Why do so many view 47 as good?

[TheVat]

David Brooks sheds some light on the question, with help from the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and a look at where the Enlightenment took us.

Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good?

The work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helps illuminate some central questions of our time.

www.theatlantic.com

In the 1980s, the philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a book arguing that in a world without moral standards, people just become bland moral relativists: You do you. I’ll do me. None of it matters very much. This is what Kierkegaard called an aesthetic life: I make the choices that feel pleasant at the moment, and I just won’t think much about life’s ultimate concerns. As MacIntyre put it, “The choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in terms of good and evil.”

But the moral relativism of the 1980s and ’90s looks like a golden age of peace and tranquility compared with today. Over the past 30 years, people have tried to fill the hole in their soul by seeking to derive a sense of righteousness through their political identities. And when you do that, politics begins to permeate everything and turns into a holy war in which compromise begins to seem like betrayal.

Worse, people are unschooled in the virtues that are practical tools for leading a good life: honesty, fidelity, compassion, other-centeredness. People are rendered anxious and fragile. As Nietzsche himself observed, those who know why they live can endure anyhow. But if you don’t know why you’re living, then you fall apart when the setbacks come...

 

[Seattle]

Brooks is off base. Trump is a narcissist and is acting like a narcissist. It's that simple. People who support either candidate are largely doing it because their policies hurt that voter the least

It's got little to do with capitalism or a loss of morals in society. Politics has largely become a clown show and people largely ignore it to the extent possible.

The implication here is that were we more religious and moral we wouldn't have Trump as President. We could have Biden or Harris however you could make different criticisms of those two and so we are back at square one.

IMO the bigger problem began with 24/7 news editorializing and the need that brings for drama and click bait. Therefore, there is little actual "news" and it's all biased in one way or another. It's all divisive and that's what we now have, division.

We need transparency and accountability and not ideology and drama.

Brooks article title says it's about people thinking Trump is "good" but nothing in the article backs that up.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

People who support either candidate are largely doing it because their policies hurt that voter the least

Politics has largely become a clown show and people largely ignore it to the extent possible.

so we are back at square one.

It's all divisive and that's what we now have, division.

We need transparency and accountability and not ideology and drama.

I like your conclusions. They are on target.

 

[billvon]

Brooks is off base. Trump is a narcissist and is acting like a narcissist. It's that simple. People who support either candidate are largely doing it because their policies hurt that voter the least

Disagree. Trump policies are already hurting Trump voters. But that's largely OK with them, because the goal of the Trump voter is to hurt the OTHER Americans as much as possible. Look at his most popular moves - deporting legal aliens. Cancelling programs that people rely on. Regularly and publicly insulting all their enemies.

 

[Seattle]

Disagree. Trump policies are already hurting Trump voters. But that's largely OK with them, because the goal of the Trump voter is to hurt the OTHER Americans as much as possible. Look at his most popular moves - deporting legal aliens. Cancelling programs that people rely on. Regularly and publicly insulting all their enemies.

That's all on Trump. That's not "why" they voted for him. That's just your spin on it. That's like me saying that people voted for Biden, not because they like inflation but because they wanted inflation to hurt everyone else.

No one voted for Biden to cause inflation.

 

[billvon]

That's all on Trump. That's not "why" they voted for him.

That is why they voted for him - so he would hurt the right people.

That's just your spin on it.

Not mine. A Trump voter literally came out and said it. During the 2019 government shutdown, a Trump supporter told a reporter "I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this. I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/424263-trump-supporter-complains-shutdown-is-not-hurting-the-people-he/

 

[sculptor]

​

Would anyone refer to Millard Fillmore as 13

 

[C C]

Brooks: There’s a question that’s been bugging me for nearly a decade. How is it that half of America looks at Donald Trump and doesn’t find him morally repellent? He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable. Some even see him as heroic, admirable, and wonderful. What has brought us to this state of moral numbness?

I haven't encountered anyone (offline) who expressed that they voted for Trump because they felt he was "good". That sounds more like local Kamala Harris supporters, who often referenced "she's a nice person" as a reason, rather than policies or effectual competence.

