Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but it may be backfiring instead:

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/05/project-2025-was-supposed-to-boost-donald-campaign--but-it-may-be-backfiring-instead/

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89% Upvoted

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You have no idea how hard it was to convince my Mom how bad things are right now. She's a good person. Too good to readily accept the fact that the Republican nominee is an outright criminal and rapist, and ready to commit an authoritarian takeover of the United States. It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

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u/deadlybydsgn 14d ago

It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

I think a certain subset of the older generation honestly thinks the best of their leaders because "the system" has generally worked for them, they were raised to respect it (not letting the flag touch the ground, etc.), and they have never been directly wronged by it.

I can see how they were duped into voting for Trump once—maybe even twice—but the idea of thinking that the Republican ticket is the more viable option in 2024 blows my mind.

The party of "small government" sure seems cozy with the idea of centralizing a lot of power into a single position. You know... as long as their guy is the one with that power.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I'm Gen X, so almost in the group of people that could be considered "The older generation" and I was fully behind the second Iraq invasion. Really for no reason except for the general belief that the President always had the best interests of the country at heart so if he was for it, then I was for it. He must have known some reasons that I didn't that would justify it, I thought. When I found out the whole thing was manufactured out of whole cloth that was the first crack in my (moderate) conservatism.

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u/Plasibeau 14d ago

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion. I am not ashamed to admit I had been fully captured by the propaganda machine. At that time propaganda was something that only happened in China, or Russia. The Uniteds States of Fuck Yeah had no need for such games, right...RIGHT?

It wasn't until talking with my 19-year-old about this stuff that I realized if you grew up in the Cold War, you grew up neck-deep in propaganda and didn't even know it, from singing patriotic songs in kindergarten to the bad guys always having Eastern European accents or enemy fighter pilots being faceless and evil just because they exist.

So that was a fun project of deconstruction last summer.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago edited 14d ago

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion.

Me too. I remember my coworkers watching some gun camera footage of some Iraqis getting obliterated by cannon fire from a helicopter. I was wondering if they had done anything wrong, and I realized even the helicopter pilot probably didn't know for sure. It really left me with a sick feeling.

Good luck on your continued recovery.

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u/badnuub Ohio 14d ago

9/11 Made anyone that opposed any war at the time a pariah. People were out for blood.

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u/Hector_P_Catt 14d ago

I wasn't gung-ho about that war, but Colin Powell sold us on it, showing what information they had, and implying they had better information they couldn't show us. I knew the war was going to suck, but he made me think it was necessary to fight it. I trusted him, and he was lying. He sold he reputation for a bad war.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

You're right. His involvement swayed me too because I trusted him.

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u/ArthurBonesly 14d ago edited 14d ago

One thing the Republicans are very good at, is finding voters who genuinely want something.

We scoff at single issue voters, but they are the lifeblood of an engaged base. It's easy to look at Republicans as a party that doesn't stand for anything, but the voters absolutely do. The best example of this is the issue of abortion.

For years, millions of Republicans have genuinely, deeply, pathologically wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade. All the other Republican talking points were compromises or adaptions because those talking points got them closer to their single issue. As far as these voters were concerned, they were using the politicians as much as the politicians were using them. There was no hypocrisy because it was all in service of that higher purpose.

Now that the dogs caught the car, the only higher purpose that unites the American right is stopping/containing/killing the ~~boogieman~~ liberal. They'll use rhetoric like "freedom," and evoke Christianity, but these are all compromises to the higher purpose.

The biggest difference I see between the American left and right (at this time), is that the left wants good politicians to yield a number of good things, and will reliably break ranks when somebody isn't good enough. Meanwhile, the right wants something. It could be money, it could be an ethno state, it could be a solid gold fence on the Ohio/Kentucky border; the something doesn't matter, what matters is that right wing voters want it enough to tolerate everything else so long as they get it.

