Serious answers only. For over a year I was told that trump “doesn’t have anything to do with that”.
I honestly need to know from an actual Republican who believed trumps words and is now witnessing p2025 almost hit 50% completion with the department of education getting dismantled.
And with that; how do these people feel that public schools, daycare centers and tech schools all going to cost 3-6x as much as it does now for tuition?
Why do you ask this question here? Do you actually want to know?
I don’t know any republicans personally but I would not be surprised if, given a choice between admitting fault and feeling bad, or literally any other option including lying or violence, they won’t admit fault. If they weren’t emotionally stunted, they wouldn’t be conservatives.
I have literally stopped speaking to my parents over this and have put the ball in their court, telling them that all they need to do is re-evaluate their position about this one fucking guy and admit they were wrong.
And I guess they’re fine with just not speaking to their son instead.
Humans in general are very hesitant to admit that they were wrong. Cult members doubly so.
It’s so unfortunate too, because so many of our society’s current ills can literally be boiled down to “so and so refused to admit they were wrong”
Yeah I realized admitting fault is kind of a power move. You can just be like “oh! I was wrong. Woops” and what might have been a like hour long argument about some unimportant minutia instead just wraps up. Nothing bad happens.
This is why blaming conservatives or getting them to admit fault doesn’t work. It only makes them become more defensive and entrenched.
A better approach is to appeal to their victim complex. IE: Instead of “Trump is ruining this country and its your fault for voting for him!” try “Dude, Trump is screwing us! This isn’t the great America we were promised!” or some variation of that. Gotta use different tactics.
I’m not sure it’s possible to blame Trump rather than his voters when he literally promised to make most of these changes. It might be more effective to say that Trump was misled by Musk.
Yeah, you have to make them see you as a member of a shared in-group. That’s the most important thing to them (and many people, honestly. we’re all susceptible to tribalism and such)
Oh no, the lying liar who is best known for lying about literally everything lied and gullible people believed it (or conveniently ignored it, or didn’t care or thought it was just peachy because they thought it wouldn’t apply to them and were perfectly fine with it applying to other people)? Who could possibly have predicted that? Oh wait, I think literally every left wing person in the US predicted that.
Honestly we knew that, even if Trump wasn’t involved, the people around him were. Y’all are too gullible. Even today I see posts on Lemmy about “Elon did this, Trump did that”, pure noise draining out the real news that happens once or twice a week.
The person i was talking to about it said that he doesn’t want Project 2025 put in place, but also voted Trump and (as you said) said Trump “doesn’t have anything to do with that”.
When I went to talk to them again after the election, he had either deleted his account or blocked me after I ask about Trump appointing many involved with Project 2025.
i am guessing this would the case on an average. thanks though
I don’t know anything about it. What is it? I guess it’s got some good stuff in. But I wouldn’t endorse it. Whatever it is.
some good stuff
If you want to live in medieval time with your wife/servant, sure.
Most are fine with it. Remember the people that died of covid denying it existed the whole time? That’s the type. They’re dumb af.
What do we call the Herman cain award now?
Not quite about just project 2025 but Nate Silver from what used to be 538 has Trump aggregated disapproval rating at 49.8% as of 03/20/25. That up from 40% in 2 months.
Source: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin
Nate silver showed he was full of shit in 2016. Idk why anyone still listens to him.
And all of those people who had family die from covid and still thought masks were a form of thought control
People who have never experienced oppression just thinking it’s business as usual.
Wearing a mask ain’t oppression either 😂
That’s part of the problem, a lot of people don’t realize they are the oppressors
The other part is the ones that do.
i forgot about that haha.
You were lied to, unfortunately. Project 2025 was always their plan, and as you’re seeing now, they’re going full steam ahead with it. The best thing you can do now is learn from this mistake. Don’t trust what politicians tell you they want, or tell you they’re doing; see for yourself what they’re actually doing.
By the way, you’re going to get responses from like 95% leftists since it’s lemmy. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong though.
What? Bro I voted for Harris lmao. I’m also a wannabe Canadian, don’t like this country.
The period is tripping everyone up lmao
I honestly need to know. From an actual Republican who believed trumps words
Fair lol. I try to type how I would speak so it’s meant to be a pause
What kind of a moron believes anything a politician says, especially a openly fascist cunt
Like 80% of the US apparently
Like it’s their third rail of blow and their homie just picked up another ounce.
