{"id":2278,"date":"2026-06-26T07:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2026-06-26T07:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:39:17","slug":"i-would-rather-die-inside-the-politics-of-spite-driving-trump-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2278","title":{"rendered":"‘I would rather die’: Inside the politics of spite driving Trump voters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s supporters actively oppose democracy, according to a recent ethnographic study, and actively want to make things worse for people they dislike.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s \u2018trashy\u2019 250 speech gets demolished by columnist<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a wise man once said: They are who we thought they were,\u201d wrote The Bulwark\u2019s Jonathan V. Last on Thursday about a May study sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute that studied Trump voters in Michigan, South Carolina and Wyoming. \u201cI want to go deep on this question because the people in the study describe a remarkable consistency about why they dislike democracy. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re misled, or mistaken. They have a coherent worldview. It\u2019s just not very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviewing how 14 out of 21 study participants immediately reacted negatively to the idea of democracy, Last observed that the participants perceived themselves as \u201ca minority under threat from a tyrannical majority\u201d who \u201cbelieve that there is a cultural schism in America, with good, God-fearing people like themselves on one side and the wicked majority on the other. They detest this imaginary majority and fear that \u2018democracy\u2019 would allow that majority to gain political power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last quoted a number of study participants who bluntly stated that they feared democracy would mean people they dislike \u2014 generally defined as racially diverse liberals who do not subscribe to the ideals of white conservative Christians \u2014 would exist with full rights. To rationalize this, they define democracy as a form of mob rule, ignoring that the Constitution created institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College for the precise purpose of preventing mob rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cSarah put this directly, \u2018I don\u2019t value democracy, because we wouldn\u2019t be heard. Wyoming\u2019s the smallest state on the map, right? If we were a democracy, then we wouldn\u2019t have a voice,\u2019\u201d Last quoted from the study. \u201cKyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: \u2018Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn\u2019t be able to feed people cows. We\u2019d all be eating seaweed.\u2019 Patricia (50s, SC) offered up a common conservative metaphor: \u2018[Democracy is] two wolves and one sheep deciding who\u2019s for dinner. I hate that word [democracy]. I mostly hate it when people who think they are educated about our style of government use it to say, \u2018Save our democracy.\u2019 No, there’s no democracy here. Praise God. If there were then California and New York would make all of our electoral choices.\u2019 Steve (60s, WY) describes it directly: \u2018Democracy rules . . . is mob rules, okay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Last added that these voters \u201cvery explicitly do not want majority rule. They want minority rule.\u201d The study found that they viewed Democrats as immoral because of issues like supporting racial diversity, backing LGBTQ rights, believing in feminism and opposing the imposition of Christianity on society. They also feel frustrated by what they perceive as young people overwhelmingly turning away from these values.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure how Democrats win over a voter who\u2019s motivated not by unemployment, or the the Iranian nuclear program, or the price of eggs\u2014but is rather lashing out because they\u2019re angry that their children rejected their political views,\u201d Last wrote.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cWe are firmly out of the realm of policy here. Or reality, even. So long as there is a trans activist in San Francisco posting on BlueSky, these people will be aggrieved. Even if their preferred political party holds the presidency, controls Congress, and has an openly corrupt majority in the Supreme Court. Domination of the political system is not enough; they want the people who disgust them to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

This means that \u201cif \u2018democracy\u2019 produces anything they dislike, then they are ready to be done with democracy.\u201d A hypothetical \u201cCletus\u201d supports Trump regardless of economics because \u201che\u2019s mad that the brown girl at Starbucks with the nose ring and the pronouns on her apron exists. And even if she doesn\u2019t work at his local Starbucks, he\u2019s sure that she\u2019s out there, somewhere. He doesn\u2019t like it and he thinks that he should be able to rule over her, even if there are more of her and her ilk than there are of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s \u2018brittle\u2019 attempt at art propaganda is crumbling: opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

The recent study treads the same ground as the landmark 2019 book \u201cDying of Whiteness,\u201d written by psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, who in the Boston Review published an anecdote about a conservative named Trevor who had to quit his job as a cab driver because he was dying of hepatitis C. Despite the fact that his state of Tennessee denied him access to health care that could have saved him, Trevor was staunch in his opposition to the Obamacare exchanges that could have provided him with help in the form of the polymerase inhibitors, a lifesaving liver transplant or other treatment options.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven on death\u2019s doorstep, Trevor was not angry,\u201d Metzl wrote. \u201cIn fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. \u2018Ain\u2019t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I would rather die.\u2019 When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: \u2018We don\u2019t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite opposing social programs as \u201cwelfare\u201d when given to other people, Trump supporters nevertheless do hope for this assistance for themselves. On Thursday Trump announced a possible $17.3 billion relief package for farmers who have been overwhelmingly hurt economically by Trump\u2019s policies of mass deportation, raising tariffs and declaring a war against Iran. These rural voters still back Trump by massive margins, even though they connect his policies to their economic distress, and polls show they hope to make up the difference in their economic relief through bailout packages.<\/p>\n

When a different conservative commentator, The Bulwark\u2019s Tim Miller, described this as a form of \u201cwelfare,\u201d economist Ed Gresser \u2014 Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute \u2014 pushed back to AlterNet against the idea that helping farmers should be opposed as \u201cwelfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTariffs have been quite bad for farmers in two ways,\u201d Gresser said. \u201cOne is that they have led to reactions against American products overseas, sometimes by governments and sometimes by public opinion. In a typical year, American agriculture exports about $180 billion worth of stuff that typically makes up about one-fifth of US farm income. So it’s quite a lot: half the exports go to, or at least historically went to, China, Canada, and Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gresser added that Trump\u2019s tariffs have hurt farmers in each of those markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exports to China have shriveled up because the Chinese retaliated very hard and hit back again directly against American farmers,\u201d Gresser said. \u201cMexico has kind of held up. Canada is off, not so much because the government of Canada has taken any particular steps but because Canadians have looked for American goods so as not to buy them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tariff program has badly screwed over American farmers,\u201d Gresser added, and because “farmers are definitely in trouble,\u201d he concluded that \u201cthe idea that the US government would respond to that in the abstract is not a terrible one in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump aides know he\u2019s nuts \u2014 but don\u2019t expect a fix<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s supporters actively oppose democracy, according to a recent ethnographic study, and actively want to make things worse for people they dislike.\u201cAs a wise man once said: They are who we thought they were,\u201d wrote The Bulwark\u2019s Jonathan V. Last on Thursday about a May study spo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n'I would rather die': Inside the politics of spite driving Trump voters - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2278\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'I would rather die': Inside the politics of spite driving Trump voters - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Donald Trump\u2019s supporters actively oppose democracy, according to a recent ethnographic study, and actively want to make things worse for people they dislike.\u201cAs a wise man once said: They are who we thought they were,\u201d wrote The Bulwark\u2019s Jonathan V. 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