I would like to skip that rethoric here on HN whenever possible. You cannot possibly reduce 70M voters to that.
I would like to explore the whys and hows of this apparent step backwards in so many things and why Trump was voted like he was and this reductionist view helps no one.
Ok, let's take the nuanced route. Not all are stupid.
They're just more uneducated than ever, more conservative than ever, and idolizing dehumanization and evil totalitarians more than ever.
The root of everything is social insecurity and bad education, caused by the USA actually not being a country for its people but for corporations and billionaires.
I'm sorry but if you want a pathological liar, criminal and an overall horrible human being as a president of the (probably) most powerful and influential country in the world, you're just scum. Keep the downvotes coming.
The inequality in a nation must have a huge effect on the nature of the people in that nation. That a treatise on inequality has won a Nobel prizes for economics would tend to support your thesis [1]. That another Nobel prize winner has also written on inequality should clinch it [2].
> I'm sorry but if you want a pathological liar, criminal and an overall horrible human being as a president of the (probably) most powerful and influential country in the world, you're just scum. Keep the downvotes coming.
This is precisely what I'm talking about. You really think this comment is going to do anything but push even more people to vote for the right? Because why would they side with your camp when you just called them scum, because you don't understand their intentions for voting for him/the party?
Which is extra unfortunate, because your comment up until that part was pretty good.
I understand their intentions. I understand that these votes come out of a place of fear. They are unhappy and a lying demagogue is pointing them to a solution and fuels them with hate. [1]
I also understand that they willfully choose to ignore massive red flags and are a bunch of hypocrites. These people have no shame and need to be shamed. It is the key emotion that leads to change and motivates to action.
Sadly, due to electoral interference by totalitarian regimes, media outlets, Musk, and the internet in general, these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.
Once you're set up like that, it's extremely difficult to get out of. I am afraid that the US has check-mated itself for at least an entire generation. The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.
Which brings us back to people wilfully being the exact opposites of those values. We've had lying oppressive demagogues probably since the dawn of humanity. Most certainly in the last century.
However, despite being afraid and frustrated, many people sided against such leaders. And this is why I consider not doing so a personal moral failing.
> These people have no shame and need to be shamed. It is the key emotion that leads to change and motivates to action.
> these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.
The Internet (or global communication in general) does indeed mean shame won't work, because people can just ignore you and go find people who support them - whether that's Trump, Musk, or some randoms on the Internet is irrelevant.
So let's double down on the shame thing, which has worked out so well lately?
> The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.
I think the crux of many social issues is that people have different ideas about what 'basic human decency, ethics and morality' even mean.
> I think the crux of many social issues is that people have different ideas about what 'basic human decency, ethics and morality' even mean.
Everybody knows that lying, stealing, swindling, rape, misogyny, selfishness, narcissism, taking pride in ignorance and probably a dozen more wouldn't make that list. Everybody.
People vote for who they identify with as this gives legitimacy and backing to their own views and behaviours.
Morality is not universally as simple as 'stealing is bad' - a basic lesson in ethics, really. Is it bad to steal food for your starving family? If your answer is a simple 'yes', then I applaud you your certainty in life. I wish I had that. But for me, and many others, things aren't quite that simple.
In any case, I wasn't really referring to things like those on your list (one of those things is really not like the others, by the way. Seems very bad faith to me) but more things like trans issues, immigration, welfare, etc.
You're right to point out that this kind of rhetoric isn't really in the spirit of HN.
On the other hand, it's a fallacy to assume that there must be merit to an argument just because it's championed by a majority.
I'm aware that it's politically suicidal to say that "most people are stupid", but I'm not a politician (I'm not even American) and I feel like "stupidity" should not a priori be ruled out as an explanation.
True, "stupid" is a very imprecise term. But my main point was merely that epistemically, there is no validity to something just because a majority is behind it.
Perhaps you could use the word "idiot" and refer to them as "idiots". The term has been used in a medico-legal context in the past to define a person's mental age.
That there is a divide between the two parties and the average intellectual ability of their supporters is a well-known fact. I'd contest that this is less of an issue than their racism.
So you really think more than half of the Americans are mentally impaired? The probability of being mentally impaired is higher for a random poster like you than for half of American people.
Your understanding of statistics is deplorable. Also, your reading ability. I specifically said it's racism, rather than the (verifiable) lack of intelligence.
Well, technically, stupidity is relative. If you're defining it as "below 50%", then that's half the people. "Below 90%", even more, etc, so the statement in itself doesn't really make sense.
If you're in the 90th IQ percentile, sure, most people are stupid to you.
People feeling disenfranchised and reaching for populists is a common issue throughout time.
I believe social media has widened the most extreme opinions and forced polarisation on most people, I can feel it with the UK too, where a very clearly corrupt government, with a revolving door of leadership: one losing the country enough money in 14 days to pay for the NHS for a decade… are being talked about favourably over a meek, awkward, slightly right of centre leader who happens to be wearing a red badge instead of a blue one.
Discourse is so swollen with bitter defence and snide attacks with soundbites of “sides”, I really do believe that its the fault of platforms showing the most divisive voices most often.
The thing that pushes me towards right for example, is seeing people dehumanising men for being men (not behaviours, just clear misandry against the gender) on social media so openly- and to much fanfare. I would otherwise be considered extremely left wing by UK standards.
Is this something you do actually experience in real life though?
Because I'm with you that social media is part of the problem. When I was using Twitter, many years ago, I also saw a lot of these super-woke people that I thought were just crazy.
But in real life, I don't see these caricatures so often (where they do exist, they tend to stick together in close-knit organisations and so are easy to avoid). Most women, gay and trans people, minorities etc. that I met just want to have some basic rights and don't care about culture wars about language use etc.
no, exactly, you can feel the effect on some peoples beliefs and behaviours but they can always be reasoned with in reality. You are completely correct that these behaviours are so much more extreme online with the #KillAllMen Movements, 4B[0] and choose the bear. I still hear whispers of these beliefs, but it’s not nearly as strongly held or widely seen as it is on social media.
More impressionable people might hide stronger beliefs, like my mum, who is a reformer in the UK and parrots all their talking points and soundbites, but only down the pub with her like minded friends, or with me. Never to a labour supporter or in a public forum- so they almost never get challenged; and they become so deep rooted.
I don’t believe we can judge what happened just by looking at the majority opinion and give it merit, but I also can’t dismiss it as simply "stupidity."
Messages from certain leaders can resonate deeply with people. If a message is well-received by so many, it could mean the opposing side didn’t present a strong enough argument—basic politics.
In my persoanl view, the discourse needed to challenge figures like Trump is limited by U.S. politics, which is heavily influenced by corporate funding. This influence likely explains why the Democratic Party often seems unwilling to take bold stances.
Policies like stronger unions, better social protections, higher taxes for the wealthy, and a meaningful minimum wage increase are hard to promise if campaigns depend on corporate backing.
You would be a fool to think that an entire population is stupid. Perhaps a proportion sure but the deciding vote comes from a large proportion of the population that are by no means stupid. Democracy in theory is a form of distributed computation and just because you don't agree with the end result does not make every else stupid
Depends on implementation but in general we already don't have a free market, and if we did the American economy would collapse with the destruction of the entire farming sector and possibly the oil and gas sector, so I don't dismiss price controls on groceries or rent controls out of hand.
Singapore has nationalized housing and is extraordinarily prosperous. Perhaps rent control isn't a good measure and we should simply do that instead.
In interviews with people who are primarily voting on the economy a common response is that they feel things were economically better for them under Trump than they were under Biden. They want to go back to that, and they believe Trump can do it again.
When optimising globally, sometimes a backward step is required to escape a local minima. It is possible that progressive politics has made a misstep, and that correcting that is the right thing to do.
I think we can all see that correcting to oligarchy/authoritarianism/fascism never works out well for any nation. I don't see your suggestion of a correction working out here either.
We have a first pass the post voting system which only allows for two parties.
We have this thing called the electoral college that further obfuscates the popular will.
Both of these flawed systems disillusion millions of people every election cycle. People in non-swing states who have a minority opinion feel they have no voice, and often do not vote.
People who have serious issue with the two major parties have no viable method to express their political will.
---
Media:
We have a highly polarized media environment where a large number of people only get their facts from highly biased sources. This can happen on "both sides" but it's particularly evident with conservative media such as Fox News. In this outlet, millions of people see an alternate reality to the one we live in. They don't see Trump's age-addled brain or his most offensive rhetoric.
---
Policy:
Many people seem to think that the Democratic party is responsible for the inflation of the past 4 years. Many people seem to think that Trump stands for lower taxes for the working class, in ways that won't hurt them.
If we take Trump literally, he wants to deport many millions of people who live and work in this country peacefully, but do not have proper documentation. He wants to give Ukraine to Russia. I believe he is at best ambivalent to a national abortion ban. He doesn't show any support for combating climate change.
You mention that the EC obfuscates the popular will, but you ignore that it's a balance that gives a voice to many who would otherwise have none.
Would you find a popular vote system that entirely ignores the votes of dozens of states in favor of just a few somehow carrying less obfuscation of the will of the people?
There is probably no single thing that you could ascribe to 70M voters except that they vote. However, there are plenty of themes that are touted amongst supporters, many (all?) of which are easily shown to be false. Also, his biggest benefactors are people with a lot of money or influence... which are definitely not most of those 70M voters.
The man was convicted by a jury, impeached, and is known to have raped people. He is a known national security risk. ... the "critiques" are endless.
IMHO, to say that there is a useful message to be sent by electing him is naive at best. The fact that nobody can seem to discern that message despite truly trying is also telling.
Is the message, "people just want to watch the world burn?" Is it something else? As far as I can tell, nobody actually knows.
Meanwhile, he has declared victory before the votes are actually finalized. Is the probability high? Yes. Does it undermine the process? Also, yes.
Are there factors such as, "Kamala is a black female" at play? Almost definitely. Does Trump pander to groups that are covertly/overtly racist? Yes. Do all of his supporters understand/admit that? No.
All other things aside, don't you think choosing a convicted sex offender over an empty suit is quite damning on its own? Are his values the values USA wants to promote both internally and externally? Apparently so. :(
Just so you know, this is exactly the sort of divisive rhetoric - from all sides of the political spectrum - that has led America down this path, and will continue to do so.
You can chalk it up to "stupidity", which is rather silly on its face, or you can acknowledge that this result is the symptom of something far deeper, and try to explore what those issues are, and try to find solutions.
I am painting one side as kinda evil and other one perfectly within norms of non-evil. Not angelic, but clearly and significantly less anti-democratic and destruction seeking.
I think that the politics got to this point because the "sides" are graded on the curve. No matter how bad one side gets, you are supposed to project best possible intentions on them, worst possible intentions on their liberal opposition just so someone can say "they are the same". Like common. The long term plan to destroy Roe vs Wade for real and worked. The rights of gays and trans are going down the drain. There is literal plan to make anticonception harder to get. Trump was literally talking about this being last election and literally tried the coup after last election.
Can we please, stop with the nonsense? I remember center mocking feminists when they said abortion rights are at dangers. Guess what, they were right.
This is not about needing to listen in a more approving way. It is about needing to listen and oppose more strongly, because what they say about themselves is that they find "evil" to be something to aspire to.
How is accusing him of being a Nazi, an extremist, a dictator, etc "taking the high ground"? He was already president once and was provably NOT Hitler..
Firstly, Democratic establishment goes out of their way to not say these. Which is their mistake, GOP has no equivalent problem to accuse democrats of evil.
Second, he literally said he aspires to be a dictator, talks approvingly about dictators, and he does engage in literal extremist rhetoric on his rallies. You can be Nazi, an extremist, a dictator while not being literally Hitler in every single detail.
He likes when people say that about him. Not saying those is just lying, insisting that others dont say those is insisting on everyone lying.
Has there been a root cause analysis on why the racists and misogynists only strike sometimes? They appeared to be powerless when the Democrats nominate charismatic candidates like Obama. My read from a distance is the man was propelled somewhat by his racial background.
I put it - as an outside chance - that it is possible that the policies and outcomes of said policies have a bearing on the voting decisions people make.
Millions of desperate people from very different cultures came into the country overwhelming welfare services and small communities, getting paid under the table by greedy businesses undercutting Americans and subverting labor laws. The current party in power allowed this influx to reach record levels, and didn’t do a thing about it. Any path to amnesty for these people down the road will change our political landscape forever, and Americans never voted for this policy.
Seems a bit of an overclaim. Strategic questions of how to handle the border was a defining issue in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Americans are continuously voting on border policy, it is one of the major elements of their national conversation. What the Biden administration did was a bit extreme but ballpark what was on the tin when he was voted in.
What is it a result of? I'm guessing: voters blamed post-covid global economic downturn on Biden because he was around at the time.
Erosion of democracy didn't seem to trouble the minds of the land of the free very much. I'm not too worried by Trump's second term, but I'm anxious about his third and fourth. One other issue is a fear of turning into Mexico, which people seem to think might happen by letting Mexicans in, but may yet be accomplished in a home-grown manner through insurrections and dismantling institutions.
It's well documented that Americans are, on average, quite undereducated. And it's also quite well documented that most of the people that vote for Trump are poorly educated.
So, not stupidity, no. But a lack of education can look similar.
I'd argue that anyone blandly categorizing dozens of millions of people who vote for a candidate (including many from communities of color and among immigrant demographics) as just uneducated ignorants is themselves overwhelmingly ignorant.
You can be against Trump for many good reasons, but a good look at why he won is about much more than just deriding his supporters as ignorant.
Can you please explain to a non-America what is that message is? I hear this refrain all the time and all I get is a vague insinuation that people are not being listened to.
The message is the same even for non-America - we need to engage with these folks and stop disparaging them. We need to talk to them, we need to understand where they're coming from, we need to help clear the air between "us and them" so that there won't be an "us and them" and so we can _together_ avoid people that tell us what we want to hear.
That's not what the GP means, the popular vote is likely to be for the Democrats, as has happened basically every election. It's only because of the electoral college system that Republicans win the presidency.
Ah interesting, I don't know enough about which states do what. Is it not at the point where the states we knew the results of have been tallied, and the swing states are still unknown?
Yes - they are free to vote, and the electoral college then selects who they put their votes towards to represent the voters, which is in line with the majority voting sentiment.
I bought that line in 2016 and again in 2020. I'm not saying I'm done with trying to understand, but that level of fks to give is very minimal now.
Obviously, I don't think 50% of the population is stupid, but every time I try to "understand" it's becoming increasingly clear it's about his "charisma" and "our team" and less about hard policies.
People out here voting against their own interests or blaming things on ignorance (inflation, etc.).
She didnt explain why inflation happened. She didnt explain why dems did not crack down on the border until right wingers made an issue out of it. She didnt distance herself from biden. She didnt explain how she would protect abortion rights. I wanted her to win but she didnt have answers or her messaging was not getting through
Inflation: "inflation has come down over the last two years, a lot of it has been from the healing of the supply side of the economy.
What is that? Supply chains have improved. The labor force has expanded, partly due to increased immigration, and that's helped to take some of the edge off of the supply-and-demand imbalances that we had when inflation was very high two years ago."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/examining-how-economic-pla...
Immigration: "After hitting a record high in December 2023, the numbers of migrants crossing the border has plummeted since then. Harris and the administration have credited their tough anti-asylum measures for stemming the flow, although increased enforcement on the Mexican side has also played a key role."
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/where-trum...
Abortion rights: "At one of her first campaign events, she stated that if Congress “passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States I will sign it into law.”"
https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/how-kamala-ha...
If you don't like what her positions are that's your prerogative but it's just not true that she did not have answers to these questions.
> Inflation: "inflation has come down over the last two years, a lot of it has been from the healing of the supply side of the economy.
I think this is one of the disconnects: inflation has been decreasing. What I think people hear, which is wrong: the prices of things are coming down.
They're not coming down, they're increasing _slower_ than before, and before was bad. Prices for lots of things are much more expensive than before covid.
The reason that "inflation is better now" didn't stick is because half the country was telling the emperor they were clothed, and half the country saw a naked person.
The last 20 years of the UK is an interesting rollercoaster.
There was a massive international financial crisis that outed the Labour government and brought in a Tory/Lib Dem coalition government based on promises of government austerity.
There was an independence referendum in Scotland where the main campaign point for staying with England was to ensure they stayed in the EU etc.
Then the Tories managed to pin the blame for the failings of the coalition on the minor partner and drew a line under that for the next election.
Then there's brexit, which was really a vote to put an end to bickering inside the Tory party. But the population, narrowly voted to leave the EU! This was very much a protest vote.
Then there's a utter crazy story of quick rotation of prime ministers and scandal and sleeze and very very poorly-received budgets and things.
So then this year Labour are back, and their main strategy was 'at least we're not the Tories'. They are not popular, but they are not the incumbents.
The UK is just developed country facing the same problems associated with an aging population as every other developed country (and also many developing countries—sucks for them...). There's absolutely nothing special about the UK and if the UK is a failed state then so too is Germany (where I live) and the rest of Europe, and the only "successful" countries on the planet are the US, Switzerland and a handful of microstates.
The funny thing is that Labour is now 100% "like the Tories". It's the Tories who are no longer "like the Tories" and have morphed instead into a rabid populist party without real politics that bank instead on identity politics.
That would be the charitable interpretation, the alternate is that they are knowingly misogynistic, deeply racist and have strong fascist leanings to follow a flawed corrupt politician with cult-like devotion.
That's why Kamala lost: they called supporters of the other camp racist and misogynists like you're doing right now instead of discussing and listening to their grievances.
Shitting on your voter base is no way to win sympathy.
The marginal voter doesn't have grievances like that unless the country is seriously in trouble (like it was in 2008 and 2020.) They're not paying close enough attention to have them, nor do they have clear ideas about which piece of government is capable of addressing which problems. They have better things to do.
If you talk to the median voter their thinking will be like "something happened three years ago I was mad about" or "my husband wants us to vote this way because he saw it on TV" or "the Democrats want to legalize incest" or "I like voting for whoever I think is going to win" (and yes these are all real.) They especially do not have coherent opinions on economic policy.
Mainly the problem is the US doesn't have a coherent media ecosystem anymore and Republicans were better aligned with newer media, ie Facebook posts and bro-y podcasts like Rogan. So TV ads and "ground game" don't work.
Simply put, this chunk of the electorate doesn’t have any kind of grasp on the workings of government. As you say, their motivations for voting are simplistic and difficult for campaigns to reason about because they’re so particular to each individual.
Part of the reason why political media has seen such a decline in quality is because of that fundamental lack of understanding by the people. Neutral nuanced analysis doesn’t resonate because that’s some combination of too incomprehensible and not entertaining enough, which has led to the media landscape we have now where it’s turned to the televised version of junk food: hyper-processed with lots of salt and sugar and practically zero nutritional value.
That said, to some degree I don’t place fault on the people for this. A lot of it comes down to inadequacies in the education system when it comes to civics, wherein young people are not well equipped to become highly functional, fully conscious voting adults.
You have no idea if thats why she lost. Thats why you want to believe she lost but it could be things like inflation, immigration, and not having clear messaging. Also not distinguishing herself from an otherwise unpopular president.
We should hear their grievances on our bodily autonomy and healthcare ?
There are aspects where we can compromise, or empathize and learn to live together on such as economy or immigration, basic human decency and healthcare are not it.
Also bit rich that we have to listen to their grievances, they haven't afforded anyone that courtesy, or respected the process of democracy.
If the results were other way round, we would be hearing conspiracy theories about election interference non stop. You can only compromise with people acting in good faith, it is clear that majority of Americans don't want to do that.
Maybe mankind ain't yet so developed that what you list isn't present in general population in large numbers, even majority.
Echo chambers like HN or typical workplace of typical HN user give skewed image how much rational folks out there generally are. Most people that I ever met are trivially susceptible to smart manipulation via emotions, even to the point of shooting their own foot.
Misogynistic was my first qualifier, it is not an coincidence that Trump has won only against women twice, and it is not an oversight that in 250 years America is nowhere close to electing a woman president.
I've read people say this over and over. And yet, I don't know of any single substantive position that Kamala has taken. She chose a vibes fight and she lost.
look at the comment i’m replying to. if you go to both candidates pages, they’ll have their policy positions laid out. Kamala made none of them a part of her core message. She instead leaned bizarrely into the threat of fascism.
She was weak on messaging, but her proposal for housing was good (improving affordability has appeal, but she failed to capitalize on it). What confounded this in part was that she probably meant to mostly stay in line with Biden's policies, and you can't connect with voters on that. They're concerned about inflation and the border. Biden's administration already fucked that up for her; they fixed the border, but too little too late (so what is there to say?), and while inflation has abated and wage-growth has improved, people still feel poorer than before 2020 (so what is there to say?).
I can't see how anyone else in her position would have done much better. I don't blame Harris much.
The problem really is that we need to accept that they are "stupid" but in an empathetic way, remembering that we were once stupid and ignorant. We took it for granted that other people wouldn't confuse correlation with causation, blaming Biden's presidency for inflation. But all of us thought correlation was causation at one point until somebody educated us on science. When a topic was confusing and complicated, we leaned on correlation to guide us until we learned better in formal education. It would be immensely difficult to explain to someone why groceries have become unaffordable without extensive exposition, but it's a hard problem that we should try to solve instead of just calling people ignorant in frustration.
Meh, it is clear where they care coming from and they talk quite clearly. What we need to do is to stop like naïve Pollyanna's, stop relying on fact checks, stop pretending "both sides are equal" and engage with dirty fight they do.
What "dirty fight" are you envisioning? Prosecuting Trump in court doesn't appear to work and is disparaged as "lawfare". Biden calling Trump voters trash apparently backfires, but nothing Trump or his campaign says ever backfires.
And "calling him what he is" has so far failed to sway his supporters, I don't see how it will do it now. OTOH, he (probably?) won't stand for election again, so the point is probably moot...
Democratic party goes out of its way to look center, be accommodating and non confrontial. It just does not work.
I stand by "politician should not mean being lawless". US Supreme Court being pro lawless when it comes to GOP is just politics of US Supreme Court. It does not mean law should not matter or that trying to apply law is fighting dirty.
Trump and his supporters will say anything and accepting their framing again and again should be already seen as proven failure strategy. It just does not work.
It is not dirty fight, full stop. Dirty fight would be to act like Trump and his supporters do or approaching it.
I suggest we stop with the "we need to engage with these folks and stop disparaging them" nonsense designed to create unequal situation where GOP and Trump can be arbitrary dirty, but everyone else needs to treat them with kids gloves and use euphemisms.
I suggest Democratic party to become more aggressive rather then forever trying to paint themselves as "the adult ones" and forever put themselves into center. It just does not work and serves only to allow overtone window to move toward radical conservativism.
I suggest we stop demanding that "both sides" are described in the same terms. I suggest we stop following nonsense:
> We need to talk to them, we need to understand where they're coming from, we need to help clear the air between "us and them" so that there won't be an "us and them" and so we can _together_ avoid people that tell us what we want to hear.
For example, conservative Christians are coming from the point of view of someone who thinks women should be submissive to men, should have less legal rights, abortion and contraception are wrong because they allow for safer sex.
For example, quite a lot of people in GOP are coming to it with idea that being gay is disgrace, being trans deserve severe punishment and that being criminal is cool as long as you are rich white guy.
Actually engage with these rather then euphemism them away.
I was just thinking the exact opposite, maybe the US needs to split into two nations. I was drawing border lines in my mind around central regions and wondering how things would pan out if they seceded. The lack of geographic continuity would be a problem for the coasts, but perhaps they could join Canada.
The Joye of Ye Taxes is that you cannot choose to stop paying them just because of a disagreement about how they are spent. Elections need to be won first.
True, that was an awkward episode. Now you've got me reading about the motivations for the civil war. I mean obviously slavery, but why go to war rather than let the Confederacy be a separate nation? Seems the fighting was over the political future of yet-to-be Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma (if I've got the right territories there), and whether they would have slavery, once populated.
Try splitting Georgia, where Harris wins a few populous counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin, and Trump leads the lump of smaller counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin.
They reelected the DA that's prosecuting Trump on one of the populous counties, on the same election where the state swung further towards Trump.
Cross the border from here in Canada into very "blue" New York and you'll drive through a huge swathe of what is actually "red" Trump country in Western New York.
Outside of the urban areas even "blue" states are red, or "purple."
The reality is that America voted for this guy. It's not nearly as regionally divided as liberals in America want to think.
For me, it means not going there anymore. I just won't cross the border for any reason.
Yeah I live rural Ontario. Last municipal election people's lawns were covered with idiotic "Stop Woke" signs. And my parents are in rural Alberta. Oh boy.
Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.
> Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.
It's much worse in the US though because the gap is so much wider. Even in the UK or Canada or Australia, the right is not opposing climate change or healthcare or anything reasonable to the same extent as in the US.
They absolutely are here in Canada. Especially around climate change because Canada is an oil exporter. And they will be emboldened by what just happened in the US.
Alberta outright banned renewables development for 6 months and then slapped a huge set of restrictions on them after that "moratorium" was lifted. A tax on electric car owners added. The conservative parties nationally are on a constant drum beat about the national carbon tax and it's doomed. Weak emissions caps we have are also doomed. Any little things that have been done for the last 10 years will be undone.
At a recent party convention in Alberta, the ruling party passed a climate denial resolution as official party policy.
Amazingly lots of people on this forum trying to sanitize what these people are about.
Conservative counties produce goods and food that can be produced anywhere.
Democratic counties produce goods that generally require an education and are significantly more valuable. Think big tech, big pharma, engineering, etc.
Democratic counties would be just fine without conservative counties. The inverse is not true.
Won't this be impossible since you have the urban/rural areas of the same state belonging to these two different nations ? At-least impossible without a gargantuan civil war that makes the 1861 war look like a toddler's quarrel.
In the past, maybe. Trump won the popular vote last night. He swept almost everything, as painful as that is for me to say. There is no way to divide the country without mass migration which would never happen.
You're losing if you write like this, because this is liberal/left wing writing. If the voters prioritize strength and machismo, you should be insulting them even more. They don't mind, they'll just assume it's about someone else.
Yes and the media needs to stop being so obviously biased because it both undermines their role as the arbiters of truth and it undermines the party they allegedly want to win
the message is: we don't want immigrants, we don't want to help other countries at our short term cost (even if it is a long term gain for us). like it or not, this is what people want.
It's not immigrants. It's illegal immigrants. It was very clear from the beginning that this is what will kill the democrats chances. When you have poor people that have lived in this country since birth not be able to get help from the government because the government services in their community are over ran due to the influx of people. Who do you think they are going to vote for? Why do you think the Republicans had an historic election with minority voters?
All they had to do was actually do anything about the tens of millions of immigrants coming over the board, but they ignored it and Trump used it against them.
The Democrat party is ran by a bunch of idiots. Hopefully this is a wake up call for them to get with the real world on issues.
Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.
If Hitler then used that line to try and justify murdering millions of brussels sprout eaters, then yes. Otherwise you've missed the point by an almost impressive margin.
"Tens of millions" "coming in over the border"? Mexico only even has 120m people in the first place. What, you think that half of their population walked into Texas and bought a house in Dallas?
> From 2014 to 2020, migrants from outside Mexico and Central America — known as “extra-continentals” — accounted for 19 percent of immigration court cases.
> In the last four years, those “extra-continentals” have risen to 53 percent of all court cases. They have arrived from countries such as India, China, Colombia and Mauritania.
Okay. Sure. Mexico only has 120m people. You think that a third of their population walked into Texas and bought a house in Dallas? A quarter? Hell, ten percent?
Fine. I'll bring some of my own statistics. There might be ten million undocumented immigrants living in the United States total. There are fewer than half a million illegal border crossings a year; if the expected lifespan following an illegal border crossing is, I don't know, forty years, then it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of illegal border crossings don't convert to undocumented immigrants. These numbers are easily available on the relevant Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni..., which itself has extensive citations from a wide variety of sources. Saying that there are "tens of millions crossing the border" is clearly and blatantly incorrect.
And, of course, that's not even getting into the real meat of the issue, that's just sarcastically calling out the surface-level lies. No, what I really want to say about illegal immigration is that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than either documented immigrants or outright citizens, that they pay more taxes than they cost in government spending, that they do not affect job access or pay of legal residents, that they prevent offshoring, and that they contribute to GDP via spending and labor. Undocumented immigrants are, as far as I can tell, purely positive contributors to America at every level I look at, for the people working alongside them and going to school with them all the way up to the grandest statistics. If we truly wanted a healthy economy - if we wanted more citizens to have better jobs, if we wanted more money for education and healthcare, if we wanted less crime and less exploitation of labor - we would legalize all of them and invite more in after them.
250k (recorded border patrol contacts) came across in December 2023 (peak), about 55k this last August. It is usually fewer then a million per year but still a significant number of people. Bad policies in 2023 led to an absolute flood. That is competition for American workers.
Still not "tens of millions", don't motte-and-bailey me.
Also, I thought competition was good and that we needed more of it. That's the usual fiscal-conservative line, right?
I'll further note that there are more job postings open right now than there have been at any time since 2000, that unemployment right now is incredibly low considering the pandemic and 2008, that the unemployment that still exists can be fairly easily traced to the previous trump presidency rather than any other cause, and that multiple detailed studies (refer to previous Wikipedia link) fail to find that illegal immigrants have any effect at all on the jobs or pay of American workers. Having more workers in total increases spending which opens up more jobs, for example, standard jevons paradox stuff. Your conclusions are not supported by any kind of evidence, your models do not describe or provide accurate predictions of reality, and your proposals will not work the way you think or claim they will.
Is it really competition? Do American workers get paid in cash from employers who don't ask for their Social Security number? Skilled jobs require documentation. Unskilled jobs require documentation. Working undocumented means being paid in cash by an employer who doesn't tell the IRS about you. Are citizens really lining up to work these jobs that undocumented immigrants perform? Food prices will increase again when all of the migrant farm workers are deported.
Most of the illegal migrants coming into the U.S are not from Mexico. They're from Latin American and Asia. Actual migration from Mexico by Mexican citizens has been on the decline in the past 10 years. Possibly due to Mexico's growing economy.
This has happened and is happening in Europe, too.
Many people are coming in, some of them don't integrate and cause problems, the center says it's not a problem and the left says let's have more of them.
More people are coming in, problems are getting worse (both real and imaginary), people are getting upset, the right realizes they can use that and they build their whole agenda or that and win the elections.
The number of countries this has happened in increases, so non-right parties need to rethink their strategy if they want to stop losing.
Europe is currently experiencing a hard shift to the right because progressives keep lying and downplaying bad economy policies and illegal immigration. Yet somehow each party has their own scapegoat.
Europe is able to change political course much more gradually: the EU is 27 countries, and the EU Parliament is elected with proportional voting systems which leads to coalitions and compromise.
A 10% increase in 'right' votes means roughly 10% more influence for the 'right' opinions.
In the USA, a tiny increase in 'right' votes means 100% more influence.
>Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.
One bigly reason I voted for Trump was because his first term was by far the most peaceful both this country and the world at-large ever was in my lifetime.
For four years we didn't start or join any new wars, we even flat out refused to when the military industrial complex begged to Trump to start one with Iran after they shot down one of our drones. North Korea didn't fire a single missile and China wasn't anywhere as loud with their saber-rattling (I'm Japanese-American, I care deeply about Japanese security). Russia didn't invade Ukraine. Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah/et al. weren't brutally killing each other.
For four god damn years life was actually peaceful, and I want that again.
Warring Middle East nations signed more peace treaties under Trump than in any other time in modern history. Israel signed four peace treaties with Arab Nations under Trump.
Russia invaded in 2014 and the conflict stabilized (but didn't stop) in 2015.
In the meantime, the Syrian civil war was raging on.
Similarly, if we ignore all the events in the prelude to WW2, the world was a very peaceful place. According to Hoover, Roosevelt was a threat to world peace, not Hitler.
I'm not implying anything with the analogy, I'm only trying to illustrate that the world was not peaceful between 2016 and 2020, despite the president's efforts.
Perhaps if we had gotten 2 consecutive terms, it might have provided more long term stability.
if Biden will sign a decree to welcome everyone and every migrant would be legal, people still won't like it. people want to reduce immigration, legal or illegal.
But you aren't getting any with this ticket. There is no political force in the US that would question the trickle-down fairytales, and your broken elections system won't allow one to emerge.
So you vote for change, yet the economics policies stay as unequal as always. But in the process you supported a rapist and a criminal who calls execution of journalists, suppression of women, blatant racism and just death and destruction of non-privileged people everywhere.
accelerationism would be launching yourself into the unknown and not committing to a particular political ideology except the continuous development of capitalism. This is simply working with the concrete situation: a Trump presidency, which clearly opens up more opportunities for radical action then a Harris presidency, since Trump will be too busy completely destroying the economy and the FBI, CIA, and NSA, the judiciary and the legal system more broadly, to be even capable of fighting back against resistance or even stopping the conditions for a popular foment. Or, maybe I'm wrong, who knows. But at least now we'll get to know.
Notably those wars were not started or escalated by Trump's republican party. While >Dick Cheney< got accepted by Dems now just because he is against Trump...
Trump has a responsibility in escalating the tension between Israel and Palestine following the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.
He also escalated bombings in Syria.
His terrible Afghan deal also made it so that there was no time or guarantees to fly Americans and people that helped America to the US while also leaving a lot of American military gear to the Talibans. This also ridiculed the US on the international stage.
Considering it seems Arab American voters were willing to punish kamala or even outright vote trump on account of the current administrations stance on IvP since then, it seems they are willing to look past the embassy issue for a bigger issue - the current state of affairs.
Considering how the Obama administration handled Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt they would have acted any differently wrt Syria.
Alas if I recall Trump managed to have ultimate responsibility for that fiasco occur under Biden's watch on account of losing the 2020 election. Whoops.
> Alas if I recall Trump managed to have ultimate responsibility for that fiasco occur under Biden's watch on account of losing the 2020 election. Whoops.
Yes, he was completely out negotiated by terrorists and his successor had to clean up the gigantic pile of poop that leaked from Trumps diaper.
> we don't want to help other countries at our short term cost (even if it is a long term gain for us)
It is not even that since what they basically propose is to dial down the war in Eastern Europe but get more involved in the war in Middle East and possibly soon in East Asia. That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.
> That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.
Europeans seem to overestimate how close America is to Europe.
If you live in the Western half of the United States, Asia is much closer than Eastern Europe, most US military deployments are in the Pacific, and most foreign trade the US has is with Asia.
Both parties campaigned on leaving the Middle East, but it is difficult to disengage from the region without devolving power to a regional ally (similar to how the US historically let France take the reigns on African relations). Historically, that ally has been Israel and Turkiye, but relations between the US and them have fallen precipitously.
it's actually really interesting, Trump already modified his rhetoric. In the rallies in the last week and in his acceptance speech he has suddenly talked about how they want immigrants to come in legally - even went out of his way to talk about "geninuses" in the acceptance speech. Pretty clear here that people like Musk have been heavily exerting influence to shape his viewpoint towards favouring immigration that allows high skilled workers in.
> we don't want to help other countries at our short term cost (even if it is a long term gain for us)
More like stop trying so hard to bring us closer to a WWIII. The USA's current foreign policy is the main cause of all the turmoil we're seeing in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Anything that can change it should be welcomed by anyone with a desire to live.
The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers. There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.
Faltering US support for the Ukraine will tempt Russia into more territorial expansion towards or even into NATO.
China will probably ramp up aggression against Taiwan and against the Philippines. It is a minor miracle that no lethal shots have yet been fired in the persistent and aggressive military incursions into Philippines territorial waters. Several navy vessels have already been damaged this year.
I believe that the best way to release tensions in the Middle East would be by improving relations with Iran - but Trump bombed the deal that would have enabled that. The relqtive economic stength of the US could have been a good motivatir. Now Iran is aligning itself with Russia.
> The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers.
Nobody has attacked the USA since Pearl Harbor. Military strength has been used to impose hegemony over other parts of the world, not to protect the nation.
> There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.
How can you say that after the countless deaths, pain, and strife caused by the USA in the Middle East, Asia, and South America?
You mean the terrorist attack orchestrated by the same guy (Osama Bin Laden) the USA propped up in the 80s when he was fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan?
The 11 September is the perfect example of the USA bringing instability to the world and giving life to future enemies through their reckless interference in the Middle East.
>The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers.
But the utility of military build up is non-linear. There comes a point where further gains for your side are marginal while further losses for your adversary are existential. A neutral Ukraine represented a sufficiently balanced state of power that rendered war negative sum for Russia. We overextended ourselves in trying to peal Ukraine away from Russia's orbit. NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape. The Ukraine war is blowback for American policy towards Russia, i.e. expand NATO up to Russia's border, bait Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, foment anti-Russian movements in Ukraine that lead to the expulsion of the Russian-friendly president of Ukraine and install someone western-oriented.
> The Democratic Party.. lied to the American people about the cognitive health and fitness of the president. It prevented, threatened, litigated and otherwise eliminated the ability of other [Democratic] candidates for the primary to compete, to get on ballots, and to even participate in a debate.
And it turns out the voters don’t seem to actually care about the cognitive health of the President, nor do they seem to care about being lied to about it.
The gibberish that routinely comes out of their candidate barely qualifies as speech.
The reality is, nobody who was wringing their hands about Biden's cognitive abilities, or his son's legal problems actually cared about either issue. If they did, they wouldn't have voted for an mentally declining criminal today.
Yes, they do hide Trump's health reports from the public - or rather he never releases any information like other presidents do. Hell, he GOT SHOT and never gave any details of what happened.
I agree that Democrats denying Biden's cognitive decline was a disaster.
I think the only lesson that Democrats can learn from the past three elections is that women have no chance at presidency. If anything, as an outsider, the campaign Harris led, seemed to reach vastly more people than Biden's.
I am 100% convinced a Republican woman could win. I was in touch with a lot of deep-red middle-of-the-country Republican voters and candidates for state and federal offices when Palin was the VP pick. Shooting-stuff-in-political-ads sorts. It was practically all they talked about. They liked her a ton better than McCain. I think they’d have gladly voted for her at the top of the ticket (granted, they lost that one, but I think an R woman could absolutely be elected President, probably more easily than a Democratic one).
That would be missing the forest for the trees in my view. I could see it having an impact, but when 60% of people say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, putting up a candidate who was in power the last four years just isn’t going to work. Biden would not have won a primary, and neither would she have
As a foreigner, the Democratic party just lives of to crying wolf on the Republican party without offering any meaningful difference. And people have gotten tired of it, judging by the fact that Trump is not getting more voters than in 2020, but they are getting considerably less.
Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic, but rather than "people want Trump" I read all this debacle as "people want something different from the Democrats".
Nah, the problem is that Republicans have openly played a dirty game for almost a decade with ZERO repercussions. They flaunt the laws and conventions of politics and nothing happens.
Democrats still play by the rules for some reason and don't call out the shit done by the other party with simple enough terms.
This. One side sticks to the rules and watches silently while the other side slowly undermines them.
At the same time, the Republicans have perfected the twin strategies of sowing distrust in neutral media reorting and playing the victim card consistently to everything, even their own attacks.
And Donald's first term taught them that when you lie ALL THE TIME, nobody can fact-check you effectively. Just stick to the script and talking points, no matter what the question.
By the time the first ad-libbed bold faced lie is checked and sourced, he has told 42 more. It's not a game you can win by playing by the rules.
It clearly shows how bad the D candidate/policy is, such that people prefered the R candidate with all the flaws you listed. The eye opener should be why people rejected the D candidates.
It’s a white nationalist backlash. They cared not about the messenger; only the message. It’s also the product of Russian disinformation. Russia has perfected the art of sowing division and faux outrage. We’ve done it to other countries so we deserve it in some sense. We’ll see a rise of toxic masculinity. Women exercising sexual autonomy and gaining power is not something snowflake men can handle.
Russia and China have been waging a cyber war against the U.S. for a long time now. Russian accounts on social media have been effective at sowing dissent, chaos, conspiracy theories, and false information. Tim Pool and others on Russia’s payroll is clear evidence of this.
The lesson of the day is that the U.S. is far more conservative than I thought. Trump is the President we deserve and we deserve what comes next. White rural voters will not be helped by him and I will not shed any tears at their plight.
I'm inclined to agree with you. At the same time, I don't think Kamala should have spent some of the limited time she had cozying up to people who wouldn't vote for her, antagonizing her base, and for the most part sidelining the people she had to convince.
Agree 100%. The "am I wrong? no, it's the voters who are wrong!" is a sure sign the next campaign will flop as well.
A large percentage of Americans aren't interested in what the Democratic Party is selling. The party can either stick to their policies and live with these kinds of showing, or take some time to really think about what the American voter is looking for.
I don’t believe you are correct. People who vote for a man as debased, self centered, sexually depraved, and criminally inclined as Trump are “wrong”. White men latched onto a horrible person as their savior. If that’s what they want then they deserve what comes. But the people who don’t want that should stick to their principles.
What does it say about Trump that so many of his lawyers and advisors ended up in jail and that so few former cabinet members endorsed him? What does it say about his supporters who cared not that he raped children with his pal Epstein?
Remember when Cruz and Lindsey Graham spoke honestly about Trump just before November 2016? Recall what they said then to what they say now. It’s a cult.
> People who vote for a man as debased, self centered, sexually depraved, and criminally inclined as Trump are “wrong”.
Maybe you're too young to remember Bill Clinton?
He was accused of sexual harassment by a number of women (including a rape). His relationship with Lewinsky (22 years old), is highly exploitive in terms of the power he held over her career. While he might have supported women's right politically, he was certainly exploitive in his personal life.
There were also a number of "questionable business dealings" in his past. Arkansas land deals, Whitewater, almost impeached by Congress for lying.
But I'm sure you'll say "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Republicans". Ok, then don't blame Trump voters when they think "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Democrats".
So while people got worked up, he got re-elected handily.
It's funny to me when people entirely overlooked Clinton's life because they liked him as a President and they liked his policies.
The Clintons earned $120 million in 10 years after he was President. Hilary gave 30 minute speeches at Goldman Sachs for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Clearly these were payouts for repeal of Glass-Steagal and other policies. He was a predator and not deserving of the adulation he got. She became senator for New York by having it basically handed to her.
It would benefit humanity if people were taught to be consistent in their views. If they understood that extremism is when the cause is more important than the truth.
But I'm sure you'll say "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Republicans". Ok, then don't blame Trump voters when they think "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Democrats".
You’d be wrong. I don’t have your apparent level of inconsistency.
I look at the grander picture. It’s not that the democrats aren’t connected, it’s that the American people are culturally bankrupt. The romans became decadent after all, culturally incapable of maintaining their empire and slowly declining in power and influence over Europe. The American idea itself is in decline.
Inflation. Record illegal immigration. Identity politics. Inflation. An anointed candidate. Perceived censorship. Inflation. Income inequality. Cover ups. Inflation.
I’m not saying Trump will fix any of this. I’m just saying people feel like PC culture has gone over the top while a 20oz Coke has tripled in price. Harris campaigned on “we’re not going back” but a lot of people would trade Trump’s insanity for housing prices of yore.
I completely agree that Trump printed a ton of money, but Biden also continued to print a ton of money.
In addition, people tend to associate outcomes with the administration in power even if it’s due to a prior administration. Inflation appeared under Biden, not Trump. Inflation decreasing also does not mean prices decreasing.
Yes. We Americans have the collective memory of a Mayfly and the inability to pay attention to things that drive actual inflation that take a lot of time to resolve, like bad housing policy, logistics logjams, and starving the beastly budget needed for oversight.
Funny thing is we saved ourselves from 2008-style economic collapse with stimulus, which partially caused the inflation here but also caused it in all the other countries. But nevertheless, all their incumbent parties lost over it.
When you get punched in the face, the first thought is not who else got punched. Of course ppl will vote based on their own recent face punching. "I didn't get punched in the face when the other guy was president"
Which is a bit of a weird argument because people did get punched hard in 2020. Things were mostly very bad during Trump’s last year in office. Jobs were lost, millions died; Trump himself spent days in intensive care in October 2020.
Political memories are very short. Trump can get excused for the botched Covid response because it’s ancient history, but Biden can’t get excused for global inflation which followed from the same disaster.
I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say ignorant. A more progressive interpretation: you can't help someone else until you have your own mask on. People are voting based on how they feel their life is compared to 4 years ago and apparently half of america very much recalls life being better then. They don't feel the need to dig any deeper than that; they need to get their own oxygen mask on.
> Inflation was global, and the USA navigated it much better than other Western economies.
This comes across as very out of touch. By "navigated it" you mean brought inflation under control. But it's not like prices came down.
The $1,500 per month grocery bill that was $1,000 in 2019 is still $1,500.
People don't look at the CPI and think "phew, glad the Fed was able to get inflation back to target" they think "I remember when I used to have $1,000 left over each month".
Not only will Trump not fix these things but he’s the cause or at least contributor to all the things you just mentioned. You may be right that those are the reasons people voted for Trump, but if they did they’re naive at best.
I agree that it's a clear message. The messaging the last time Trump won the election was that the electoral college was broken, Trump lost the popular vote, Americans deserve better.
8 years later, after all of this political baggage, prosecution, and media repudiation the Democrats managed to lose in resounding manner – not just the electoral college, but the senate, house, and popular vote.
This is after what is arguably a great Biden presidency, economy-wise. The Democrats have centered their entire identity for the last 8 years about being anti-Trump. There are no bright spots in the results for them, no messaging that they can hang their hat on, and build on going forward. From a base building perspective, this is brutal. The next election is square one for them.
My new unhealthy conspiracy theory is democrats like being perpetually in the minority where they can talk a good game but don’t actually have to follow through on anything. That’s why they always tack right and try to compromise with people who call them enemies and groomers and demons. “We’ll welcome them into our cabinet” never sat well with me in the era of Trump.
Polls show voters think Harris/Walz were too liberal, not the other way round. They mostly haven't gone right either; Biden campaigned as a moderate and ran as the most progressive administration in my life.
(Which was good! But voters hated it because they don't like change and don't like inflation.)
If they'd done something they would've lost more. Voters, who on average are near retirement age, hate it when you do anything because they think it'll affect their retirement.
In this case they were blocked by Manchin/Sinema from anything like filibuster reform, but they did get some big important economic reforms in.
To me it seems like Democrats just failed to listen to their constituents, and being one who wanted Bernie Sanders to have some chance at running in 2016 and 2020, I think this is the reckoning of that more than anything. The Democrats have ignored their own base and this is what happens when they pander to signals from everywhere else.
I don't understand everything you're saying, probably because I am not involved in day to day US political discussion, but a few of your points seem wildly exaggerated or misunderstood.
No one is forcing anyone to turn any sons into daughters, are they? What you're really saying is that you don't want anyone to be allowed to change their gender. That's a quite prohibitive stance for a country that puts so much emphasis on freedom.
What's this "male perverts sharing locker room" stuff about? Who's campaigning for letting random adults into kids locker rooms?
In California for instance if the child wants to transition then you must let it. If you attempt to stop it or guide them out of the decision in any way you’re at risk of having your child taken from you. That’s the force being used, do what we say or we’ll take your child.
I believe Elons kid had this happen to him, hence why he’s so pro trump despite the fact that trump is pro oil industry. The lesser of two evils he said.
Parent got voted down because HN is largely extremist left.
This is harsh: it’s effectively trolling, but it’s not by the original poster but a calculated political campaign designed to smear Democrats. Saying anyone wants “male perverts [to] share showers and locker rooms with their kids” is untrue, but it’s really effective at getting people to pick a side because it sounds terrible and even though this is not a pressing problem in the real world (if we’re talking child size abuse, the risk is family members and trusted adults) it’s perfect for getting strong emotional reactions, as we can see from how heavily used it is.
Governor Youngkin got elected in Virginia riding on a wave of anti-trans sentiment based off of a single reported assault where the accused wasn’t even trans, didn’t identify as such, wasn’t allowed to be in the bathroom where the assault occurred, etc. but that was such a volatile claim that it was all over the news for the end of the campaign even though it was a single assault out of thousands.
I think it’s possible to recognize that a position is not factual and based on emotional impact but we need a better term than trolling to describe it.
agreed; I'm not saying the person is _right_. If the left wanted to get dirty, they should have tossed up all the pedo priest data. At the end of the day, it was absolutely a messaging problem. People very literally believe that their kids could be targeted and become trans. Education and more propaganda are the only options.
I think it should have been focused on the economic issues: there was a little of that but it should have been louder on what people experience like the way grocery costs include corporate profit-taking or how the guys deciding to have layoffs or hiking rents were heavily supporting Trump - there are a lot of abstract or targeted issues but almost everyone thinks about their paycheck and how much of it is going to living expenses.
You believe polls? The right notoriously is undersampled because they simply don’t take them. If you need more evidence, the polls also put her in the lead.
Polls had it as a tossup similar to what we saw. I believe that when voters repeatedly say they care about the economy and immigration, they probably are saying those because they mean it and not because they’re fixated on trans people but shy.
The Democrats just lost an election because they tried to dismiss poorly-articulated-but-legitimate concerns as trolling/ists/phobes. Could be a teachable moment, if they are willing to learn.
Every individual is a rational/irrational actor. I don't know the split of time they're irrational vs rational. Maybe 50/50.
Some people are better than other people at convincing other people to do things in a certain way. Might have a little to do with genetics, probably more to do with education and size of platform, which is mostly a function of whose legs you popped out of and a little bit of whatever magic sauce makes you, you.
Most people that are good at convincing other people to do things a certain way are doing so in a way to personally enrich themselves. Sometimes they have a little more empathy, or perhaps intelligence, and know the personal enrichment can't be too flagrant, but regardless they all share that goal.
Unless one becomes too much of an outcast from the other good-convincers (think e.g. Lenin, Mao, CKS, Washington and his friends) and they convince everyone to go kill the followers of the other good-convincers until an equilibrium can be reached where either only one good-convincer is being enriched or at least both are to an acceptable degree.
This dynamic will play out eternally. Part of the mechanism of good-convincerness being sustainable is that you never disturb that equilibrium too much, so in this case to ground it, hence why the democrats tried to pivot right to fight accusations of being leftists (an ideology very much opposed to this idea of the best convincers being extremely personally enriched). In the end, they didn't really lose. Kamala will continue to likely have a powerful political career, and if not she can at least write some books and die phenomally wealthy like Hillary will. Democrats can switch from having much federal power to being an opposition party. Nothing actually changes, the message simply switches from "give us votes and money to enshrine whatever it is you care about" to "give us votes and money to fight fascism rah rah." Both messages are of course a lie, the real message is "give us votes and money in a way that allows us to continue to collect votes and money."
The message is that in the global zeitgeist, the natural human tendency among everyone, good convincer and not, for liberation, personal agency, and fulfilment, is obviously not being met when no matter where they turn there's someone telling them that if they want these things they have to all support a given good convincer. In the early Soviet Union, communist leaders too advantage of the opposite zeitgeist to achieve the same thing. Right now, the reactionaries have acquired a greater share of the zeitgeist, maybe because their messaging coincides well with several refugee crises and the inevitable climate refugee crisis.
In my personal opinion these tendencies can't be rewarded in this form of top down hierarchy where it's good-convincers pitting their supporters against each other. Imo we can overcome the nurture and saecular aspects of what makes someone a good convincer (education, self determination, material conditions provided for) to make everyone more level in their ability to convince others to do things. Early societies had this more "flat" organization, where the best convincers lived basically on raw rhetorical ability (look up some old Cherokee transcriptions for their interactions with missionaries, they were genuinely hilarious and viciously good at humiliating rhetorical opponents), and even that could only go so far.
During the Spanish civil war I believe the anarchists did a phenomenal job educating and "leveling the playing field" among an astounding number of people - off memory as I'm on my phone, something like 70% of their economy had been syndicalized. Somehow they convinced a shitload of the population to think deeply about their engagement in society and politics and become active, daily, if not hourly, participants in that process.
This fascinates me and I want to try this again. It of course involves sucking it up and talking to Trump supporters which I...
This fascinates me and I want to try this again. It of course involves sucking it up and talking to Trump supporters
That’s a good attitude, because nothing is truly solved with a Trump presidency. His victory was always just an expression of the undercurrent. The electorate has just voiced it, for a second time, but that’s all.
Stop calling working people without a college education stupid and stop alienating men. "Non-educated" people work just as hard or harder than the rest of us. I've been to college and the only thing it "educated" me in is Computer Science, which I majored in. I'm not in any way better as a human being than my friends working in construction. Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine. If I stopped my niche research tomorrow, no one would really care. If handymen, farmers, or truckers stopped working, there would be riots.
Also, the DNC should really stop forcing unwanted candidates down people's throats. It doesn't work, even when you spam social platforms with your narrative.
As in, they were right calling people bigots if they wanted to get out of the eu? That definitely didn't improve uk, I've even heard about people feeling "betrayed" by the now valid tariffs that damaged their UK business
Working class people who, especially, wanted to control immigration were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc and were ignored. Result is that they voted for Brexit. No, that didn't change anything because this was ignored by the establishment (both Labour and Conservatives) and that is still festering with the resulting rise of the Reform UK party (of Nigel Farage who's celebrating with Trump in Mar-a-Lago right now).
Here's a better analysis of the Brexit thing which was posted here yesterday. It was mostly decided by the fact that the pro-Brexit people had better marketing campaign.
