Why Trumpism Won’t Go Away Unless We Change

Mocking Trump supporters won’t change their minds. Demonizing them just feeds the fire.

There are more than 70 million Trump voters in America. Not a fringe. Not some weird little cult. That’s a massive chunk of the country. You don’t get to pretend they’re all hillbillies in red hats who don’t matter. They vote. They protest. They organize. You may hate what they believe, but shouting at them won’t make them vanish.

Too many liberals think yelling at Trump supporters is activism. It’s not. It’s just venting. If you actually want results, you need strategy — not moral tantrums giving the illusion of having courage. This isn’t about being right. It’s about being smart. And right now, most of what passes for “resistance” is just self-soothing noise.

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Mocking Doesn’t Work

If someone’s been convinced the media lies, the government’s corrupt, and universities are indoctrination machines, what do you think happens when you mock them from those very places? You just confirm what they already believe.

You think you’re being clever. They think you’re proving their point.

And no, calling them “uneducated,” “racist,” or “brainwashed” isn’t brave. If calling people names actually changed their minds, the internet would be a utopia by now.

The problem with mocking people into silence is that it teaches them to be quiet, not to think differently.
— Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Shaming Isn’t Strategy

You want people to switch sides? Great. Start by not treating them like trash. Shame doesn’t make people reflect. It makes them dig in. If your whole political strategy is to humiliate the other side into agreement, you’re not fighting for democracy. You’re just acting like a bad version of them.

Trump didn’t invent division. He weaponized it. And the more you sneer, the more useful you become to him. He thrives on the culture war. He needs enemies. And when you act like anyone who supports him is evil, stupid, or broken, you’re handing him ammo on a silver platter.

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Working-Class Pain Is Real

A lot of Trump supporters aren’t rich. They’re working two jobs, stuck in dying towns, watching their lives get smaller every year. Their factories closed. Their healthcare is garbage. Their bills keep growing while their hope keeps shrinking.

And what do they see when they turn on the TV? Rich people telling them they’re backwards. Elites mocking their clothes, their accent, their fears.

You think they vote for Trump because he’s classy? No. They vote for him because he sounds angry about the same things they are — even if he’s full of it.

You don’t have to like Trump to understand why someone in a forgotten corner of the country clings to the first politician who didn’t talk down to them.

When people feel like strangers in their own land, they will cling to the only identity that gives them meaning
— Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land

Not Every Trump Voter Is a Fascist

Some are. Pretending they’re all harmless won’t help anyone. But lumping every single one into the same bucket as the Capitol rioters is intellectually sluggish.

Some voted for Trump because of taxes. Some because they’re “pro-life.” Some because they didn’t trust Hillary. Some because they hated lockdowns. Some because they liked the economy in 2019. Some just wanted to burn the whole damn system down.

And yes — some are racist, sexist, xenophobic authoritarians. But not all.

If you think you can reach people by painting with the widest brush possible, congrats. You just became the thing you say you hate.

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You Can’t Be Anti-Fascist and Pro-Censorship

Liberals love to quote Orwell. But they sure do love acting like the Thought Police.

Want to stop fascism? Start by defending the open exchange of ideas. That includes listening to people you hate. That includes debating instead of deleting. That includes understanding before you condemn.

Yes, lies are dangerous. Yes, conspiracy theories rot minds. But you don’t beat lies with censorship. You beat them with truth — again and again, loud and clear. That’s how democracy works.

Don’t just label people racist and walk away. That’s shallow, and it doesn’t move anyone. Explain why their conclusion is wrong and what they’re leaving out. People notice patterns and try to explain them. If you don’t give them a better explanation, they’ll decide the non-racist one is just politics pretending to be truth.

A shop owner might say, “In this neighborhood, most shoplifting is done by Black customers, so I’m stricter with them.” What they’re doing is spotting a pattern, assuming it explains everything, and turning it into policy. Humans are wired to do this. We notice a few events and jump to conclusions like cavemen solving science. For centuries, people believed rotten meat turned into maggots on its own. They thought piles of wheat produced mice. They believed swallows hibernated underwater, that rain caused worm births. We’re pattern-seeking animals, and if the pattern feels true, we don’t ask if it actually is. We just start building rules around it — even if those rules ruin lives.

