What I’ll be talking about is not the kind of delusion conservatives ascribe to liberals, quite the opposite.
Jimmy Kimmel thought it would be a great idea to bring anti-DACA Trump voters and a DREAMer family face-to-face. If you want your blood to boil, watch the result below. Spoiler: at the end it didn’t seem like Kimmel still thought this was a great idea.
Kimmel is coming to terms with a delusion, which, in my opinion, was, until recently, shared by most American liberals: the notion that ultimately, the overwhelming majority of Americans are good decent people. From my two-decades-long experience of debating them, as well as awareness of opinion polls on several issues, my impression was rather different. I long thought that the majority of conservatives are like the ones in this video: stupid, mean-spirited, immoral, racist and staggeringly hypocritical.
This has been true for a long time. It was pretty evident in the time of Saint Ronald already (nevermind Joe Scarborough’s rose-tinted glasses). This didn't start with Trump, these people's loyalty to Trump only made it more visible. But before, I think most liberals were either sheltered or dismissed any examples as the aberration of a small minority. Even now, I don’t think most people have a sense of the kind of threat this poses. To put it bluntly: I’m fully convinced that, if fed with the right propaganda, a third of Americans wouldn't bat an eye if Trump would put you - you - into a concentration camp.
Let me stress the “stupid” part. The biggest stupidity of these folks is not in falling for scam artists, even transparent third-rate ones like Trump, but in sticking with them even when they get the feeling that they have been had. They grab at any possible excuse to bury their doubts. Witness Trump’s poll numbers, which, other than being record low, show that he has a rock-solid support from at least 30% of the population and another 5 to 10 percent who are swayed by the latest scandal but return to the fold within days. I guess these people think admitting a mistake is worse than letting that mistake run amok further.
Kimmel’s failed experiment was based on the hope that these people can be made to re-consider their abhorrent views. I'm not saying that changing views is impossible with any method for any of them. But I strongly doubt that the majority of them would change their views any time soon. So what you can do is keep them from power by out-voting them in every election for 20 years. The key is turnout (matching the evangelicals' 85% turnout).