"Better marketing" campaign is another word for saying that they understood people's concerns better and were thus able to use that to their advantage instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did). This is what Cummings did to win.
> instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did)
Can you point to any examples of this? I don't think the official Remain campaign did anything of the sort. Insulting the people you are trying to convert is a poor strategy, which is why I don't believe they did it.
When you say "were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc", what I think happened was that the Leave campaign alleged that that was what the Remainers thinking/saying and it gained traction.
Your "analysis" is from someone involved in the Brexit campaign. Of course Cummings is going to say he was amazing at marketing.
Another argument would be that Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules. In countries with legally binding referenda, that would justify rerunning the referendum. But in the UK it was "only advisory".
I believe the argument being made is that calling spades spades is bad when spade is an insult and you need to convince the spades to vote for you.
Which is also why Republicans calling Democrats childish names such as "Dummy-crat" or saying "socialist" (or "commie") for all things to the left of their Overton Window doesn't convince any to their left to change their minds rightward.
I think that might be the culprit, but then you have no escape. Some post brexit interviews have been - at least for an European - quite hilarious. I feel sorry for them tho, but it's sort of a leopards ate my face situation
I used to live in Cambridge; I knew only one person who was a long-time UKIP voter in EU elections, who was "delighted" by the result of the referendum.
Even though I'd already been openly discussing moving to Germany ahead of the referendum, and went on an InterRail trip immediately before it to find a place to move to in the event of Leave winning, he did not comprehend that my reaction to the result included cutting him out of my life entirely.
He wanted the Cambridge to shrink, I left. That's his face leopard.
(As for intelligence: he also sometimes boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, this was Cambridge after all).
What happened is that the remain side had to fight on the side of a reality that existed and the Brexiteers made up a fantasy future that has failed to materialise.
Worse: many different and mutually incompatible fantasy futures, which they denied ahead of the referendum, and which after the referendum became a source of infighting that made all possible Brexits impossible to get past Westminster until Johnson came along and lied to everyone to get enough support to actually close a deal.
(The only time I can think of when digging a deeper hole got anywhere, even if the where was a… I guess in this metaphor: a disused basement where the stairs were missing?)
Your comment somewhat illustrates the point. It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them, which is a recipe for eventual failure as we've seen.
Judging by this thread, it's still not possible to have a discussion on this...
There was nothing coherent to understand. A rag tag coalition mainly built on delusional positions.
- we can have all the trade benefits without freedom of movement (specifically denied by EU at the time, didn't materialise)
- we will have 'more trade' afterwards (fails to understand how trade works)
- we won't have to follow EU rules (in reality, we can't really diverge that much from how the EU works without incurring penalties)
- we won't have to pay anything to them / we hold all the cards / ... (we did pay for our liabilities and we definitely didn't hold the cards)
- we can become much more left wing if we leave the neoliberal EU (fails to account for the fact our country isn't particularly left wing overall)
- politicians will have to take responsibility/can't blame the EU (brexiteers keep blaming the EU even now, BJ et.al. have faced minimal or no consequences for their actions)
- we can fish again (ignores relative importance of fishing vs the actually productive economy, disregards that EU is a big market for said fish)
Well oversight on financial institutions by EU is gone, yeah you still have regulations for normal business that you have to do with EU. But super rich and corporations can drop their money in UK puppet territories and EU is not going to have pressure points. Google "UK tax havens" and I bet brexiteers were handsomely paid for their efforts by people who want that scheme to continue instead of sharing any of that money with EU.
> It disparages those who voted for Brexit instead of trying to understand them,
But why? Why is it the job of the people who are on the side of established truth who have to understand the views of the fantasists? I saw more "disparagement" from the pro-Brexit crowd than the Remainers. Why isn't it their responsibility to understand the realist position?
We told them Brexit would be a disaster. We were told we were scaremongering. It went ahead anyway, and it turned out to be awful. It was a stupid decision, and it was terrible judgment.
Why can't we tell people that some proposals are stupid? And why can't we tell people after the fact that they made a stupid decision? How is it our fault that they make bad decisions?
People were concerned about loss of sovereignty and high immigration. These are perfectly valid concerns and the Leave campaign perfectly understood that when they picked "Take back control" as slogan.
Immigration is also a big factor in the Conservatives' defeat in the general election. People felt cheated as immigration hit a record high and voted Reform UK, which handed Labour a huge majority despite actually getting fewer votes than at the previous election.
So it's quite extraordinary to see the comments here with zero reflection on why all of this happened. This is the real, dangerous divide between the well-offs in and around London and the rest of the country.
I have read that the two main issues on voters' minds in this American Presidential election were immigration and the economy, so result is not very surprising.
What lessons haven't been learned? Keir Starmer's Labour won the last UK elections by a landslide and the Tories got the boot. I do think your analysis oversimplifies a complex issue.
I'm not ignoring that Starmer got elected by keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, but the Tories' smash-mouth politics did not win the day anyway. What I can see from where I am is that Brexit was a very special case and it's all gone back to normal now.
There was no landslide. Labour actually got fewer votes than at the previous election when it was by Corbyn!
What happens is that Conservatives voters voted for someone else, mostly Reform UK. And the reasons have been the same as what's been festering since Brexit with the added factor that the Conservatives increased immigration to record level...
Labour won with 411 seats (up 211 from 2019) and 33.3% of the popular vote (9,708,716 votes) vs. 121 seats for the Conservatives (down 251) and 23.7% of the popular vote (6,828,925 ).
YMMV but I call a lead of 290 seats and 2,879,791 votes a landslide.
It was the Lib Dems that seem to have taken most of the Tories' voters: 72 seats (up 64) and 3,519,143 votes. The latter at least checks out. Reform was up 1 seat from 2019 for 5 seats total. Not quite a big splash then.
Labour also won big in Scotland against the SNP for the first time in years (but that was rather the fault of the SNP).
You're completely missing the point and where the votes went.
Labour got 9,708,716 votes in 2024 vs 10,269,051 in 2019. Starmer and Labour did not convince voters adn lost votes to the Greens.
What happened is that people did not vote for the Conservatives and instead voted Lib Dems and, especially, Reform UK, which got a massive 14% (3rd place and more than the Lib Dems). The Reform UK vote is because the Conservatives did not deliver on Brexit and even more importantly did the opposite of what they said on immigration, which reached record level.
The number of seats to Labour is a result of the above (Conservatives dropped so Labour candidate was elected) not because people voted Labour more than before. The surge is Reform UK.
So the same issues that have been at play in the Brexit referendum are still the key issues.
Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.
Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.
Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.
Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.
Yep. Hence the recent push to kneecap the education in States - be it book bans, forced Bible studies or other eye-popping regressions. Watching this unfold across the pond was a bewildering experience.
I would have thought young people having access to the internet would have allowed them to educate themselves and see through bullshit, but apparently not.
I really do think this is the beginning of the end for the US. At least I have front row tickets to the show.
Who are you calling uneducated? Just because your have an opinion doesn’t make you an authority on what people under other life conditions need to lead a successful life. Speak for yourself.
> Just because your have an opinion doesn’t make you an authority on what people under other life conditions need to lead a successful life.
That has nothing to do with anything. Every single person voting on the economy for Trump, blaming Biden for inflation is an example of a lack of education. Just for one example.
There's a reason college educated people vote so differently to non college educated people on average.
Depends on who you ask. Both sides demonize the other, but say they don't. Republicans are just much, much better at it. The ads and rhetoric are all designed to solicited emotional responses from the constituency, putting them in a very easy position to "Other" anyone who disagrees. If you can make your followers feel like they are disenfranchised then it's a simple matter to control them by promising to be the solution for their discontent.
Project 2025 also helped, since Democrats answered it with shock and horror instead of countering with their own improved version. Say what you will about the depravity contained within those pages, but Trump voters hold it up as "at least it's a plan" without having read it, much like their other beloved book, The Bible. Knowing that, it was quite easy for the Trump campaign to whip up support.
As much as I want to end with some pithy comment like "manipulation is a hell of drug," I can't. Half the country just got permission to put their ugly truths on display and they certainly did not disappoint. I have trouble laughing about that anymore.
When one guy is talking about domestic military deployments and shooting his political antagonists, and it’s not clear that the courts will stop him, then I do indeed think the F” word is in order.
The rest of it is self evident, but I’m not going to be the one to say it out loud.
The Kamala campaign had one and only one major problem.
COVID stimulus and an economic slowdown from 2020 caused four years of inflation in the entire world, and people see the price of milk going up and punish the incumbent (not even the person who was in charge in 2020.
At which point, it doesn't matter how you campaign, or if the opposing candidate is actual Satan, nobody's going to vote for the incumbent.
It also doesn't help that the press normalized actual insanity that would not have been tolerated from anyone else, and collectively pretended that it's normal and reasonable behavior.
It does matter how you campaign. Very few people live without access to information beyond the price of milk. If you see that global inflation is a thing and that it is a topic of importance for potential voters you could acknowledge that it exists and work on your messaging/make it look like you're trying to do something to fix it.
Flooding the country with millions of undocumented workers to compete with Americans is not a favor to the working class. That is a hand out to corporations.
I can’t find any statistical reporting to back there being millions more undocumented immigrants coming into the country in the last 4 years. Data-backed reporting indicates that we’ve had ~11 million undocumented workers since the 2005 with little change until 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
It's also a hand out to middle class, who cosume a lot of services provided by illegal imigrants (landscaping, renovation, cooking in restaurants etc.). The Dems kept the price of maintaining a nice lawn low.
It was not, but the Trump campaign continuously lied about it. Trump lied and lied and lied about the democratic party being anti-men, anti-cis, anti-Christian, Kamala being low IQ, and whatever other stupid shit he could think about, but somehow it's Harris fault for being "too divisive" (not sure how).
Trump is the incarnation of a thin-skinned bully, he allows himself the worst but will cry as loud as possible on the first sign of a backslash.
If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.
The working class and young men (all young people really) have been completely left out of the economic recovery. Harris saying she would change nothing about what Biden has been doing was a huge problem. She tried to address it later.
At the end of the day, "it's the economy, stupid".
Huh? Since when is a zygote not alive? It has a cell membrane, contains genetic material, has metabolism, can maintain homeostasis, and can grow. That's pretty much the definition of life.
Do you also think neurons, muscle cells, etc are also not alive?
The abortion debate is not about whether or not the thing that gets removed during abortion is life--I doubt you can find any competent biologist who would say it is not--but rather whether that particular cell or group of cells should be treated different than other cells or groups of cells in your body.
E.g., why should abortion be any different from removing tonsils or from circumcision, both of which also involve the removal and death of living cells from the body?
By that logic, we should also consider banning antibiotics. In a world where we consider a cell or a small grouping of cells to be a life (rather than just alive) antibiotics are essentially a tool for genocide.
That is exactly my point. People are conflating being alive (explicitly in this thread in the sense that a single cell is considered alive) with having a life that should be preserved. Complaining that if we found single celled life on Mars that we'd protect it even to our great inconvenience, but we will end a single cell or small group to save a host body, are making their argument based upon a false equivalence. Any life that might be found on Mars isn't ever posing a risk to a sentient host, and those defending harsh abortion controls because “all life should have a chance even single cells” don't extend “all life” to, well, all life.
Why is this attached to my comment? My comment has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. (Which I not only do not want to ban, at the very least I'd like it to go back to how it was under Roe v Wade).
My comment was about people misusing the terms life and alive. The correct way to argue that abortion should be legal is not to redefine life and/or alive so that some living cells or collections of living cells do not qualify rather than trying to redefine common terms used by biologists.
The correct way is to argue that we only only protect some cells or collections of cells and not others and then to argue that fetal cells belong in the not protected group. The question then comes down to deciding what it is that makes some groups of living cells protected but not others. Probably the best argument would be something along the lines that before that collection of cells has grown and developed to the point that it has a brain that can think and feel it is not really different from a tumor or other collection of cells that we don't protect.
The mother is providing care for the unborn child with her body. Seems like needing care vs. being unable to exist on its own is a distinction without a difference.
True. Although the scale for anything from sperm to baby is probably human<->animal<->bacteria life. I liked it because it definitely shows it's a form of "life" in an accessible way. Where on the scale it falls and whether that life should be protected is an entirely different matter.
I know, right? It's not mine. I don't really care for it either (except for the "kill at 9 months" thing), but it's interesting to see the two groups argue about it. Both seem to think they're undoubtedly 100% right, as a fact, etc.
I remember reading about college professors who shows a 1 day old zygote or whatever and a skin cell which appear pretty indistinguishable from one another.
Does any reasonable person believe that zygote at that stage is truly equivalent to a human life?
Next up no one should be masturbating because each sperm is potentially the next Mozart or Einstein.
> why is bacteria life on mars but a clump of cells is not life on earth
That is conflating life (the ability is eat, shit, reproduce, and the potential to late become sentient) with actual sentient life, which is not correct.
Also, no one is planning to ban antibiotics because bacteria is considered life so we can't do anything to save the host by killing it.
We could make it not opinion with ease. Make the test:
“Can the fetus survive without the host body?”
That’s a medical question that will slowly move toward not aborting ever. And it solves the medical issues as well. “This fetus is killing the host” always allows for removal, because we can either keep them alive, or it can’t survive.
Then the folks who want more babies to reach term can focus on improving medical technology instead of getting involved with the mess that is people’s love lives.
Climate change is a part of Earth's lifecycle. There have been ice ages, and there have been periods like jura, when it was warmer. It's all natural.
What you probably mean is how humans influence this cycle; whether accelerating or delaying it, in effect disrupting it. For that, there's no evidence; however, there are many politician lobbyists (and yes, also scientists taking advantage of juicy grants to deliver what was ordered) going to capitalize on the fear that it might be.
I'm not denying climate change as a whole or in absolute, I just want to point out that there's enough evidence to think that the world as we know it won't actually end in 2012 as some studies indicate.
~99.9% of studies agree on human-caused climate change [0].
We know, with absolute certainty for an undeniable fact, that Exxon's own climate scientists skillfully and accurately predicted climate change as a result of increasing fossil fuel use [1].
And we know that Exxon's response to that was to systematically sow doubt for decades, using tobacco-lobby style FUD tactics.
And yet you want us to err on the side of apocalypse. "What if we create a better world, and it was all for nothing".
You've been conned. I know how difficult it is to show someone they've been made a fool of, and I won't try. In fact, I agree with you that in many cases science ought to be questioned - lobotomies, mockery of germ theory, racism presented as science based, Daszak's infamous Lancet paper, etc.
On climate change though, there's very little to respect on the side of deniers. I would argue that, at this point, denying anthropogenic climate change amounts to treason against life.
... Also, yes, the West is responsible for the vast majority of CO2 release. It's not remotely close [0].
* The United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions [at 4% of world population].
* This is twice more than China – the world’s second-largest national contributor [18% of world population].
* The 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28) – which are grouped here as they typically negotiate and set targets on a collaborative basis – is also a large historical contributor at 22%.
* Many of the large annual emitters today – such as India and Brazil – are not large contributors in a historical context.
* Africa’s regional contribution – relative to its population size – has been very small. This is the result of very low per capita emissions – both historically and currently.
OK but what does cumulative historic data have to do with anything. It's a dynamic system, it's about of rates of release and removal. Might as well list total contribution by the mammoths.
Again, I find it very small-minded to imply that I'm a denier because I advocate for questioning what we are told. Furthermore, you are putting words on my mouth which make no sense at all.
People should understand there can be healthy middle grounds, which Parent obviously struggles with.
I don't deny anthropogenic climate change, on the contrary, I'm believe it's real and there's evidence for it.
I am, however, sceptical of how it's being presented and used.
An odd choice; to present your points layered in snark and sarcasm, then complain that you weren't fully understood.
> I am, however, sceptical of how it's being presented and used.
Then say that. Poe's law is rampant on this topic. If you want to be understood, then you need to write clearly and plainly.
> People should understand there can be healthy middle grounds
We're so, so far from a healthy middle ground on the discussion around climate change; and comments like yours above push in the wrong direction.
Questioning "what we are told" on climate change without differentiating between what 99.9% of scientists are saying, and what political/industry goons are saying, is guaranteed to receive clapback from any right minded individual.
So, don't act surprised when there's pushback. It's not "small-minded", it's people responding sensibly to the words you wrote.
I concede you're partially right, and I was later regretting my tone, until I re-read a few of the comments and answers. Still, I actually agree with the content of what you're saying, although maybe not the intention or the conclusions.
My tone is, after all, pushback, precisely because we didn't start from a middle ground to begin with (parent's comment). I am pushing in a direction. You might disagree with it, and that's fine.
> differentiating between what 99.9% of scientists are saying, and what political/industry goons are saying
Even if what scientists say can be inaccurate, as has happened throughout history, the point is rather that I question what politicians or the industry says, based on Science, because while the science might be correct, the message is easily corrupted.
and everybody just pointing out that climate protection cannot be forced onto a population is also framed as a climate change denier. i don't deny climate change. but i don't see why current generations' lifes should be tougher just to help out future generations. there needs to be a healthy balance.
That's what the previous generation said in the 90s. They could afford that choice, because they knew they would likely be dead before climate change started really affecting everyday life. Our generation – those who are not close to retirement – does not have the same luxury. Our future will be tougher anyway, both from the climate change itself and from the efforts to mitigate its effects.
Do you want your children to have a better life than you? They won’t unless we start putting in the work to fix climate change.
As a species we took on some climate debt to improve our standard of living, and we’ve been talking bigger loans every year. Those loans are coming due in the form of larger and more frequent weather-based disasters as well as health problems for millions. If we start paying off the loan more aggressively now, we can help prevent harsher payment plans for the next 50 years.
You don’t pay off a house all at once, but you’ll thank your future self for paying it off earlier rather than later.
i don't have children and i don't care about the future of our species. solution is easy - don't bring children into this world. having said that; life always finds a way and even dire future projections won't be much worse (maybe not even close) to stone ages, dark ages or natives living in a jungle. and they all did well enough and do. that's how it is.
Have you been living under a rock? Our current lives are already tougher because of climate change, and it's only going to get worse. More extreme and more frequent weather events (droughts, floods, heat waves, ...) are already happening.
> I don't see why current generations' lives should be tougher just to help out future generations.
Most people want a good life not only for them but also for their children, and their children's children. I don't have children, but I still want a good life for future generations. Is that not simple basic human decency?
Note that the longer we wait, the more difficult we make it ourselves to change things, and the more tough even our own lives are going to be, even ignoring future generations.
> There needs to be a healthy balance.
Yes. The status quo is not a healthy balance (or arguably any kind of balance).
To declare an arbitrary date when a human being starts to be a human being is so hypocritical, its no longer funny. Actually, I would call that ignorant and evil.
We're using abortion as birth control, in at least 90% of the cases, if not more. Because we dont want to tell the people involved that they have responsibilities in life, and if they dont want children, they are supposed to keep their legs closed or use some other form of birth control. The motivation is clear, its a convenience. But morally, its absolutely evil. I used to see it differently, but that was for my own convenience. Because I secretly hoped that if I ever accidentally knock a women up, I could avoid my responsibility if she is willing to abort. 20 years later, I realize its my responsibility, and I cant make a doctor kill a human being just because I would like to have an easy life.
At what level of development is a human foetus anatomically distinguishable from a cow foetus?
There's no fact-based reason to draw the line in any particular place. We, humanity, don't know what "personhood" really is beyond the laws we write while guessing and the just-so stories we tell each other to justify those laws.
That's why I'm vegetarian, and why I'd become vegan quickly as soon as someone can get milk from GM bacteria. (And sell it in supermarkets).
It's also one of two reasons why I try to be nice to LLMs: just in case. (The other reason takes it as read they have no experience of existence: by being trained on humans, they'll do better and worse exactly when real humans would do better and worse, and that means worse on holiday season and when getting insulted).
Self-awareness itself is poorly defined. So is consciousness, so is sentience, so is intelligence — and by some (but not all) definitions those are four* different things.
No, not really. It has pretty standard definitions in philosophy and science, or it wouldn't have been able to be tested for over several decades. I suggest spending some time reading the wiki, it gives a pretty detailed overview.
The only point you have is about consciousness, and we don't need to understand the entire thing to understand parts of it or observe it, just like gravity.
• The ability to recognise one's own body as distinct from that of others, as demonstrated by plants.
• The ability to pass the mirror test, which some AI pass, but whose relevance is widely debated in animal psychology both on the grounds of sensory chauvinism and because it may cause both false positives and false negatives owing to us not being able to converse with the animals we're testing.
• Introspection, except that now we've got LLMs responding much the same way Turing hoped they would when outlining his eponymous test and suggesting that a "viva voce" interrogation would have us know if the machine was innovative or "learnt it parrot fashion"*.
As humans are also demonstrably great at confabulating reasons for their acts (see: split brain surgery, specifically experimental research on patients' cognitive functioning after surgery), it is unclear whether humans score any differently than LLMs in this test irregardless of if LLMs do or don't count as people in any other sense.
• Qualia: nobody knows.
• Mindfulness, meditation and spirituality: arguably only those who explicitly practice the appropriate mental techniques, e.g. Buddhist monks and similar.
• Public/social awareness of self-standing in community: everyone who is "cringe" fails.
* fun fact: AI critics have been stochastically parroting the stochastic parrot criticism since at least 1949
Like I said, it's actually very well defined because it's been being studied for decades at this point. Just because it can sometimes be an overloaded term in colloquial usage doesn't negate that.
I again suggest you give the wiki page a read. It's quite in-depth and detailed with plenty of good references.
I did in fact read the Wikipedia page, and also have an A-level in philosophy, which means I've written more about this in three homework esseys than the total length of the English Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness
No, thats not what I said, and you know that. I believe we are using abortion to a very high degree for basic birth control. I am aware that there are exceptions, like those you mentioned. However, while necessary, these exceptions also pose a threat. Because if we have abortion legisation which only allows for abortions in cases of rape, millions of women will, out of desperation, start to claim rapes which never happened. Its a bad situation, no matter what we do.
Yea Kamala should not have been the candidate. She was tied to Biden who was associated with inflation which I think really decided this. I'm not sure the rest of your comment has that much to do with it
> She was tied to Biden who was associated with inflation which I think really decided this.
What about the rest of the world who've also been experiencing the same?
It's a very shortsighted take, and we've seen the same in the UK where Liz Truss 6 weeks as PM has taken the blame for global inflation in the court of popular opinion
Of course, its not logical, but voters "feel" they were better under trump without realizing inflation was a global phenomenon. This was also a failure of Dem messaging.
This is why we call Trump's voters "stupid", the US is still under Trump's tax plan until 1/2025. So if someone has an issue with taxes, it's not Biden's fault even though he is in office.
Inflation was caused by the Covid stimulus of 2020, and the mountains of free money printed that year (which is why it hit the entire world - every government did the exact same thing). Last I checked, Biden wasn't president at the time...
Given that Trump's economic policies are primarily the cause of inflation in the US, not sure what your point is. He printed and gave away 8 trillion dollars when combined with his tax cuts for the wealthy and people wonder why the cost of everything went up. Corporations across the planet were the beneficiaries of corporate welfare as governments printed money to battle COVID, and then they pocketed the profits and told their employees that they couldn't afford to give them raises.
I understand calling people stupid is not a strategy to convince someone.
But it’s not like that is why someone votes for Trump, right? It’s maybe more of a way to disincentivize conversions back.
I… really wish there had been a primary though. Biden deserves to be hated for the rest of his life for this (along with all of his other decision making)
They should have had a primary instead of having a ritualistic anointing of Biden. The reason Biden had to drop out is because he was there when he shouldn't have been.
I can vaguely understand fixing a primary for H. Clinton, but for Biden? One of the things Biden ran on in 2020 was a vague indication that he would leave after one term.
What I don't get is how the bar for the Democrats seems to be so much higher than for Trump. Sure, "the typical man" is more easily validated by Trump than Harris, but at the same time Trump says much worse things about women than Harris about men. I can see how the Harris seems more "elitist" in a way than Trump, but to me that seems like a subtle negative versus Trump's long list of very obvious flaws.
In essence, yes. I'm saying that Trump's narrative on women is no worse than societies default. Women experience far worse things than macho talk. It takes more to alienate a lot of them.
I'm politically the opposite of the person you're replying to, but these two notions are correct and not contradictory. Average people are ignorant and misogynist, and we should acknowledge this and talk about it, but not to their face. If you're not the direct target of the ignorance or misogyny, you should explain to them why their assumptions are false in a dumbed-down way, not using university-level language. Calling people ignorant directly will get them defensive and emotional. They will think they are being attacked because they are a man.
Of course, for people who are directly targeted by the ignorance and misogyny, it's their right to directly call it out, but they might not call it out at all, because they would be targeted further.
We call that "double standard" and it's top on the list of common fallacies. The lack of education, whether I demonize it or not, definitely has a saying in its spread. And dismantling the department of education won't help getting people more educated in the following elections.
I think the difference is that Harris (less so than Clinton but to some extent) was seen as representing a liberal consensus that men, particularly white, heterosexual men are 'over', that the 'future is female', etc.
Trump is just Trump. A rhetorically violent, deeply unpleasant convicted rapist, but not the vanguard of an explicitly misognist movement. At least not one thats culturally hegemonic. So while American progressives may label Trump voters sexist or racist, the overwhelming majority of them don't see themselves that way. Meanwhile, a highly vocal minority of progressives do actively demean men, while people, straight people etc, and have for a decade. They've enacted DEI practices, and scholarship and funding practices that exclude men from fair participation in the workforce, education and the arts. As efforts to correct historic imbalances in that participation. At the same time, they've ignored how male participation in higher education has dropped off, the epidemics of alienation and underemployment affecting men.
Edit: Just to clarify I'm addressing the question - not advocating Trump, or suggesting that life for men or white people or straight people is in fact materially worse. Just pointing out people strongly dislike being disliked, actively biased against and demeaned and this does in fact affect their voting preferences.
I'm genuinely at a loss as to how that connects to anything I wrote. It's not Harris' gender that was the issue - to the extent that the position I'm taking helped shift the dial. It's the perception that she would continue the policies and forward the ideological perspectives listed above. It doesn't help that she seems extremely disingenuous and politically opportunistic. Trump is of course both these things - but conservatives seem to care less about that, likely because of the redemption narrative built into Christianity. You can be as much of a villain as you like provided you push that button. It's worth noting that Obama and Bill Clinton both pushed their Christianity when campaigning, and that appeal wasn't lost on evangelicals. Progressives, it would be difficult not to admit, are pretty adamantly set against redemption currently.
I dont know about the USA. But I know from personal experience, that COVID politics destroyed my trust in left-leaning parties. I voted left until 2020. I will never give them my vote again, ever.
To be fair, RFK Jr believes that vaccines are linked to autism and wants to ban fluoride in drinking water because it's "linked to cancer". It's very worrying that he could be setting health policy.
