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1/ Last night, at Trump Tower, there were maybe ten Trump supporters, and 60 journalists. At one point, one of the supporters said "Whatever happens, we're going to stay peaceful." "Can you get rowdy?" asked the journalist impatiently. He declined
2/ "Come on, can you guys start a chant?" He and the guys who were with him obligingly chanted.
It was after a different interaction like this that another TV journalist turned to his camera and said "Well, there you have it: the energy here is electric."
It was after a different interaction like this that another TV journalist turned to his camera and said "Well, there you have it: the energy here is electric."
3/ The women I was with and I started cracking up, because it ... really was not; it was a friendly laid-back show of support, and there were friendly interactions between Trump supporters and non-supporters.
4/ I talked to one supporter, a secular Muslim man who'd immigrated here as an asylum seeker from Iran, where, as a law student, he'd gotten into trouble with the regime. He's not socially conservative, but he thinks that eg the Little Sisters of the Poor situation was horrible:
5/ People should be allowed, he thinks, freedom of conscience. He's a basic Frenchist, calls himself a classical liberal. He supports Trump because of foreign policy –if we'd had Clinton, and under Biden, he thinks, we'd be more likely to be involved in more "wars for democracy"
6/ abroad – and because he likes the balance of economic nationalism –onshoring jobs– with not being too interventionist/regulatory within the domestic economy.
7/ I know a lot of different Trump supporters, who support him for many different reasons, from the flagrantly, entertainingly weird, to the normie grillpilled, to the truly sinister.
8/ Many are idealists: committed to a version of Trumpism as it could be with a different leader, one who's less awful.
9/ (tag yourselves, natch.)
I also know a lot of people who can't imagine why after the last four years *anyone* would vote for Trump: who think that half of the electorate has proven itself to be evil.
I also know a lot of people who can't imagine why after the last four years *anyone* would vote for Trump: who think that half of the electorate has proven itself to be evil.
10/ We're all fallen. But the line between good and evil doesn't lie between red states and blue states, and people are complicated. Whichever side you're on, just ... try not to drink the kool-aid that says that the other side is simple and evil. I know it's tasty. Don't do it.
