Oh, that's really interesting. I don't think that you should feel bad about liking someone who makes you feel less judged. I think most people actually have emotional reasons behind their decisions, and knowing your own just makes you self-aware. And, for as much as the president affects our daily lives, maybe feeling less judged isn't that tiny compared to the other theoretical benefits of having the right candidate in office.
That said, based on your Kavanaugh story, I do feel like I was missing something. As you point out, it doesn't really make sense to like someone both for their morality and amortality. It sounds like its more like negative reinforcement, or "a breath of fresh air" with respect to the self-righteousness/judgement you're feeling from the Left. Then, someone who was pushing back against that judgement did something you see as righteous and were emotionally invested in - the feeling of awe makes sense as a response.
Personally, my reasons for not supporting Trump are emotional. Of course I have logical reasons to support those, and I think some of those logical reasons are legitimate, as opposed to simply motivated reasoning/confirmation bias, but the direct reason why my brain is ready to say "the other guy" when it's "do you want Trump or..." before I've even heard the rest of the sentence, is a strong negative mental association I've built with Trump over the past 8 years. And my best guess for that negative association is a combination of a) dislike of his divisive rhetoric, and b) fear of the impact of electing someone who rejected the norm of peacefully accepting election results. While mental associations don't retain a full log of how they formed, they just are features of our mental landscape, I do have some memories to clue me in to how mine may have formed:
1. When Trump announced his candidacy, I didn't take him seriously. No real negative association, but here was a tv personality trying to do politics.
2. By the end of the primary, despite having gone into it with the intent to vote Republican, I had decided I couldn't vote for Trump.
3. When he won, I held out hope that he would leave behind his divisive rhetoric as a campaigning strategy and be a decent president. I changed my mind about this upon hearing his inauguration speech, which is possibly the most negative, divisive, us vs them speech I've heard from an elected official.
4. In 2019 I was still telling people they were ridiculous for saying Trump was the worst president. Had they heard of the trail of tears for instance?
5. In 2020, my negative associate with Trump J-curved. On the heels of using foreign aid to pressure another country into helping him win the next election, we had covid hit, and while I'll never know the exact reasons, I can't help but suspect that the anti-vax, anti-distancing stance of the GOP contributed to the US hitting number 1 in the world for covid deaths (more than all US military deaths combined), despite not being number 1 in population. Finally, in interviews before the election and in the debate, Trump refused repeatedly to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, which was a huge red flag for me. This ended up culminating in the election denial that has undermined tens if not hundreds of millions of people's faith in our democratic system. Even typing this, I feel strong negative emotions toward a candidate who would refuse to accept losing an election. I don't expect much from presidents, but being willing to give up power is definitely up there.
So, for me, instead of feeling relief from judgement or self-righteousness, the effect Trump has had on my personal life is increased levels of interpersonal conflict, more distance in some relationships, and more difficulty communicating and finding common ground with many people. This is a larger impact than I'm aware of any other political figure having on my day to day life, and it's negative, so it makes sense that I would have a negative association with Trump.
As for judgement from the left, if you don't mind me asking, what are your demographics? I'm a straight white cis-male with judeo-christian upbringing and no official minority statuses, and I would say I feel some judgement from the Left. I am actually concerned about the Left gaining too much power. But the Republican party I intended to vote for in 2016 doesn't exist anymore, and I feel like rejection of election results, higher education, fact checking, epidemiological science, etc, are much more pressing concerns than the theoretical thought-policing dystopia I fear the Left could eventually evolve into. To be honest, I'm kind of upset with Republicans for removing their decent option and making me feel like I don't have a choice, but I was never fully on board with Republicans anyway. It's just weird how despite feeling like McCain and Romney were downgrades from politicians of the past, I wish I had them as options to vote for now.
I wonder why, despite also feeling some judgement from the Left, I ended up on the opposite side of Trump as you. Do you think you don't mind his rhetoric? Or do you think it's a first-impression snowball effect, or something else?
Wow, this is the most interesting reply I've gotten yet, because of just how much I agree with! I'm also a centrist. I also don't want one party to gain too much power. And "since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse" is such an articulate way of expressing exactly what one of my biggest political concerns is. I may steal that line!