But most people's anecdotal experiences with COVID amount to "It was just like having the flu, I don't see why they made such a big deal about it and banned Twitter accounts for saying things that line up with my experience"
My impression is that it's not about what Kamala Harris (or most Democrats) said, but the fact that the Republicans were able to create the perception that there are strong movements which hate "whites" and which hate "men" (in various combinations), and that voting Democrats would help those movements. Apparently, they were able to convince enough non-white men and white women that Trump will be better for them.
It doesn't. Part of what you're seeing is just straight up cheating. Florida wouldn't allow election observers. It might take a little while to sink in, but American elections are more or less running like Russian elections at this point, and these results are what you get when it's not honest. Sometimes it's like this, and sometimes the leader figure is said to get like 99% of the vote, when he doesn't feel like playing coy about it. It's up to him, not you.
America started when it rebelled against being ruled. I'd say that's not entirely off the table. First it has to become clear that we're getting ruled, not represented.
The simple fact is, Trump is a rorschach/inkblot test.
He is everything people claim and nothing at all. He says so much bullshit constantly that you have to just ignoring or discounting shit he says. So he reflects what you believe.
This is all moot now. We have a far-right supermajority in government. America is fucked for the next few decades at the very least. The DNC is no longer relevant.
Calling republicans far right is the exact rhetoric that alienates and divides people. Take the next four years to try to find some common ground with the right.
Actually that statement shows exactly the political and societal problems there is today in the US. If people can’t even talk together and even get insulted it’s going to go even worst.
Ho really? Did not history teach us everything that is happening today and can happen tomorrow ?
It can go worst as in a civil war. To a full split of the country in x countries. Now I don’t think it will happen but saying it can’t go worst is both factually false and not anchored in reality
Common ground. The whole democratic apparatus of the United States might get severely hollowed out for the foreseeable future, and you're talking about finding common ground.
Not at all wanting to be confrontational- genuinely curious; if they’re not on the far right then where are they? The Democrats seem fairly centrist, and it’s the more wayward independents (eg Greens) that seem to be on the Left.
My perspective is European & Australian, so I wonder if that skews it.
Because it’s illogical. Far right implies there is an edge to a majority “right”. Calling the entire majority “far right” is just lazy adhominem attacks. Calling the entire the democrat party far left is equally stupid.
Calling the democratic party "far left" is stupid for a different reason, viewed from a global perspective, they're probably best positioned as centre-right.
Depends what you care about. Broadly speaking the entire developed world is further left than the US on workplace/business/union policy issues.
The US left (federally, not talking Alabama dems here) is generally more left on immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ and affirmative action type policies than Europe, broadly speaking. Drug policy is a wash IMO. There's a lot more variation in Europe because the EU doesn't arbitrate social issues the way the US federal government does.
> Broadly speaking the entire developed world is further left than the US on workplace/business/union policy issues
This is what's crippling them. We initially built the social security net to counter this issue. Then we increased employee rights to maximum levels. I think one of either would be beneficial, but not both.
As an Alabama Dem, this is something that is just so disappointing to see when we're assumed to be not "generally more left"
There are so many here supporting and doing good, hard work with things like the Yellowhammer Fund, ¡HICA!, and Magic City Acceptance Center and Academy but we have to fight for any acknowledgement. We had more people vote for Kamala than several states but they amount to nothing in the public eye. It's so deflating and discouraging
I think you have to acknowledge that the democratic politicians that rise to prominence in your state are not exactly the left of the left when it comes to policy in the same way that Christ Christie and Charlier Baker aren't hardline republicans. It's just a reflection of the electorate, not a personal slight.
This is not true. Their identity politics stances are widely unpopular across the globe, and you won't find another country where they are represented in political discourse.
> Because it’s illogical. Far right implies there is an edge to a majority “right”.
"far right" and "far left" are terms for contextualizing a political stance, based on the world view and actions. It's doesn't matter where the majority of people stands, they can be all far right or far left or in the center, it wouldn't change the definitions.
The nazi government of Germany was "far right" even when a majority of the population supported it. The political left-right spectrum is roughly defined with socialism, communism on the far left, social democracy on the left, classical liberalism on the center-right, conservatism on the right, and ultra-nationalism, fascism on the far right.
In America you generally only see "Far X" used as a slur to basically imply extremism. I'm sure a lot of people will have strong feelings about whether that's accurate or not but my point is mainly that I think it's weird when people in places like Europe go by the academic definition with regard to American politics.
Far-right is well defined globally. Few core values: nationalism, authoritarianism, anti-socialism, economic libertarianism, racial and gender hierarchies, anti-establishment sentiments.
If you think a party is ticking many boxes, you may label it as "far-right".
By that reasoning Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy weren't far right, because a very significant portion of their population actually voted for that. Or France now, our "Rassemblement National" used to be far right, but now enough people (about a third) vote for them that they no longer are.
Sorry if that feels like a strawman, but I find the idea of using popularity to determining what counts as "far" stupid and dangerous.
They are a corporate party, just like the democrats. Supporting secure borders is not far right. Republicans have support of every race, they are not racist despite the media repeating that they are. Trump is very hesitant about getting involved in wars. I see nothing far right about them, maybe they are somewhat nationalistic instead of globalist, but the US is a diverse nation. At the end of the day they are just another corporate party that appealed more to the American people.
According to Wikipedia, "Far-right politics ... are typically marked by radical conservatism, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and nativism"
Digging into the page for radical conservatism, "Elements of ultraconservatism typically rely on cultural crisis; they frequently support anti-globalism – adopting stances of anti-immigration, nationalism, and sovereignty – use populism and political polarization, with in-group and out-group practices.[3][4][5][6] The primary economic ideology for most ultraconservatives is neoliberalism.[6] The use of conspiracy theories is also common amongst ultraconservatives.".
Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
Ah, yes. That well know impartial source of political facts, wikipedia.
>>Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
You can be patriotic and anti-immigration without being far right. I think the claims of a stolen election are yet to be properly investigated. I'd welcome a truly impartial look into all the covid postal vote shenanigans last time.
>>As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
You can criticise institutions now? And I'm sure he'd be in favour of an indepenndent media if America had one.
Putin is a obviously a dictator. Bolsonaro and Orban not so much (especially Bolsonaro as he was, er, voted out which would seem to automatically disqualify him from being a dictator).
Political ideologies are defined by a cluster of stances that collectively form a narrative. Those stances may individually have some debatable justifications, but it's when they're taken together that it becomes compelling.
It's not just
"there's something wrong in our society"
it's
"there's an insidious dark force at work, it's brought us down from our glorious past, these groups of people are involved, violence against this threat is understandable, only a few men are strong and capable enough to lead us out of this...".
In 1930s Germany and Italy the "groups of people" were marxists, jews, gypsies, homosexuals and a few others. In modern Russia it's LGBT, central Asians, objectors to the war, and various religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses. For Trump and a lot of Europe's right-wing it's LGBT, immigrants, intellectuals, and liberals (though he calls them communists).
Because they’re trolling, knowingly or unknowingly. There’s a presumption here that HN commenters can operate a search engine and read pages of text, and are therefore capable of basic research.
If they’re asking for a definition, it’s likely because they already know it and just want you to fall into a “gotcha” they can then divert discussion toward in their favor. It’s cheap theatrics.
You can miss me with that last part, because I have to assume malice on the part of those who try to steer discourse around vocabulary or policy nuance rather than acknowledge the binary reality of the question.
Vocabulary is what we have for textual discourse lacking other inputs, and clarification on terms is a basic and actual necessity of such. You say you "have to assume malice" and, in line with what I already alluded to, that requires malice.
It's not pedantic to ask that your statements be taken clearly and in the right context.
It's worth noting as well that in the context of inclusion, pointing out pedantry at all is going to exclude a group in the "common" understanding of exclusion.
Most importantly, this person is trying to understand your perspective and instead of trying to sway their opinion, you criticize them. One thing that the "far right" has accomplished recently is an understanding that everyone is a person and worth respect and voice. Which is evidenced by the countless videos displaying such behaviour and the ubiquitous response of blessing attributed to people with such inquisition in comment sections everywhere.
In stark contrast is the term uneducated and it's supposed link to intelligence. Don't they teach logical fallacies in college anymore?
Were they conservative? No, they wanted to upend society and create one that is nothing like anything ever seen before. They were also anti-religion. In many ways, they were anti-tradition, and I wouldn't consider their obsession with bringing back dead traditions to be traditional.
Were they hateful, racist, etc.? Yes, up to you if that's considered 'right'.
Were they, like how American political parties are, friends of big business? Not really, they wanted to sponsor monopolies and whatnot but also wanted the businesses to have no influence over the state, rather the other way around, the state can force the big business to do what they want. As far as if it actually worked that way when they were in power, I'm not sure.
Can you name a policy of today's republican party that is further right than the republican party of 20 years ago? From my perspective they've ceded ground on many social issues. They had a porn star speak at the RNC convention this year. Dick Cheney, one of the people responsible for the "War on Terror", endorsed Kamala Harris. The idea that federal politics in the US has shifted right, not left, is baffling to me.
Democrats believe a man who thinks he is a woman is scientifically a woman. They believe in censorship. They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex. They believe in a discrimination campaign against whites and Asians, and meanwhile allowing unfettered illegal immigration with the intent of giving amnesty to the millions that entered through the forcibly unguarded border.
They are not centrist by any stretch of the imagination.
> Democrats believe a man who thinks he is a woman is scientifically a woman
It's a bit more complicated than that. Gender is a social construct, mostly determined by genes & genitalia. It's not quite enough to believe you're a woman, other people have to believe it too. Another issue at play is that there are far more "intersex" people (who have some characteristics of the opposite sex, sometimes to the point doctors don't quite know whether to list them as male or female), and from what I've heard trans people often (possibly generally) are "intersex" in a way that wasn't visible at birth. The idea of a female's brain in a male's body isn't that far fetched.
> They believe in censorship.
I believe this one is more popular in the far right (when in power) than in the far left (when in power)
> They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex.
Militarism sounds like it's more popular on the right. Though it can be more complicated: military backed imperialism can indeed support stuff like welfare at home.
---
Now the elephant in the room: last time I checked, democrats were firmly capitalists: they believe the means of production should be owned privately. Even if you exclude actual communism from acceptable discourse, they're fairly poor at public services and keeping inequality in check.
Why is everyone else responsible but the people responsible? Not calling out fascism is surely just as problematic.
Do you have any data (except for interpersonal psychology) on whether letting fascism slide or calling it out ultimately makes the situation worse? At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?
> At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?
You call it fascism when it is fascism. Once it is openly fascist then it is probably too late to stop, but you don't call it fascism until it is fascism.
You could try to answer this yourself by looking up the definition and cross checking it with the rhetoric from the republican party during this campaign.
I fail to see how the Republican party is fascist. I think it's a term the Left uses to demonize their opposition. Ironically, that is kind of fascist-like.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
I assume you have good reasons to believe Republicans are fascist. I'm simply asking you and any others who believe this to share your reasons. Is that not reasonable?
Even if I listed all reasons why the rhetoric during the campaign reeked of fascism, you’d simply dismiss them, like all the times before where this has been called out already. This is why people rightly feel people like you act like they’re in a cult. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Like right now, by editing your comment you're desperately trying to pose there is no accepted definition of fascism. Dismissing definitions only fits the bill.
Ah yes, the "you're too stupid or unreasonable (i.e. deplorable or trash)" to reason with so I won't even try argument.
> you’d simply dismiss them
I'm a random internet stranger. How could you possibility know me so well? Again, it's just a blanket stereotyping and demonization of people who have different beliefs that you do. A mass ad hominem attack. That attitude is a root of many problems in the political arena. I expect that kind of rhetoric on Reddit, but am disappointed to encounter it here.
> Even if I listed all reasons
I'm a busy person and I assume you are too. Why don't you list one and we'll go from there?
You already try to dismiss an accepted definition, so why would I bother reiterating all the easy to find articles, videos and podcasts that literally quote and warn of Trump's rhetoric? Do you think you sound like a person that is trying to understand criticism of his party, especially right after voting for them?
> You already try to dismiss an accepted definition
In this discussion, we've already defined it? where? That's news to me that I can dismiss something that I wasn't aware of.
> Do you think you sound like a person that is welcoming criticism
I am very welcoming of criticism of my party and the one I voted for. Trump can be a bombastic jerk. I voted for him because his policies align more with my values than Harris'. He was the lesser (much lesser) of two evils. I didn't vote for him in the primaries and I wish he wouldn't have won them.
Anyway, you continue to make assumptions about me rather than discuss/debate the issue of why you think Trump is a fascist. It's not much of a discussion and so I'll opt out now. All the best to you.
If you think every debate should first have a discussion on definitions, before you can get to the heart of the argument, you should not be debating.
We don't have to define it. That's the point. It's already been done for us.
It's the same with asking me to list reasons or sources that explain the republican parties fascist tendencies, while that's been done thousands of times through the course of their campaign. If you were truly curious as to why people might feel that way, you could have done so at any point during the last few months.
You did't accept the definition you bothered to look up and you didn't accept the valid concerns people had during the campaign.
The real reason you're walking away from this conversation is because you don't care if I am right.
You're not afraid of fascism, because you think you're in the right group.
I think the other poster was just being polite, trying to have a discussion about the left's misuse of the term fascism, yet failed to account for the degree of intelligence required to understand such nuance. So let me spell it out for you all, you are misusing the term and on the odd occasion that one of you actually checks the definition, you view it through your own biased lens, rather than reading the complex description thoroughly. You cherry-pick some terms and twist others around to suit your own dogma, with the intended goal of using it to villainise the enemy.
If you replace nationalism with partisanship, in very many ways the modern left is far more closely aligned with the vile components of fascism than the republican party, or even Trump supporters. The left have done everything they can do vilify anyone who disagrees with their core beliefs, which they hold are a matter of morale superiority and to which, in their minds, no person of moral substance could ever find disagreeable.
By very definition, conservatives are conservative. When they disagree with someone, they continue to treat them respectfully and move on with their lives, comfortable in the reality that there exists people around them with very different beliefs than their own. The left, on the other hand, do no such thing and yet look in the mirror and convince themselves that they're the better people in all this.
Trump less won this election than the democrats did lose it by arrogantly putting up a candidate with strong ties to the current unpopular administration and whose other policies and attributes did not appeal to the swing voter.
I don’t even have a dog in this fight since I'm from the EU. I can see why the Democrats lost. I can also see why Trump won.
And I'm factually correct when I say that Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. He has motivated even a reasonable person like you to defend him vehemently. He made you part of his group, and by the looks of it you’re already starting to hate those who are not in it.
Let's hope we never have to find out, but so many people captivated by a conman while simultaneously crying about everyone else's position is a recipe for abuse.
Separating children from parents at the border, reverting hard fought women's right to their own body, that is the stirring of fascist behaviour.
That wasn't his main intention. It was to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the country. And after popular criticism, he reversed that policy and never enacted it again. That doesn't sound authoritarian/fascist to me. It sounds more like bending to the will of the people you govern.
> reverting hard fought women's right to their own body
And a large swath of the country believes abortion is murder. I guess for that, they are fascists in your eyes?
The term really has lost it's meaning and is just used by the Left to demonize the other side.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
Advocating conspiracy theories, undermining trust in democratic process, pro-nationalist, racist, sympathetic to (if not supportive of) white supremacists, ultra-conservative and traditionalist, stoking unfounded fears of communism/marxism, etc...
Okay. Let's take conspiracy theories. Trump has promoted the Obama birther conspiracy, pizza gate, that the Clintons are responsible for the death of Epstein and other political opponents, that there was fraud in the 2012 election and various false claims about the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections, various tropes about Soros etc...
It's a fact that Trump shared and promoted these. It's a fact that they are conspiracy theories.
Objectively, the use of force to eject protestors at rallies is of the fascist mindset. Trump endorses it.
The counter-argument is that a culture of violent police suppression is just modern America, and it’s not fair to tar one particular party with that particular brush.
I was watching a streamer who once referred to something as “stupid” before they corrected themselves to use a different word (I don’t remember because it’s not the point). The reason for their correction was that they believe that word to be a lazy way of describing something; lots of things can be considered generally “stupid” but there’s always some underlying reason for that conclusion which will invariably be a more informative descriptor. (It takes effort to discover this reason, hence it’s “lazy” when one does not.)
I do commonly see “fascist” used to describe things in similar ways where the person seems to be expressing a general disdain for something. They do successfully convey some meaning but it’s very non-specific. Just food for thought for readers who want their opinions heard more than they want to hem and haw over the specific meanings of words.
It's just the standard leftist doublethink of the past decade. Any realistic definition that labels 99% of Republicans as far right would label 95% of Democrats far right too. If their ideas were popular they would have started their own party a decade ago instead of being ground up in the DNC.
They claim "harm reduction" but that's not how just not voting works, 95% is still a super majority and anything you "win" is just tokenism at the end of the day.
I mean, they call Harris a communist so all bets are off. Even Sanders would barely register on the left side pretty much anywhere in the western world
The positions the Republicans voiced in their campaign cam ony be summarized as far right. So applying the moniker to the party in it's current form is accurate. The party isn't the same as their voters/supporters.
In my country in Europe our most "right-wing" parties would be considered leftist in the US, so hopefully this brings into perspective just how extremely right-wing republicans are.
I’m sorry, but OP was right in calling the party - the entire party, and its supporters, and its candidates, and its institutions - far right. Because at the end of the day, many believed this was a nuanced choice about policy differences rather than what it really was: a binary choice between an imperfect Democracy, and strong man totalitarianism.
The voters made their choice clear, and those of us most impacted by GOP authoritarian policies now get to spend the next four years (at least) trying to make sure we survive attacks against us while also maybe still salvaging this grand democratic experiment.
So no, you can take that “find common ground” and shove it. We adhered to decorum for decades, even as the GOP marched ever further right and ignored, plowed through, or destroyed any and every uncrossable line or improper decorum in their path. You don’t get to try and apologize on behalf of an electorate that willfully has chosen violence, nor should we (those affected by said violence) have to tolerate their excuses.
All of the moderate Republicans were primaried out over the last eight years, the senate has a few holding on but the house has been mostly cleared out. The party is very much far right. Did you not see how many Republicans refused to certify the election in 2021? It’s only gotten worse since then.
They don't believe in climate change, want zero controls on guns, are generally anti-immigrant - even the legal immigrants are lied about e.g. Haitians in Springfield, don't believe women should have certain rights concerning their own healthcare, want to keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, etc.
They are impenetrable. Yes they'd claim I'm unwilling to compromise but we're talking about different starting points - I have to get them to accept certain actual real-world events and facts as true before starting a meaningful conversation.
I watched the victory speech. He promised three things (1) only four years of him in the White House, (2) appointing RFK to eliminate vaccines and gut the health care industry (3) end current wars, so basically give his boss
military control of Eastern Europe.
I don’t believe (1). The other two would mean our kids’ life expectancies just halved.
Common ground with people who voted for someone who campaigned on hate is a pretty steep hill. Funny how Republicans are never asked to "find common ground"
Republicans stopped existing in 2016 when they found out they either have to bow down to Trump or become third-party behind democrats and trumpists. Last meaningful actions of republicans was suppressing Trump during his 2016 reign, but those people are out now. There are no republicans left in power.
Who's in charge now are not republicans. Now it's just far right believing in genius and ability of their cartoonish leader.
I realized the stupidity argument during covid first, and it all came from the left. So much contempt, a reason why I no longer can identify with liberals. In fact, I am disgusted by what I remember from 2020/21.
If one handyman or one farmer or one trucker stopped working, no one would really care. If all CS researchers stopped working, I'd wager people would care, just as they would if handymen/farmers/truckers stopped working.
I thing OP point is that if the trucker stopped working people and businesses will be impacted that day (before he gets replaced, easy with trucker, not with labour). The impact will be more direct and tangible way than, say, a CS researcher not showing up this morning.
> Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine.
Non-american here, but I feel pretty much the same way. I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine. A single educator in my child's kindergarten most likely does work that is orders of magnitude more important to society than mine is. Maybe this attitude comes from the fact that both of my parents never set a foot into higher education, but it is something I feel very strongly, and which is quite humbling.
I remember my father predicting in the early 2000s that the academic elite was increasingly crippling the country by adding more and more non-pragmatic rules in seek of some idealistic utopia, and that they would lose the support of the masses pretty soon. As a young teenager, I did not believe him, and in my arrogance of youth, I also dismissed it as the ramblings of an uneducated worker. But sure enough, most of the things he feared back then turned out to come true.
> I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine.
Today, for sure. I think it's far more nuanced in the long term. Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday.
Of course, if you disregard today completely for building the tomorrow, a lot of people who don't get access to wealth today will be pissed. Which is very roughly what's happening in the USA. "What we have now is perfect, and can sustain forever, stop with the progressive BS", chant the conservatives.
It's a hard balance. Dems messed it up, Reps will mess it up further, I bet.
> Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday
The research of yesterday was on another level than most of what is done today. Not to say that it's worthless, pursuit of knowledge is always worth it.
> Stop calling working people without a college education stupid and stop alienating men.
Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.
However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy to marginal tax as a grave danger to working people - you don't have to go far for examples. And when someone does believe this sort of blatant bullshit, then, yeah, they don't come across as particularly bright individuals.
So what is the takeaway here? When referring to trump supporters, follow the line of reasoning:
- Trump floated bleach as a covid remedy
- Bleach as a covid remedy is obviously stupid (we should both be agreeing on this one)
- Trump supporters support such statements from trump
- But pointing that out is "calling them stupid" and thus we shouldn't do it?
I'm genuinely curious about this because it makes up so many discussions with trump supporters in a nut shell. I don't want to condescend to them, but I also shouldn't be pointing out things that genuinely are stupid about trump, because doing so would offend them too? What should I do, just pretend all the dumb things Trump does (and that his supporters support him for) don't exist? Just so I can find common ground? (I mean, strictly speaking this is exactly what I do in polite company with trump supporters. I just pretend all the really dumb shit doesn't exist and just talk to them about policy and stuff, and in the end I end up finding that we agree on 90% of stuff and we go on our way. And they continue to support trump for reasons I don't understand.)
I've seen research shared here that suggest that more education scales with more radical political beliefs and overconfidence, for both sides of the spectrum, not just left. So you're right. Though of course more people concentrated in cosmopolitan areas with liberal cultures means more educated people lean left.
This is an honest question, I'm not American, I don't live in the US and I genuinely don't know: how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency? I'm also curious to know if the Democrats have done any different.
In the interest of full disclosure I am totally guessing that neither did anything to materially improve the lives and fortunes of working-class Americans and neither Donald Trump will, nor would Kamala Harris. Working people in the US, as in the rest of the world seem to me to be shafted for good, by all sorts of economic forces that they have no control over. I'm speaking in this as a current academic but one-time unskilled, immigrant worker.
It used to be that you could feed yourself and your family with "the sweat of your brow". Not any more. Who is working to change that?
> how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency?
Uneducated working class folks compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and cheap housing. During his presidency illegal immigration was lower and wages rose for the working class and housing costs were relatively stable. He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, and crime tends to impact the working class much more than the middle/upper classes.
Mostly folks who voted for him voted on the premise that their experience of the economy was better when he was president rather than on the basis of individual policies.
The entire point of being wealthy (and USA is one of the richest countries on earth) is to be able to afford to sacrifice some extra wealth (e.g. by not working, or giving to charity, or abolishing slavery, or enforcing worker's rights) to accomplish other goals (whatever you deem good, or moral, or just fun / entertainment).
I get and fully understand that many Americans are angry and want change, and they exercised their democratic right and pursued that change. We all need to respect that. Many things are not on the right path, and I have a feeling "DEI" and grievance farming is going to have a rough time ahead. And I get it: As a white male I honestly am tired of government being a tool to suppress white males. I am sick of living in a Western country that endlessly self-flagellates and acts like it needs to host the world in some act of contrition for success.
Having said that, it's hard as an outsider to look at the things Trump is campaigning on and not see that as not just calling "non-educated" people stupid, but he is literally relying upon it. Either his voters are extremely ill-educated, or they simply don't believe a word he says and actually make his lying a feature of his candidacy. Either aren't great.
When just about every economist says that the US economy -- quite literally the best economy on the planet -- is going to implode under the policies Trump has stated (even just the tariff proposal, not even getting into the crackpot "abolish the IRS and write on a piece of paper that crypto wipes out the debt", or Elon magically cutting 2/3rds of the federal budget, etc.), for people to then vote for Trump to "fix" the economy is not educated. Being isolationist in one of the greatest eras of peace in human history will not bring peace to Earth, it's literally guaranteed to bring war that will end up on your doorstep, etc. Nuclear non-proliferation dies with this election, and there are a lot of powers that existed under the US umbrella that are going to fire up a nuclear program, covertly or not.
I fear that many Americans just have no idea how much they have to lose. There is a sense of comfort and complacency to assume that this is the baseline. But it isn't. It can get much, much worse, very quickly.
> Quite the contrary, their job is far more important to society than mine.
I doubt it. Think about how connected the world is, you can't even apply for jobs without the internet.
Both jobs are equally important. The main difference is that you can get started doing construction without many pre-qualifications, while a construction worker may take a year or more to get the basics of computer engineering down.
That would be true if there was a change with that population. Right now the numbers are that Trump won with slightly less votes than when he lost in the 2020 elections; and Kamala lost with significantly less vote than Biden got in the 2020 elections. There are almost 20 million of voters that didn't show up on this year election that showed for the 2020.
Obama is the only 2 term President to have gotten a majority of the vote both times since Ronald Reagan. Our system had been broken in a sense (depending on your perspective). We’ve had candidates get a plurality and some a majority of the vote who did not get elected. I think the electoral system needs to be abandoned.
The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought. That Trump got a majority of the vote is a huge win for him. No one can claim his win is because of a backward electoral system and not because he is popular. This is huge. Democrats will be dead for 2 years minimum. Trump will be able to enact whatever legislation he wants to.
He is the President we deserve. The DNC needs to be abolished. Democrats had the opportunity to reform the system. It’s been over 100 years since the number of Representatives has been updated. They could have imposed election reform. They could have gotten rid of archaic Senate rules like filibuster.
> Democrats had the opportunity to reform the system. It’s been over 100 years since the number of Representatives has been updated. They could have imposed election reform. They could have gotten rid of archaic Senate rules like filibuster.
When? How? Any change like that in the last few decades would be very hard, and probably before that as well.
I don't disagree with you, I've argued "fixing the system should be #1 priority" for years, but even if the Democratic party wanted to, I don't see how they could have done so.
When Obama was President his first two years Democrats had clear majorities of both houses. But that fool was obsessed with “bipartisanship”. He acted as if the political norms of the 70s had not changed. Also, they haven’t even tried to fight for the things I mentioned.
