Your parents might lack empathy and are cruel, therefore they are looking for other cruel people to confirm their cruel behavior: The cruelty is the point

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

Sorry to tell you this but the racism really resonated with them.

Your parents are not nice people. It happens, my parents were not nice people.

The comments here are wild. So much judgement about people we literally know one single thing about.

There should really only be one answer to this question: "I dunno. Why don't you ask them?"

Just because your parents like some guy that they've never met doesnt mean they are evil, sociopathic, racist monsters. The most likely explaination is that they got walked down the right wing media rabbithole by some network of acquaintences, and now they are trapped in a fairy tale depiction of the world designed to appeal to their baser emotions.

People believe in bigfoot and the flat earth. Why? Mostly because they feel lonely and powerless, and want to feel like they are part of a group that is united in their knowledge of The Truth.

I'm guessing they consume a lot of Fox News or similar? Propaganda works.

I've got a former military buddy who is all about Pete because "he's not gonna let the fatties and the faggots fuck up our military anymore."

Nevermind that the navy has been called gay since their inception, or that muhreens have zero self discipline outside of a military situation, or that the air force has run more drug than most cartels, it's the "fatties and faggots" that are the problem.

I always knew my buddy was dumb, but it took that conversation for me to figure out that it went all the way down to the core of who he was as a person.

Your parents are bad people

1. Decades of propaganda

2. I'm not trying to insult here, but your parents aren't that smart. One of mine fell for it too.

Bottom line is if you fall for extremely obvious propaganda you are not, and never were, very intelligent.

It's easy to win over weak people.

There's a good chance that they're stupid and hateful

Two character traits that are often celebrated in 'Murica rather than being condemned

You can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

they're selfish and dumb and choose to be ignorant

simple as that. they might be nice people in some respects, but the above still holds true

It takes a certain type of fundamentally fucked-up personality to consider that killing and maiming is an acceptable career. The military then spends vast sums on further brutalising those people until they kill on command without question. Violence and cruelty stalk their lives. He is One of Us, therefore he is better than One of Them.

I mean how does theoreticallyconservative small government folk support a real estate trust fund baby who openly take bribes, is building himself a castle, and floods the streets with masked, unmarked, paramilitary. Oh and constantly breaks the laws of the land put out by the forefathers along with a whole ton of other laws?

Party of suckers and losers.

I know America thinks being in the military is an amazing thing, but if we tune back to reality, soldiers are not excellent human beings.

They're dumb and/or terrible people. It happens.

What do they say about him?

I can fully understand somebody having no opinion, but actively liking him? There must be positive stories about him on the far right news networks that I am not familiar with.

30 years in the military and a shitty person? Man that is so weird, how could it be?

Judge someone by the company they keep.

Fox News.

They watched him on FOXnews, thought he was "cute", about like a Sajak or a Kardashian. So why not put him in charge of the world's most lethal military?

I think my best guess is the “mere exposure effect”. The guy and his ego strikes me as something that’s probably fairly common in the military (as far as I can tell from the outside). Being exposed to a lot of men like him probably makes him feel comfortably familiar.

The military and drinking are like peas and carrots