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This is an interesting take. I've stopped trying to understand the why, since it never made much sense to me in the first place. Furthermore, I don't think I do need to explain why he's hated in order to take it as a given, and use that hatred as the basis for explaining behavior.
While I can't answer why, I have some theories. First, he's a genuine outsider that has resisted cooption. Second, he's personally repugnant due to manners and demeanor. Third, he's politically repugnant, and his pet issues (immigration, mostly) mark him as low-status or otherwise 'other.' Fourth, he's a genuine threat to the status quo (similar to #1) is ways that triggers reactions from those inside the system (deep state, anyone?). Fifth, the normal demonization of Republicans, but enhanced due to #2.
Of these, I learn towards #4. I think some people are afraid of him, afraid of his appeal, afraid of the way he acts and speaks, and their fear easily turns towards hatred and hyperbole.
I don't have a good reason why he's so hated. Trump Derangement Syndrome was coined for a reason, and I think it explains plenty even when it itself is unexplained.
He was hated, and persecuted, before he contested the 2020 election. He was already impeached once and the entirety of the bureaucratic class was opposed to him by the time he walked in the door. It was this antipathy that caused the groups described in the famous Time article to collectively 'fortify' the election in advance. So I think this causation is backwards.
It’s worth noting that Clinton crazies were very much a thing, there was a definite bush derangement syndrome, and a decent percentage of the country literally believed Obama was born in another country.
Trump derangement syndrome is an escalation, but the blue tribe thought the Obama-Kenya conspiracy theories were a huge escalation and didn’t really distinguish between the randos who said it and the GOP higher ups who explicitly disavowed it. If Rubio had won the 2016 election we may well have been seeing the same level of derangement, admittedly with less ammo.
The "randos who said it" included Donald Trump - who became a GOP higher up when he was nominated for President. Both Trump's popularity with the anti-establishment right and his extreme unpopularity with the pro-establishment left (and large parts of the pro-establishment right) start here. When Obama published his birth certificate, Trump claimed the credit for making him do it. Per Wikipedia, Trump didn't publicly acknowledge that was a US citizen until September 2016 - i.e. after fighting the Republican primary as an ambiguously-repentant birther.
Falsely claiming that a major party candidate is ineligible is an attack on American democracy. The GOP primary electorate nominated Trump despite (definitely) or because of (probably) his willingness to do it anyway. Trump's base within the GOP is people who think that Democrats always cheat, that they get away with it because the GOP establishment are cucks, and that Republicans should cheat back harder. This is more obvious post-Jan 6 than it was then, but Trump's opponents brought receipts in 2016.
Fundamentally, the scary thing about Trump is that he behaves as if American elections are kayfabe on top of an underlying system of raw power politics, and his supporters love him for it. If American elections really are kayfabe, this makes him someone who breaks kayfabe and gets away with it, which any wrestling promoter knows can destroy the franchise. If you think that American elections are not in fact kayfabe, then he is the worst threat to American democracy since elections really were rigged in 1960's Illinois. In either case, he needs to be stopped.
It's pretty strange to see so much discussion here about why liberals hate Trump - a lot of "sore loser" theory - without Democrats or progressives pushing back on why they think he's particularly norm-breaking.
It actually makes me worry about the skew of this site and if we left a lot of left-wingers back on Reddit.
It's not just that "Trump wasn't supposed to win". He violated a lot of norms - not just red and blue norms like unconditional support for the nominee - starting with not releasing his taxes and escalating to things like playing footsie with not acknowledging the outcome of the election.
THIS was the particular red rag that was theoretically avoidable by a generic GOP candidate (as opposed to being anti-immigration - or rather: anti-some immigration)
There is obviously a thing where liberals (this can be of the left AND right variety - especially if you look at Europe) conflate their particular politics with democracy and freedom as such - which is how things like populism, Brexit, being anti-immigrant all end up being marked as "dangerous" or threats to freedom - but, in this case, Trump tied the connection himself.