I know a couple life-long Republicans I sometimes briefly talk about politics with (one family, one acquaintance). Neither of them like Trump, but like the idea around Project 2025. One is an evangelical Christian, the other is a Catholic.
The Catholic strongly believes government should be run like a business, and the president should be like a CEO, so he should be able to fire everyone and replace them, if needed, with workers that will execute his plans. He’s also an anti-abortion, and tough-on-crime/immigration type. However, he strongly disapproves of Trump seemingly being pro-Russian now, Trump and his cabinet’s personal lives (he’s always strangely fixated on people’s personal lives, in a moral sense, for some reason), the take-over of the FBI and CIA, and the tariffs hurting his stock portfolio.
The evangelical Christian just doesn’t like Trump as a person, and doesn’t like Russia. He’s a just-world-hypothesis, small government, women are subservient, pro-business type; but also low/lower-middle-class, and has needed, and will need the social services he opposes. I guess his opinions are pretty similar to the Catholic’s, just a little more extreme on the social side, and supports policies that have always hurt him. I mean, Republican policies hurt the (fairly wealthy) Catholic too, but at least they get to say their taxes are lower and there’s less red-tape.
He wants a king, not a democracy
He thinks the president should hire/fire anyone they want, but they dislike the people the president has been choosing.
“Government should be run like a business” sounds like a totalitarian religion.
So basically the opposite of what the founding fathers wanted with separation of powers and checks and balances, right?
I thought these people were cosplaying traditionalists.
Yeah, these people are ignorant of and don’t care about civics. The ignorance of the one guy surprised me, because they went to a decent college, but didn’t even know what gerrymandering was. They are un-american, IMO.
And this boys, girls, and the Eldritch entity in my cupboard is why the humanities are so important, if you want other examples go watch the Behind the Bastards episodes on the Zizians.
If you want to understand them more, I think the problem is you’re seeing different aspects to what they do.
‘Large’ government with lots of power might sound more like totalitarianism, overseeing many aspects of life that - in the opinion of many - ought to be left to people’s freedom.
Running the government like a business, on the other hand, implies having pressures on it to do only what achieves its aims, and do that efficiently. And a CEO-president means the power to fix the government without being restricted by bureaucracy.
… Of course to me, by that point, it sounds like a king, exactly as you said. And running a government as a business sounds about as stupid as you can get. But these things aren’t exact, and understanding how a different perspective can make something look good helps us to understand the people with that perspective. It also helps us see things to improve that our perspective might be missing.
But it’s not about the size of the government, or the bureaucracy, it’s about whether anyone can have dictatorial power over life, death, freedom etc of others without any check on the legality of their orders.
The separation and co-equal branches of the 3 arms of government is bedrock. The government and bureaucracy can be huge or tiny without relevance to this.
I understand the appeal of being unshackled by other people’s opinions and interests.
I just don’t know how they reconcile their notional “conservatism” (they is conserving the traditions) with dismantling the actual tradition.
Interesting. Thanks for the time man.
No offense but your personal experience does not characterize an entire religion. 2 people do not speak for 2 religions unless one of those people is the Pope.
The reality is people often use the guise of religion as an excuse for them to act a certain way when in reality they are just bigots.
Idk I grew up as a fundamentalist. It the religion is shitty without the toxic politics.
Didn’t mean to paint entire religions. It was just a convenient way to differentiate the 2 people I was talking about, and to imply where their motivations may come from. I’ve known plenty of less right-wing Catholics and Protestants. I am an anti-theist though, and think religion does more harm than good.
Just for some perspective: in 2009 I was a Christian nationalist and I thought Obama was going to use FEMA to imprison conservative dissenters and would turn the US into a communist dictatorship. I hoped and prayed for an explicitly Christian government and an end to most federal programs. If I had the same worldview now, I would be orgasmically happy with the way things are going.
Pray tell what changed your view?
Reality
I’m going to test the character limit for a Lemmy comment.
My views on religion and politics have evolved a lot over the years. I hope I remain open enough to continue to change and grow. I can think of several touchstone moments, people, events, podcasts, and books that have influenced my departure from religious fundamentalism and political conservatism. There was a book I read as a child, a skeptical professor in college, a compassionate neighbor, a contrarian friend, a challenging podcast, an insistent and feisty little girl, spiritual slavery, and a God who didn’t listen to a community in pain. It’s a story of exposure to new ideas.
