"I've been trying to find a pen pal who can give me some reasonable arguments for Donald Trump for the last few weeks, to no avail."
First off, I do not like Donald Trump and did not vote for him.
That said:
It's not "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for a factory worker in Ohio to believe that he shouldn't have to compete with Chinese slave labor.
Nor is it "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia to take exception to being lectured on his "white male privilege" by an academic who's never done a hard day's labor in his life, or to be upset by seeing the industry that's employed his family for generations deliberately destroyed for no reason. The coal is still going to be mined and burned. It's just going to be mined and burned in countries with few, if any, environmental regulations.
Multiply those guys by a few million and you have Trump.
Will Trump actually help these people? Probably not, but he's listening to them. He's at least pretending to care about their concerns. The Democrats (supposedly the party of the working class), on the other hand, have been spending the last few decades demonizing them.
Hmm. I don't think I said it was racism or misogyny, but since we're talking about it:
I do think there was quite a lot of bigotry. In particular, I think the campaign repeatedly conflated Muslims with terrorists (to the point that a religious test for immigration was suggested). The candidate also said a number of things that could be construed as misogynistic, though I'm the first to admit that all of this "locker room talk" is probably as much the product of insecure posturing as it is a formulation of any particular view towards women per se--a product of a child-mind exposed to a misogynistic culture, not of a misogynist.
Part of my surprise is that that bigotry is not a deal breaker, as I said in reply to a different comment. Part of my surprise is that the electorate did not detect the unrealistic nature of the policy proposals (such as they are).
The message was directed towards those without a college education; I see college as a place where people are encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills. If you have underdeveloped critical thinking skills then you'll be more easily persuaded by unrealistic policy proposals that sound like what you want to hear.
I sometimes feel the democratic party uses similar tactics on under-educated minorities; Trump seems to be the first to have the gall to overtly use them to unabashedly target under-educated white males - and to great success.
First off, I do not like Donald Trump and did not vote for him.
That said:
It's not "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for a factory worker in Ohio to believe that he shouldn't have to compete with Chinese slave labor.
Nor is it "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia to take exception to being lectured on his "white male privilege" by an academic who's never done a hard day's labor in his life, or to be upset by seeing the industry that's employed his family for generations deliberately destroyed for no reason. The coal is still going to be mined and burned. It's just going to be mined and burned in countries with few, if any, environmental regulations.
Multiply those guys by a few million and you have Trump.
Will Trump actually help these people? Probably not, but he's listening to them. He's at least pretending to care about their concerns. The Democrats (supposedly the party of the working class), on the other hand, have been spending the last few decades demonizing them.