Given the cynicism revolving around candidates ever since journalists first started digging up dirt on them for the sake of headlines and careers, it seems bizarre that any citizen would waste their "evaluative measurements for why I should vote for _X_" on everyday moral qualifications that trigger either their pet peeves or emotional idolatry (depending). Though that's perhaps nevertheless the case, as in the past one has surely frequently heard the vacuous "he/she is so pleasant, respectable, decent" with respect to traditional candidates who weren't as blatantly an open book as Trump (and vice versa).

Presidents at least up to 1970 were no uncorrupted saints (especially during the age of unbridled patriarchy, Jim Crow legislation, and the "Chicago machine" type resonances). And those that got by afterward did so much as corporate magnates and celebrities do -- by virtue posturing to so many social justice fetishes that their behaviors (as well as wealth and affluent lifestyle, I suppose) can be excused. At least up to the point that doing the opposite started attracting a contrarian crowd, as Trump exploited. Trump is, in a sense, an atavist President, echoing the long era that preceded the New Left and ambitious societal rehabilitation (but sans a significant part of the outer facade that was a necessary veil then).
_

 

[Thoreau]

I think it honestly all boils down to lack of education and intelligence. I used to live and work in Italy as a K-8 educator, and I can tell you firsthand how far advanced Italian education quality is compared to American education at the K-8 level. My Italian fourth graders were learning multiple languages as well as various sciences (ecology, biology, and basic chemistry) that American students don't start picking up until several years later. They were learning algebra and geometry in 6th-grade whereas American students typically don't start learning it until 9th-grade.

In the US, we have been actively defunding/underfunding/misallocating public education since the 1970s, and it shows. 54% of American adults read below a 6th-grade level. 21% of American adults are considered lowly literate. An additional 5% are functionally illiterate. It's truly embarrassing, especially when you compare us to Canada, the EU, Australia, and most of Asia.

You cannot expect an uneducated population to vote in an educated way.

 

[Seattle]

That is why they voted for him - so he would hurt the right people.



Not mine. A Trump voter literally came out and said it. During the 2019 government shutdown, a Trump supporter told a reporter "I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this. I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/424263-trump-supporter-complains-shutdown-is-not-hurting-the-people-he/

As I recall you are an engineer. I know you are more logical than that. Do you think that maybe there is another Trump supporter somewhere with a different view?

 

[billvon]

As I recall you are an engineer. I know you are more logical than that. Do you think that maybe there is another Trump supporter somewhere with a different view?

Of course.

You claimed "that's not why they voted for him." I provided an example that proved that statement wrong.

Further, when you see Trump supporter material on social media, a great deal of it is self-congratulatory over the legal immigrants who have been deported, the LGBT people who have been fired or denied medical care, and the protesters who have been arrested and imprisoned. They state quite clearly that they are glad he is hurting the right people.

 

[Seattle]

Of course.

You claimed "that's not why they voted for him." I provided an example that proved that statement wrong.

Further, when you see Trump supporter material on social media, a great deal of it is self-congratulatory over the legal immigrants who have been deported, the LGBT people who have been fired or denied medical care, and the protesters who have been arrested and imprisoned. They state quite clearly that they are glad he is hurting the right people.

This is an example of the divisiveness that people seem to not like. Apparently half the country are meanspirited people?

I heard a Harris support say that the billionaires should be eliminated and the wealthy don't contribute to the economy like the working man.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

This is an example of the divisiveness that people seem to not like. Apparently half the country are meanspirited people?

I doubt the majority of Trump voters are both sadists and masochists as is being implied.

 

[James R]

I think that some (perhaps most) of Trump's support comes from people who feel - rightly or wrongly - like "the system" hasn't done anything for them in years. They see Trump as the guy who will burn it all down for them, and they imagine - wrongly - that will be a good thing for them.

Some more of Trump's support comes from morally compromised people who are willing to bow to the Strong Man in return for kick backs that benefit themselves personally.

The rest of Trump's support comes from the clueless people who have bought into Trump's lies and the lies told by the media - and its rich owners - that get kick backs (in effect) from promoting him.

 

[billvon]

Apparently half the country are meanspirited people?

They don't see it as being meanspirited. They see it as protecting America from foreign invaders, as stopping the DEI globalists, as "picking the winning side," as "making America great again" etc etc.

 

[billvon]

Sadists? In the sense that they enjoy seeing the pain of those they dislike, a large part of them are. I don't know if it's a true majority, but it is certainly a very sizeable percentage. Look at the exultation and crowing on social media over "Alligator Alcatraz" often followed with gleeful imagings of how illegal immigrants will be eaten if they try to escape. When asked about this aspect of the facility, Trump said "I guess that's the concept".