In Obama's first term, the parties were not nearly as ideologically sorted as they were today. There was a Democratic majority of 257 in the House, yes, but 54 of those were members of the explicitly conservative Blue Dog Coalition. They wouldn't have agreed to vote for sweeping partisan reforms.
I think they would have gone for updating the number of a Representatives. But they didn’t even try to do such things. Obama kept trying the make a deal with Republicans and acted like it was the 1970s. In the end he saw what his efforts were worth when Republicans refused to even vote for his Supreme Court nominee.
Changing number of representatives would require a constitutional amendment and that wouldn’t have passed with enough states.
I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population. If the ratios are the same then I don’t think 435 vs 4035 matters.
Changing number of representatives would require a constitutional amendment…
You are wrong on this. You should look up Reapportionment Acts. The number of Representatives does matter in an electoral system and for other reasons. A Representative from California represents far more people than one from North Dakota. This is a major power imbalance in both electoral matters and in matters of federal legislation.
The number of Representatives hasn’t been updated in a 100 years.
> Changing number of representatives would require a constitutional amendment
No, the size of the House is determined by Congress; a century ago they decided to cap it at the current number, and never increase it since then, regardless of population increase.
> I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population
That's not the case, though. A quick look at constituents per representative across states is all it takes to see how stark that is.
It's extra important because the number of electoral votes each state gets is dependent upon their number of representatives.
> It’s been over 100 years since the number of Representatives has been updated. They could have imposed election reform. They could have gotten rid of archaic Senate rules like filibuster.
As much as I'd like to think the waning days of the 2022 Congress were wasted, I don't think this would have been feasible.
Manchin and Sinema refused to get rid of the filibuster. And with that in place, nothing else that you mention was possible.
> The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought.
Yup. In 2016 we thought Trump was an aberration, a temporary cultish fad. In 2020 we felt justified because he lost, but we ignored how barely he lost. And now, knowing everything about Trump there is to know, we've elected him again, and we can't even say he lost the popular vote this time. The GOP took the Senate, and may even keep hold of the House for at least the next two years. Thomas and Alito will likely retire from SCOTUS, and Trump will appoint young, carefully-chosen, extreme right-wing justices. The makeup of the court will be hard-right-majority for the rest of my life. I'm sure he'll also appoint more hard-right judges to the federal judiciary in record numbers.
This is who we are, and it's time we start accepting that. Dem leadership needs to internalize that and drastically change their strategy. I'm not sure
I think calling this too much government inaccurate. IMO it is government not doing enough what it should do, and putting its hands into private issues too much. So cutting government regulation won't work.
In this election, the Democrats were unable to offer the majority of voters the past they fondly remember or the future they can look forward to. It's that simple.
The lesson is that Reddit is not real life, and that calling half the country racist sexist fascist inbred stupid genocidal monsters turns out to not be a winning strategy.
Whether democrats finally learn that lesson is another thing. I am not optimistic on that.
> calling half the country racist sexist fascist inbred stupid genocidal monsters
The Democratic campaign did no such thing. Can you point to any examples? As far as I can see they went to great lengths to avoid saying anything like that.
As far as I can tell there was far more venom from the Republicans. Maybe the lesson is that a winning strategy is to be more insulting.
It was a single remark by the outgoing president who wasn't standing for election, and something he quickly rowed back on. It was clearly something he didn't intend to say, but at some point in an election campaign someone is going to misspeak.
Anyway, you're moving the goalposts. The allegation was "calling half the country racist sexist fascist inbred stupid genocidal monsters".
The popular vote is not a good indicator. I live in a deep blue state, the fact that my vote doesn't actually influence the electoral college reduces the incentive to go vote, drastically.
Exactly, unless you rerun with a "popular vote wins" election - it's not concrete at all. The campaigns would not have been run in the same way, and the people would not vote in the same way.
I say this every election when democrats play the "but we won the popular vote" card as well - that wasn't the game being played, so it doesn't really mean that much.
I'm an outsider; is the US a democratic union of 50 states (plus districts and territories) or is it a democratic union of ~ 335 million individuals?
Is the EU vote in Brussels passed by countries or by individual citizens?
As I recall the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union .. if the US has moved to a single unified country of individuals then it might be time to reset the rules (the US founders would be in favour if I read their comments on evolving systems correctly).
Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
That's a silly comparison when even the EU is a mix of by-country/by-population (council/parliament—and even the parliament is weighted toward giving smaller countries more representation)
If you mean "state" in the sense of "nation-state", then no, the US is not a democratic union of 50 states. It's a federal republic. While each state does have its own identity, government, and laws, the US federal government has much more power over US states than the EU has over member countries.
> the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union
The current electoral system was set up to appease the southern slave-owning states who would have had little representation if the straight popular vote was used.
> Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
Potato, potahto. Distinction without a difference, in this case.
How about some good old-fashioned respect for the office of President?
Trump's legacy already speaks for itself.
As far as Europe and other overseas countries are concerned, Trump's most remarkable accomplishment was quite some time ago when he was President the first time.
He made unprecedented Presidential history already, and for the rest of his life (as well as the lives of millions of other senior citizens) he can bask in the degree of admiration that he brought to such an esteemed executive office.
He clinched it like no other in over 75 years of very strong & respectable leadership, recognized worldwide which really means something to international partners of all kinds.
He made sure that President Barack Obama will go down in history as the final US President to effectively be the "leader of the free world", in a long line of illustrious Republicans & Democrats who may one day regain such a level of respect again.
Only not possible in the lifetimes of millions of people around the world, for whom it's just a little too late now. Biden couldn't recover that mantle in only 4 years unless he was a miracle worker of some kind, that's how elusive it really was.
Completely eluded Trump, and once again the traditional American kind of world-class leadership on an international stage fades further into the past, with no recovery on the horizon any time soon.
You're confusing the electoral college with the Senate. In the electoral college, the states are weighted by population. It's a flawed system, but it's not "each state having an equal say".
But even then the weighting is _very_ uneven. The number of votes per elector can vary wildly by state, by as much as some small whole multiple. So the “weight” of one vote in one state can be say, four times that of another state.
It’s amazing to me that this can stand and efforts to change never seem to get very far.
Yeah. It's been scary to see how Big Tech and the media presented Trump as a threat to democracy and someone you cannot possibly vote for. It becomes dangerous when one party has that much power and support. It's not a democracy anymore when people are not presented with facts and are not allowed to express their opinions without getting cancelled or labeled a certain way. You can see it even in the comments here: "Far Right", "bigot", "redneck". We should acknowledge that blunt words like this are at a very low level of political discussion. "Far Right" is a particularly nasty label because even a liberal from 2010 would meet the definition as it's used today by liberals.
Look at this [1] - Oprah warning women that if they don't vote they may lose their ability to vote. This is ridiculous. Trump is not a saint and January 6th was a dark moment but they (the Big Tech, the media, the celebrities) blown the negative image of Trump out of proportion and are making stuff up. Whether you like him or not he is the candidate of the other party. There is no democracy without the other party. The reality is that the megaphones have been cornered by a single side and are used in the most unfair way with additions of fake news and negative coloring about Trump and the "Far Right". Elon Musk saved the day by buying Twitter. It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
There were plenty of reasons to not vote for Kamala. Perhaps the biggest ones are her views that align with communism. [2] And by the way, Merry Christmas! [3]
You're complaining about how Trump was presented as a threat to democracy after he made a speech saying how if he wins you'll never have to vote again? After he lead an insurrection and tried to illegally overthrow the previous election both on paper and in person?
Seen a good few Trumpers complaining about the label "far right". If you don't like the label that's on you, it's like an orange complaining about being called an orange, it's a fact.
Like I said, it was a dark moment. However, Democrats have been in charge for 12 out of the past 16 years and have the support of billionaires owning the biggest content platforms. Recently, they used those platforms to the fullest extent to drive their political agenda with the general message being "Democrats are the only moral choice". He stirred up an insurrection but like I said it's not just about Trump but the 2-party system that makes this a democracy. I would repeat the second paragraph of my previous comment.
What am I supposed to think when I see a campaign ad like this? [1]
> It's been scary to see how Big Tech and the media presented Trump as a threat to democracy
Please explain how Project 2025 (written by the Heritage Foundation etc etc, not big tech / the media) is not a threat to democracy, specifically its sections on consolidating power in a single person (= autocracy) and dismantling various federal systems of checks and balances in favor of loyalist political appointees.
> It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
Truth Social was built specifically as a safe space for Republicans and their views. Musk did not make Twitter a bastion of free speech, not when using words that personally offend him get you banned.
> Truth Social was built specifically as a safe space for Republicans and their views
I have never heard of it. A niche social media site built specifically for expressing right-wing political views could never compete with Facebook, Instagram, Reddit.
Every time somebody wins, their supporters say it sends a clear message. You should consider that the message you believe is so clear that you've left it unsaid is demonstrably not clear.
I absolutely sympathize with individual reasons to vote Trump and don't automatically look down on Trump voters (immigration, for example). But, Trump himself and explicit "Trump supporters" (i.e. people who make it clear they support his general identity - negativity and all) 95% of the time don't leave any room for sympathy when I encounter them, online or in person, and they are extremely common. What the average liberal is shown (and I assume you care about the average person in each camp, since lauding the common man is a prominent value) is an unheard-of-in-their-lifetimes amount of verbal encouragement (with varying degrees of explicitness) for hatred of others, violence against others, imprisonment of others, and disrespecting of the law/constitution in the name of those things. It's not comparable with any past Democratic candidate (or Republican, for that matter).
On the personal scale, my wife and I don't express anything close to extremist positions, or any cheerleader-type love for Democrats, or any name-calling of conservatives, and yet we are called every slur that's popular with Trump supporters. And we're white, cis Americans. My wife, because she's so friendly when strangers talk to her, has been stalked by one Trump supporter and had another call her a slut (to another Trump supporter, not to her face). She's terrified of these people now. It's insane that they even state out loud their support for Trump in the short time we encounter them.
You can't expect humans presented with that to think, when that candidate wins, "Wow, I guess political issues X, Y, and Z are really important to those guys. Maybe I was too harsh on them." They're going to think, "Wow, those guys really are leaning in a fascist-y direction and have a big problem with evil people in their ranks. I'm scared for my country, community, and family." I don't think that's an extreme or unnecessarily provocative thing to admit.
I can't wait for four more years and beyond of hearing these same talking points over and over and over again. I could put up an argument here, but it's been done before and better, and frankly, I'm just so tired today.
Because people like you are often at the forefront of wider social movements. Stuff like healthcare, safety nets, worker empowerment… Your influence goes way beyond gender care or women's rights. Beyond their bigoted sensibilities they have an incentive to shut down many of the wider political views you may defend.
It's more likely that there is a small vocal pro-trans lobby, a small vocal anti-trans lobby, and almost everyone else who gives it no thought whatsoever.
I did say "or is just that willing to throw us to the wolves".
You can't pretend that we we haven't been forced into the political eye over past several years. The winning party has been extremely loud and extremely clear about their plans for us. I don't buy the ignorance argument anymore, not after three election cycles of this. If you voted for them, then you're okay with more of us dying in exchange for whatever you think you're getting out of the deal.
(Using the nonspecific "you" here—of course I don't know how the person I'm replying to voted.)
This is a little outside my bubble - what specifically are you worried about?
I have a couple acquaintances that are trans and they seem like normal happy people that aren't overtly oppressed. I'm under the impression that the state of trans rights is more or less equivalent to black rights, is that not the case?
I don't think we should try to draw any conclusions about the mental state or hopes and fears about people who we consider acquaintances. We just don't know them well enough, and they don't know us well enough to open up about the hard stuff.
republicans spent +$100 m on anti trans ads this cycle. it was a major talking point of the whole campaign. “gender reassignment surgeries happening in school”, etc.
It doesn't send me a clear message. Trump got fewer votes this time around than he did in 2020. And overall I read that 20 million fewer voters participated this year. The message I'm getting is apathy.
The prediction markets pretty closely tracked NYT's probability estimate, which seems like the best possible analysis of the available data (partial current results, complete past results, at the precinct level).
Running a primary is like checking in code to the build. You learn a lot of things you cant anticipate, without engaging with the real world.
For elections this includes all the things that people think about a candidate that they don’t feel comfortable saying out loud, or even operate subconsciously.
Maybe demonising major fraction of voters is not most effective tactic. Maybe you need to show that you actually did something for people in past term. Maybe you need to show that things that matter for many will get better. Say living conditions or cost of living.
I've been voting in the US since the 1990's. We've never had a presidential candidate that won and actually delivered on their promises, all of which have generally hovered around the idea that "things will be better this time." What makes you think this one will be any different?
People claiming economy was better under Trump's first presidency then under Biden / Kamela's recent presidency. E.g. people mentioning super high inflation.
There were other arguments, but it seems to me this is the major one.
Love him or hate him, it will be fascinating to see if the democratic institutions of the United States can endure this. He has made it very clear he wants to dismantle as much as he can, including term limits.
Time will tell if the US really is the greatest democracy and can withstand a wannabe dictator, or if he really can subvert it all. It’s going to be a wild four years, and I fear more wall building.
For someone who doesn't follow US politics that closely (yes, we exist), in what way has he made it clear that he wants to dismantle democratic institutions? Any concrete examples?
Those are only the crimes that have been committed and charged so far. Asking for and being granted immunity, retroactively, is pretty undemocratic. There are more crimes on their way.
He tried to lead an insurrection four years ago. Has stated that if elected, you won't have to vote again. Has called for removal of broadcast licenses for the press. Has said he'd be pleased if the press were murdered.
This is exactly what Elon was talking about how so many people still believe the multitude of hoaxes which have been thoroughly and objectively disproved. It’s as if people were OK with just going with the original drive-by media headline and never looking into the details or following up.
The "you won't have to vote again" was clearly him saying that he didn't care if the people vote again, because it won't benefit him.
He didn't say that he'd be pleased if the press was murdered, in those words. Though I agree that what he said was awful.
This is the thing about Trump. He says things that are dumb or incendiary, then his opponents make it sound 100x. Then people who aren't terminally online see it and think, "is that all there is?" and it makes them think that he's not that bad, ignoring the actual bad things he's saying.
>He tried to lead an insurrection four years ago. Has stated that if elected, you won't have to vote again. Has called for removal of broadcast licenses for the press. Has said he'd be pleased if the press were murdered.
The rhetoric and lies you've repeatedly said about Trump is exactly the reason your party was so soundly rejected in the landslide electoral college, the popular vote, the senate, and the house. Your lies and hoaxes don't work anymore.
None really. He’s pissed about his court cases and wants to investigate or appoint new judges. People that believe in the dictator narrative don’t appreciate the limits of the Executive branch.
Every executive order can get erased wholesale by the next President, and Trump only has 4 years.
I don’t know, I guess? If you want to, you can hold just about any president under some criminal wrong doing. For whatever reason (certainly not political) we really needed to go after his overvaluing of real estate, and asking of recounts in a close election (why would he ever think a recount is worth it, it’s not like he could win the popular vote and all swing states). In retrospect, one could actually now make the argument that his hunch was right in questioning such a narrow election with an unprecedented voting pattern (Covid era mail in, it was quite new). I do sit here in awe and find myself saying “hmm, maybe he did have 25,000 votes somewhere this whole time, sure as hell found them tonight”. Makes you wonder.
He’s gonna do his tit for tat because he’s a simple man, not a great one, and certainly not an epic dictator.
I’m not defending him, I just think the grand dictator spin has always been nutty.
He could try to do something like Putin and extend the limit of 2 terms (just to keep America Great a bit more)and later declare himself dictator for life like Xi Jinping. You could look at Hitler as example how to become absolute dictator.
“
news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!
On the positive side, Americans are nowhere near as politically apathetic as Russians are, nor have they grown up under a single-party rule their whole loves, as the Chinese have.
Not saying that this won't stop MAGA from trying - but at least there's a cultural element to this, that will stop the American people from just folding over and accepting dictatorship.
And they'll do ... what? Keep watching football, scroll their phones? Pick up a burrito at Chipotle? The new Russian model of disaffection can (and is) working just fine in the US.
In 2020, he told his then vice president Mike Pence not to certify the electoral vote count which gave Joe Biden the victory in the presidential race. Pence ignored this order. Had he not done so, it would have meant a constitutional crisis at the very least.
What he has actually been mroe explicit about wanting to dismantle (and what his faction has made considerable progress dismantling in his favor already) is not as much “democratic institutions” as “the rule of law”, though his most dramatic failed attempt to dismantle that was also directed at democratic institutions (the set of schemes including the false electors gambit, attempte to get the VP to reject proper electoral votes, and instigating the mob attack on the capitol when it was clear the VP would not do so.)
So this guy supposedly found a loophole in the Constitution that would facilitate a legal transformation of the US into a dictatorship, and talked to Einstein about it, but the specific loophole/concern has never actually been published?
Sounds like clickbait was already alive and well in the 1940's.
Depression as Gödel did suffer from and developed massive anxiety after the murder of Moritz Schlick, deserves a little more respect and above all help. Calling him "completely mental" doesn't help at all.
It's had a good run to date, perhaps even longer than expected.
and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
~ Benjamin Franklin, Closing Speech at the Constitutional Convention (1787)
I think when they say USA is the greatest democracy they re speaking of its size, land size.
It's always been a kind of mix between an oligarchy and democracy, just look at the 2 party voting system, extreme wealth required to candidate and the lobbies expenditures.
That's very close to the antiquity democracy, they just need to remove woman right to vote (next one after abortion).
At least with trump we will have a good laugh once again.
The things he says he wants to dismantle are bloated executive-branch bureaucracies. If he actually manages to do it (which he didn't during his first term), it would be traumatic for a lot of federal employees, but not exactly the death of democracy.
If he removed licenses from media companies that were critical of him, there would be approximately 0 media companies, and yet he's on track to win. One of the biggest takeaways from this election is that the populace largely doesn't trust the media.
Nobody cares about the free press, their content is, for the most part, garbage.
I think this election has signalled the death of the mainstream media, and the rise of independent media.
I find this absolutely wonderful.
False. Did you see what CBS did to the Harris interview? That behavior is explicitly what he was talking about. CBS edited an interview under the guise of their news department to switch answers to questions with other answers. It wasn’t that CBS was critical of Trump, it’s that they engaged in outright fraud using publicly licensed airwaves. That’s against FCC rules. What CBS did wasn’t disinformation — it was fraud.
Perhaps a sanity check at those media companies would help. They've been broadcasting propaganda non-stop and you've witnessed a colony collapse just today.
He literally said that. He said that if he wins, these are the last elections. He said that he wants to remove license to media that are critical of him. Trump said quite a lot. All it takes is to listen to what he is saying.
And the other thing to listen to what his primary voters - conservative evangelical Christians were saying they want for years. It is literally ridiculous how these people are saying exactly what they want, then they literally do what they said they will do, again and again. But somehow, I am supposed to assume they don't mean it, this time for a change.
@mbg721, you seem to be willfully ignorant of anything this man has said and the dangers everyone is talking about. You seem to be completely missing any ideas on his policy and the changes he wants to being to the government and the democratic process.
Please stop commenting "Where?", "What?", "How?" to everyone in the comments here. They do not add any value to the conversation.
I don't see any clear articulation of the dangers, other than that he's a convicted criminal, which I argue is for purely political reasons. Republican candidates have been labeled "HITLER 2" since Goldwater. I'm not cheerleading, but rather am trying to make policy arguments that add as much value as possible.
Can you explain why his conviction is relevant? As it stands, the facts are that it was for hush-money paid to Stormy Daniels, but it's clearly viewed as political by voters. I would agree that it was a grave matter if his felony were an unrelated murder or something, but that's not the situation, and again, voters are not stupid.
According to Snopes[0] he claims he was urging Christians specifically (who don't usually vote in high numbers) to vote "just this time", then they wouldn't have to vote anymore for four more years, or something (which they wouldn't anyway...)
He was definitely addressing Christians (he repeats it several times) but at the end of the video he says "[...] we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote", which does sound a bit suspect to me, even in context and taking into account the fact that he's often loose with his choice of words and phrasing.
Classic example of how the media and the uninformed combine to take him out of context / in bad faith.
The absolutely true fact is that that statement had nothing, even so much as a hint of a dog whistle, to do with that you’re saying. Like not even a shred.
He was speaking to a populace that doesn’t typically vote. So he’s saying that they can just vote this one election, because it’s important for them to for their own good. Then, he’s saying “just this once” because, again, they typically don’t vote. And again - after that he says “I’ll fix it so good you won’t have to again” - this is in reference to him fixing the government so well that they won’t need to vote again since it will be so well-functioning.
By the way, this was my take originally, on first listen. It was reinforced further my listening to it again. It’s completely clearly the true take, and I think if you have trouble accepting that it’s because you’re disturbingly mislead by bias, probably not your own fault entirely, but undeniably so.
I agree that he probably wasn't talking about getting rid of voting altogether, but I'm still not sure on the logic of him getting the government into such good shape that Christians wouldn't need to vote anymore -- surely it would still be possible for the populace to vote in a terrible government that would undo all his improvements after his 4 years? But yeah, I suppose he could simply be saying that with his improvements, things would be stabilised and the stakes wouldn't be so high for the next election.
How does him addressing it to Christians makes anything better? Like, yes, hardcore Christians are his fans, because they want to get rid of abortions, liberals and generally resent anyone but themselves.
The fact that Christians generally don't like to vote (which I wasn't aware of until just now) is relevant to the question of why he said "we'll fix it so good, you won't have to vote".
Christians do vote and see voting as a way to push for the legal restrictions they want. Them not having to vote anymore, because the rest of us cant get abortion, anticonception whatever else allowed through political process anymore is literally definition of "going away with democracy".
Which is actual political goal of radical evangelical christians, if you actually read what they write and listen what they say. It is not about them being allowed to be lazy, it is about them successfully creating religious state.
Your link entirely agrees with the statement that Trump disbanded the pandemic response team. What it calls false is that the members were fired from government completely instead of shuffled around into other non pandemic related departments.
So yes, that one. Did you actually read your link? Or did you get duped by the headline?
> Based on our research, the claim that President Trump fired the "entire" pandemic response team is PARTLY FALSE. The Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was disbanded under Trump's then-national security adviser John Bolton. But Trump didn't fire its members. Some resigned, and others moved to different units on the National Security Council.
USA's clear separation of powers is a liability in this case. In parliamentary system, where executive and legislative branches are not that well separated, if the executive branch misbehave, a simple vote from the parliament can disband the government. In USA, the impeachment process is lengthy and hard to apply.
In a typical British parliamentary system, the executive also has majority in Parliament. If the executive doesn’t have parliament, they lose the executive.
‘Impeachment’ in Parliament systems only works when MPs are willing to think for themselves.
> If the executive doesn’t have parliament, they lose the executive.
Not automatically. A minority government of course more at risk of losing the confidence of parliament but it's also a powerful incentive for such a government that want to survive to use cooperation and compromise with the opposition.
"and I fear more wall building." - more wall building was instigated under Biden, this is practical reality rearing it's head not the political left/right.
Lina Khan has been fantastic imo, even for tech. I think she forces companies to compete where we actually want competition, and not let us rely on insane levels of lock in
Yeah. Tech employees and tech companies themselves are consumers of other tech. Lina Khan was what we needed for a long time, and it's a bad thing for everyone that she will be unable to finish what she started.
Her strategy denies liquidity in the startup ecosystem. The very thing that enabled sillicon valley to become what it is. Generations of founders moving on and create new companies in new markets.
It'll be interesting to see what this will mean for European dependence on US tech companies. I'm not personally against companies like Microsoft as such, in fact I think they are one of the better IT business partners for non-tech Enterprise. Often what they sell is vastly underestimated by their critics within the EU, not that I disagree with the problematic nature of depending on foreign tech companies either. With the proposed deregulation of US tech and their "freeing", however, I wonder if a lot of organisations will be capable of continuing using US tech services or it'll move in the direction of how Chinese (and other) services aren't legally available for a lot of things.
I work for a European company and we already have strict rules about what data we’re allowed to remit into the US. Typically we’re only allowed to use cloud products hosted within UK + EU. It’s actually causing problems for us now with some of the generative AI stuff since the Azure offering doesn’t match fully the APIs of OpenAI for e.g.
It's similar for us. Since I work in the energy industry we're required to have plans for how to exit Microsoft if the EU deems it too dangerous for too much of the energy industry to be reliant on Microsoft. Which is part of why I worry, because we honestly can't. We can leave Azure, but we can't easily leave the 365 platform. By easily I mean that we may not survive as a company if we have to do it. It can obviously be done, we just don't have the resources required to do it.
I'm genuinely curious to hear why it would be so hard to leave the Office 365 platform, to the point that it could mean have to shut down the company. I know it isn't something that can be done overnight, but this is on a whole different level than what I assumed the case to be. To make my question more concrete, let's say the EU gives you two years to move away from Office 365, why would this jeopardize your company?
Most corpos and banks are basically built on Excel, Outlook, Teams, Sharepoint, etc.
If you pluck that out it completely freezes 50%+ of their operations, people really don't get how much stuff in modern companies is reliant on MS stuff (and thus why they are one of the richest companies on the globe)
In some cases I would say yes if there was a hard limit (even few years) to migrate. Again, most people that didn't work in many really big corpos and banks don't comprehend how reliant those businesses are on the MS office stack.
One very mundane reason a company I had worked for switched to Office365, was that emails from our own domain would often end up in the spam filter.
It can cost a lot when that happens.
I see this being a problem in the current situation, where most businesses use either Google or Microsoft for their emails. But in the case of an EU-wide change, I think the situation would be different. Plus, there are other providers that could be used that aren't blocked by MS' and Google's spam filters.
yeah, the real selling point of the google mail is that they have the power to just remove mail from other providers. Or the risk of removing is enough motivation of using gmail only. And as a major mail provider, they could change the ways we handle mail (to make it more reliable), they just choose not to.
Moving away from that would be a massive change management undertaking, but it's not the "Office" part which is our primary challenge. To be fair, I'm not sure we could actually survive the change management required to leave the Office and Windows part, as it would be completely unfamiliar territory for like 95% of our employees, but the collective we at least think that we can. We have quite a lot of Business Central 365 instances, the realistic alternative to those would be Excel (but not Excel). SharePoint is also a semi-massive part of our business as it's basically our "Document Warehouse".
I didn't know about business central, a quick Google search tells me it's an ERP. There are alternatives, but migrating an ERP is definitely more problematic than changing document storage and the applications you use to read and write documents. But if it's an ERP, I wouldn't say an electronic sheet like Excel would be an alternative. Or am I missing something?
They just mean that they would have to do real work and not just sit on their ass goofing off on the internet all day. Real work is something the last few generations are "allergic" to, it gives them the "ick". They somehow got it into their head that doing work is bad and that you should only rely on other peoples work, I blame Gates and public education.
