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Because the people who vote (R) have different values, and a different worldview than the people who vote (D). They seem to deny that a government can do anything, deny that racism is still a problem affecting millions of americans every day, deny that healthcare should be a basic human right, deny that free markets inevitably centralize power structures and create monopolies, deny that average americans are broadly underpaid, deny that authority figures they like should face justice etc etc.

They also typically claim something like "I'm just voting for gun rights" or other very specific carve outs, but if you press them on other things they usually seem perfectly happy to tell you that they think the world is woke and that we need a strongman and all sorts of classic conservative talking points.

Another reason is the religious angle. Millions of americans are enthusiastically, extremely christian, at least as claimed. This includes things like denying that evolution happens, denying the world is more than 6000 years old, sometimes denying that jesus was a white man!, denying that the US is not a christian theocracy, often denying that the new testament supersedes the old testament, sometimes denying women individual rights as free and equal people in society, etc etc etc. Look up the numbers of people who believe in these things.



You're just listing (D) talking points about (R) positions without taking a critical eye. In the spirit of HN, how about a steelmanning exercise?

> They seem to deny that a government can do anything

Counterpoint: government share of the economy should be as small as practicable, and decisions should be left to as low a level of government as practicable. Much fewer things should be decided at the federal level and it's better to let the private sector handle things.

> deny that racism is still a problem affecting millions of americans every day

Counterpoint: one can acknowledge the racist history of the country while rejecting the race essentialism that modern-day liberals see as the right way forward.

> deny that healthcare should be a basic human right

Counterpoint: basic human rights should be negative rights only (the right to prevent the government from doing something to you) and not positive rights (the right to have the government do something for you). The latter always infringes upon the former, but the reverse is not true. There's no way around the fact that healthcare is a resource that requires people to work to produce; you can't just legislate "more healthcare" without having people perform that work one way or another.

> deny that free markets inevitably centralize power structures and create monopolies

Counterpoint: most every monopoly you find will have the power of the state behind it. There's no evidence to suggest that a monopoly in any industry would remain so indefinitely, even if government did not break it up.

> deny that average americans are broadly underpaid

Counterpoint: in order to claim that someone is underpaid you must equally claim to know what the real value of that person's labor is. How do you know that someone is underpaid?

> deny that authority figures they like should face justice

Counterpoint: historical evidence makes it clear that politicizing justice is detrimental to the smooth transition of power, because each successive party in power, wary of recriminations from the other side, will be progressively more incentivized to hold on to it. This is why Ford pardoned Nixon. And since I'm sure you're referring to Donald Trump: he has had more legal scrutiny than any other individual on the planet in the past few years, and I'm sure many (R) voters would come around to seeing him face justice if anything substantial backed by evidence comes up, which hasn't happened yet.




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