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It's the limbic system vs the frontal lobe.

The limbic system won.

My take is that people are attracted to fascists and authoritarians for similar reasons as many people are fascinated by serial killers and the evil protagonists in TV shows. Something about watching evil and cruelty appeals to human nature.

subconscious desire to follow & make one's self appealing to those with more charisma and power than ourself, despite the harm that comes with it

People are attracted to power. It's that simple.

The best explanation I heard for the appeal of fascism was from someone on the far-right – that fascism is basically an immune response of a nation.

When enough people are hurting from the status quo voting for "sensible" policies of soft reform isn't going to cut it. At some point you need to blow up the existing system so you clear out the rot.

This immune response might be costly to the nation in the near-term but the hope is when it's over it will have also have destroyed the infection.

When it's put in these terms I can begin to relate more with the appeal of Trump, and while I'm not personally convinced he is a fascist, I do get why people say that. I can be nervous and unhappy with the result, but also acknowledge that the US needs significant change and voting in Biden or Harris was never realistically going to bring that.

There's clearly something wrong with democratic party. They're no longer appealing to the working class they claim to speak for and instead their primary supports now seem to be suburban white-women and the college educated metropolitan class. Today they're also supported by the media establishment, war-mongers like Dick Cheney, most billionaires, Hollywood celebs and pop-stars. Given this it's really no surprised we smart well off people on HN don't like Trump and quite like the sensible status-quo Harris promised.

I hope this immune response doesn't kill the host and I hope something positive comes out of all of this. We should take comfort in the fact that the US is the most resilient democratic nation on Earth and Trump probably won't be alive in another decade. Those who worry about an actual fascist up rising probably need to relax a little. The great risk over the next few years is probably just geopolitical stupidity and we've seen plenty of that in the last 4 anyway.

> The best explanation I heard for the appeal of fascism was from someone on the far-right – that fascism is basically an immune response of a nation.

This is some really low-tier fascist apologia, in my opinion. Fascism isn't an immune response, it's a cancer. Once active in the host, it tries to sap it of whatever resources it can to enrich itself. Rooting out fascism has, historically, come at great personal and political cost to the countries that manage it.

Would you use those adjectives to describe Obama? "People" certainly must have been attracted to those traits if he served two terms.

That makes no sense. I have never insinuated, and do not believe, that Obama is a fascist and authoritarian. That would be a crazy assertion.

You argue on the basis that from "If A then B" it follows that "If B then A" and that's fallacious, of course.

Maybe the fascination from people who never actually lived through fascism. Like people who fantasize about BDSM or CNC sex but would never really do it in real life.

I'm from Spain and even to this day we hear old people saying that "life was better with Franco". I think it's more about a need to have a homogenous society with very clear rules and boundaries.

>The limbic system won.

The limbic system always wins.

"The mind is always the dupe of the heart." (La Rochefoucauld)

Not necessarily. Only when people are afraid or anxious.

Well then isn't the limbic system in charge? Because those are like two major emotions most people feel

>those are like two major emotions most people feel

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H. P. Lovecraft)

It often wins, not always. Otherwise we'd be all monkeys out of control and we're not. We're often capable of handling our basic animal instincts.

The limbic system is a neural net that’s been training for a billion years. It’s probably right.

I'm sure voting sensibly in a democracy, understanding all the consequences it will have on oneself, the nation and on foreign people was definitely part of the function to be optimized for (besides that evolution doesn't work like that)

Not having an unending war with a power armed with nuclear weapons appealed to voters.

> You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is.

This made talking politics with my social circle difficult. Don’t shoot the messenger. This was not the time to run a risky candidate. I actually think Harris ran a decent campaign, much better than I thought she would, but I don’t think she had much of a chance. I remember when Biden dropped out several groups came out saying that if the DNC didn’t give Harris the nomination, that they would consider than to be a betrayal and that they’d lose their support. It was frustrating to see them so focused on what was “right” or “fair” when the stakes were so high.

The crazy thing is that we already went through this in 2016. We had people protest voting against Clinton. It didn’t work. And yet we seem to have been ok letting unyielding idealism sabotage important elections.

That said, I think a huge problem was Biden’s ego and his inability to stick to his campaign promise of being a one-term president. With him dropping with only a few months left, democrats didn’t have many options.

Agreed on Biden's ego being a problem, but when did he ever promise to be a one term president?

