Trumpland
Fusion (2016)
Film Review
This documentary, filmed a month before the 2016 election, explores the life circumstances of a cross section of Trump supporters, referred to by Hillary Clinton as “deplorables.”
Commonalities shared by this demographic are
- recent personal or family experience with job loss, bankruptcy or foreclosure.
- strong feelings about Wall Street outsourcing manufacturing jobs to third world countries.
- strong feelings about US politics being a “crooked” system set up to destroy the middle class.
- strong opposition to their perceived corporate control of the two major political parties.
- a perception that Trump, unlike other politicians, “can’t be bought.”
When answering filmmakers’ questions about Trump’s perceived racism and xenophobia, their replies vary. Some (especially women) feel that Black Lives Matter activists have a point about the abysmal way Black people are treated in the US. Others claim that Black people (and women) are demanding special privileges not enjoyed by white men.
Most deny that Trump is racist, claiming he only wants to prevent terrorist attacks by banning immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. They agree with his proposed wall because they believe his claims that most illegal Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and rapists. This flies in the face of research indicating undocumented immigrants (who are loathe to draw attention to themselves) commit far fewer crimes than either legal immigrants or native born Americans.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Reblogged this on The Secular Jurist.
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“Commonalities shared by this demographic are
recent personal or family experience with job loss, bankruptcy or foreclosure.”
How many of Trump’s supporters actually believe that they, like Trump, can file bankruptcy multiple times and still manage to ‘own’ multiple high end developments and be worth billions? How in the world can they actually think that Trump would even spit on any one of them if they were on fire to help put it out? Trump merely played into their fears of some bogeyman who has come to steal their jobs, “rape ‘white’ women,” and “receive special privileges.” The only thing the people of Mexico are doing is the work that Americans refuse to do and the only “special privilege” Black people are receiving are bullet riddled, morgue bound bodies, if that can even by the stretch of the most imaginative person, be considered a “special privilege.”
White men still own every damn thing in America and so why they felt the need for Trump, points to nothing beyond racism. No one is taking anything from them and that is a fact. Black people are being pushed further and further away from their former communities thanks to gentrification, they are shot dead by the police every other day and the remaining Black folks continue to work low wage jobs, so I have yet to see why Black people could in any way be perceived as a threat to white men. And the Mexicans are too busy working multiple jobs in order to feed their families here and yet be able to also send money back to Mexico.
No, those whites who voted for Trump just have too much time on their hands, too much white privilege and too much hate in their hearts. Let’s call a spade, a spade and be done with it.
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As far back as I can remember (going back to Nixon), Shelby, Republicans have been playing the race card to get themselves elected. Nixon’s war on drugs was actually a war on black people but in the 1970s, politicians were too scared to acknowledge this publicly. With the rise of Trump, it’s perfectly okay to promote hatred of Blacks, Mexicans and Muslims.
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#1.) HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA…….!!!
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Very apt response to the Trump presidency, Jane. Sums it up nicely.
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Trump has lied about everything. His core supporters are white-selfish haters, with shitty, extreme personality disoders like trump himself and christofascists.
I personally, do not understand why anyone wants to come to this nasty, chemical, and radioactive cesspool anymore.
Millions of homeless. Police-state type cops shakedowns. Cops, shooting innocent people. Even whites.
he is growing more demented by-the-day. The demento evolved as a crooked , lying, freako the clown trump. The nepotism for his pinhead off-spring is unprecedented.
Freako the clown closing down the VA system. Freako only employs 1 murican citizen out of a thousand at his garrish resorts. He doesnt appear to be oriented to person, place , or time a lot. He reacts with demented, vicious tweets, earlyin the morning like he is sun-downing. What a terrible undemocratic oligarchy we live in, supposedly run by a demented, plutocrat puppet. Clinton democrats are no better.
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Thanks for the comment, Gloria, Your obvious knowledge of the signs and symptoms of dementia are impressive. I think you may be right – that the vicious tweets are a form of sundowning.
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I’m European, Spanish, so will talk about the opinion here: Trump is seen as an inept buffoon, someone who appears in news at TV, newspapers and internet each time that does some eccentricity or insults someone (what happens often, I’m afraid). The news reader tell the Trump news with a smile at their faces and then continue with relevant news; Trump is like a break, a funny story between the important news. Surely underestimating him, of course, because even being so stupid as he looks, he’s dangerous yet, for US and the rest of the world.
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Samuel, here in New Zealand, people tend to regard Trump as an inept buffoon and a joke. I personally see his election as a sign of how much the US has declined as a world power.
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So true! We don’t deserve this power.
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Lara, I think you’re referring to the bald rich white men who run the US government, right? I can’t recall being given any say in the matter.
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To see the “Commonalities shared by this demographic” and believe trump is the answer is unquestionable evidence of the delusional sickness of trump supporters, a sickness that has grown like mold in this despicable country full of obedient automatons who embrace indoctrination as if it were truth. Scary.
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Good point, ashiftinconsciousness. The question in my mind is whether Clinton supporters are just as delusional as Trump supporters. In my mind, the real root of the problem is that we’re not given real choices in elections.
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Our elections became selections long ago.
Clinton supporters are delusional in the sense they still believe Capitalism is a viable system. They cling to the dogmatic beliefs of Corporate Indoctrination yet congratulate themselves for being too “intelligent” to support an imbecile like trump. They’re usually smarter than trump supporters, but not at smart as they think they are.
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63,000,000 Voted for Trump. All with those five traits. The same 63,000,000 who voted for Romney, McClain, both Bushs. All with those traits. Interesting.
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Ernest, there was a point in time where Democrats represented working people. Now they just represent corporations, the same as Republicans. Thanks to Karl Rove and similar political masterminds, the Republicans have become far more skilled at convincing working people they’re looking after their interests (when they’re really looking after the interests of Wall Street – like all politicians).
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The problem with Hillary’s campaign is she never fully expressed who she represented, why she was running or what she wanted to get done. She could have pretended to support the working (blue collar) class instead of insulting them.
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Excellent point, Old Guy. She didn’t have to insult us.
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