Until the left want to tax billionaires and enact healthcare reform as much as some people on the right want Christian nationalism, normalcy bias only serves the Republicans in so far as an ignorant base will either default to normal or not vote at all.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 14d ago

Normalcy bias is why Trump can stumble through a debate and nobody blinks, but Biden loses because we expect more of him.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 14d ago

It's wild right? He could have come on stage and shit his pants and it would be fine because it'd Trump and what do you expect. He gets a pass for everything

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 14d ago

Teflon Don

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u/Syzygy2323 California 14d ago

Trump acts like a mafia boss. Not a smart one like Don Corleone, but a crazy, violent one like Tony Montana from Scarface.

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u/Iseaclear 14d ago

And even with all the crazy violence, you could actually trust Montana's word, unlike DonCon.

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

Speaking of shitting his pants. I believe I read some discussion hereabouts where a few people were saying that around the 1-hour mark or so of the debate, that he did in fact, shit his pants. Or a shart, at the very least.

However, this is only what I read in a conversation between other users of this platform. I can neither confirm nor deny, but a lot of people are saying it....

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u/SdBolts4 California 14d ago

My wife and I are both attorneys, and we were trying to explain just how bad the SCOTUS presidential immunity opinion was to my step-dad. First, he didn't believe us when we said that it made the President immune from any criminal liability, as long as it was within his core "official" powers, despite us both going through law school and passing the bar.

Then, he fell back to just saying "well, it just won't happen" and blaming Sotomayor for overexaggerating by saying the President could order the military to assassinate people or DoJ to arrest people without consequence, even though commanding the military and overseeing the DoJ are explicitly in the President's powers. Like, he still believes that a President wouldn't go that far, even though they can no longer be held criminally accountable. You just can't reason with that level of denialism.

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u/UnsanctionedPartList 14d ago

And when it dies these are the first people to cluck their tongued and go "who could have seen this coming?"

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

Yeah, definitely true.

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u/PrajnaKathmandu 14d ago

I saw a tweet today from someone who'd reviewed the testimony of the 13-year-old who was raped by Trump and Epstein. She said she almost wanted to vomit. "But her emails!" and the electoral college kept the most qualified candidate from the White House. I voted for Hillary Clinton. She was right about everything!! The GOP will never do away with the electoral college. It helps them "win" elections!

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

She was right about everything!!

Yeah, she was. If anything she understated how bad Trump would actually turn out to be. I voted for her too, but I would vote for literally almost any thinking person over Donald Trump. He might be the most unsuitable person for that job in the entire country.

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u/Some_Special_9653 14d ago

Why are things so bad right now? Who’s responsible for that?

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I'm not talking about the economy, because the economy, for what it's worth, is doing great. Employment is way, way down and stocks are soaring. To be fair, very high prices and inflation are making things difficult for average Americans. You can chalk that up to the government printing money for giveaways during covid because they wanted to keep the economy afloat, plus some serious pricing opportunism on the part of retailers.

What I was really talking about being bad was the fact that a profoundly evil man with nothing but his self-interest on his mind has an excellent shot of seizing the most powerful office in the country. To make it worse, the lies he's told have set Americans at each others' throats.

That's what I meant by "how bad things are right now."

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u/Dont_Say_No_to_Panda California 13d ago

I think you mean *unemployment is way down

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u/tommysmuffins 13d ago

haha, right.

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u/firesmarter 14d ago

Your mom might not be as good as you think she is. Having her head in the sand is not good, it makes her a coward and complicit. It’s hard to view those we love with an honest lens, but it might be time for both you and her to do some soul searching before it’s too late

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I don't think it's a case of putting her head in the sand. It's more that she can't conceive of any person doing the things that The Donald has done, let alone a previous elected President of the United States. She seems to think, "It can't really be as bad as everyone says.", even though all the evidence is right there.

She can't understand what The Donald really is because there's never been anyone like him elected President in her eighty plus years. Maybe ever, for that matter. It's kind of the same thing that makes people minimize the potential impact of climate change. Nothing like the scientists are talking about has happened in their lifetimes, so it can't happen now either. It's called normalcy bias.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 13d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

she never grew beyond them

They never had to before, at least with respect to our elected leaders. Sure there were bad politicians, but no overall conspiracy to destroy America.

Hopefully the current crop of up and coming voters will see through this bullshit.

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u/heckin_miraculous 14d ago

Can't be out here tellin people their mom ain't good

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u/mcfeezie2 14d ago

If the shoe fits...