I was brought up to be a fundamentalist baptist. I was faithful to the only baptist creed: “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, I’m don’t chew, and don’t run with those who do.” Well, I suppose there were additional “don’ts “ like dancing, swearing, listening to worldly music, and watching rated R movies, but those items don’t fit into a nice little rhyme. Anyway, when I was a kid, one of my relatives had a book called The Handbook of Denominations. I found it and spent an afternoon looking at it, having my mind blown. To that point, it had never really occurred to me that there were Christians who were not baptists. This primed me to pursue relationships in middle school and high school with people who believed differently from me. I thought the heathen kids were wrong and disobeying God’s word, but they were interesting. I had friends who were LDS, Catholic, Charismatic, even atheists. I enjoyed a wide exposure to ideas while my church mates were cloistered.
In college, I took Biblical Hebrew. The professor was a secular Jew. His breakdown of the wild poetic imagery in Genesis 1 exploded my fundamentalist idea that it was literal history. Throughout the class, we were to visit synagogues and report on our observations. This exposure to a different way of worship impacted me deeply. I saw people earnestly believing and praying in a way different from me, yet with the same sincerity and conviction.
When my wife and I started our family, we had an elderly neighbors who were life-long Roman Catholics. Throughout my life, the Catholics I had met only went to church on Christmas and Easter, drank, cursed, and fornicated, and were generally indistinguishable from the heathen around me. I saw them as not-serious idol worshippers, doomed to eternal hellfire. My neighbors were different. They were the kindest, most generous people I had ever met. Even now, years later, I tear-up thinking about their sweetness toward us, a struggling young family. It was like living across the street from Jesus Himself. They brought us meals, helped with home repairs, watched our kids, bought clothes and toys, and so much more I can’t remember. Their love turned the tables on the Protestant reformation for me. I didn’t convert, but I started to realize in every group there can be shitty people, ordinary people, and beautiful people.
During Obama’s first term, as I mentioned above, I was a Christian nationalist. AS far as I can remember, one single comment from a trusted friend and mentor upset my political apple cart. After a Bible study, I asked my friend if he had seen some story about the President on Fox News. He said, “I don’t watch that crap. He’s my brother in Christ, and I don’t appreciate a bunch of talking heads telling me to hate my brother.” That was a watershed moment. My friend was politically conservative and religiously extreme. I respected him and that put a lot of weight behind his words.
Another trusted friend recommended a podcast for entertainment’s sake where the hosts talked about their shared experiences in a fundamentalist religious upbringing and current-day divergence while getting drunk. I saw how two people can keep a close friendship despite holding different views; in this case, Catholicism and agnosticism. They also spoke favorably about Obama and when 2016 rolled around, they were huge fans of Bernie Sanders. I strongly related to their experiences and their left-leaning political views were challenging at first, then contagious. In 2016, for the first time, I did not vote straight republican down the ballot.
In my adult life, I have been a member or regular attender of five different Christian denominations. Some of these changes were quite significant and involved catechism and re-baptism. I’m always searching for answers.
Once upon a time, I was an Eastern Orthodox Christian. For many years. This is a culturally conservative and religiously fundamentalist expression of Christianity. The church has strict gender roles, especially within its rituals. Women are permitted to teach the children and perform domestic duties. In some Orthodox denominations, women may serve as cantors and choir directors. Women are prohibited from serving at the altar. They cannot even enter the sacred space surrounding the altar. After services one day, a few groups of people lingered, talking. They were mostly parents, as there was to be a short altar server class. When the priest announced it was time for altar server class to begin and for all the boys to meet him at the front of the church, a girl, maybe seven years old, declared excitedly, “can I go? I want to be an altar server!” The priest, caught off-guard answered “no, I’m sorry.” “Why not?” “We can talk about it when you’re older,” the priest replied nervously, looking at her dad for backup. This little exchange stuck with me. It seemed inappropriate that a child’s enthusiasm for wanting to feel helpful and important was squashed simply because she had the wrong biological equipment. This was the beginning of the end of my religious fundamentalism.
I had exercised my rights as a male in the Orthodox Christian denomination and performed vital roles in services for many years. I’m going to be brief here because the community is small and I am protective of my anonymity online. I was pressured to serve the church and be available for every service (at minimum three per week) on a volunteer basis. Although I became exhausted and frustrated, to entertain thoughts of quitting was considered spiritual weakness. This was an especially damaging time for my spiritual life.
