepts of law and justice”
So what happened to my fellow supporters? I’m still here but it’s like all the others vaporized? Or I was the only one the whole time, but then why would Trump lie for my support when my one vote wasn’t gonna decide that first election?
This seems really weird
I’m sorry to say this, but it sounds like you got duped, hard.
When estimating support numbers, remember the 90-9-1 rule. In opinion creating spaces, most of the Creators and Contributors are interested actors. What you thought were large numbers of “fellow people”, were most likely opinion creators, grifters, and a small number of genuine believers. The bulk of real people, were most likely the lurkers whom you never saw or heard from, and who likely held all sorts of different opinions.
Your one vote was barely relevant, the important part was to plant a series of messages in the minds of those silent 90%. Once the goal has been achieved, and the opinion space no longer needed, those genuine believers get discarded, and the next opinion creation space is spun up with the same formula.
Thanks for bringing up the 90-9-1 rule, that does make it make more sense how the demographics feel so different from how they felt.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure people in the room cheered when Trump said “you’d be in jail” at the debate. Would those people cheering still cheer for whatever trump is saying now, or what happened to all that public anger?
Edited because I got sidetracked from my train of thought originally
“People” are not a single entity. Everyone is different. Many would cheer for him no matter what, whether they are diehard Rs or they have some kind of parasocial relationship or whatever. They don’t care what he says, only that he said it. Some would cheer because they like what he says, regardless of who said it. Some would disagree and become disillusioned. And some might even hate him now.
He still has a lot of supporters. I nearly cut my mom off recently, and I rarely talk to my dad. Both of them rampant supporters. Naturally, their support of this bullshit treatment towards innocent trans people (like the guy I’m married to) was enough. And they’ll defend it still, even disrespecting us in the process, or jumping through mental hoops to explain how he doesn’t actually hate trans people and isn’t attacking them on a near daily basis. I can’t explain why they do this, and honestly it’s not my job to change them as much as I’d love to (and I’ve tried). All I can assume is that my parents don’t respect who I married, and that’s enough for me. But my point is they’re still out there.
Those people will cheer for anything he says because the content doesn’t matter, only tribalism.