We don't even need to look at the lib reaction - look at some of Tucker's leaked texts from the Dominion case if you think this reaction is purely lib derangement at a "blue collar billionaire".
There aren't very many Democrats or progressives on this forum and I'd hazard to guess most of them view trying to push back to be a waste of time - most of these arguments have been re-litigated dozens of times since Trump's presidency and the assumptions gap has been found to be unbridgeable.
This is likely true. But as a progressive Democrat myself, I wonder how many people here are like me in that I don't particularly want to push back but rather read and learn. It's pretty easy to see countless arguments that Donald Trump is a particularly norm-breaking POTUS practically everywhere I look, but it's harder to see arguments of the "sore loser" theory, especially any good or strong versions of those arguments. A large part of my motivation in reading posts in this forum is to see such things in the hopes that they actually challenge my biased perspective on various CW issues including Donald Trump, in the hopes that I can form a more accurate view of them.
For this particular issue, what I'd most prefer to see is a progressive Democrat make a case for the "sore loser" theory and a MAGA Republican make a case for the "Trump was a particularly norm-breaking POTUS in a way that was genuinely dangerous to democracy" theory, not out of charity but out of genuine, heartfelt belief. Because those are the arguments that I would find the most credible and most valuable for triangulating the actual truth of the matter. Unfortunately, such people don't seem to be particularly available, and so I want to see the strongest version of the theory I personally find distasteful or wrong on a visceral level, which is the "sore loser" theory.
I am a progressive Democrat myself, and I feel similar to you in terms of reading and learning. I myself have very little interest in “pushing back”; I find it would be absolute waste of time, and likely why you won’t find the discourse you are looking for. In my opinion, the value of a forum like this is that it allows progressives, at least such as myself, to observe a rich diversity of right-winged thinking to identify the more insidious and subtle dogwhistles indicating the traits of a conservative, so one may steer clear of them in IRL interactions.
While I find the sentiment of maximizing the purity of your social bubble somewhat loathsome, in this instance I would be entirely content providing you as much assistance on this front as I could. I even think that I could do this in good conscience, given that your stated premise is to
The rules I have, personally, for total removal of an individual from my life before I even know them have been invoked a few times in my life, but not often enough that I feel the need to nervously genuflect towards the Paradox of Tolerance when I do.
That said your somewhat duplicitous presence would lead to my wondering whether your [statistically likely presence somewhere along the chain of decision-makers in the hiring/firing process, for instance] motives in this are entirely pure, or at least not intended to cause real, actual harm to real, actual people while offline. Could you please tell me if the stakes being there was a consideration to you, when you wrote this comment?
Would you consider asking yourself as well, if coding "right-wing" to danger or at least avoidance isn't just coding class-signals (your presumed outgroup) as political?
I sincerely don’t know what “coding class signals as political” means, otherwise I would answer that question.
I believe you are asking, “Would I not hire someone if I knew they were conservative?” To answer that, I would, yes. I believe conservative ideology is incredibly abusive to both the believer and those associated with them. My evidence for this belief is partially anecdotal; every single conservative I have ever known in my life (to include myself at one point) my mother and father, my brothers, my grandparents, my boss, my coworkers, my boyfriend’s sisters, brothers and parents, and his friends hurt themselves and others around them as the expectations social conservatism puts on them clashes with their wants and desires and causes untold amounts of emotional discomfort, immaturity and agitation. I have my own objective evidence as well, but that would be too long to list for this response.
I personally trust the judgement of someone who believes in social conservatism to be so significantly impaired that yes, if somewhere down the line I were to find two applicants were equally qualified but one attended their college’s Turning Point club and the other did not, I would find the former to be a potential emotional, physical and ethical danger to my employees. I would worry they would say hurtful things to their coworkers, disrespect the authority of their supervisors and use workplace equipment incorrectly.
If you are asking me if I would hurt a conservative in real life when you say “real harm”, no. I believe social conservatism was partially born from poor emotional regulation being met with hostility and pain, and responding with more pain is not constructive.
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