Most Republicans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln

[HomerJS]

We now can see the REAL derangement. Republicans clearly are insane.

Most Republicans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln: poll

A majority of Republicans ranked Donald Trump over Civil War hero Abraham Lincoln when asked which was the better president, according to a poll — a result that Trump seized on as an argument again…

nypost.com

In case you want to claimed biased questions here is the source. They just asked Republicans to rank a list of Presidents

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/a10nw9wbas/econTabReport.pdf

 

[interchange]

Is we separate Trump as a man from Trump as a symbol, then perhaps we can start to answer some of these questions.

 

[pmv]

I guess when answering these sorts of questions people don't react in good faith. They answer them with the idea in mind that this will be a story, and are probably just trying to send a message rather than stating what they literally believe.

(Of course, it's not a very well-expressed message, because many will just hear it as 'Trump supporters are morons'.)

 

[fskimospy]

Yes, I imagine this is primarily performative. If I remember right Republicans said similar things about Bush in the mid 2000’s before the bottom dropped out.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in a few years Republicans pull the same ‘who, me?’ bit they did with Bush where they claim they never liked the guy they were effusively praising just a few years prior.

 

[K1052]

I guess when answering these sorts of questions people don't react in good faith. They answer them with the idea in mind that this will be a story, and are probably just trying to send a message rather than stating what they literally believe.

(Of course, it's not a very well-expressed message, because many will just hear it as 'Trump supporters are morons'.)

Another possibility is that about 20-25% of the country believes in Trump at a cult like level. The WH and Trump campaign has basically gone full North Korean propaganda on the Glorious Leader and those people are eating it up.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Is we separate Trump as a man from Trump as a symbol, then perhaps we can start to answer some of these questions.

We could but a great many people aren't "us". I might understand how the Titanic is sinking but that is more of an academic consideration than a solution to a crisis.

 

[K1052]

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in a few years Republicans pull the same ‘who, me?’ bit they did with Bush where they claim they never liked the guy they were effusively praising just a few years prior.

Any disavowal is likely to come from Republicans facing electoral trouble in their districts due to demographic and political shifts. It's not going to work either since the odds Trump and his vile brood disappears from the political discourse, even if he looses, are about nil.

 

[thraashman]

Obviously, Lincoln freed the slaves which most Republicans consider to be the biggest mistake the country ever made. The idea that we should treat other races as equal is like the worst thing ever to a solid majority of the current Republican party. That Trump continuously attacks different ethnic and nationality groups makes him the perfect President to those people.

 

[HomerJS]

I guess when answering these sorts of questions people don't react in good faith. They answer them with the idea in mind that this will be a story, and are probably just trying to send a message rather than stating what they literally believe.

(Of course, it's not a very well-expressed message, because many will just hear it as 'Trump supporters are morons'.)

You mean just like Trump his supporters are liars as well?

 

[tweaker2]

For the Repubs a chameleon comes to mind, or an octopus, having the ability to change their complexion and outward appearances as the situation presents itself. They are opportunists looking to take advantage of every fantastical nook and cranny that the Dems offer up to them. Take take take and give nothing in return is their SOP.

In their present and true form they are forced to live in a world of lies and deception in order to stay relevant. This without admitting it to themselves, not ever for to do so would destroy the very foundation the party has managed to severely weaken with its fakery.

 

[interchange]

We could but a great many people aren't "us". I might understand how the Titanic is sinking but that is more of an academic consideration than a solution to a crisis.

Reverse Harry Potter: it's not how you are different. It's how you are the same.

 

[pmv]

You mean just like Trump his supporters are liars as well?

I don't agree that answering a survey hyperbolically in order to say "in your face, liberals" constitutes lying...though I do think many Trump supporters are angry to the point of derangement. And that their anger is for the most part unjustified and/or misdirected (i.e. it's about a fear of losing privileges)

I suppose the thing is, I don't find it impossible to imagine doing something similar from the other direction - declaring a leftist figure to be a flawless leader (when I actually can see they are far from perfect), simply out of anger with the conservative/faux-centrist media propaganda that would certainly be attacking them.

I don't think I would do it these days, because as a grumpy old man I'm relentlessly negative about everyone and everything, but I do think I would have done something like that when I was younger.

Also - I think it's acknowledged that when you fill in numerical 'satisfaction surveys' for some service or other, there's a case for exaggerating and making your views more extreme, because they average those things out and picking an extreme maximises your effect on the result. I think these political surveys are similar. So I don't think they really tell us much.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If the Constitution was drafted during an Age of Enlightenment or Reason, Trump's Tweets are occurring in an Age of Psychosis . . .

 

[sandorski]

Trump is Alive, Lincoln is Dead. Death is weakness. Sad.

 

[interchange]

If the Constitution was drafted during an Age of Enlightenment or Reason, Trump's Tweets are occurring in an Age of Psychosis . . .

Before Hitler's rise to power, I don't think most people would feel that the German populous was showing serious signs of psychosis. And after his fall, despite the East/West division, I don't think there was such a huge climb up to reason made by some educational / societal advancement effort.

We are all far more capable of bending or breaking reality when we unconsciously feel it psychologically important to do so than we realize. I don't much care to puff my chest and look down upon those who are further away from reason at the moment.

 

[thilanliyan]

Trump is Alive, Lincoln is Dead. Death is weakness. Sad.

Yeah what a loser

 

[pmv]

Before Hitler's rise to power, I don't think most people would feel that the German populous was showing serious signs of psychosis. And after his fall, despite the East/West division, I don't think there was such a huge climb up to reason made by some educational / societal advancement effort.

