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Thoughts from a Russian ex-pat on the war and also on the west [1]

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Date: 2022-09-30

A friend of mine in Estonia shared this video with me. I found it both fascinating and thought provoking.

The thoughts at the end about the west hit home, at least in terms of the US and my personal feelings about Trump and his MAGA base. He is quite correct that I and many others who lean left have come to view Trump as a malignant narcissist and his followers as contemptible: at best, unintelligent, uneducated and uninformed; at worst, people who are racist and misogynistic, who want to impose their religious beliefs on others and prefer authoritarian rule to democracy.

So to his question: how do you change the culture so that it does not create or support people like that?

Yes, accomplishing such a cultural change would be the ultimate first best solution. Dismissing and bashing them solves nothing.

But I honestly see no fix in the US at this point. One third of them continue to be MAGA Trump supporters. Depending on the poll, 60 to 70% of republicans say they believe the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Biden is not the legitimate president - with no evidence whatsoever. Over half of republicans think the Jan 6 violent attack on Congress was justified.

Pundits keep wringing their hands saying democrats just need to start paying attention to rural voters and their needs. But Biden has, and it doesn’t seem to be changing any minds. Democrats keep working on getting out the vote, but that feels like stacking up sand bags against a flood. It may work in the short run, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of living in a flood plain.

I think he’s right that cultural change is necessary. I just don’t see how.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/30/2126292/-Thoughts-from-a-Russian-ex-pat-on-the-war-and-also-on-the-west

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