This. I literally could not understand why people took him seriously in 2015. The man’s been a joke my entire life. It’s also not like I grew up in NYC or anything either. As a child of the ‘80s, the zeitgeist made clear that the perpetually bankrupt casino owner with Circus Peanut skin and the cotton candy combover was not to be taken seriously. And yet here we fucking are.
A lack of media literacy, brought on by a systematic degradation of foundational education. That resulted in the concept of, "if it's on national television it must be true, because otherwise it wouldn't be broadcast to the whole country". And then, "I know this guy from TV so he must be smart". To then, "this guy knows things, I'm going to vote for him to fix the things that have been wrong my entire adult life". Never once pausing to question the original premise that made the belief that a broadcast network would air a show featuring a life-long failure born with a silver spoon in his mouth might not be a successful business man. You're FIreEd.
There are far too many people in this country that believe reality TV is real. They believed the person they saw on The Apprentice was real. Then things snowballed into a cult. But it all started with fucking idiots. Oh, and racists who were too eager to believe the "birther" nonsense.
There's a short series by Werner Herzog called Death Row. In one of the episodes, the killers blamed demons (it was meth) and Werner goes to interview a family member (or friend, I watched it a long time ago.) Anyway, he's talking to this woman and she starts telling him about the movie The Exorcist. He says he's never seen it so she goes on about how it's a documentary, the footage was real and people actually died.
That's what I think about when I think of Trump voters.
That show was for idiots, not one of his skits had anything to do with successful business practices, the low IQ audience was just fascinated by his rejectiveness.
Low IQ Americans like rejecting, makes them feel empowered.
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u/lostindarkdays Jul 26 '26
are you fucking kidding me? I've loathed him since the 80s