> The majority of the country was telling them "We are having change anxiety after Obama

Biden came after Trump.

> All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright

What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.

> Biden came after Trump.

Exactly, Yeah! He was the white man not in mental decline that said that everything is going to be alright.

> What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.

Yes, these are some of the issues that needed to be addressed instead of gender politics and foreign policy.

What is the disagreement?

The disagreement is that Fox News focused on gender politics, but it was largely absent from both Biden and Kamala's campaign.

I guess congrats to Fox, because focusing on it all day every day worked. The average joe thinks that's all the Democrats care about. It's extremely transparent when someone says "gender politics" what media they're consuming.

Yeah man, the only people talking about gender politics at this point are Republicans.

So, when the democrats finally said "hey, we were wrong, here's a boarder bill to limit entry into the US", and Trump said "don't fix the boarder",

Why did Trump then get votes?

Nobody is confused as to why people SAY they support Trump, people are confused that you can show someone who supports Trump objective evidence that he hurts them, works against his wishes, etc, and they will support him harder.

The "backfire effect" doesn't replicate, but boy IDK if we can call two elections anything more than an adequate sample size.

If Gender politics is such a nothing-burger that the president shouldn't care about it, why did they vote in the party who is enthusiastic about hetero-normativity? Why did so many republicans devote airtime and debate time to talking about the double digit number of trans people in sports?

>At every step of the way they very eloquently and academically explained why they have the right solutions

Part of the problem is that they didn't explain anything. Even in friendly interviews, the best kamala can answer when asked for specific is a big word salad that can be summarized as "Trump is evil and a danger to democracy, vote for us". Saying you have a plan and shitting on the other party for not having one is not the same as having a real plan and communicating it properly.

In an opportunity economy, you'll have OPPORTUNITY!

I think Harris 2024 is the worst campaign I've ever seen in modern American history.

This self-righteous narrative is way off.

The Democrats would rather lose with a neoliberal+unpopular candidate than win with a popular candidate. Because they serve similar corporate interests as the Reps. Only with a completely different Culture War shtick than the Reps.

That you frame this as being “factually, morally, academically” correct is funny—what justice does the Dems fight for? Not Palestinians. Not the average American. Just well-off women (now white or Jamaican) having “their turn” as the commander in chief.

It's wasn't meant to be factual, its presenting the narrative the Democrats tell themselves. "We are the academic, rational side" I'm not arguing the factuality of this because it doesn't matter. Regardless if it's true or not, it's missing the fact that you must also take the emotional state of the listener when presenting ideas. And while the Democratic side is hyper attuned to notice the emotion of being offended they are absolutely tone deaf to fear.

My mistake.

I did think at the time when Biden had to step aside that it was a shame they didn't try to choose the most competent replacement (maybe Shapiro?) rather than just going with Kamala who I think everyone agreed wasn't very good.

Yup, its hard to claim you are going to address systemic issues when you are unable to get over internal petty politics of your own party system

may be Sapiro didn't want to run this time.

> think everyone agreed wasn't very good.

Isn't this what people said after Clinton lost in 2016? Hindsight is 20/20

"All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline"

They did that with VP Walz, but it did not help. Their policies are the problem.

But surely you can tell that putting him in a subordinate position does not produce the same emotional effect, if anything it amplifies the negative reaction by baking the problem into the ticket.

I've read in a few places that if Walz was the presidential pick and Harris the VP, he would have probably been able to beat Trump.

Nobody gives a shit about the VP.

Vance Rogan interview got 15 million views compared to Trump's 45 million. Not overwhelming, saying nobody gives a ship about VP is kind of a stretch.

Especially since we had 3 assasination plots on Trump. It's quite possible he won't live the end of his term and not because of his age.

You imply that Americans are racist. You're making the same sort of mistake that you ascribe to the Democratic Party.

Ahhh yes, a calming old white man would've solved everything.

I guess we'll see in the next 4 years.

But Trump didn’t do any of things you suggested either. In fact he was barely coherent in his ideas most of the time.

Yeah this always surprises me when people compare the candidates. OK, Kamala was mediocre. But a ham sandwich is better than Trump's inane incoherent rambling. His positions are a vague protectionism.

It kind of makes sense from a certain angle.

Trump is a known quantity - people know what they are getting with him and have made their peace with him being how he is.

People expect more from Democrats. Harris would get dinged for saying things that Trump says, by the same people who are fine with Trump saying those things.