I don't agree with this view. Saying that new generations are lazy compared to the previous ones is a complain as old as humanity itself, there are ancient writers that made the same complains centuries ago. Either you know their situation and you can provide some more detailed argument, or you are just assuming things you don't know.
Which is a nonsensical policy of course, since the US made clear in the past that regardless of where the server is located, US companies have to give access to data. See the CLOUD act.
My experience is that most companies in Europe just don‘t care about data privacy and continue to use whatever Microsoft sells them. Vendor-Lockin is a huge issue.
European wise I think we're really failing to build significant homegrown tech companies. I'm not sure of the exact reason although I've heard that startup support it low and too much regulation / diversity of regulation are issues.
Yeah, I agree. However, I can blame them on making things worse when I specifically elected them to make things better. Instead of solving Germany's issues, they are infighting and spending money on social programs and on illegal migrants. Next year, every single tax, healthcare, and social security rate is going up.
Furthermore, the Greens are blocking real progress in the name of NIMBY-ism. The current government is actively killing markets by introducing harmful policies.
There is just no upside to founding your tech startup in the EU. You'll just be at a disadvantage. And as long as we have a unified US/EU market, this is not something that can be fixed. This has always been the downside of any kind of trade agreement that opened up the markets to foreign competition. Typically, the two parties pick winners and losers. Europeans export cheese and wine and Americans export Google and Facebook.
Diversity of regulation and different languages/cultures. The US is a single, huge market with a largely shared culture and the same language. By contrast, an app that takes off in Germany has no guarantee of doing so in Italy or Slovakia.
America is a single massive low-regulation market. And a wealthy one. Tech products require high fixed cost to write the code/build the product, but then low ongoing cost to provide a service. Less regulation means lower complexity in building a product. A big market without a lot of regulation is a great way to amortize the high cost across a lot of people, while a wealthy market can support a lot of products. And of course a lot of investor cash to push around. Even using a single language and having mostly overlapping customs means that one product works for millions of people.
There are plenty of European customs and views that make developing these companies unpopular (eg data collection and privacy) but the single-massive-market is the economic reason why the US is so powerful.
That's not the only reason in my opinion. It's way easier for European graduates to find a job and cruise on to retirement. The govt takes care of them for life and so the do or die attitude needed to start a company just isn't there in most countries. This is a consequence of the welfare state most of Europe has become.
I see this as oversimplification. US Tech faces hard regulations too (fintech, healthcare etc...). Also Regulation is not that big of a bump in EU. GDPR simplified rules across 27 different national laws and forced new innovations in privacy.
Also Spotify, SAP, Adyen all started in small markets, as counterexamples.
The main reasons why USA is ahead I think are the historical advantages (internet, personal computer), the network effects created by the historical advantages and the VC ecosystem. Also the culture for risk tolerance.
Also USA gets best of the talent from entire world, USA is almost always the first choice. But rest of the world gets what's behind mostly. So a lot bigger talent pool.
Overregulation and taxation is the major issue. I can only speak for Germany. Low worker rights in the US make for healthy companies that can grow and shrink as needed. You can't just fire people in Germany, even though you pay horrendous amouns for social security.
It's quite simple actually:
- many different regulatory policies to follow in order to sell accross the EU
- different languages / culture
- risk averse culture in investments and business (Americans go all-in and do not fear to fail fast)
- lot of lobbying from already established compagnies (which are often state-backed which doesn't help)
- no start-up culture basically. Contrary to the US, regulatory entities expect the same from a 10 000 people org and a 15 people start-up. It completely kills most startups.
In the end all these regulations allow Europeans to have access to "safe" products but it kills most of our innovations in favor of the US or China.
Absolutely undeniable. I wish those 'not liking' your comment would say why they do not agree.
I'm not innocent of knee-jerk down-voting but I would like to cure myself of the habit. I wonder to what extent the extreme political and cultural polarization that prevails in the West results from a general reluctance on the part of adherents to engage in debate. At least that's my impression.
The anti-establishment movements in EU are also predominantly anti-US, leftists are often anti-US too.
I got the impression of many Americans online believing that Europeans are tech and progress loving, bureaucracy hating people under tyranny of EU which is a building in Brussels that churns rules and regulations.
However that's not true, most Europeans love the big government hate new tech and prefer the slow and worry free life over the daily hustling.
If Trump follows up with its promises, I only imagine EU parting with US on more stuff. I also see many Americans apparently believing that EU is mostly museums and there's no technology. Also not true, EU is made of countries that are traditionally tool-makers and Europeans are anti-tech and anti-change only when it comes to adoption of tech into their daily lives, not when creating tools and machines. ASML is not a coincidence, all kind of precision tooling and machinery is the bread and butter of European industry.
So, if EU parts with US, I imagine that American stuff will be quickly replaced with European made stuff. The dominance of American tech in the daily lives is mostly due to network effect, a forced change will result in what resulted in Russia and China: local alternatives.
Europe is worse off than the US only in Energy and demographics. Two massive issues but there are no quick-fixes for those, so they are European realities with or without the US.
> I imagine that American stuff will be quickly replaced with European made stuff.
I am in the process of (very slowly) decluttering my life. One weird observation that I had, is that I have very few hardware from the USA, even when I think liberally about "from" as designed and not just manufactured. I found a (crappy) HP printer, (wonderful) Apple hardware and two Zippos. There may be more, but it's not obvious labelled.
Software and some online services on the other hand are different.
From this European perspective the USA is very much a service export and not a stuff export economy.
I agree. The software is also possible to replace if forced.
US invested huge piles of money on the computer age and they cornered the web and software markets and now extracting grotesque profits from it mostly because its a winner takes it all industry. It's not that Europeans don't know how to write software, it's that it doesn't make business sense to go after the established American companies. Linux is invented in Europe, just as the Web but the American entrepreneurs were those who turned these technologies into great businesses. If forced by blocking, it wouldn't take much time to create European alternatives as the hard work of discovering what works and what doesn't is already established. In fact, during the internet age there were many European alternatives for most of it, there's still local alternatives to many.
Take Uber for example, it's not anything special. In places where it's banned, local entrepreneurs quickly made local alternatives.
There's of course industrial software, gaming etc and that's also plenty in EU. It wouldn't take much time to replace everything.
There are plenty of examples from the last 10-20 years where embargoes simply propelled local alternatives even in the most improvised countries.
Americans will have to be stupid to ban software to EU, so it will have to be the EU who bans American software and that probably wouldn't happen until things get really bad.
The first time Trump was elected was a shock, but now we understand. It wasn't a simple mistake.
I have only few customers who use Google Workspace for their emails and only one who uses Dropbox for files. Initially (about 2002) companies moved away from U.S.-based cloud services. However, now I have an increasing number of customers who want to cancel cloud services entirely.
But for my customers, there is no alternative to Windows.
I'm more curious about the NYT tech union strike. They went forward with the strike and.. it doesn't appear anything bad happened. That might completely undermine the union's arguments...
This election has been a testament to the complete and utter obliviousness of the American voter, as far as economics goes.
All polls have indicated that economy and inflation was the number 1 issue that voters on the right cared about, and yet they haven't flinched at the proposals that Trump have laid out. Musk even said it in clear language, that there will be "austerity" moving forward.
The greatest grift in modern times - and the people that stood most to lose walked straight into it, cheering.
I guess the only hope is that the economy is fine, and improving - which makes any radical changes much more visible and risky. If Trump and Musk want to set off the bomb and likely crater it, then they'll own that mess. But hopefully they'll just do nothing, and try to take credit for the trajectory they've inherited - for the sake of your average citizen.
Harris proposed peacetime price controls, an idea that hasn't been tried since Nixon, and for good reason. I don't think Democrats have the high ground on economics.
Let's see how the trade war of all trade wars will play out for average Joe down in Mississippi. All while social safety nets are disintegrating underneath his feet.
What's dangerous about this is not the plan itself, but that there won't be anyone to confront Trump about his half-baked, or downright disastrous plans.
Maybe? Democrats had the chance to propose something better, but they decided to prop up a geriatric puppet until they couldn't, and then were forced to prop up his widely unpopular VP. I'll take trade war over domestic goods shortages, which is what price caps inevitably create.
The economy isn't shit. The economy is booming. Job growth has been good, summer consumer spending was good. Real wage growth has outpaced inflation the past 18 months.
Inflation is going down. Interest rates are going down.
America came out of this victorious, compared to other countries that faced the exact same post-COVID woes.
The problem is that democrats couldn't convey this stronger. Republicans managed to spread the doom and gloom more than facts.
Now it's going to be trade wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, more crony capitalism. Trump is fixated with tariffs, because in his mind, deal-making comes down to strong-arming the other party. Trump seems to be oblivious of the soft power the US has wielded for decades. That's also about to get flushed down the toilet - all countries in the world are embracing for Trump-style "negotiations".
I know it is not good to engage in victim blaming...but maybe the voters do get what they deserve?
Perhaps the economy as a whole is doing great, but the facets that impact the individuals across the nation are not. Many/most people feel that they have less in their pocket AND their refrigerator at the end of the month than ever before.
What you call victim-blaming may be mixing up cause and effect. Voters aren't stupid. They hear "the economy is doing great!" but they see their grocery bills. Maybe the victims are just tired of being victims and voted accordingly?
Maybe another perspective on this is that Democrats were preaching to the upper arm of the K-shaped recovery that everything is fine with their bureaucracy in charge (because nobody actually cares about Biden or Kamala personally), and the people on the lower arm voted on "Hell no, it's not!" This was the Springfield, OH thing, where the media tried to laugh it off as a few racists claiming pet-eating, but a small town was truly stretched beyond its limits through illegal immigration.
The economy is great for about 20% of the population, maybe 30%. Take a drive down no-where town anywhere in the US and you'll see the economy doesn't work for most people. All of middle America (geographically) has been absolutely gutted by globalism, among other things.
Peter Santenello has a good YouTube channel where he goes around the country (and world) and interviews regular people. It will give you some insight on the economy for the remaining 70%.
I genuinely hope Trump's plan works to alleviate this but I don't think even rampant protectionism can put the cat back in the bag for the heyday of American manufacturing. I expect it to go about as well as it did for the Soviet's insular economy.
This is the attitude that leads to Democrats losing. People were not obvious.
Biden is wildly unpopular. People are extremely unhappy with his management of the economy, immigration, etc.
Democrats could have changed directions. Instead they doubled down on Biden. Harris said she would do nothing different. So people didn't vote for her. That's very logical.
That's not to say that Trump will do a good job or that his policies are better. They're worse and he's a crook. But voters everywhere made this sentiment clear for an entire year and were totally ignored by the Democratic party.
They tried to get a border deal, which was stopped / blocked at the behest of Trump.
The economy has been on a up-swing for a good year now, and things have improved all-over. People can't live under a rock and think that a global pandemic wasn't a huge part of this - most countries experienced the very same economic effects.
But, again, Trump laying out his disastrous tariff plans is the canary in the coalmine - that his voters either don't understand economics, or simply chose to live in a make-believe world where they imagine Trump will just "fix" things.
The border deal was a hail mary 3 years into a presidency. They should have done something about the border years earlier when voters started to complain about it if they wanted to.
It doesn't matter what some economist says the economy is doing. Most people are be unhappy with the economy. That's what matters. Democrats listened to economists instead of voters.
Of course Trump's votes don't understand economics. Why do you think overwhelmingly we see educated people now vote Democrats and non educated people vote for Trump?
Trust us some economist says we're doing a good job was a crappy message. This was an own goal.
Point still stands on the border deal. They wanted something, but through Trump, it was derailed - for no other reason that it was detrimental to his campaign.
Reagan had a plaque at the oval office that said: "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit"
And Truman had a plaque that said "The buck stops here". I don't buy these lame excuses.
Biden should have used executive orders to deal with the border. Just like Trump did. Biden didn't because he didn't care that voters were extremely upset about the border. Now we get to "enjoy" Trump again.
This European travels to the US all the time, having probably spent an average of 1-2 months or so there yearly over the past couple years.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
He's promising reindustrialisation to a bunch of the Midwest and less competition for jobs to a bunch of poorer people. It's sort of rational, even though I disagree.
He is not trustworthy with either facts or consistent opinions, so voting for him for something he's /said/ he would do is the stupidest thing anyone could do.
No, of course not. But my sample seems to be so starkly different from the election results that that in itself is puzzling. He's picking up a sizable fraction of the votes even in blue states, after all.
No, just a massive failure by the Democrats who decided too late to run Harris. Any candidate who won a party primary would have beaten Trump today. Harris lost because she wasn't popular enough with her own party's voters to win.
Trump will be older and weaker than Biden today in 2028.
JD Vance hopefully can 25th Amendment the Trump before senile behavior wrecks the office. But I'm worried that Trump stays in all 4 years and does irreparable harm.
25th Amendment powers have never been used before. So it's not clear how far Trump will degrade while still holding onto power.
You're not meeting the people hurt really bad by the system who stopped giving a shit, and a lot of people that vote for Trump had Harris/Waltz signs on their lawns but really want to pay less in taxes and don't like transgender people.
> I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
I don't know about the politics of your state, but in mine over half the ad campaign of the Republican senator who just won was focused on transgender issues. His losing Democratic opponent did not touch that issue.
> Or abortion
Statewide ballot measures aimed at abortion rights succeeded even in many states where Democrats lost.
> What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
I think the name-calling really hurt them.
Calling half the voting population bigots of some type just makes that half dig their heels in to give you a bloody nose.
If your main priorities, when running in a political race, does not match the main priorities of the voting masses, it's easier to change your main priorities than to change the main priorities of the voting masses.
For a long time now, the Dems have been trying to change the priorities of the voting masses instead of aligning with them.
They are so used to preaching at their voter base ("This is what a real man is, not what you think it is") that they forgot what the aim of running is - to win.
Dictator on day one in the land of the free with the biggest military of the world — but on the other hand the libs were really mad, so that was worth it, right?
> Good on the Dems for trying to change the world instead of accepting the hateful and unfair place it is.
You can't change the world by losing.
Their primary goal should have been to win. The primary way to do that is to (ugh) pander to the voters' will.
It's because they are so out of touch that we are seeing the result that we see. Politicians that are disconnected and disengaged from the voting masses deserve to lose.
No, they get a vote, obviously. You've focussed on the vote part of the quote when the important information was in the racism. It's racism that must be constantly pointed out, that people must be educated about, and racism should be rooted out when found. I'm not saying you support racism in any way, of course, I really don't think that. I just think you misunderstood what needs doing to prevent these unforced errors (Brexit was an unforced error of the UK government).
> It's racism that must be constantly pointed out, that people must be educated about, and racism should be rooted out when found.
As I pointed out in a different post, trying to shame people into silence doesn't magically change their vote.
Unfortunately, when you are going to call every Rep supporter a racist with no evidence other than who they voted for, they are going to stop answering your polls honestly.
Racists don't need shaming into silence. They need to understand what's wrong with their beliefs.
Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
> Racists don't need shaming into silence. They need to understand what's wrong with their beliefs.
They already know, they don't care, because that specific belief is not rooted in reason or rationality.
> Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
> Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
I somewhat agree with the first part[1], but vehemently disagree with the second: I don't think that eradicating racist thoughts will move the needle on who gets elected, as there are, IMO, simply too few racists around to influence an election.[2]
[1] IOW, I don't believe that education will change a racist's belief, but I do see value to society in eradicating discriminatory stereotypes and discriminatory actions, of which racism is merely one.
[2] There aren't even enough racists to form a party of their own, so I doubt that them moving from red to blue is going to be any difference from statistical noise.
I think the ultimate answer as an American is that policy simply does not matter. For reference, here's a couple conflicting data points:
* Voters approved measures that would protect abortion in their state (with the exception of Florida, which only got 58% out of the 60%) needed. Said voters did not consistently vote for Kamala Harris.
* Another set of voters thought Kamala Harris was too progressive, and had no opinion on Donald Trump
* But at the same time, in local elections democratic candidates generally sweeped the ballots
I think ultimately the presidency is just an election purely on the basis of 'vibes' and whatever is directly in front of you. It doesn't matter if you can achieve your promises nor do said promises even really matter. And people vibe more with the reality TV president because they've already forgotten 2016-2020. Maybe Trump directly crashing the economy will be the thing to snap people out of it, maybe not.
I've also spent plenty of time there over the years, and while most people I interacted with did seem perfectly fine, there were glimpses of something quite wrong.
A woman who worked at the hotel I was staying at had never visited the centre of the city the lived in, because she was afraid of being "knifed". This was Dayton, Ohio. Downtown Dayton is lovely.
A colleague who appeared reasonably intelligent and competent absolutely did not believe that Evolution occurred. I explained that this while this view might be common in the US - and it is - the rest of the world mostly considers this settled science.
Religion is absolutely far too influential a force in people's lives. This is decreasing, but it's still problematic I believe.
The Armed Forces are idolised. Airports have special lines for service personnel. You get to board early if you're in uniform. This is almost unique in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
Blowing some shit up in the grey zone (or even Kursk) is one thing - his state hasn’t been threatened in any real way (which is their nuke threshold policy).
However, lobbing western made (and make no mistake, western operated) weapons into their internationally recognized territory is an entirely different ballgame.
That’s a typical drive-by headline. Did you even read the article? Or the first hand sources? Putin never once threatened using nukes out of the blue like some kind of madman - only reinstated their pretty bog standard nuclear defense policy when asked about it. Context is important, don’t be an idiot.
It is not even as embarrassing as some people think.
Ukraine send well trained troops there while they were needed in the east. Now they are loosing the ground there but cant really pull out. While loosing trained soldiers as well.
That this kind of rhetoric completely devoid of historical knowledge and common sense is so widespread tells me so many people have a completely broken model of Putin's motivations. Unfortunately it is these same people that are pushing hard for escalation. It's strange to see people's opinions be so completely disconnected from reality while also being correlated to such a high degree.
No, the fact that Russia didn't use nukes in response to Kursk incursion says nothing about his willingness to use nukes when the security of the state is actually at risk. Nuclear weapons will change the complexion of this war in ways that neither side can fully predict. It is rational to avoid moving the war to an unpredictable stage when the current stage is manageable in your favor. Not every border skirmish is created equal. They do not all rationally warrant the use of nuclear weapons.
I don't agree it was reasonable that Ukraine couldn't strike airbases when it had the chance. Meanwhile it's Russia that is escalating: targeting civilians on a mass and individual scale, torturing and murdering POWs, using gas. They know there will only be condemnation and hand-wringing but no action.
He is not attacking them directly though, UK is pretty internally focused and won't really do much if the Ukraine operations expand and include to say other former soviet block countries.
In mainland Europe, France with La-Penne and Germany with AfD and now Sarah Wagenknecht[1] have far-right problems of their own and don't have political will for anti Russia stance so they won't be able do much either, rest of Europe are minor players or far-right governments like in Hungary under Orbàn.
[1] I refuse to call her party far left, now matter how she is described in media.
I guess that's the best case scenario right now. The worst case scenario is Trump pulling out of NATO completely, and (effectively or officially) allying with Russia.
I really hope I'm just not seeing all the pieces, and that such option is not even remotely viable, but it would be bad.
I'm quite sure the US will see a military coup, in the event that Trump tries to ally with Russia and become enemies with NATO countries. I mean, I don't think it is possible for Trump to pull out of NATO. Worst case is he simply decides to shut off all funding.
Politicians are short term, military officers are life-long and ideological.
To be clear, from American perspective - surely. I'm not saying that in a positive manner or negative, just as a statement of fact. Ultimately besides aliances USA has no real need to care about Europe.
And from a local perspective - a grumpy neighbour that helped kickstart World War II, that enslaved my entire region for ages and raped their way through.
The real enemy is trying to trespass your frontiers with Belarus. That's where we (Polish or Europeans like me) should focus. Platforma is a step in the wrong direction. The rest is just a distraction; fear makes the wolf bigger than it really is.
The world's real problems are the climate crisis and global instability and inequality which lead to mass migration. I haven't really heard anything convincing from Trump on how he plans to tackle these (I don't mean the migration itself, but how the reasons for it might be eliminated).
> global instability and inequality which lead to mass migration
I'm not risking much by saying that the world was never as equal or stable. People migrate more now because they can (thanks to tech advances and permissive politics). Before, it was an order of magnitude harder.
I know globalization is inevitable. Where people disagree is on the rate of change: let's speed it up (progressives) or slow it down (conservatives). The average people - the ones who are paying the bill - want to slow it down. Let's just accept it.
> The EU will most likely move towards developing a nuclear force of their own (as opposed to France only (the UK no longer being a member of the EU)).
The EU has no army. NATO (which UK is part of) is still in effect and it is not going to change.
Trump has pushed to extricate the US from NATO, and as De Niro said in Ronin; "if there's doubt then there is no doubt".
If you want security can you really rely on someone who may or may not have your back, especially if they have a policy of transactionalism?
So, the EU needs to look to their own security, and the ultimate deterrence is nuclear weapons. And if the EU doesn't take up the mantle then the Poles will definitely do it, and probably Sweden, and possibly Finland / Germany. And so the EU needs to figure out if they are happy with a fragmented nuclear policy or not.
Russia denied there was going to be an invasion of Ukraine even the day before it started.
In 2014, nothing was going to threaten the UK's membership of the EU.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall was going to stay put for another 50-100 years.
In 1938, the UK Prime Minister waved paper promising peace in our time.
Nobody saw the Great Depression coming in January 1929.
The mesh of treaties including the Triple Entente was supposed to prevent WW1.
The southern states were convinced they had both legal right to secede and the economic support and military power that the north wouldn't try to keep them.
The British were convinced that democracy was a stupid idea and that the 13 colonies would come crawling back when they realised they needed some proper aristocrats to govern.
The world doesn't much care about things like this, pro or con.
Sadly, it is time for the EU to develop its own coordinated army. I think in the long term it will be better if we are able to have our own geopolitical interests, instead of having to follow the USA in everything because they are our bodyguard.
Here's a European perspective that is somewhat pro-Trump, surprising as it may sound. I am Dutch and if someone would come along and promise the following:
"We're gonna lower your taxes so you have more money to spend"
"We're gonna take a sledge hammer to bloated policies so everything will run smoothly. Then we will build a million houses per year"
I would very much consider voting for that person. That said, Trump is a madman, he lies all the time, is a danger to institutions etc. At the same time, I am so disgruntled by the current system and by not a single politician tackling or even speaking about relevant issues that I am easily swayed.
I think this is highly relatable, especially in the Netherlands where the housing situation is beyond bonkers. The protest vote is strong and/or gaining strength in many countries across the world to reflect this fact: the quality of life for the average person has either stagnated or fallen in many places, and that's a very strong rally point on election day.
Yeah but whose fault is that? A vote for the right is a vote for the rich, the very same that hovered up and concentrated all the newly gained wealth because any taxation has been dropped or they found ways to avoid paying taxes altogether, thus preventing the redistribution of generated wealth.
But this is the doublethink that the right-wing is somehow able to pull off. They aren't promising that people will be better off, that wealth will be distributed. Instead they're pointing at even poorer people like immigrants and saying "they're taking your jobs".
Yeah the quality of life for the average person is stagnating, but that's down to politicians and the rich, not to whatever boogeyman they're pushing.
I think this misses the point entirely. It's not about blame, or promises of this or that, it's about hope for change. Whether that will be a positive change or not remains to be seen, but if your life is shit, any change can feel better than no change, because at least there's hope that it might be better.
Watch TV, drink diet cokes, eat hamburgers, rage at minorities, foment insurrections, raise taxes, and just generally crap all over the place? Those are the actions I saw.
Turn the supreme court partisan and overturn principles that had been valid for decades.
I remember an interview at a large evangelical event about how they could vote for the decidedly un-Christian liar, fraudster, etc.. Their answer was that a "deal with the devil" is okay as long he delivers on supreme court justices. That was their literal phrasing.
And this is the problem we have with democracy, and why it's doomed to, eventually, die. People tend to believe words. I guess it fine when words are the only thing you can rely on, but in this case, we have history and past performance. And as someone who is not that interested in US politics, from my understanding, his past performance is terrible by all measures.
But I guess this is something that will never change. The older I become, the more apparently I see that it does not matter WHAT you do, it only matters how you SPEAK about what you (will) do, whether it be in politics or in a corporate environment. I'm not the kind of person who regrets things in life, but if I could travel back in time and give my younger self one advice, it would be "focus on becoming a great orator", as this opens any door regardless of the level of experience.
Edit: to clarify, in order to not reply to each comment individually, I might have used the word "terrible" harshly. The thing with politics is that as a complete outsider to the US, I don't have a reliable way to know what policies were proposed and what were adopted/rejected, nor the long term effect of them on the country. The only thing I can rely on, is information available online. His track record is not covered in a good light online.
Sure, you can say that information online is skewed in one direction, but this is true to an insider, as some comments have demonstrated. The results of a particular policy and its application are subjective rather than objective. My entire premise was to demonstrate that actions are meaningless in the eye of the public.
Theoretically, this means that you get a "get out of jail" card no matter what you do in life, as longs as you can articulate your words properly.
> his past performance is terrible by all measures.
Which was partially a good thing, since he failed to dismantle Obamacare or build a wall at the Mexican border, even though those were two very explicit campaign promises.
Who knows what he'll do or not do this time around.
We do know what he will do. It’s pretty much guaranteed he will pick even more Supreme Court justices, making it even more right wing than it currently is. That will have a lasting multi-decades impact. He will nominate more federal judges. He will cancel any investigation in his own crimes.
Remember that Obamacare was saved by a single vote from McCain, who is now dead.
Abraham accords. Isis. Tax cuts. Booming economy of 2018-2020. Remain in Mexico. Far lower illegal immigration. People remember the actions too.
“From my understanding, his past performance was terrible too”
Depends on what you focus on. If you listen to soundbites it sounds like a circus. There’s a lot of drama displacing and stepping on toes of the entrenched players in the system.
Trump raised taxes on the middle class. The economy was substantially worse under Trump - he spoiled the opportunity Obama gave him. He killed a lot of people with his COVID response. Our debt and deficits spiked under Trump as he drained tax dollars into the wealthy’s pockets.
It’s not so much that people remember the actions, it’s that they remember the right’s white washing of those actions.
Isis was already losing in 2017 after they lost Raqqa and Mosul. Trump played no part in it.
> Tax cuts
America is already stacked with an insane deficit and debts. Tax cuts don't see like a good thing in that situation.
> Booming economy
Yes, the economy he inherited from Obama and perpetuated by spending ever more public money and increasing the deficit.
> Remain in Mexico
This only concerns 35k people which is a laughable amount.
> Far lower illegal immigrantion
Not if you compare to the end of Bidens term.
We're also still waiting for that wall to happen. Another lie of course.
Republicans also voted against a bi-partisan bill to reduce immigration.