While I was involved with this church, a tragic incident occurred in a nearby rural community. A mother was home with her four-year-old son and put him down for an afternoon nap. She also fell asleep on the couch. When she awoke, her son was nowhere to be found. She searched the house and property, called neighbors, and eventually called law enforcement for help. By the evening, dozens of friends, family, and neighbors were out looking for the boy. It was spring and the nights were still dangerously cool for a boy in pajamas. Word spread on social media and churches prayed earnestly for the boy and his family. I was especially touched because I had young children. The boy was found two days later, dead from exposure, lying in a ditch just 100 yards from the house. Many people had probably walked right past him. I hated God for that. This was a catalyst for my investigation into whether I believed in a personal God who actively intervened in his creation.
TL;DR: My faith and politics changed over a period of 10-15 years from Christian Nationalist and religious fundamentalist to progressive agnostic through exposure to new ideas, often introduced to me by people I trusted.
Wow… That’s quite the journey. Thank you for sharing it.
It’s particularly enlightening is that the diversity of information presented to you is what helped you change. Not just one “gotcha” quote from some online commenter, one snippy remark about a noticeable hypocrisy. Not one source of disruption, but many. I think that’s fascinating, and extremely helpful for those of us with family who only get their news and opinions and politics from one place.
Again, thanks for telling your story.
What denomination, primarily, were you? Did you manage to get anyone out with you? (I was unable.)
I’ve been part of several denominations: fundie baptist, charismatic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox. I’m now a bit of a free agent, but I attend a UMC when I’m feeling up to it.
I’d also be interested in hearing about how you changed your views.
Not even trying to be mean but probably themself or someone they know personally got hurt.
Not necessarily. In my case, psychedelics played a huge role in finally making everything click.
Oh, hey. That whole mind expanding thing really isn’t a joke. I look back, sometimes, on who I used to be.
Yep. That crowd never changes until they are directly impacted somehow.
You do see that quite a bit in “ex” subreddits. Personal experience can shake anyone’s views, not just “that crowd.” Spiritual abuse played a role in pushing me away from religious fundamentalism, but there were other factors that laid the groundwork. The process took years and key elements involved a mind-expanding book, two compassionate friends, a podcast, and a local news story that showed me God was quite a bit different than I thought he was. I’ll write the book about it under another comment.
This is very common, but was not the reason for my worldview change.
I wrote a novel in reply to HarkMahlberg above.
How in the name of sweet baby imaginary white Jesus did you get out of that mindset!?
I wrote a novel in reply to the same question asked by HarkMahlberg above.
Not the person you replied to but I also used to be a hardcore Christian convertitive.
Honestly just talking to people with different viewpoints than me. Back when Reddit was decent I would troll with conservative BS to get a rise out of commenters, but occasionally people would reply with points I couldn’t refute. Making IRL friends helped a lot too. I realized people actually have nuance in their opinions and there’s a lot more gray area than I realized. Leaving relgion was the last step for me. Once my identity was no longer my beliefs I was able to change them.
Its part of what scares me about the internet now, we all get locked in little echo chambers. Nobody’s viewpoints get challanged and there’s no honest debate any more. Defederated social media will only make it worse as there will be 10,000 different Lemmys, each one for an exactly specific set of beliefs that will never be questioned.
Schools won’t cost 3-6x as much stupid LIBTARD! Schools will cost 3-6x as much and your Taxes will be Raised to pay for the CEOs Mansion STUPID COMMIE!
That sounds about right
Ask the guy who had his wife deported and is still supporting Trump.
I’d prefer to never have to interact with someone that hateful and stupid.
At this point, I don’t know why Republicans don’t outright just say they want people who they see as less than them suffering and/or dead. That’s their only consistent political view.
Studies show that people on the left are more trusting of others in general than those on the right. It is reflected in their obsession with guns and their rejection of social programs.
Leftist ideology is at its core about people. Even when it is wrong, it’s wrong trying to help people.
The right is just about power. The only mistakes it makes are actions that cost it power.
So many of them are in denial about it themselves. It’s very strange indeed.
Republicans lie. As any fascist party, they don’t have any consistent ideology beyond hurting people. They’ll invent whatever reasoning and justification they need to justify their bullying, and they’ll immediately abandon that reason for another convenient excuse when necessary.
Republicans lie. They knew damn well what Project 2025 was, and they were in favor of all of it. When they said Trump had nothing to do with it, they were lying. Republicans ultimately don’t care what happens to society, or even themselves personally. They would gladly vote to lower the quality of their own lives, as long as the undesirables were hurt in equal measure.