If that seems irrational and hypocritical, well, that's how people are, regardless of their politics.

Another model of how to think about the candidates is that human beings make decisions based on how the person or thing in front of them makes them feel - and afterward they come up with post-hoc rationalizations as to why. Even smart people do this. To some extent, we're all lying to ourselves about this.

So it makes sense that this time around both candidates ran campaigns focused on emotions, instead of policy specifics.

He is barely coherent most of the time, but several of his ideas do resonate with people and are easy to understand:

1 - Other countries in the world have taken advantage of the US

2 - Illegal immigrants have changed the country for the worse and are taking jobs

#2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.

None other than Bernie Sanders said as much about the subject right around 2007. His stance at that time was that we needed to do something about illegal immigration specifically to protect the jobs of American workers, but then later he changed his tune to fit in with the rest of the party.

If you address the majority of people's concerns and worries, they'll vote for you.

I am indeed very worried about all these illegal immigrants taking our very important jobs.

When I order food delivery, get in an Uber, and drop off my laundry at the wash and fold I want an under-educated American!

This is such a goofy response. Are you aware that under-educated Americans need jobs, and in fact vote???

That's why we have surging high unemployment! Oh wait it's still lower than when George Bush was president.

People want prosperous livelihoods not just jobs. Do you think those working those low paying dead end jobs are just completely content with having zero mobility or financial security?

That uber driving might be living in their car but at least they are employed right??

if you are buying delivery food, taxis, and laundry services you are clearly an upper class net worth individual. surely you know what’s best for working class americans

Yes I'm a super high net worth individual with a household income of $60K a year.

It's called living in a city, I don't own a car or have a laundry machine.

A laundry machine today could be a risky investment as you don't know how many years it will last. My old flat had a machine that broke down (It was less than 6 months old) and there was a known problem with the model which was to do with the input pad to set the settings. Luckily it was under warranty, but even still the stop was fighting hard to replace it :/ (I think it was fisher and paykel, they used to be good but they moved the manufacturing base from New Zealand to overseas).

My take away from those kind of exchanges is that most people have no idea how other groups of people live

Do not insult a person’s honest earned livelihood that they work for to support their families.

There are tens of thousands of Americans who are forced to live in Trailer trucks or from their car who often do those sorts of jobs.

They just want an honest living and do not have the opportunities to get higher college education to land well paid white collar formal jobs.

That uber job is often their way to save up for their truck driving license so that they can move to a decent wage to get his/her kids a nice christmas gift, nutritious daily meals for their kids and other emotional needs.

To them, seeing their jobs being taken up by illegal immigrants for lower wages, no payroll taxes to pay, etc. is a very very very real issue to them and a zero sum game being played against their life.

Taking jobs? Who, is giving them illegal jobs?

Why aren't people talking about this and doing something about it?

Americans. Plenty of business owners happy to pay under the table, steal wages and take advantage of illegal workers with no protections.

People rent out DoorDash and Uber accounts for 20% of the income from people that can't sign up themselves.

It's again our limbic system: it's easier to assign all the blame outsiders

> 2 - Illegal immigrants have changed the country for the worse and are taking jobs

> #2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.

There is only one group for which that is true -- men without a high school diploma. Otherwise, immigrants are generally taking jobs that Americans won't do.

Case in point, picking produce at farms. The last time they cracked down on immigration, a lot of those farms had to spoil a lot of crops because no one would pick them.

> Otherwise, immigrants are generally taking jobs that Americans won't do.

Because the pay is terrible. Start paying well and plenty of Americans will want the jobs.

Working a low skilled job like fast food should be enough to pay for college so that it is possible to lift yourself up out of poverty.

We have created a two tier system and the educated class just makes excuses about why the system has to work the way it does today.

> put an uncharismatic non white woman as the candidate

As a "white" man (no more white than native Americans are "red", Chinese are "yellow", or Africans are "black"), I take offence at the suggestion that skin color or gender should be a defining characteristic to determine who should be the US president (or anyone else in power).

Charisma is a different story, but boy, if Trump is the benchmark for what counts as having charisma, we're in even bigger trouble than I thought.

Think you missed the rest of the post:

> You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is.

And yet the article has since been edited to remove both the sentence I quoted, and your rebuttal (whatever that was supposed to mean). Clearly they knew it was wrong. I'll take your downvote with pride.