Ok, so to respond, it seems like the main points are:
Media lies
Don't want drastic changes
Trump had a successful presidency
Other candidates are unimpressive
Don't want one party to have too much power
Media lies: I get this one. There's something about seeing someone make false claims or bad arguments that pushes me to the other side. Interestingly for me, it cut the other way. I didn't see much reporting about Trump in 2016 as much as I just heard him say things that were just blatantly false. Even getting past his continual bragging, he set a record for "pants on fire" statements. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was mostly hearing media lies instead of Trump himself talking.
Don't want drastic changes: Yes! 100%. I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear. And we have a political system where bribery is not the norm, people choose their leaders and laws, and leaders are supposed to serve rather than be served. I definitely believe in making things better, but just screwing with stuff without understanding it seems dangerous.
Interestingly, this is actually one of my strongest reasons I don't support Trump. Trump objectively has less knowledge of the inner workings of the political system than any other main-party candidate in my lifetime. And he also is pushing for change as strongly as the most progressive candidates out there. He wants to "drain the swamp". He also set a record for administrative turnover. He has pushed for government shutdowns multiple times. To me, he totally seems like he's coming in with a sledge-hammer.
Most importantly to me, during his 2020 campaign, he repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This is a gimme question that should be the center bingo tile for any candidate, but for him it wasn't. Somehow a simple "yes, I'll step down peacefully if that's how the votes come in" was something he couldn't say. This was a huge red flag for me, and when he then lied about the election, it confirmed my fears - that Trump wasn't prepared to let go of power. That seems incredibly dangerous to me, and honestly, with no malice toward Trump himself, I think the best thing for our country would be if him and his family were thrown in prison as a result. Now, secretly, they could get carted off to a life of luxury in the bahamas or something, I don't have any reason to want them to suffer at all, but I really need anyone considering a coup to believe there will be dire consequences for them.
Trump had a successful presidency: This one is really interesting. I had the exact opposite impression. There was tax reform passed, that's a win. Other than that though, he failed to deliver on his promise of a wall or repealing obamacare (sure, because he had opposition, but it at least means he wasn't successful crossing the aisle, if that's a thing anyone can do nowadays). He had record administrative turnover and a brief trade war with China. And then, the big one, under his presidency, America hit number 1 in worldwide covid deaths, despite not being number 1 in population. Now, maybe none of this is his fault, but I certainly wouldn't call it "success". I'm curious if we have different sources of information, different ideas about what constitutes success, or just different emotional associations coming into his presidency that led us to opposite conclusions.
Other candidates are unimpressive: Yeah. I feel this one. I wish we had better. It feels like we keep getting stuck with picking the least worst candidate instead of the best. I guess I just have different values or views than a lot of people if those are the candidates that become popular enough to run.
That said, I've been impressed by Kamala's rhetoric this campaign. She talks about being a candidate for all Americans. She talks about wanting unity and conversation. She has committed to a peaceful transfer of power, and talks about respecting the will of the people. Is it all just talk? Maybe, but talk matters. How has my life really changed since 2016? Mainly, I feel I've become disconnected from a lot of people, and people write eachother off more now and find less common ground. It feels like so many conversations are shiboleths for "are you with us or with them?". That is the real impact Trump has had on my life, and it has primarily been from how he talks. He constantly uses "us vs them" framing in his speech, he broke all sorts of ettiquette norms for talking to and about other candidates. He is almost always airing a grievance or bragging about himself and his people. I feel that's the thing that has actually impacted my day to day life, and I prefer a candidate who at least espouses positive values. And hey, maybe it's not all talk! I'm willing to give her or anyone else willing to say they want to work with the other side in this political climate a chance.
Don't want one party to have too much power: Completely agree. My voting strategy used to be to split my vote. I liked Obama as a candidate and voted for him twice, so I went into 2016 fully intending to vote Republican. And I would have happily voted for Jeb Bush, or Kasich. But, the Republican party put Trump up instead and started the transformation into what we see today. I think this was a mistake. I'm actually afraid that the left will get too much power because I think the Republican party has abandoned truth and goodness and will eventually collapse because a core of "us vs them" anger isn't sustainable. I wish we had the old Republican party. I would happily vote for Bush, McCain, or Romney. But we now have an anti-vax, anti-fact checking, anti-higher education, anti-free press party that won't admit when it lost an election, and as much as I fear how this is going to slingshot back too far left, I'm busy avoiding the current dumpster fire. I'm curious: what do you think about the current GOP vs the GOP 20 years ago?