If you want change, you don’t fix it by demonizing the shop owner and congratulating yourself for having the higher moral ground. That’s the easy move. The harder move is challenging the conditions that produce the pattern in the first place — poverty, unstable housing, school failure, local unemployment, addiction, and the way disadvantaged neighborhoods get left to rot. Those pressures raise theft rates anywhere, for any group, in any country.

And another problem is that we’ve made certain symbols and words more explosive by reacting to them like they’re nuclear weapons. You can laugh at a “Bush is an ape” cartoon and call it edgy politics, then ruin someone’s life for doing something similar with a Black person and call it moral clarity. The inconsistency is the point — it isn’t principle, it’s tribal policing.

Sometimes people call something racist with absolute certainty when the real issue is that they’re viewing the person primarily as a racial category instead of as just another human being. With Black people, the “Black” comes first and the “person” comes second. With white people, they’re treated as the default human — and the fact that they’re white becomes almost invisible.

That mindset doesn’t reduce racism. It keeps race at the center of everything.

The only way to disarm hatred

is through understanding. Not agreement. Just understanding.
— Cornel West, Democracy Matters

You Want Unity? Act Like It

You don’t get to scream about healing while calling half the country garbage. Unity doesn’t mean everyone suddenly agrees. It means treating your opponent like a human being even when you’re fighting them tooth and nail.

That means less “shut up, redneck” and more “why do you believe that?”

It means asking hard questions like:

• What pain are they in?

• What are they scared of?

• What do they think they’re losing?

You may not like the answers. But they matter. Because those fears are shaping votes, protests, policies — and yes, presidents.

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You Don’t Get a Free Pass

Trump supporters aren’t innocent. Many cheered while immigrants were jailed. Many looked away when police killed. Many spread lies and fed the fire of paranoia. Some threatened teachers, doctors, poll workers, neighbors. Some helped erode truth itself.

They chose that.

It’s easy to overlook that you don’t become better than them by hating harder. If you think your hatred is morally superior, you’ve already lost the moral high ground. You’re equally corrosive to society.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

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Stop Acting Shocked

People say “How could they still support him after all this?”

As if January 6 was supposed to wake everyone up. As if indictments were supposed to break the spell. As if four years of chaos didn’t already happen.

They support him because their identity is tied to it now. They’ve doubled down. Their churches, families, social circles, even businesses are wrapped up in Trump. And when you attack Trump, they feel attacked. Period.

This isn’t about facts anymore. It’s about belonging. And the more you try to rip them out of their tribe, the tighter they’ll hold on.

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Tribal Politics Is a Mirror

Look around. Liberals have tribes too. MSNBC has its echo chambers. Progressives have their purity tests. Democrats eat their own. Everyone wants to feel righteous, not reasonable.

You think your team’s immune? You’re not.

America’s political system doesn’t reward thinking. It rewards yelling. So if you’re spending more time owning the other side than understanding them, congrats — you’re just like them. Only with better fonts and pronouns.

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The Internet Is a Rage Machine

Social media doesn’t want calm — that would be chaos for the big players (what an irony). Calm kills engagement, tanks stock prices, and breaks the business model.

Social media thrives on outrage. Every time you quote-tweet a Trump supporter with “LOOK AT THIS IDIOT,” you feed the algorithm. And it feeds you back: more outrage. More division. More tribal war.

Your righteous dunk might get likes. But it won’t change a single mind. It just makes you feel good for a second.

And that’s the game. They want you mad. They want you distracted. They want both sides too angry to talk, too smug to reflect, too proud to stop.

Don’t fall for it.

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Germany’s Problem Wasn’t “Not Fighting Hard Enough”

People love to bring up Hitler whenever talking about Trump. Fine. Let’s talk about Hitler — accurately, for a change.

