Do people use the 'Nuremberg blame' when it comes Trump?

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By Nuremberg blame I mean that as the opposite of a Nuremberg defense, in which people blame the shepherd for causing so much trouble, instead of the sheeple who chose to follow the shepherd. A lot of people want what Trump wanted, but everyone still blames him and not them, even though the sheeple are a much bigger power for carrying things out.

I just think it's really ridiculous personally, but that's just me. Unless maybe I am wrong?

Trump was/is the symptom, not the cause, but just out of curiosity, what is it that you think he wanted?

Personally, I think he started out wanting a better contract for The Apprentice, and then he wanted people to cheer for him and give him money, but I'm open to other ideas.

I do think there's a portion of people who don't want to believe their neighbours are as terrible as they've demonstrated themselves to be and create deflections like you describe to shift that blame.

Let's face it, there's people who heard the warning about who Trump was and liked what they heard. Those folks knew what they were after so I don't think shifting blame away from those who desired those outcomes is productive.

He made an already existing situation considerably worse.

I blame every president and their policies, beginning with Reagan, for bringing people into a situation where they want a Trump.

I've never been sure whether to blame leaders or the people who support them for the trouble they cause. That might simply point to the notion that blaming is a pretty futile thing - it does seem to imply a degree of grandiosity.

“I didn’t think leopards would eat my face,” says person who voted for leopards-eat-faces party.

There are some people who voted for Trump and regret it, like the leopard victim, but most of the people who blame Trump for such-and-such never really liked Trump to begin with and certainly didn’t vote for him.

Since America has a system where two parties dominate, no presidential candidate can rely on voters from his party alone. The staunch voters of either party, each voting for their guy, effectively cancel each other out. So, all presidents must rely on the undecided voters who don't bind themselves to a party, rather voting for the candidate as an individual.

Many of these undecided voters are effectively sponges. They vote for, and get swept up in, whatever the prevailing feeling of the day is. Also, dislike for the opposing candidate may work in the other's favor.

Lots of folks voted for Trump simply because he wasn't Hillary, then subsequently jumped on the anti-Trump wagon after voting for him and voted Biden four years later. Don't be surprised if these same people go Republican again in 2024 and vote for the candidate who "isn't Biden," ...assuming Biden can make it to 2024.

The number of “swing voters” is not particularly high, and political undecided people tend to just not vote at all.

Some good reading here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ju ... are-there/

If the same number of loyal voters for both parties came out and voted for either candidate, there'd be a perpetual stalemate. And if one party had more loyal voters than the other, that one party would forever be in power. (This does tend to happen on the local level.)

This is why "swing states" are so important in presidential elections. The winner (usually) takes all electoral votes for the state, and it's the number of electoral votes that gets a president elected.

It's also why Mondale only won his home state in 1984. Even the historically Democratic states all swung to Regan that year. That hadn't happened in 1980. Sure, perhaps more came out to vote; but there was a drastic swing of otherwise Democratic voters that year to Regan as well as a the uncomitted non-party contingency choosing Regan over Mondale in their respective states.

To say swing voters and those who don't vote along party lines are irrelevant shows a fundamental misunderstanding of American presidential election process.

Traditionally the equation in the US was 40% on either side were staunch partisans who would vote their side no matter who was nominated, with the remaining 20% being true independents who swung the election based on who they liked better in a particular cycle. I'm not sure that holds anymore, more and more people claim to be independent but vote like partisans due to negative partisanship, and negative partisanship has become the true driving force in US politics.

I'm actually one of the true independents, I went from Bush to Obama to Johnson twice and then Jorgenson, and I might have gone Trump had I lived in a purple state rather than a deep blue one where I can cast a protest vote without any consequence. I do tend to generally prefer Republicans in office for a few reasons, but I'm not a fan of the party, I just hate them less than the Democrats, which is a classic negative partisanship situation. Unlike a true partisan, my vote is actually up for grabs, as I supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary.

I heard of a survey they did in the UK way back in the 1980s that claimed the most common reason for voting was "to keep / kick the other lot out." I think Harold Wilson may have also sensed that in the 1960s when he referred to himself as "the lesser of two evils." I haven't voted for a very long time, chiefly because my constituency is a very safe seat for the incumbent, so in practical terms it's poor bang for buck for me to go to the trouble and I have better things to do with my time. Nor have I seen anybody I'd trust with the power of leadership. A possible exception might have been Corbyn, but it looks like they railroaded him as a threat to vested interests, and as a result the Labour Party is only worth voting for in order to remove the Tories, and as I said, my vote wouldn't change anything at all.

At the end of WWII they had war crimes trials in Tokyo that were equivalent the Nuremburg Trials.

One of the Japanese convicted, and hung, was General Hanna (think that that was his name) who commanded the Japanese forces that seized the Phillipines. His men committed atrocities against American, and against Phillipino pows (most infamous being the Bataan Death March). But the General's defense was that he "didnt know what my underlings were doing because I was too busy running the military campaign against the American counter attacks". Basically the exact opposite the Nuremburg defense of "I was only following orders": "I am not guilty because my subordinates all did stuff I didnt know about so I am not responsible".

So...you could call this opposite of the ND "the Hanna Defense".

The allies considered it to have been his responsiiblity to be aware and to reign his men in. So they didnt buy the defense, just like they didnt buy the ND. So, fairly or not, there is precedence both ways.

Curiously I agree

Is being the symptom worse or no?

Where are you heading with this?