In conclusion, I think we have a lot of the same beliefs/values, and it's super interesting to me that we ended up on opposite sides of the "trump divider". If you have any hypotheses on how that happened, definitely share them!
I'd like to push back against the idea that empirical observations are more reliable than theoretical arguments.
1. Did you say this because you have empirical data showing that empirical data is more reliable, or do you believe it should be more reliable on theoretical grounds?
2. Here's a reductio ad absurdum: Empirically, a terrible pandemic started under Trump's presidency and 0 pandemics have emerged under the Biden/Harris administration. Thus, relying on empirical observation, we should vote for Harris to avoid another pandemic.
3. Empirical observation, literally, can only tell you the past. I can observe that on Tuesday July 11, at 3:13pm, a bird chirped, but that doesn't give me any information about whether I will observe a bird chirp tomorrow. So, when we say "empirical observation" here, we really just mean "the theory that the same things will happen next time", which is just a naive theory. Additional empirical observations have helped us establish more nuanced theories like "inflation is related to the money supply" that would let us assign the cause for inflation to the economic stimulus used to prevent a covid recession, instead of to the sitting president.
So, I think that we need empirical observations to build valid theories, but making connections between these observations allows us to leverage that knowledge to gain insight in novel contexts. One of those contexts is that future, so any time you want to talk about the future, you are inherently talking theory.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective! My first question for you is, are these the actual reasons you support Trump, or are these the arguments for him you'd present? What I mean is that, as someone who doesn't support Trump, I have plenty of arguments I can give for why he's a poor candidate, but if I'm honest, my direct reason for not wanting to vote for him is a strong negative association I've built with him over the past 8 years. Now, why do I have that negative association? Well, hard to know 100%, but I suspect it's his divisive rhetoric. I always hear him talking about us vs them, the media being unfair, lock her up, people rigging elections, etc. I remember in 2016 when he won I thought, "hey, I didn't like how he campaigned, but now that he won, maybe he'll turn out to be decent president, and then in his "American carnage" inauguration speech he talked about how he was only going to be a president for the people who voted for him, and I was like "well, there goes that theory". The other turning point for me was when he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power repeatedly leading up to the 2020 election, which is a huge red flag for me. So my actual reasons for not supporting Trump are: I dislike his divisive rhetoric and fear the impact of electing someone who rejects the tradition of peacefully giving up power when voted out.
What are your actual reasons, if they are different from the issues you've already shared?
Sure, I'll attempt a steelman. I don't know how well I'll do, and the purpose of this question is to help me understand so I could do better, but why not have a before/after version. So here's my initial attempt at a steelman (I guess it ended up being more "honest" than a normal steelman, more like "channeling" a rational Trump supporter.)
Ok, is Trump actually a genius? No. Is he the smartest, most moral, or otherwise flawless candidate? No. But I don't need a role model to be President, I need someone who will create change, and Trump, more than any politician in my voting lifetime has offered a credible promise of change. Despite all the "Hope and Change" every politician promises, they only ever got to their current position by conforming to the current system and not rocking the boat. Trump is the first politician who got there by being independently wealthy and popular in the real world, outside of the political machine. And yeah, I'd support Musk or someone else who ran for office like that. I even liked Yang, though he had some ideas that were kind of out there for me. Trump doesn't just promise change - he is a change from the norm.
Why do I want change? I don't know - call me an optimist, but I gotta think we can do better than this. Maybe I've just bought the propaganda, but I believe that there was a time when hard work paid off, and people valued family more than appearances, and I feel like we've lost that. It feels like people who didn't work hard are getting ahead while people who are working are falling behind, and I keep hearing more virtue signalling and people obsessed with social media. I'm willing to roll the dice on seeing what someone from outside the system can do.
So yeah, I can give you tons of reasons why Trump is a better vote, and I believe them too, but the real reason I support him is because he has shown that he is willing to take real action, even if people don't like it. As self-aggrandizing as he can be, he's not spending his career virtue signalling, he is willing to step on toes, and he will actually put America first.