> If you listen to soundbites it sound like a circus
Fucking a pornstar while you're wife is at home with your newly born kid that might also play a role. But somehow the party of the nuclear family doesn't see a problem with that.
> his past performance is terrible by all measures.
What was terrible for you? He didn't start new wars, he did the abraham accords. He put in a policy of -2 regulations for every new regulation. He was much better on spending UP UNTIL COVID than Biden was.
What was so bad? He might speak like a crazy person, but his policies weren't that bad.
His policies were terrible. He broke off several key international treaties. He instituted the family separation policy. He broke down federal institutions that could have helped fight COVID.
In what way was he better on spending? He managed to increase the deficit every single year, even before COVID.
> He might speak like a crazy person.
He does speak like a crazy person. He advocates for crazy policies. People from his administration are crazy people and advocate for crazy policies.
This is what the election is teaching me: people don't care a lot about what you do, they care much more about what you say. You just have to make people feel good.
Yeah but you're speaking as someone who actually pays taxes (I presume) and feels like you're not getting any benefits from it. But when you (or I) were growing up and enjoying an education paid for by the government, or when you lose your job, or when you retire, or when you need a doctor / the hospital, etc, you'll be grateful that there is a system in place to keep it affordable.
But this is another example of a string of selfishness in modern politics; it's a "got mine, fuck you" line of thinking. Whereas post-WW2 there was much more of a cooperative mindset, collective national or european-wide trauma, and a drive to cooperate to help each other out, regardless of their employment status. But WW2 has been forgotten and both Europe and the US are shifting back to the right-wing, because there's immigrants after your jobs, benefits and women apparently.
He actually promised the opposite of this last time, because suburbanites don't want any new housing built. I haven't checked what he said this time around.
I do think catering to nimbys was the democrat’s original sin in some respects. Housing unaffordability makes everything else worse and blue areas are especially bad.
Especially in CA where the Reagan Tax Revolt lives on in CA Prop 13, where boomers sitting on $2m+ properties that they bought in 1978 for $40k pay <$1k/year in prop taxes while their new neighbors pay $40k/yr in addition to their 8% mortgage while the boomers vote down any new housing developments or zoning changes.
“ I wanna do infrastructure. I wanna do it more than you want to do it. I’d be really good at that, that’s what I do.”
And then his party reminded him that that is specifically NOT what they do. They like to let the private sector handle everything, because that’s who funds them and how they get rich too.
Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ? I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
I just did. Unfortunately I did not learn much. The first few letters were pro-Trump, but with for me unconvincing reasoning, I think OP asked for something better - and I read it because I too wanted to hear something with more substance. Most letters were even against Trump.
Most pro Trump arguments seem to be some vague statements about freedom of speech and "weaponizing of the Justice Department", which I find unconvincing given the things Trump said several times during the last few months, indicating he would do exactly that and worse.
The letters are as vague as this example:
> My concern is that Ms Harris will at a minimum continue the leftist direction of America that has been pursued, or at least tolerated, by Joe Biden. Not to mention the violation of basic constitutional rights that the president tried to introduce with his vaccine mandate during the pandemic.
or
> Mr Trump will cut bureaucracy and regulations to unleash creativity and productivity in the American economy, especially manufacturing. Ms Harris will inflict taxes and spending that will spur higher deficits and inflation.
or
> You overlooked the unacceptable risks posed by the Democratic Party and Vice-President Harris. These include support for censorship, political correctness, selective prosecution and soft totalitarianism. The Republicans spend more, impose tariffs, and obsess on immigration whereas the Democrats tax more, regulate more and censor. Neither party confronts the hard choices required to limit monetary expansion, deficits and entitlements that gnaw at the dollar. I choose the Republicans because I value freedom of speech and oppose the totalitarianism implied in weaponising the Justice Department.
and that's most of the pro-Trump statements already.
I have no doubt the arguments exist, and those I wanted to hear, because I too share OPs question.
If you think there are plenty of places out there to get a wedding cake or a gender transition cake, and people should just leave people alone whom they disagree with, who do you vote for?
Wrong? I made no such statement! I was talking about the quality of the argument, not about the direction.
I'm not "dismissing" anything either. I have no opinion on Trump vs. Harris, as strange as that sounds to those with strong believes.
I merely observe that OP asked for arguments, and that link points to opinion letters that don't even attempt to make one. Which is fine for them - this is about this sub-thread's context. OP asked for arguments and the link does not provide them, this is not a dismissal of whatever is going on in that linked page itself, only whether it serves to satisfy OPs request here.
You know, nothing gives me competence in my incompetence than seeing just how fucking successful Trump and Elon have been despite their lack of competence
You especially see it if you pay attention to framing. On every mainstream platform, social issues are always first and foremost framed as "how can we afford this expensive social program!?!". It's always business friendly and worker hostile.
I swear that has been something that, as an European person, left me quite speechless. We've heard a lot about Biden mental situation, but nothing about the other guy struggling as well
He's nowhere near as bad as Biden. The media downplayed Biden's senility until the disastrous debate made it impossible. Americans got to see both candidates talk without a teleprompter for a couple hours, and Trump was able to handle it easily, while Biden exhibited clear signs of mental decline.
Trump has a rambling oratory style, but that is more of a stylistic affection.
The question isn't if he's better or worse than Biden, the question is if he's well enough for the presidency. And he's shown very clear signs of mental decline the last months.
Neither Trump nor Biden should have been chosen as candidates, yet all the focus has been on Biden.
Musk, Bezos and Murdoch are three that come to mind. Two are legacy media. Between Fox and Washington Post that surely is not even half of the 'mainstream media'. What other oligarchs are there that I'm overlooking?
- Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook/Instagram (issued the statements in late Aug 2024 about Biden administration pressuring about censoring Covid-related info)
- Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times/San Diego Union Tribune, and other newspapers, LA Lakers, billionaire biotech person
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, owner of Time magazine
- Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns The Atlantic Monthly
- Masayoshi Son, Softbank CEO, USA Today/Gannet media group owned by New Media Investment Group via Fortress Investment group via Softbank
[edit - added below]
- Michael Bloomberg (former mayor of New York city) owns Bloomberg
- Sumner Redstone owns Paramount/Viacom/CBS
- Thomson family (Canada) owns Thomson Reuters via Woodbridge Company
- Brain L. Roberts, CEO Comcast, son of company founder, NBCUniversal, Sky Group, owned via 33% controlling supershares
- Donald Newhouse, son of company founder, Conde Nast (New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue), newspapers, controlling stake in Discovery Comms.
- John Malone, former CEO of TCI cable, largest shareholder of Liberty Media, et al.
You mean the same majority of the major media outlets of all types that has been consistently hostile to Trump for many years?
If it's the oligarchs in the media who were a factor in this second victory, then it was through one truly spectacular mass-scale reverse psychology of getting exactly the opposite of the narrative they almost consistently pushed. That would be one very interesting story if it were at all true.
More realistically: to a very big (and apparently growing) swathe of the American voting public, the kind of shit that mattered most was what much of the media and their progressive political supporters in the major cities derided enough for all those millions of voters to dig in their heels and ignore them. Trump symbolically and often also literally, vocally represents this resistance to that media narrative, and thus he won again.
It's anecdotal, but the easiest way to understand them is to just travel to a conservative state and talk to them. Even if you won't agree, you'll see that they exist
And I would add, listen. Don't immediately check out mentally because you disagree with what they are saying, don't argue, simply listen and try to understand. It's really hard for humans to do, but it's important. You cannot hope to change minds or appeal to voters if you don't understand what motivates them in the first place.
And when I say you have to understand people I mean truly understand, not intellectually lazy crap like "oh they're just stupid" or "they're racist" like you already see in this thread. Stupid/racist/etc people do exist, but that isn't most people and it isn't most Trump voters either. They are normal people with real concerns and needs, not caricatures of evil.
I do try. The problem is, a lot of times what they're saying is just nonsense.
"The economy is terrible" -- well, no it's not. We had some inflation a few years ago, but so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places. The Biden administration has been doing a great job with the economy. And you know those business people who want Trump to win because they want lower regulations? Yeah, they're not on your side -- they're trying to screw you over. You feel economic pressure, and so you're going to vote someone who's going to make it worse?
"Libs are weaponizing the justice department" -- People who have flagrantly tried to flout laws and undermine our democracy need to be held accountable. I mean yeah, "Always prosecute the outgoing party" is something we want to avoid, but "Never prosecute anything any politician does" is just as bad, if not worse. And at any rate, if that's something you're actually concerned about, why is your solution to vote for "LOCK HER UP!" Trump?
"Biden / Harris are just as bad" -- I mean, no? Trump literally sent an armed mob to attack his own vice president. Nothing you think the alleged "Biden crime family" comes anywhere close (and BTW there is no "Biden crime family").
"Immigrant gangs are invading our country" -- I mean, just no.
Not everyone is like this, but a lot of people are just living in a fictional reality constructed by Fox, Newsmax, and now Musk.
> "...so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places..."
And you fail to see why that might be uninteresting and unconvincing to a low income voter struggling even harder to make ends meet? Maybe even infuriating enough to vote against whoever said it?
I'm trying to treat people like adults. They're suffering because of worldwide macroeconomic conditions that are out of Biden's control, but Biden's administration has managed to make the suffering less than in other places. Other sources of suffering include policies which the Republicans themselves have been pursuing.
Imagine someone buys a Kia hoping to reduce how much they pay in gasoline; but then the price of gasoline doubles, and they end up paying more than they were before anyway; and so they say, "Kia is a terrible car, it's so expensive to fill up, I'm going to buy a Hummer instead".
That's what voting for Trump in this situation is like: at minimum he's going to enable rich oligarchs to squeeze low-income voters even harder, and at worst he's going to trash the economy by raising tariffs, deporting working immigrants, and politicizing the federal reserve (lowering interest rates and triggering even more inflation).
I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to.
> "I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to."
I offer in rebuttal the election results (which, to be clear, I myself am not happy about).
The Democrats could have promised a lot more programs and initiatives to relieve the pain of the working class than they did. They could have made economic relief a lot more central to their advertising. People want their pain acknowledged and sympathized with, not waved away with an airy "it's not so bad".
I think we basically agree then. As far as I'm aware, the Democrats didn't attempt even to make the "making the best of a bad hand" argument, much less make a case for how they were going to address the situation.
One thing that Trump is incredibly talented at at is getting everyone to talk about him. I've always thought that the way to get him beat wasn't to trash him, but to talk about the great things about the alternate candidate. So I made it a point to avoid talking about Trump on my social media.
After the DNC, I thought we were going to get the same thing from the Harris campaign -- but it seems like in the last few weeks, Harris went hard on attacking Trump, hoping to get women out to vote for reproductive rights, leaving me nothing really to share or talk about on FB.
Trump, on the other hand, went hard on getting young adult males, who typically don't vote at all, to come out and vote for him. Both efforts had their effect, but Trump's bet seems to have paid off more, and put him back in the white house.
Well that's all wrong. You don't need to travel to find a Trump voter. And merely talking to them is not going to be sufficient to truly "understand" them. If only.
Biden is wildly unpopular, Harris is his right hand, she didn't get put up by any competitive process, and she never promised change to a country that very much wants it. The nyt always considered her the worst possible option from day 1, aside from Biden. This shouldn't be a surprise.
Yeah, but you have to be somewhat deranged to trust a multiple bancrupt and proven grifter with that — especially since the economic record of his last administration hasn't been stellar at all.
But if you are lucky he will allow you vote for the other side in 4 years again and then you will vote republicans after and back and forth we go.
Recently there’s been an influx of illegal immigrants from Venezuela including some associated with Tren de Aragua that have been highly publicized and politicized. While most people do want America to be a melting pot of people from everywhere, whether you want your borders so wide open to allow criminals and gangs to sneak in is another question, and also probably something we all agree on, but in this case one candidate has been in power and has appeared to have not solved the problems.
Honestly, Americans don’t like modern feminism and anything related to trans ideologies. High inflation played a role too. It was pretty effectively curtailed but not fast enough to directly affect people’s lives before the election.
Is not only americans. Is most people, but they are afraid to tell and being labeled as biggots.
Is a lot a things, economy for sure, but the demiocrafts passed 4 years calling half the country nazis and facists, and denying things that everyone could see like Biden health issues. This comes with a price.
> Honestly, Americans don’t like modern feminism and anything related to trans ideologies.
I doubt most people like those two things. The difference is, they get insulted, shamed and targeted for social ostracisation if they let on what they don't like.
Which results in the election results that you see - just because you've successfully silenced someone from expressing their opinion, that doesn't mean that you changed their vote.
They discuss a paper "The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy.”
Which asks the Q:
"H]ow can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘authentically appealing’ (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?”
one A is:
"Trump’s boldly false proclamations—about himself, about his rivals and critics, about the world—are not a bug. They’re a feature. They demonstrate he is sticking it to the other side. To the elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the libs, the woke crowd, the minorities, the…whoever it is his supporters resent, despise, or disregard."
That's also why in 2016, a year's worth of "Trump is terrible" articles only helped him - because the actual received message was "we, the people you despise, really would hate if Trump was elected". It's a sign of authenticity. Trump couldn't betray them, because he very evidently had nowhere else to go.
Aka polarisation. When Trump first won I conceptualised it as him arbitraging humanity/democracy's lack of preparedness for social media and the internet upending established flows of information.
The solution at its heart is to reduce conflict and bridge the gap. I have enjoyed Zachary Elwoods most recent podcast episode showing how Trump is misquoted by traditional media outlets which has the negative effect of furthering the perception of bias.
If you use Twitter you would know. People hate the lackadaisical attitude to illegal immigration, the inflation in the economy, and the idealogy-centered government (yes, this has been a popular sore point).
I find it hilarious when people say democrats are "idealogy-centered government" [sic], but Trump isn't. What do those words mean to you? Are you saying that Trump has no ideology?..
As someone who voted for Harris, I’d say trump is less ideologically driven than democratic candidates. He’s insane and erratic, which don’t follow ideology.
Then Idk, he openly says that government agencies should have less power (epa, fda...). I mean, he doesn't sponsor this view, but he openly said he'll make musk give less and less agency to gov. Companies that aren't deemed worth of it, whatever it means
It’s framed as an equality movement whereas it takes as an axiom that society is built on systemic oppression - that’s the unquestionable tenet. And then the prescription is using governments power to impose “preferred” outcomes, no matter the cost.
Thanks, but no thanks - I prefer to live in a meritocracy.
Also my personal pet peeve - having a cultural preference is not racism, god damn it! Not all cultures are the same, and we should be allowed to state and fight for our preferences! (Unlike discriminating on the basis of physical appearance or features, which is actual racism).
The fact that America equates the two is asinine to me (as an immigrant)
It.. unironically seems so? Not long ago Trump used to be a Democrat. He has often backtracked and tweaked his public ideology to whatever gets the most populist support, e.g. Abortions.
Yet the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that basically had nearly everything Republicans asked for, and the House wouldn't even take it up because Trump didn't want to lose immigration as an issue.
And inflation is almost down to normal levels, and Trump is promising wide ranging and massive tariffs that it is hard to see not causing a significant rise in inflation.
So its hard to see how people who are concerned about those issues would vote for Trump.
Even if they don't like Democrat approaches to those issues, or really dislike Democrat ideology which might explain voting for Trump now when the only real choices were Trump and Harris, what about during the Republican primaries?
Republicans used to have many reasonably competent people in the primaries. How the heck could they not find anyone better than Trump?
This is my conclusion as well. In many other western countries Donald Trump is a badly written movie charagter. In the US he is their best option for a president. "What about those that didnt vote for him" people may ask, but the fact that the democrats isnt able to provide an alternative better than Trump, and haven't been able to provide better politics than Trump says everything.
50% of the voting mass look at Trump and say "that is my president!", and millions cant even be bothered to show up to vote for someone else. This is America.
I honestly think that Elon Musk is just on a personal vendetta against anyone who bruised his ego. He can't stand that he was called out for his Thai diver "pedophile" comment or that his trans daughter openly disavows him. He specifically blames the "woke mindset" for the latter. So for him, it's probably just a "stick it to the libs" kind of thing.
I don't think it was any of those, Elon and his mother have regularly referenced Tesla being snubbed at an EV Summit, and GM being praised as leading the EV transition in a quarter they (GM) delivered 42 electric cars to Tesla's 300,000.
It is still a matter of bruised ego though, I think Elon Musk takes things like this very seriously.
My take is that the democrats are being blamed for the ever higher cost of living.
There are people who vote because they want the insular America and to bring jobs back from China/Mexico/etc, those who vote to burn down 'the establishment' because they feel no hope, and those who just hope that any change means cost of living drops.
After seeing this guy become elected for the second time I have come to the opposite conclusion. This is what America wants, and this is what America is. The rest of the world should acknowledge this and act accordingly, and the people of the US, especially the Democrats, should as well.
Pretending like "this isn't us", "this isnt real america" is just keeping them from doing any real introspection.
In particular, I believe the economic rhetoric Trump used worked very well with many lower income people. I don't remember Harris taking any strong stances there, or maybe what she had I store was not communicated well.
I think this is accurate, a big chunk of the vote seems to be "my bills/food/rent went up when Blue in office, Red says they _will_ fix it, so let's try Red"
Of course not statistical, but seems to be a large trend in discussion
Yeah, I think that's it, or at least a large part of it. People were unhappy and when you're unhappy you vote out the incumbent (and in a two-party system there's only one other choice).
I also think that's the same reason the exact same guy was voted out four years ago. Pretty bizarre if true, so it's probably not the whole story.
Promises from an incumbent can hit differently. If Democrats were willing and able, they should have done it in the last 4 years. If not, then why promise?
I have no doubt Harris would have delivered on improving the conditions for the poor. Unfortunately Trumps rhetoric was simply too effective, perhaps because of what you say in the second sentence.
This is the challenge that the Democrats have; the Republicans have a policy that appeals to a significant enough percentage of the population, while the Democrats have to try and appeal to "everyone else". A two-party system is not a democracy, it's a compromise, and only a political revolution will fix it.
Of course, that's also what the Republicans / Heritage Foundation are aiming for, if they have their way they will do away with democracy. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of.
It’s all that matters in the presidential race. But barely over half of the population wanted him as president. The other side doesn’t disappear just because they lost an election.
I think you’re confusing the electoral college with the Senate.
There are two senators per state regardless of population, so low-population rural states have an outsized influence in the Senate.
In the electoral college, each state is weighted by population. It’s unavoidably biased (just by the nature of chunking votes into seats and states) but it doesn’t consistently favor either side.
Each state gets a number of electors equal to their Congressional delegation: Representatives *and* Senators. So the overweighting of small states in the Senate does, to a smaller degree, affect the Electoral College as well (as every state gets two "free" electors).
The electoral college for one. Massively oversized benefit, especially since the house size has been frozen. Basically every level of our government is designed to give small rural areas the advantage. It’s no wonder we are the only prosperous nation without universal healthcare and post secondary education. We give the people who contribute the least to our society free rein to run it.
No, basically every level of our country is designed to balance the voices of heavily populated areas with rural areas. It's completely ignorant of the history of our nation to claim it's intended to give rural areas an advantage, when in fact it is an attempt at compromise. And let's not forget: without that compromise our nation literally would not exist, as the large and small states wouldn't have come to an agreement otherwise.
For one, the population is way more spread out in the US than in other countries. There are only 9 cities with more than 1 million people in a country of 350 million inhabitants.
Those are local administrative areas, not cities. Using any reasonable functional definition of a city, the number of cities with a population >1 million is around 50.
They're not so numerous; due to the way the system is set up, they have outsized impact. Wyoming with 500k people has the same amount of influence in the Senate as California with 38 million people.
That said, so far she hasn't won the popular vote either, so that's not what we should be blaming in this election.
My question is, why can't democrats see how bad and average intell. their candidate is? Trump can at least talk, give interviews and all. But other one???
This is also what billionaires and the rich want, which is how you can tell rural USA isn't going to gain anything. But they'll blame immigration or some other issue instead of the people swimming in gold coins, making them work harder for less money year over year.
No, urban areas voted Democrat once again. If anything, 2024 has really showed the widening divide between urban and rural areas, both in the US and in Europe. Probably everywhere else as well.
While it is true that democrats carried urban centers it is worth noting that their support appears to have eroded somewhat in these areas. Republicans picked up a statistically relevant number of votes there.
If I were a betting man I'd wager that switches like that are purely due to inflation. Shit's too expensive and people think that changing the party they vote into the seat of the presidency is going to change that.
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
I'm in the UK and I was just listening to Andrew Neil, a political commentator over here, and he mentioned something interesting. There was apparently a 3 to 2 ratio of Hispanic/Black voters voting FOR Trump. A possible explanation is that the border policies have had an impact on minimum wage workers, of which Hispanic and Black voters are disproportionately a category of. The Democratic Party will have to do a post mortem, but there's likely to be many issues found where the Democrats failed their voters.
Your refusal to believe that is apt. People are not nearly as dumb as this narrative puts them out to be. This mindset is at best elitism, and ignores human agency.
In reality every Trump voter has their own reason to behave this way. And their behavior is perfectly rational according to their own beliefs. My personal theory is that we have been grossly underestimating the potency of misinformation and disinformation propaganda on social media. Especially those which weaponizes peoples actual grievances with authority, and directs them in this way. Anybody can be a victim of misinformation (we see this in action with people that fall victims to scam), the misinformation you personally don’t fall victim to was probably not directed at you (see e.g. the Nigerian Prince filter for wire fraud scams).
I think that even though humans are smart, and we have our own agency, there are also number of ways which our intelligence can be exploited. This is the case for scams, but also for misinformation propaganda. I think the real lesson here is in the failures of our democratic institutions to protect us from this exploitation.
You start off by saying these people arent stupid, then go on to suggest they are easily manipulated by (what you think is) misinformation. Just not smart, like you I guess?
Honestly, I think the kind of people you are sneering at are actually smarter than you as they would never make the kind of stupid, ignorant comment you've made here.
Being susceptible to propaganda (or a scam for that matter) isn’t stupidity. We are all susceptible to it. It just varies which propaganda and to what degree.
I never called Trump voters stupid. I think there may be a misunderstanding here because traditional discourse has people believe that only stupid people fall for misinformation propaganda (or a scam). I was explicitly rejecting that.
Is it possible that you are the one that has been manipulated by misinformation?
Is it possible that people can disagree with you without "misinformation" being involved?
Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that I’m susceptible to propaganda, including misinformation campaigns.
However misinformation campaigns are a fact of social media. There are several documented cases of misinformation spreading. It is possible that I have just been lied to about that the media et.all lied about the scale and severity of misinformation and I believed it (although, wouldn’t that be a misinformation campaign which proofs their existence?)
You have two options. If you listen to the American left and most media outlets, it's because Trump voters hate women, gays, foreigners, blacks, trans people, and progress - and to be fair, some do. If you listen to the people actually voting for Trump, it's because they fundamentally disagree with the basis for Harris' policies (and Clinton's before her) or the outcomes thereof.
Many have a very shallow understanding of policy and have also had their perspectives heavily influenced by propaganda from Fox News, etc. Ask the average Trump supporter how tarrifs work for a good example of what I’m describing.
Not from the US, but I really wonder:
Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
I mean sure: depending on your media diet you might find all his flaws acceptable, but ask yourself if Obama (or any other candidate) displayed the very same flaws if that would cause you outrage. If yes, you might need some introspection.
> Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
You don't get to be president without being a pathological liar who only cares about themselves and not the people. I'm not saying this to excuse Trump, far from it. I am ashamed to have him as a president (to the extent I'm ashamed of anything outside my control anyways). But I've been just as ashamed to have Biden, Obama, and Bush as the president too.
> Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
The Donald Trump that your media reports on isn't the real Donald Trump, or at the very least the one his supporters see.
Example: Trump talks to a group of people who normally don't vote, and asks them to make an exception and vote this time, noting that this will be the last time he runs, and so they won't need to vote for him again. The media then takes "you won't need to vote for me again" out of context and uses it to claim that Trump will end elections in the US. People who only listen to the media see one thing, and his supporters (who are aware of the context) see another.
Everyone is throwing ideas, excuses and explanations into the mix, but maybe people just want what he’s proposing - strict border control, low regulation, small government, low taxes, free speech etc.
Im not American and barely engaged with politics at all but all of that sounds like a pretty good idea to me without looking at any stats or trying to find out why my fellow citizens were confused into making the wrong choice.
It isn’t about why his promises appeal to some people. The question is why people buy the ”free ice cream for all every day if I’m elected class president!” from a pedophile-rapist criminal. And instead of class presidency it’s real presidency.
I wouldn’t trust literally anything in this guys hands’ and even less a country.
Except they're lies or false promises; low regulation is only for companies, allowing them to infringe on workers' rights, increase poverty, etc, which goes towards oligarchy. Small government means more power to less people, which goes towards autocracy. Low taxes means less money to social programs, which means people will literally die from being unable to afford health care, which is eugenics. Free speech for me but not for thee, it's Musk's flavour of free speech where words like "cis" are banned.
But sure, on the surface they sound good I suppose.
A friend of mine just sent me an article from a Danish newspaper where they cover the reasons as to why people would want to vote for someone like Trump. They interview Arlie Russell Hochschild who has written two books on the topic: "Strangers in Their Own Land" and "Stolen Pride".
One explanation from Hochschild is that you have a group of disenfranchised votes, who see "everyone else" get to "jump the line" for help. Not only do they get to jump the line, they see the president (Obama back then) help these other people (immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ, an so on) move ahead of the line, while they are left behind to fend for themselves.
I haven't read the books yet, but I definitely plan to. From the article it certainly sound like it would help me understand why some Americans vote the way they do.
> "A friend of mine just sent me an article from a Danish newspaper where they cover the reasons as to why people would want to vote for someone like Trump...."
And this illustrates the problem. Hochschild is a professor emeritus of sociology at Berkeley. Why in heaven's name would you think that good insights will be garnered by reading a Danish article about a book written by a Blue professor about another group of Red people... when you can go on x dot com and read for yourself why people voted as they did?
I can say for certain - from reading and listening to what Trump voters have said themselves - that Trump voters are absolutely done with this kind of framing.
If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor, but if you do good work, then maybe you have the tools to write about that work and target it to a group of like minded people, communicating in a why that they/I better understand.
Personally I'm not interested in going on Twitter, or Facebook, because those are going to be the most extreme people, at both ends. I'm also no prepared to do the filtering required to identify trolls or propaganda. My interest is in the vast majority of people who don't really have a voice online. I can't go out and talk to them, I'm on the other side of the planet. I'd still like to know why they vote the way they do, because I'm directly affected by how rural America votes. I wish I weren't, so I guess that's one opinion I share with Trump.
As someone who has listened to both (or many, since there are not just two) sides, I can say for certain there is a severe disconnect between what Team Red says and what Team Blue writes about what Team Red says. If you are really interested in what Team Red says, do not listen to Team Blue at all about it. Not CNN, not Harris, not Blue politicians, not Blue journalists.