We are all far more capable of bending or breaking reality when we unconsciously feel it psychologically important to do so than we realize. I don't much care to puff my chest and look down upon those who are further away from reason at the moment.

Psychosis seems a rather technical term, but...before Hitler's rise to power Germany had...roving bands of Freikorps (probably including many with PTSD from the trenches), the stab-in-the-back-myth and the general trauma of losing millions of people in a war that they didn't expect to lose, a long-standing intensely militaristic and disciplinarian culture, an attempted communist take-over in Barvaria, a viciously anti-democratic aristocratic elite (many of whom believed in all kinds of weird mystical nonsense - in some cases so crazy even the Nazis wouldn't have them), a period of hyper-inflation...etc.

OK, perhaps not 'psychosis on an individual level, but as a collective metaphor that doesn't seem far from the mark. Germany for most of the post-WW1 era wasn't exactly a normal and well-adjusted nation, surely?

 

[soundforbjt]

For the Repubs a chameleon comes to mind, or an octopus, having the ability to change their complexion and outward appearances as the situation presents itself.

Definitely not an octopus, they have the ability to solve complex problems.

 

[interchange]

Germany for most of the post-WW1 era wasn't exactly a normal and well-adjusted nation, surely?

No, probably not. But I think historians may someday come up with a list like that for us in the wake of Trump.

OK, perhaps not 'psychosis on an individual level, but as a collective metaphor that doesn't seem far from the mark.

I think you're figuring out what I'm trying to say here. What I see in this thread is a discussion of how Trump supporters themselves seem to be individually psychotic. Not what it is about our society in which a large group of us are willing to identify with a psychosis.

If we position ourselves as post-Trump historians, what do you think we'd say?

 

[Vic]

Not surprising given that Lincoln was a liberal.

 

[tweaker2]

Definitely not an octopus, they have the ability to solve complex problems.

I once had a 100 gal. salt water fish tank that I used to stock with fish, etc.that I'd collect when I wasn't spearfishing for food. Like most other hobbies I got steeped in, it turned into a part time business affair in order to pay part of my way through college.

Anyway, I inadvertently collected this juvenile octopus that stuffed itself in a piece of coral that I needed to decorate my tank with. Well very soon after I acclimated the coral and introduced into the tank, the lil' sucker came out from hiding and from thereon in I commenced to study and interact with it. I had it for a few months whereupon it grew too large for the tank, started preying upon the other fish in the tank so I had to take it back to the reef where it came from.

I was amazed how quickly it learned when it was feeding time and how it would grab his share of the food and snake it away from the other fish in the tank. I duplicated that food in a jar experiment I saw on Discovery and damn if it didn't take not twenty minutes before it figured out how to open the jar just like I saw on TV.

 

[Puffnstuff]

We now can see the REAL derangement. Republicans clearly are insane.

Most Republicans think Trump is a better president than Lincoln: poll

A majority of Republicans ranked Donald Trump over Civil War hero Abraham Lincoln when asked which was the better president, according to a poll — a result that Trump seized on as an argument again…

nypost.com

In case you want to claimed biased questions here is the source. They just asked Republicans to rank a list of Presidents

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/a10nw9wbas/econTabReport.pdf

Well that's because when most Trump supporters think of Lincoln they think of welders.

 

[nutxo]

For the Repubs a chameleon comes to mind, or an octopus, having the ability to change their complexion and outward appearances as the situation presents itself. They are opportunists looking to take advantage of every fantastical nook and cranny that the Dems offer up to them. Take take take and give nothing in return is their SOP.

In their present and true form they are forced to live in a world of lies and deception in order to stay relevant. This without admitting it to themselves, not ever for to do so would destroy the very foundation the party has managed to severely weaken with its fakery.

Are we talking about republicans or the democrats debates?

As for voters. Well Trump was a punch in the nose. I think a lot of people that voted for Trump felt disenfranchised. Every other politician wants to make promises to help minorities and gays and kind of leave the lower white middle class behind. I think a lot of Trump voters felt like they were being told by liberals that their belief system doesn't count and they didn't count. Maybe they weren't smart enough to understand. So they bloodied the liberals noses.

Unless democrats can impeach Trump AND remove him from office the poor stupid forgotten lower middle class is going to deliver a knock out blow and we get 4 more years of Trump.

 

[brycejones]

Every other politician wants to make promises to help minorities and gays and kind of leave the lower white middle class behind.

See this is the bull shit lie that keeps getting repeated. Treating every member of society with respect does not mean others are being left behind.

 

[zinfamous]

I once had a 100 gal. salt water fish tank that I used to stock with fish, etc.that I'd collect when I wasn't spearfishing for food. Like most other hobbies I got steeped in, it turned into a part time business affair in order to pay part of my way through college.

Anyway, I inadvertently collected this juvenile octopus that stuffed itself in a piece of coral that I needed to decorate my tank with. Well very soon after I acclimated the coral and introduced into the tank, the lil' sucker came out from hiding and from thereon in I commenced to study and interact with it. I had it for a few months whereupon it grew too large for the tank, started preying upon the other fish in the tank so I had to take it back to the reef where it came from.

I was amazed how quickly it learned when it was feeding time and how it would grab his share of the food and snake it away from the other fish in the tank. I duplicated that food in a jar experiment I saw on Discovery and damn if it didn't take not twenty minutes before it figured out how to open the jar just like I saw on TV.

awesome. I love octopi.

I'm convinced the only reason they aren't dominating the planet is their primary status as a prey species and their lack of vertebrae. ...but I suspect they will eventually overcome those shortcomings.