I really like the framing of establishment/anti-establishment. I think that there are a lot of people who weren't on those sides who got pulled into one side or the other because of their left/right affiliation, but I think that is a really good explanation of the "core" appeal - the one that was there in the 2016 primaries. It would also explain why I reject Trump. I'm not anti-establishment or discontent. I am generally trusting and not suspicious of others. Combine that with my education level, and the "Big brother is out to get us" shtick Trump gives in his rambling style was never going to appeal to me.
Thanks for this! So, you mainly support him because he doesn't make you feel judged?
Also, would you tell me more about what the Kavanaugh thing means to you?
For me, a candidate's claim of what they will do is sufficient when they have unilateral control over doing it. For instance, I believe a claim to sign or veto a specific type of bill. I don't tend to believe that they will make the economy good, avoid recession, close all the tax loopholes, etc.
Do you:
a) believe candidates when they claim they will be successful at things not entirely in their control
b) believe Trump but not others (like Kamala) when they claim they'll do things not entirely in their control
c) think that a Russia-Ukraine peace negotiation would be entirely in Trump's control
d) see some actions that are entire in Trump's control that you are confident would cause peace
e) other
Why do you believe that Trump will negotiate a peace?
Ok, well first let me correct that misconception: I am definitely making an effort to understand. Knowledge is the only thing I get out of this. If you feel I'm being insincere about any specific point, feel free to ask about it. But I think the difficulty in communication really just shows exactly that: real communication is difficult.
I interpreted your initial "That makes it sound like I've done something I think I should to feel bad about." to mean "It sounds like you are implying that my reason for supporting Trump is bad" (I took the word 'judged' from your original post, btw), so this reply was saying "no, I am not implying that it is bad".
Apparently, you were actually criticizing my description. By that, do you mean that you do think "not feeling judged" is a bad reason to support someone, or do you mean that it's not an accurate statement about you. If the former, why do you think that it's a bad reason, and what in general do you consider acceptable reasons? If the latter, how is me saying I don't view it as bad "doubling down"?
For your next objection to my "it doesn't make sense to like someone for both their morality and amorality", perhaps I should have paraphrased less as directly quoted you with "the Kavanaugh thing wrecks that narrative".
This implies you think it is actual and current. Do you think we currently have a thought-policing dystopia?
That's reasonable. I would like there to be no enemies. Now, obviously that's not the case, but it is almost never true that an entire group is an enemy, and it is often true that calling people enemies creates and perpetuates enmity.
You're correct that I trust the establishment, though obviously not to a degree that I think is too much. I also think that you're correct that this may be a crux. For your test, without Googling, my belief is that Trump said "there are fine people on both sides" in reference to the Charlottesville protests. Even if I'm incorrect about that though, I don't think that it measures how much trust I have in the establishment news, since you haven't measured my confidence in that belief or how resistent it would be to counter evidence. If some random person on the street tells me they just ate a bagel, I will believe they just ate a bagel, despite a relatively low level of trust. But that doesn't mean I would stake much on that belief or resist counter-evidence. I don't know if my current belief on this is true, but if not, I guess you can test how I react to counter-evidence (though you may have to distinguish between my resistance to changing my belief and my level of trust in the source of whatever counter-evidence you provide).
I was recently thinking about how I would explain my general trust in the established systems (science, education, free press, democracy) to someone who didn't share it. It's quite difficult, because I think at core it comes down to beliefs about what other people are like. Perhaps the best way to explain it is that my base assumption is that other people are like me, and when I think about how I would act in these systems, the result of them being filled with people like me is that they would be fallible but reasonably reliable. The other reason it's hard for me to explain why I don't distrust them is that trust seems like the default to me. Like I said, I'd believe a complete stranger's claim about what they ate. When I ask a cashier the price of an item, I've never once thought they might lie to me. The vast majority of things I hear people say (and the things I say to others) line up with reality, so against that background prior of P(statement|human said it)~=0.99, it feels like I would need to understand why someone else think P(statement|human said it & establishmentIndicator)<50%, before I could begin to explain why I haven't reached that conclusion.
I'm curious, do you have any beliefs that others label as conspiracy theories? How do you determine which sources to trust? Do you trust any of our established systems in (science, education, free press, or democracy)?