I'm not trying to insult anybody. I've had a hard time understanding why so many Americans are supporting Donald Trump. It would make sense if he was around 20%, but at ~50%, I need to think carefully about what could be motivating them. This is my attempt to do so.
- They may not actually be racist, but they are certainly Ok with a candidate who says a lot that I would consider to be racist.
- In spite of a lot that I think is good about America, many would prefer to take their chances with a large change whose effect is unknown: a "random restart". It's not clear whether this is due to an honest difference of opinion about which things are good and which are bad, or simply a lack of imagination on their part about how very much worse things could be.
- They must get a lot of their information through watching video rather than reading. Trump is excellent at using his voice, face and body to convey an emotional message. When you read it, however, much of what Trump says does not make any sense. It's not a matter of just being incorrect. He simply makes a lot of statements that either cannot be interpreted via the rules of the English language or have either no informational content.
- A surprising number of people who consider themselves to be libertarian are supporting a candidate who is clearly on the opposite end of the political spectrum: authoritarian.
- I have no reason to call them, as a group, uninformed. They do, however, seem to be Ok with a candidate who has not shown himself to be well informed on a number of critical issues. He often give one of two generic answers: (note that neither of them requires him to have actually even heard of the thing that the questioner is asking about).
- 1) If it seems like a bad thing: "It's a real mess and the current administration has't done anything to fix it. They have, in fact, made it worse."
- 2) If he really doesn't know what the thing is at all: "A short time ago nobody was talking about that. Now it's a big deal. Just amazing."
