(Let's be reeeeeeeal careful with this thread. 200% benefit-of-the-doubt in all directions. Everyone's worn out.)

There's a like 5 separate threads here to untagle:

1)Current events: USG/Politics
2)American/Western Imperialism
3)Global Populism
4)Global War on Terror
5)America's War for Greater Middle East

Auxiliary:

6)The lack of any editorial control on social media
7)The Internet war
8)Youtube and Twitter as commercial ventures rather than free social platforms.
9)Advertising as a revenue stream
10)KIDS THESE DAYS!

I guess as an outsider I'm puzzled why Trump's support has held fast (and by some measures even getting stronger) if the people/workers/middle class/99% are not getting better off.

If they were worse off (and this is the point that's not much talked about as all the oxygen is sucked up by Trump's late night poop-tweets), then it makes no sense that he's still popular with his base.

So I'm assuming there has to be SOME truth to the claim that 'jobs are coming back' and 'unemployment, even African-American unemployment is low'

It may well be that the jobs that coming back are low-wage jobs. PBS Frontline had a program on Dayton, Ohio last month where the old $35/hour jobs pre-NAFTA were all replaced by $13/hour jobs today. NAFTA was Clinton's thing, so I can see it makes sense for working class people to be suspicious of "globalist" Democrats. But I can't understand the support for Trump if ordinary working folk are doing worse under him. I don't know, I'm an outsider, so I was hoping you Americans could shed some light on the mystery. Is it just racism? Tribalism? Brain-washed by Rush Limbaugh and FOX (which begs the question why they are attracted to those sources in the first place).

And the ugly truth of it is that a lot of the people who still support Trump don't support him in spite of everything we've talked about, they support him because of it.

"Those fucking immigrants. The fucking women. The fucking foreigners taking our jobs and our factories. We need to go back to the way things were in the good old days. America is for good clean American families." Trump promises all of that, despite it being fundamentally impossible because that's not how the world works anymore. I wish I could find it, but there was a great article breaking down the entire myth of "bringing back the jobs" to coal towns and industrial towns and how that plays into supporting Trump. The basic breakdown as I remember it is a lot of industry in America was the backbone of the community (Coal towns, steel towns, car manufacturing towns etc) and that's how you got rich, you became a manager and worked up the ladder. But as the world globalized and technologically advanced those jobs started disappearing overseas or to more efficient factory systems and these towns started getting poorer.

So now, you have all of these old, embittered people (Old white men) that see all the rich liberal pussies in the cities getting rich off the money that should have been theirs. So you have Trump wander in and go "You're right, all those people in the cities are getting rich off your money, we need to fix that, bring back the factories and mines, get your job back and make you rich." and they go fuck yeah. But it won't work because the world doesn't work that way any more and even if they do open the coal mines (As they are trying to do atm), so what? The demand isn't there any more the world has other sources, the world is moving away from coal, and so on and so on. So you have this entire subsection of the population that is willing to overlook the couple little things they don't like about Trump if there are any, because he's gonna make them rich again and bring back the jobs. Hope is dangerous drug, is how the line goes I think.

There's a reason Trump's primary support base is almost entirely rural middle America.

And yes, media plays a big part in it. An entire generation grew up with their news source (Fox, or related, usually from what I've read) and that was the news you didn't watch anything else, that's the direct line to the truth. The Republicans and by extension Trump effectively have completely control of what comes out of there so yeah, it's literally a propaganda machine pointed directly at the people that support the current administration to keep them angry and scared and supporting the plans of the people in power.

Those are just the couple things I can think off the top of my head, and I'm sick of typing. But hopefully that helps a bit. The thing to remember is that Trump is a force of charisma to the base he targets, he's incredibly skilled at lying and manipulating and telling those people what they want to hear. Facts have, as we know, played effectively no part in his entire campaign and administration.

*against better judgment wanders into the thread after holding off for days* Also worth noting that economic growth = / = a better economic situation for the majority of the population. Sluggish recovery from the 2008 crash doesn't really mean all that much if most of it is centered around massive corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy rather than stable growth of longterm jobs.

Also (I'm sure many of us on the forum can speak to this), it's quite possible that a significant amount of job "growth" we're seeing is workers taking on multiple jobs to try and stay afloat. Which, not ideal.

Trump isn't solely to blame there—the Obama administration took a lot of half measures and reaped the whirlwind—but he most definitely isn't helping and will almost undoubtedly make things actively worse in the long run, to BDA's point.

Thanks for all your answers. Really appreciate it. If Trump pretends to be a beacon of hope to the little forgotten person in flyover states, it's weird that he'd hijack the GOP, the part that obviously (even to an outsider) only represents the wealthiest 1% of the country. That false hope should go down better if offered by a left-wing populist, like say Bernie Sanders. Even an idiot should know Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, etc are wholly bought by corporate lobbyists.

And then massive tax cuts to corporations and billionaires are passed, and the GOP support doesn't budge. The tribalism is so entrenched. And Democrats could promise universal health care, and sick people in rural mid-America will fervently campaign against socialised medicine.

So, yes, Trump offers false hope to poor rural people. Got that. But if a Democrat offered the same false hope, they'd be hated, even though the Democrats can demonstrate an historically (slightly) better track record.

The media has done an excellent job in painting Democrats as in bed with Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Hollywood, etc. But the message that the GOP is in bed with defense contractors, big Pharma, banks, hasn't got through.

I find it fascinating that brainwashing can be done so effectively that someone will act against their own interests. A drowning man will reject the (commie, Chinese, Jewish, liberal, insert hate group here) rope thrown to assist him.

The phenomenon of poor voting for upwards wealth redistribution certainly happens in Australia/UK as well, but to a much greater extent in the USA.

We'll see what happens in the mid-terms... it seems like a no-brainer that there should be a blue-wave after all that Trump has done/said in the last few years, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a swing towards the GOP.

Does the left have any share of the blame? Lame Pelosi/Schumer mainstream DNC? Distracted by identity politics rather than inequality? No charismatic leader to rally around?

You seem to forget that there are no poor people in America, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires. (Steinbeck) Improvements for the rich will mean improvements for anybody that something something bootstraps.