The mistake Germany made as far as Adolph Hitler is concerned wasn’t “not fighting back hard enough” once he took power. By the time he became Chancellor in 1933 and consolidated control over the media, courts, and police, it was already too late. The trap had closed. The institutions that could’ve stopped him had either collapsed or helped him.

The real failure happened before that — when the country ignored the anger, poverty, humiliation, and resentment that made people vote for him in the first place.

Germany fell because too many people were arrogant about why others turned to it, making the country vulnerable to fascism. They laughed at Hitler’s voters, mocked them, called them stupid — and refused to believe that millions of ordinary Germans could genuinely want something so dangerous.

Sound familiar?

If you’re only fighting Trump once he has the mic, the crowd, and the stage, you’re already late. The real fight is understanding why millions want that in the first place — and offering something better before they reach for another strongman.

The Nazi regime was the result of a long, slow collapse of political legitimacy. By the time Hitler seized power, the collapse was already complete
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

Learn from Germany: Strategy, Not Screaming

If you really want to learn from Germany’s failure, stop fantasizing about punching Nazis and start paying attention to how people get pulled into that mindset in the first place. You don’t stop a fascist wave by scolding the tide. You build levees.

The right strategy isn’t yelling louder. It’s cutting off the fuel supply.

That means:

• Fight economic despair before it curdles into hate.

• Flood the information zone before lies fill the vacuum.

• Talk to people before grifters do.

• Win local elections before cultists take over school boards.

• Defend institutions before they get hollowed out from within.

Germany lost because they let the infection spread while they debated how to treat it. By the time they realized it wasn’t a joke, it had already seized control of the lungs and the brain.

The lesson is reaching them sooner, not shaming them harder.

Because once someone feels seen by the fascist, and mocked by the liberal, it’s not hard to guess who they’ll follow.

To make people immune to authoritarianism, you have to reach them before the authoritarian does.
— Jason Stanley, How Fascism Work

What America Needs Right Now Is Strategic Centrism

Not centrism as in “let’s split the difference.” Not “both sides are the same.” That’s nonsensical. But centrism as a strategy — a way to get results, cool the fire, and break the fever before it spreads.

America doesn’t need more moral fireworks. It needs grown-ups in the room asking smarter questions.

Like:

• Why did so many people vote for Trump — twice?

• What fears are they responding to?

• How do I be constructive, not just reactive?

• How do I stop proving Trump’s whole narrative about “liberal elites who hate real Americans”?

Because if all you’re doing is feeding the image of yourself as the enemy, you’re not resisting — you’re starring in his campaign ads. And you’re doing it with the smug satisfaction of intellectual masturbation and moral superiority.

You don’t get to treat people like garbage just because you’re convinced you’re right. That’s just flipping the script, not justice.

“Eye for an eye” sounds bold — until you realize it just turns you into the same bitter creature you’re supposed to be standing against. At that point, it doesn’t matter who started it. You’re part of the problem now.

The most effective resistance to extremism isn’t the opposite extreme. It’s the steady middle that refuses to play the same game.
— Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy

Last Thoughts

If you want a better country, act like it. Not like you’re stuck in a war zone where half the people are enemies to be destroyed.

Be firm. Be honest. But stop swinging at every red hat and yelling “fascist.” You’re not helping. You’re just screaming at the wind while someone else quietly takes power.

We don’t beat the worst ideas by crushing the people who believe them. We beat them by being better — smarter, tougher, calmer, and unafraid of truth. Even when that truth comes out of someone wearing a MAGA hat.

Focus on what America is and what it needs, not what it failed to be. You can’t undo the past — but you can make better moves now.

The more you obsess over Trump supporters, the more you play his game. The more you focus on hating them, the easier you are to manipulate. Trumplike players exist on all sides. And some of them will sell you that hatred in slick packaging — dressed up as moral duty — while dividing the country for profit.

Trumps come and go. Trump supporters are here to stay. So if you want to win long-term, stop trying to erase them — and start figuring out how to live in the same country without burning it down.

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Done reading? Now stop screaming into the void and start talking like we’re all stuck here together. Because we are.

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