I mean, I know why people love him too — he is entertaining as fuck and if you’re too poor or too rich to be affected by government policy, who gives a shit about the president?
He basically ran a campaign of "People in Washington suck and I'm going to ruin their day" and that is the one campaign promise he's knocked out of the park. Every time the media gets bent out of shape about something he does, his base feels vindicated.
Exactly, but it’s not just people in Washington. It’s anyone who gets to sit at an air conditioned desk for 8 hours a day and make twice as much as a coal miner with black lung.
During the debates candidate Clinton suggested enforcing a no fly zone in Syria which prompted the moderator to ask her whether she would shoot down a Russian plane while she armed "moderate" rebels.
Meanwhile Candidate Trump said he thought they could get along and co-operate to defeat ISIS.
Personally, sitting thousands of miles away from the USA, candidate Clinton said everything that I'd never want to hear. Also Russia has been a great ally to my country for many years so culturally the russophobic impulse has never been there.
Not really, I think that for a certain subset of the electorate, voting Trump was highly rational from a game theoretic perspective, and the worse Trump is, the better he serves this purpose. So I don’t need to hand Wave the emotional reasons.
I'd like you to elaborate more on the game theory aspect. My personal opinion along those lines is that people looked to Trump as a bull in a china shop. The "system" was so corrupt that the only solution was to send someone in who would wreck it from the inside. It would be disingenuous to be upset now that he's broken some plates. While I don't think this is the majority of Trump voters it anecdotally appears to be a significant portion of the avid/vocal supporters. I still think most of his votes came from the people who show up and vote R no matter what. But there was definitely a shade of, "FUCK YOU" from the voters to the government this election.
Imagine you live in a room with an investment banker. Every day, $100 appears in the room and the investment banker decides how much you get to keep. Every year, you get to decide whether or not to push a button that sprays rancid feces on both of you.
On Day 1, the banker lets you keep $30. He keeps this $30 for another 10 years. Then, he starts cutting your share by 2 pennies per week ($1 per year). It’s annoying but not too bad, but you don’t want to be covered in feces so you don’t push the button.
A decade later, you’ve only got $20. A decade after that, $10. Five years later, only $5 out of every $100.
At some point, it becomes strategic to push the button. Sure, your life sucks and having your tattered clothes covered in feces doesn’t help. But the banker in the bespoke suit is harmed more, and might rethink his allocation tomorrow.
And when you do push that button, the stinkier the feces, the better.
