Appealing to economists is the opposite of what they want, because economists look at macroeconomics efficiency which encourages globalism. They would rather be inefficient and hold on to their identity.
>They would rather be inefficient and hold on to their identity
What identity?
They don't. A large chunk of them were Bernie Bros before he dropped out of the 2016 election.
The 'uniparty' narrative denigrates the Western system of multi-party representative democracy and checks and balances, and equates it with Putin's monstrously corrupt and brutal one-party state.
Unfortunately these fascist narratives are extremely effective on underinformed and unintelligent people -- and our enemies know these people vote.
(Personally, I think they got played.)
Man, those guys are doomed. This is what they're aspiring to: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/25/michael-alex...
why are there are a great many democratic nations with (many) more than two parties, even with new parties arising and old parties diminishing. (I have firsthand experience with some of them. I highly recommend the experience.)
Is it wrong to 'intuit' that those nations may have a more vibrant democracy than a system of two parties that are both beholden to corporate capture?
Of course I will not be surprised at how asking this on HN will affect the scrip - oops I meant to say karma of course! - of such an inquirer as myself.
It's the US electoral system; each seat is individually elected, and the presidency is determined on a state-by-state basis, negating the votes of most of the country.
For contrast, take Germany. Its national parliament, the Bundestag, is the rough equivalent of the House of Representatives. It has 630 seats for 1/4 the US's population. Half of those are directly elected by geographical areas in first past the post voting, but the other half are proportionally assigned to the parties according to the "second vote", on a statewide basis. As a voter, you might or might not vote strategically for your direct representative, but the second vote is where you can vote your heart. The state-level parties come up with ordered lists of potential members to seat, and however many seats they get for that state is how far down their list they count. The caveat is that these proportional seats are only awarded if a party gets more than 5% of the vote nationally. This most recent election, we came within a few thousand votes of another new party getting added to the mix, and the CDU/CSU + SPD coalition not having a majority between them, and that would have been an even bigger mess. The FDP, the party that broke the last coalition and caused this election to happen early did even worse, and lost all of its seats, which I think is hilarious.
This all resulted in the CDU/CSU (center-right/conservative) getting the largest number of seats, the AfD (far right) getting the next (almost all from the former East German states), followed closely by the SPD (center-left), then the Greens and die Linke (leftists). The CDU/CSU has enough people in their leadership who remember what happened the last time conservative and centrist parties played ball with a far-right party (those parties no longer exist), so skipped over the AfD and instead negotiated a coalition contract with the SPD as the junior partner, whose membership recently voted to accept it (we'd have been complete idiots not to, and happily, 85% of the party are not complete idiots). The CDU/CSU and SPD don't love having to be in a coalition together, but have done this before and The Recent Unpleasantness Across The Atlantic has got a lot of people thinking a bit beyond their usual petty concerns.
So German voters appeared, on average, to want a center-right government, and that is essentially what they're getting. I say "they," because I'm not (yet) a German citizen, but the SPD's rules allow me to be a member and vote on things like candidate slates and coalition agreements. The Chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, who is the leader of the party that got the most seats (CDU/CSU). He is very boring, which is delightful.
There is a kind of senate (Bundesrat), directly chosen by the state parliaments (I think), but even that is somewhat related to population - Nordrhein-Westfalen and Bayern have more members than, say, Saarland and Bremen. I don't hear much about them, so I think they're mostly a veto on the Bundestag. Oh, and they pick the President, which is an almost 100% ceremonial position.
This electoral system made being a Green supporter in the 1980s if you were otherwise an unenthusiastic SPD voter who despised the CDU (CSU if you're in Bavaria) something other than a de facto vote for the CDU/CSU. It also let the far right corral itself into the AfD instead of taking over the major conservative party, as happened in the US.
If you really want answers, best thing to do is hang out in an area dominated by Trump supporters for a few weeks. Talking to them has changed my perspective on a lot of things. I don't agree with a lot of what they say, but I understand them now. They often aren't great at articulating their thoughts. They think in terms of macro-level complex systems. I shouldn't say 'think' - more like they intuit. They feel something is wrong, and they don't necessarily know why. You have to (kindly and with curiosity) interrogate them a bunch to figure it all out.
I follow a bunch of them on X, and they seem outraged by some of what Trump is doing, particularly the pro-war stance. Hence the low poll numbers?
[Sorry I really geek out on anthropology and understanding cultures.]
Sadly, it's mostly just cult of personality which I figure you are graciously trying to avoid assuming.
Tariffs are the perfect example of this. Trump announces tariffs? Good, we need long-term investment in domestic production. Trump cancels them? Good, they are just a short-term negotiation tactic. Trump negotiates a trade deal? Good, now we get a better deal on imports from that country. Trump says tariffs are back on the table? Good, we need domestic production long-term.
There are no macro-level complex system ideals here. Pinning them down to one claim is like fighting jelly where on every strike it morphs into something else.
I guess saying you don't understand tariff consequences and the like but you trust Trump to know what he's doing and make things great could be a reasonable position?
I'm hazy on some economics myself but don't especially trust Trump to make thing great. But I did kind of trust some previous presidents to do a decent job without following all the policies. (Clinton and Obama seemed quite good).
In 2016 that might have been a reasonable position without digging too much in to his background/history.
But we've had years of him in and out of office now, repeatedly lying. Lying about big things, small things, changing the lies, doubling down on the lies. Threatening people who question any of his lies in even the most polite/positive way possible.
Why anyone today would "trust" him on anything is just... insane.
In 2016 I definitely saw ads from churches in Mississippi on local cable TV that were totally outright political advocacy combined with cult of personality. I was so astonished, I almost filed a complaint with the FEC/IRS. But to top it off, I remember very well an ad of Trump’s that said “I’ll make every dream you ever dreamed come true.”
The trickiest bit is navigating the, ah, information gap. If you don't listen to Mark Levin or watch Fox News, your interlocutor is going to teach you about a bunch of things going on that you had no clue about (and when you look up the stuff afterward, at least 90% of it's pure bullshit) and you're going to get blank stares or hostility if you bring up any of a wide swath of current events that you assume everyone knows about.
You've gotta just roll with what they say and not do much talking, basically. You mustn't act surprised or incredulous when they make claims about things going on that you're pretty sure aren't real, you mustn't present counter-examples, you mustn't keep pushing if you try to broach a topic you assume is neutral and widely understood and they start to bristle at it.
It reminds me of that experiment where a part of the brain gets stimulated and the subject performs an involuntary action—then comes up with a logical explanation for why they did it, even though they didn’t choose it. I think that’s what’s happening with a lot of these Trump supporters. They're reacting to environmental triggers without really understanding why. It’s fair to say they’re being driven by something external—though then you have to ask, what’s driving that? Who's driving us?
In the end, they’re just human, like me or anyone else. We're all playing the Human game. No one’s really 'awake' or enlightened. After talking to enough people, I’m convinced most 'truth' is concocted, and no one’s actually in control. Truth lasts only as long as it’s useful.