I know I've seen some articles on this but I can't seem to find them again. There were studies done where they asked self identified right wing people to agree or disagree with political statements.
People were very likely to disagree with a statement like "I support universal healthcare", but very likely to agree with statements like "I support laws which would ensure no taxpayer would enter into medical debt for obtaining necessary medical care". Essentially, if you just described socialist ideology, without using the common words for it, a large amount of right wing people completely agreed with it.
This has been my anecdotal experience as well. Most of the time when I ask my Republican friends their opinions on specific policies I find that their views are very populist leaning toward socialist. They just happen to also be motivated by fear and easily swayed by propaganda and will readily vote against their own interests in exchange for a false sense of security.
They are then confused and frustrated when the scumbags they voted for do exactly what they said they would do and it turns out badly.
I've noticed the same in conversations. When I talk about socialist theory, people agree 100%, but as soon as you say a buzz word it's, "Now I don't want full socialism!"
If they were to vote for their values who would they vote for?
The democrats aren't upholding these values either and while I agree that they are much better than the current republican party it doesn't mean that voting for them would be voting in their interest but instead in the least bad option.
We vote blue not to change the system but because voting red makes the situation worse. The whole affair with the GOP stacking SCOTUS with Federalist Society jurists provides one example of many. At this time, they're trying to neuter elections to push Democrats out entirely.
To change society we'll have to do far more than merely vote. And to date, we've had to claw every right we have by force or coercion, and when the public isn't a direct threat to the elite, they feel free to strip away our rights. Dobbs was only the most public of the provisions: most fourth- and fifth-amendment protections have been stripped away, again by the US Supreme Court.
If you look at what the administration is actually doing and trying to do, there is a lot of going to the right direction. There is absolutely not enough of that, they probably could and definitely should do more, but it's disingenuous to say that they do absolutely nothing for the working class.
I don't think they hate black and trans people but whatever warped version of black and trans people that they have been told. There have been studies that show having a gay friend in real life make people more accepting and I assume that similar things could be shown for trans and black people.
Yeah, but when they won't make that friend, that "fun fact" doesn't help anyone. So they are, for all intents and purposes, de facto racist even if in a perfect world where we all hang out on Sesame Street they wouldn't be.
The culture war is the only lever the GOP has to win elections. Their domestic/economic policy is so bad for the majority of Americans if not packaged with propaganda.
These “the far right just wants normal relatable things” seem to be a relatively popular genre. We can all agree that freedom and safety and health and happiness are good things to have.
But we’ve all seen what the trumpers do when you start trying to give those things to poor people, or immigrants, or trans people. The question we need to be asking isn’t “do you like nice things?”, the question is “who do you think is deserving of nice things”
But then the deeper question is "why do you think these other people don't deserve these things?" and then they tell you all about how they are sinful, lazy, violent, or whatever else that they use to justify shunning those other people which is obviously incorrect but it is what they believe so if they actually believe all of that stuff then obviously they are gonna be hostile towards those kinds of people.
It is better to understand and try and remedy why people are doing awful and horrible things than dismiss and judge them because the first option actually can lead to a solution and the other is going to isolate them and make the problem 10x worse.
Being empathetic is the first step to forming trust. Also by the way even though I am saying all of this it doesn't mean that if someone is being rude to you or insulting your friends you should just turn the other cheek and let them stomp all over you. What it means is that you have to be assertive with who you are and what you stand for but also being willing to listen and understand (not necessarily accept) what other people are saying.
Edit: Also FYI the far right are people and not all of them are 24/7 talking about far right stuff. So statistically they likely do want "normal relatable things" most of the time.
So they understand the vote issues.. but Raul to pay attention to that the politicians vote on. The funny part is conservatives continue to vote for politicians that go against what they want.