Masochists? Not at all. They do not want to be hurt. When they ARE hurt they are generally shocked that anything they voted for could happen to them.

Take the example below. A small businessowner lost a third of his workforce (legal immigrants) due to an immigration crackdown. He voted for Trump, but clearly did not expect to be affected in this way.
=================================
Trump Supporter Breaks Down After ICE Takes Away Third of His Employees
Published Jun 12, 2025 at 2:06 PM EDT

By Billal Rahman NEWSWEEK

A Florida man who voted for President Donald Trump has lost nearly one-third of his employees amid immigration raids.

Six workers for a small roofing company were apprehended by federal immigration agents in the Lower Keys on May 27 after being stopped.

"It's going to be really hard to replace those guys," Vincent Scardina, the owner of the roofing company, told NBC South Florida in an emotional interview. "We're not able in Key West to just replace people as easily as, say, a big city, very limited people to pull from, and then you would have to train them, and that takes sometimes years."

Why It Matters
Trump pledged during his campaign to remove millions of migrants without legal status as part of a hardline mass deportation policy. The White House has said anyone living in the country illegally is considered to be a "criminal." Critics say the immigration raids sow fear into vulnerable communities.

What To Know
The men, who are from Nicaragua, have valid work permits, according to NBC South Florida.

"They are legally here. They have an authorization to stay," Regilucia Smith, the attorney for the men, told NBC South Florida.

 

[exchemist]

David Brooks sheds some light on the question, with help from the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and a look at where the Enlightenment took us.

Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good?

The work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helps illuminate some central questions of our time.

www.theatlantic.com

In the 1980s, the philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a book arguing that in a world without moral standards, people just become bland moral relativists: You do you. I’ll do me. None of it matters very much. This is what Kierkegaard called an aesthetic life: I make the choices that feel pleasant at the moment, and I just won’t think much about life’s ultimate concerns. As MacIntyre put it, “The choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in terms of good and evil.”

But the moral relativism of the 1980s and ’90s looks like a golden age of peace and tranquility compared with today. Over the past 30 years, people have tried to fill the hole in their soul by seeking to derive a sense of righteousness through their political identities. And when you do that, politics begins to permeate everything and turns into a holy war in which compromise begins to seem like betrayal.

Worse, people are unschooled in the virtues that are practical tools for leading a good life: honesty, fidelity, compassion, other-centeredness. People are rendered anxious and fragile. As Nietzsche himself observed, those who know why they live can endure anyhow. But if you don’t know why you’re living, then you fall apart when the setbacks come...

I've just read this article. Do you know who immediately sprang to mind, as an example of the kind of person such a society produces? Seattle.
It makes sense of so much of the sort of things he writes - and why I so often find them vaguely repellent and/or depressing.

Anyway, a very interesting article.

 

[TheVat]

Florida man who voted for President Donald Trump has lost nearly one-third of his employees amid immigration raids.

Six workers for a small roofing company were apprehended by federal immigration agents in the Lower Keys on May 27 after being stopped.

"It's going to be really hard to replace those guys," Vincent Scardina, the owner of the roofing company, told NBC South Florida in an emotional interview. "We're not able in Key West to just replace people as easily as, say, a big city, very limited people to pull from, and then you would have to train them, and that takes sometimes years."

I didn't know leopards would eat MY face, sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating Peoples Faces Party.

 

[TheVat]

I've just read this article. Do you know who immediately sprang to mind, as an example of the kind of person such a society produces? Seattle.
It makes sense of so much of the sort of things he writes - and why I so often find them vaguely repellent and/or depressing.

Anyway, a very interesting article.

I do sometimes see the "bland moral relativism" here, though I don't know that member well enough to weigh in. I do suspect there is too much leaning on the notion that people can simply act from self-interest and that will somehow all work out, the invisible hand will prevail, etc.

 

[TheVat]

The rest of Trump's support comes from the clueless people who have bought into Trump's lies and the lies told by the media - and its rich owners - that get kick backs (in effect) from promoting him.

I sometimes fear that too many people, deficient in critical thinking skills, will default to the notion that anyone who has gotten far in their life has some inherent goodness to them. Trump should be seen as the poster child of how untrue this notion is.