> If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor
Indeed. This is a major ongoing crisis in academe. And journalism.
As a self check, if you think that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" remark referred to white supremacists as "very fine people", then you need to upgrade your sources. Find the extended original video. It is hard to do! If you give up, let me know and I will send you a link. The search is instructive, however.
If you go back and read carefully, I suggested going directly to the source because we live in an age of unprecedented direct access, and it is no longer necessary to have same-side "explainers" about what the other side thinks and says.
To hear what Team Blue thinks, I'd recommend Team Red simply read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, et. al. Or watch CNN, MSNBC, BBC America, network news... Even Wikipedia.
I mean, I grew up in a conservative state and a small/medium sized city that has always been red. Not every one is a "redneck retarded bigot". I don't think most of them aren't as openly racist as made out to be. Outside of politics you wouldn't even think anything was too out of the ordinary.
That said, I'm not sure stuff like "He's annointed by God", "He tells it like it is/Isn't afraid to speak his mind", "Liberals are evil/devil/<insert literally any reason to hate them> " is stuff you want to hear, but it does represent a somewhat overall sentiment (generalized of course).
More centered around ignorance and perceived old "conservative values". I find very few people actually able to articulate their points.
"The thing that baffles me is that good and serious people have seen versions of what happened tonight in the US for eight years and are still surprised that people don’t see the world as they do.
1) Voters think “the economy” is “can I afford to live” NOT “we are doing better nationally than others”. Inflation is politically more important than GDP
2) Immigration matters, both the sense of control/uncontrolled and the raw numbers, particularly when money is tight. See 1
3) Don’t take voters for fools: in this case don’t insist a clearly gaga leader is up to the job
4) Don’t try to fight a charismatic opponent with someone who can’t answer basic questions about why they want to be in charge. The ability to communicate is not an optional extra for politicians, it is a core part of the job description
5) Go woke, go politically broke
6) What the metro elites regard as an illogical vote is not necessarily illogical for people who are struggling and angry - see 1,2,3,4,5
Personally I think democracy matters very much and some/much of what Trump says is appalling but until his opponents learn the lessons above, voters will keep voting for someone who manages to encapsulate what they feel"
> I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
They aren't, really. That's just what a vocal minority calls them, said minority actually deluding themselves into thinking that they are the majority.
You ever stop to think that maybe calling ~50% of the population of your country "a bunch of redneck retarded bigots" could perhaps have some part in it? The media pushing that narrative everywhere certainly doesn't help either.
I'm not a Yank nor do I vote or care to ever vote, but if I were and all I ever saw was every mainstream source of news and media, including sites like Reddit and apparently even HN, calling me a retard (which funnily enough is a pretty bigoted insult coming from the supposed moral & good side) and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
From where I'm sitting across the pond, the Republicans want stricter border control, smaller government, lower taxes, free speech (which itself is a loaded term that means different things depending on who's saying/hearing it), which is basically what the populist parties across the EU are promising as well.
Every far left extremist (which have no clue what communism even means) has an analogous far right extremist (who also have no clue what it actually means), both are idiots and shouldn't be let anywhere near government.
Admittedly the US had a choice between someone unfit for office and a lawfully convicted felon, I don't envy this situation.
What? Kamala would have done great, where is this coming from? Trump for better or worse is about to get Weekend at Bernie'd by his cabinet just like Biden did.
The democrats are not socialist and they don’t call themselves that. Socialists may or may not cast a D vote, but if they do it’s a monumental compromise.
The Dems are terrified of accidentally seeming too left. Republicans have no problem embracing the more extreme right, whereas Dems would rather cowtow to the imaginary swing voter and lose than get called the S word.
Yep exactly, this is what won him the 2016 election and the meltdowns were amazing. This time around the dems have also had the economy making them look bad, not to mention the illegal immigration issue finally making it to "big blue" cities like New York.
So it's not really surprising he won, and the margin isn't surprising either.
I suppose but I'm not really sure if the GOP has anything on offer that will actually help. I hope they do because we're gonna be living in it but nothing thus far proposed has been said to be good for the economy.
See this is what surprises me. I would have thought voting for a more regular market with higher taxes to the elite would be favourable to the majority non-tech workers, rather than the billionaires which play the puppeteers to trump
Not a single penny of that "extra tax money from tech workers" would go to the average Joe. That's the problem. It would go straight for the lowest classes or overseas.
> You ever stop to think that maybe calling ~50% of the population of your country "a bunch of redneck retarded bigots" could perhaps have some part in it? The media pushing that narrative everywhere certainly doesn't help either.
Yep, it's an own goal. Similar shit has led to the rise of right-wing populism all across the world, time and again. Yet they never learn. They never realize that shitting on the average Joe is not how you get power in a democratic setup.
Turns out, the average Joe is a poor, working dude. He is not a sexist colonialist or any other -ism. Yet the Democratic Party will not stop alienating men.
Namecalling and shit slinging is exactly what Trump and his supporters do and it seems to work out well for them. They love thinking about people crying over their insults and whatnot. But they also complain loudly if anyone turns the same against them.
It's not 50% though; in 2020, only ~240 million people were eligible to vote (out of 330 million, so about 72% of people); only ~158 million people actualy voted (48%). Oversimplifying, only 25% of the population of the US voted for Trump, and it's probably even less due to the system of electors.
This is why democracy is broken, because not everyone gets a voice.
I've never understood this argument. When performing scientific studies, there is a sample size of n = x hundred/thousand, and we then generalise the result across the entire population. Having 48% of the population participate in this "study" is likely to be very indicative of the likely voting choice for the remainder of the population, right? You really think that the proportion of votes for each party for those people that haven't voted would be any significant difference from those that did?
You're experiencing an illusion. The few who do embrace the identity of "redneck retarded bigot" will wear the identity openly. The majority who do not embrace that identity will diplomatically avoid discussing their true political opinions with you and you'll just assume their democrats because they're intelligent and sensible, and then you'll be flabbergasted when things like last night happen.
what? plenty of intelligent and sensible people have told me point blank that they're voting for Trump. I'm not surprised in the slightest that he won.
It's also the (trying to be) misleading mainstream media. Stuff like "he wants to deport all immigrants" being uttered until the last day - without specifying it's just the illegal ones, which is a very important distinction.
And there are many examples like these, where he's quoted WAY out of context, and that kind of stuff. If you believe that for years and at one point learn that it's actually bs and he didn't say that or the context reveals he was quoting someone else, or negates the comment the next sentence, etc, you start to question ALL your beliefs.
They pushed too far, fabricated just a BIT too much, and people caught on.
> and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
And most people would say that would categorize you as mentally deficient. Voting against your own best interests because you feel people are mean to you isn't usually seen as very intelligent.
I worked for Best Buy. They fired us and hired an Indian offshore team. They had H1B representatives in the U.S. that I had to spend three months training to do my job.
H1B is supposed to be to fill critical shortages. There wasn’t a critical shortage because I existed and my entire team existed.
Best Buy’s CEO preaches “inclusivity” and “the value of each employee” — while simultaneously firing Americans (and permanent residents) to lower costs — while making the vast majority of their profit selling products to Americans.
The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
On a more subjective level — anyone that the establishment tries so hard to oppose-arrest-bankrupt-kill is worthy of my vote. When Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, the decision got really easy to support Trump. Also, see the Abraham Accords for why many support Trump on a foreign policy level.
I don’t care about engaging in a debate and plenty will downvote simply because I’m not in their tribe — but while you asked for a scientific study, there isn’t one yet, but there are tens of millions of anecdotes like mine which should give you a good start.
Not that it matters — my wife is an immigrant from Mexico and her entire family in the U.S. (who are all first generation citizens) — all voted Trump as well. Some make the mistake of assuming “immigrants” are all “undocumented.” There’s a huge difference in being anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigrant. The left-wing media fails to make the distinction. Also have a look at the so-called “Black” vote — they have a lot more nuance than the media would have you believe.
This is a great example, and you’re downvoted because liberals don’t like to hear the criticisms of their tribe. They ask why people would vote for Trump, you explain your anecdote, and they downvote you. Classic blue tribe behavior.
I agree fully with your points. Covid restrictions were insane and will change my voting habits forever. What happened to "personal responsibility" in that time??
> The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
Bingo. All of the “my body my choice” rhetoric rings very hollow when you need to show proof of vaccination to sit down at a Starbucks to drink your $4.69 Americano (and still be required to wear a mask, despite being vaccinated twice in a state with something like a 90% vaccination rate).
And calling republicans facist and anti-democracy after closing small businesses, schools, playgrounds, etc. setting up phone numbers to dime out your neighbors?
Saying you are anti-1% when your covid policies directly enrich the 1%? Saying you are anti-racism when your covid policies directly hurt those without?
And then the massive economic fall out after when surprise surprise, doing all that will fuck shit up?
I was a loyal democrat my entire life before 2020. Never again.
- The economy is what ultimately matters to many people, and the impression is that the economy has been bad for the last 4 years under Biden but was better under Trump. The actual data is more unclear and confusing, but the average person has this impression.
- Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
- A general sense of rage/dislike/push-back at "elites" in Washington DC, the coasts, the mainstream media organizations, etc. If you google "trust in government" or "trust in media", they will elaborate on this issue. Trump, although a billionaire from NYC, is generally disliked there and is perceived as being an outsider and rebel vs. the elite group mentioned.
- Some protectionist policies Trump claims to support will benefit people in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc
Ultimately it comes down to two things, IMO: personal charisma and the economy. Everything else is only relevant in close elections.
Harris wasn’t just unlikeable. She came across as downright incompetent, a mediocrity elevated to the highest positions by the exact sort of identify focused criteria voters don’t want.
> Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
I would argue it was the other way round. They both went on podcasts etc and I'm debate and in rallies Trump was verging on incoherent and boring his own supporters. But on policy he was far stronger. I'm not American and I'm left wing but the trade and tax policies he's proposing do speak to traditional left wing, trade union workers: put up barriers to lower cost countries undercutting American workers. I don't know what Harris vision is, it seems she has trouble articulating it clearly.
Trump went on quite a few very popular podcasts like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, but Harris didn't.
IMO the average voter is quite in-line with Rogan and Theo Von culturally (more than they are with Trump or Harris, for that matter) and so for Harris to skip those was a major misstep that just further made her seem like an aloof member of the DC/Coastal elite.
Biden didn't have this problem because he was more of a blue collar/middle class guy from Scranton and despite his gaffes, was more likable by the average person.
Rogan alone has more daily listeners than left leaning news shows have people watching in a week. I think it was something like 11 million per day. Big mistake to not show up there.
Absolutely - if you look on YouTube alone, the view counts on interviews/podcasts between Trump/Vance and Harris/Walz are dramatically different. For better or worse, people increasingly get their information and news from videos, and to skip that was a major misunderstanding of the cultural landscape.
From what I have read/watched, Rogan didn't refuse to interview Harris and offered to do the same multi-hour interview he does with every guest.
Harris just wanted him to fly to another city and do a 1-hour interview in their studio. To make an exception for a single guest seems unfair and I don't blame Rogan for not agreeing.
What‘s most striking is that a sober dialogue on opposing views/ideas has been replaced by partisanship and hatred of the othet side, whatever the subject. What do we need to do to get out of this mess?
I don't think there's a great mystery - what could possibly be the secret for why people voted for Trump you say? Probably the same reason why people vote for any other political candidate, right? Surely the simplest explanation is the most likely; they preferred him to the other candidate in some combination of what he brings vs. the other candidate? Some people are lifelong affiliates of a political party, sure, and that's less interesting and fruitful TBH, but for the "undecided" or "open-minded" voters I don't see how it's more complex Than they decided it based on the information at hand. Question is whether they were misinformed and how much the positive messages ("This is what we'll do") draws vs. "The other person will end the world" rhetoric. Thoughts?
You have to understand American politics behind the rise of Trump. Since the 1980s and Reagan, Democrats had broken with their New Deal era coalition composed of union workers. Instead, Democrats have aligned with middle class knowledge workers, and pushed for neoliberal policy that have offshored many manufacturing jobs. This was seen as a betrayal to the working class. That has left many working class whites with high school degrees with low-paying service jobs, that gave them a lower standard of living compared to the union jobs their parents worked.
This continued from Clinton to the Obama era. While Obamacare was a step in the right direction, it was seen as too little too late. It also had unintended consequences. For example, some of my part-time service job colleagues reported that pre-Obamacare, the employer could have them work 40 hours a week, because they weren't forced to provide them health insurance that met some minimum standard. However post-Obamacare, their hours were limited at 29 hours, which made it much harder to make a living.
By 2016, there was an opioid addiction crisis composing largely of working whites with only a high school degree, and the economy was still suffering from the slower-than-possible recovery from the Great Recession. (Economists say it would've been faster with more stimulus, but Obama was cowed by his neoliberal econ advisors). Due to gridlock in the political system, immigration system reform was impossible, and Presidents could only use Executive Orders to try to mitigate (but not solve) the problem of an increasing number of illegal immigrants from the Southern border.
All the pieces were in place:
- Scapegoat: illegal immigrants
- Weak economy: check
- Disgruntled populace: check
Feeling abandoned by both parties, the electorate went with an anti-establishment strongman demagogue who preyed on their hopes and fears. It's almost identical to the political environment that gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini.
The saving grace for the US during Trump's first term has been her strong democratic institutions. Pray they hold up during his second and hopefully final term.
'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
I'm afraid this is the problem - your implication is that Trump voters need explaining using scientific analysis as some sort of aberration.
One day, there will hopefully be an analysis - but it will be of how among huge parts of the media and establishment this ideological view became the null hypothesis to the extent that people - in good faith - thought they were looking beyond the propoganda while asking questions like yours.
This kind of commentary just boggles my mind. I voted for both Republicans and Democrats in my lifetime and I have never had any problems identifying the reasons why anyone would vote either way. And I consider myself a very casual political observer. The fact that people believe that Trump won because people are retarded bigoted rednecks just tells me you live in a fucking bubble under a rock in a deep forest. How do you go through life living so isolated from anyone who doesn't think like you?
Why not ask some of the distinguished conservative academics who support the likely (as I write) next President? By the way, how about turning the question round? I hope you do not think that's unthinkable.
You're asking as if the other candidate is a no-brainer choice. If the other candidate were Kennedy, then sure—but they were not. In this case, many would be undecided and would vote not the best candidate, but the least bad one.
Get out of your bubble and listen to people. Hacker News is part of your bubble.
The majority of people have picked a side long ago and are sticking to it. You want to talk to independents or people that have changed sides recently.
The interesting thing for me was seeing the blowback from the woke movement. People I know that were raised Democrats and supported gay rights could no longer identify with the party supporting a movement that appeared to be telling them that they are racist (and BTW be careful or you might get cancelled) and that it would be great if their kids changed genders. This led them away from legacy media and towards opposite points of view.
I am not claiming this was the decisive reason- just pointing out something that I don’t see talked about much. Listen to people and you will find other reasons.
My theory is that a good portion of people didn't vote for "Trump", they voted for their party. That's the end of their thought process.
Party affiliation is a huge part of people's culture and personality in the US, "We are a Republican family" is something people outside of the US wouldn't say out loud. They have always voted Republican and will always vote Republican even if it's against their interests.
> I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
Exactly, they "propaganded" so hard that they created a narrative that they are the definitive winners. So you bought into their propaganda and now you are surprised. The reality is that the democrats are not that good and the people voted.
The only reason people vote for conservatives is because they're selfish or ignorant. This is obvious because there are 2 things in the economy: labour and capital. It is no coindence then that democracies invariably develop 2 parties. One of those parties ostensibly represents the intrests of labour. As such the other must represent the interests of capital. But how could a party that benefits so few, ever win a majority? Well, a combination of selfish people (those who benefit directly from the policies) and ignorant people (those who have been convinced by any number of falsehoods to vote against their own economic interests).
> Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ?
You could try to ask HN'ers who voted Trump why they did ... statistically speaking, folks on HN do not exactly strike me as fitting the "bunch of redneck retarded bigots" profile.
Oh but wait, that would only be possible if admitting on HN that you supported Trump was not guaranteed to have the following effect:
- starting flamewars, which might get you banned
- being ostracized and attacked
And turns out HN is IMO a reflection of what happens in US society at large: in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" social circles, telling people that you support Trump is career/social suicide.
Except that more than half of the country supports him, so if you pick 100 people, even in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" circles, chances are, you know ...
There is something deeply dysfunctional about a society where you have to hide your democratic choice for fear of being socially destroyed.
Ah, so Twitter had the more quality real-world signal; who would have thought? It seems "hate and disinformation" are just what people were feeling, and what they were thinking.
Don't think so, the Tory leadership at the time did not really want to leave, but it was a useful rabble rousing position to energize their base. Ideally just falling short was the best scenario they wished, so they could keep blaming Europe for everything but not really face the consequences of the exit they are facing now.
Trump voters are not casting a protest vote, how much ever now it is going to be retconned as disinformation, stupidity or anti Gaza vote, the reality is they fully expected to win if not democratically then by force.
I wouldn't know about that, I was not on Twitter when Brexit was being campaigned. What I do know is that, unlike possibly every other platform, on Twitter, it always felt like Trump would win.
I'm convinced Twitter single-handedly won the election. Everyone that are pro Trump seems to be coming from Twitter, with the same talking points as Musk. Elon sure got it's money's worth.
I did use it a lot. Have you considered Twitter might be an information bubble?
Musk says sensible stuff. But his actions are completely opposite.
"Free speech is essential to democracy" OF COURSE
No one is taking that away. They said the same thing before Biden won. It's just fear mongering and people eat it up.
He talks free speech and then buys Twitter and removes community notes from his account just to push his agenda. It's free speech but it's all fabricated propaganda.
Trump on jan 6th commanded his goons in the bubble to try to steal the election with the fake electoral plot. Look it up. No mention of that on free Twitter. They are literally trying to install Trump as dictator under your nose. While you fight here about free speech. It's ridiculous, and people eat it up.
70% of Republicans think Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election and that's hardly the only misinformation they have. It's hard to imagine that that wasn't a huge factor in the election.
It's interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections. They continuously seem to pick bad candidates and poor strategies resulting in them losing the election when they seem to have had the general conditions for winning. This time, the elephant in the room is of course the late ousting of Joe Biden, but there were similar issues that (in hindsight at least) were obvious in the Clinton 2016 campaign. This pattern can be seen in other countries as well, where it's clear that one group knows how to play the game while other groups don't, but it's surprising to me that a massive organization like the democratic party wouldn't have streamlined this process.
It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.
The Democrats are somewhat hampered by their focus on facts and rationality ("play fair") rather than spouting bullshit, conspiracy theories, and whatever bigotry is currently hot ("win at all costs").
Also by the fact that their unwillingness to turn on their capital sponsors, who don't really care whose in power and whose needs are ostensibly better met by republicans (so long as republicans don't start a trade war...)
Dems will continue to make the mistake of coasting deeper into the right wing, picking up 0 voters in doing so (why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?), meanwhile disenfranchising any left wing voters left in the USA and creating no new left wing voter bloc by presenting a coherent alternative to the reactionaries.
The same mistake is being made by neo liberal parties across the world.
>why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?
I'm always surprised by how bipolar US politics is. There's no place for nuance or third options, it's always one or second extreme. In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing. That's OK, people don't have to only hold extreme opinions.
> In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing.
As this election shows, then, you would vote for Trump, who is "better on immigration." You would tell yourself, as many Trump supporters demonstrate in interviews, that "he wouldn't actually do that."
If you're looking for a quote of him saying that word for word, no. But it is not an unreasonable interpretation of the things he has said he wants to do. Especially when he's used language saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and makes up lies about immigrants eating pets.
It sounds to me that this is crass exaggeration and one of the many reasons why there is such a big divide between supporters of both factions. The whole exaggerated narrative and associations to nazism is definitely off putting.
I understand you think people are exaggerating. You probably roll your eyes when people say Trump is a fascist, I imagine?
Can I ask - let's say before 2028 the democrat party gets tea partied and gets a genuine fascist candidate. What would that candidate say? What would their policies be? Can you do the same thought experiment for the Republican party? Or do you, unfairly, believe it's simply impossible for one, or the other, party to become genuinely fascistic? Perhaps you even believe fascism was permanently defeated when Mussolini was hanged? I would admire such an optimistic view!
Just in case you're genuinely curious why people say these things, it's not like we're all just making it up. Trump's rhetoric simply, to one who studies history, sounds very similar to Hitler's. It doesn't mean he's as bad as Hitler, it just means he talks like Hitler talked.
As for hitlerian policy, there is simply no way to deport the millions he has promised to deport that doesn't involve roundups, trains, and concentration camps. It's a physical impossibility to achieve otherwise. Do you disagree? Will he not follow through on his campaign promise to deport every undocumented immigrant?
I see you're unwilling to engage with the topic, though I try to in good faith. This makes me sad and frustrated. The key thing about British and American political discourse seems to be a disengagement from political education and reality. The reactionaries are actually "moderates," the guy speaking eerily similar to passages of mein Kampf is not hitlerian, center-right are actually communists, etc.
You don't see any similarity between immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (from Trump) and "Look at the ravages from which our people are suffering daily as a result of being contaminated with Jewish blood" (from James Murphy's English translation of Mein Kampf?
That's what Trump's circle wants, though. They want to deport 25M immigrants. Generously, the number of people here illegally is only half that. They don't care if people here legally get caught up in it and deported as well.
Deporting even a couple million people will require mass raids, round-ups, and the construction of concentration camps. It is physically impossible to deport that many people quickly or quietly or efficiently.
They're afraid of losing the white majority, plain and simple. The sad thing is so many non-white people don't see this and voted for him.
They planned poorly with their candidacy; Biden and Harris were the obvious candidates being president and vice-president, respectively, but Biden was too old and they couldn't find a different candidate that wasn't as well known as Harris quick enough.
That said, the Republicans would have the same problem if Trump dropped out or if that bullet didn't miss.
It is some sort of tribalism. Believers can't see it. E.g. we gotta remember that people were gaslighting eachother into pretending Biden is not what could charitably be described as about to be senile.
Refusing to see one self as part of the problem, fundamentally.
Unironically yes. You have to meet the median voter where they're at, even if you find some of their positions dumb or bigoted. That's why Obama spent the 2008 election cycle pretending to be opposed to gay marriage.
The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.
Who's calling Trump a fascist? For one, John Kelly, the right-wing Marine General, Trump's former chief of staff.
"Project 2025" may be unhinged, but in what sense is it a conspiracy theory? It's right out in the open and produced by one of the most prominent conservative think tanks.
"interesting how bad the democrats seem to be at the game of winning elections"
Since 1992, haven't democrats had power for over 20 years as opposed to GOP's 12 ?
Yea, but the game's changed. The Republican Party has figured out how to rally millions behind charismatic candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if we were in for a couple more years of Republican leadership.
Charismatic or populist? Same thing in effect, but the latter has a bit more weight / context to politics.
Also if they're having their way, they will break the current system; Trump has said people would never need to vote again if he wins, and Project 2025 aims to give much more power to the president (autocracy): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Given what democrats stand for, you don't even have to be charismatic to push them into a corner.
Any candidate who will shout anti trans anti illegal immigrantion talking points will always carry the day
Trump literally said "you won't have to vote again".
And if the Project 2025 plan works as they planned it, that's the truth. America will become a single party state and that won't change without a civil war.
They will stack the courts and every appointable position with pro-Trump (not Republican) people who will make sure every election goes their way in the future.
I wouldn't say charismatic, but he's solid. I think people mistake charismatic for blunt. Trump is more blunt than he is charismatic. That makes him appear like less of an NPC compared to other politicians, and people actually like that.
You specifically chose a range of dates to make this as dramatic as possible. Could easily say GOP has 24 to 20 since 1980, or 16 to 12 since 2000, or 8 to 4 since 2016.
My view since 2016 has been that winning elections in the US is about telling a good story. Whether you're trueful or not doesn't really matter as long as people believe it.
Trump's story is pretty ridiculous, there's no way that his plans on how to fix the economy or the border or the whole department of efficiency thing work anywhere close to as well as he says. Regardless, his demographic believes it.
Kamala's story was a lot weaker, involved a ton of hard truths and concessions about things that people in her base care about such as Gaza. Additionally her story on the border was mostly the same thing as Trump's. If you like the border story, why not go for the guy pushing it harder?
Obama had a pretty good story in 2008 (the whole hope thing). Dems need to get back to that.
It would have been pretty silly for Harris to campaign on a Hope and Change™ platform, since that would imply she is doing a very poor job as incumbent.
I think it is because people who think or say "what about me?" hear "what about me?" from others as if it's support of their own view, when really their core issues could be totally different. "Yeah, what about us?"
As opposed to "we need to help everyone, especially highly victimized groups". And then people infight over which groups require more attention vs everyone else.
There is the LGBT. Specially the T part. The right thing is to do is support their rights, and it is very hard not to do the right thing when you know what the right thing is. However, the republicans have weaponized it against the democrats. They call them radical left and they campaign saying things like the want to convert your sons in girls and other awful things. It is an imposible choice because it can cost you the election.
What I always find interesting is how Democrats insist their failure is due to a lack of sound strategy. That is of course a strategy in and of itself to NEVER admit that it might be a refutation of their policies or (gasp) their values. Telling yourself you just lost because you didn't "play the game" is a cope. It serves its purpose though, as it allows ardent followers to avoid actual self reflection.
Right, and economics as a field is difficult to understand for most people.
Presidents can't in reality take all that much credit or blame for the economy. A lot of it is out of their hands, and many economic shifts take longer than a presidential term to play out. But of course presidents will try, and succeed, because most people don't understand this.
On top of that, the GOP complains about how much money Biden "printed" during the pandemic, but Trump did his fair share of that in the first year of it as well. They just make dishonest arguments.
The Dems exist to give you an illusion of choice. This has gone down exactly as planned, or why do you think rich donors play both sides? Do you really think the Dems are this naive and keep messing up without it being on purpose?
The opinion makers know if it wasn't this close there'd be visible backlash.
I don't think "have had the general conditions for winning" is at all accurate this time around. It was clear ahead of time, and much ink was spilled on it, but it's even more clear in hindsight that this cycle was always going to be a giant uphill battle. Incumbent parties all over the world have been and are having the same issue. We're all still going through a hangover from the pandemic.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 534 ms ] threadI would like to explore the whys and hows of this apparent step backwards in so many things and why Trump was voted like he was and this reductionist view helps no one.
They're just more uneducated than ever, more conservative than ever, and idolizing dehumanization and evil totalitarians more than ever.
The root of everything is social insecurity and bad education, caused by the USA actually not being a country for its people but for corporations and billionaires.
I'm sorry but if you want a pathological liar, criminal and an overall horrible human being as a president of the (probably) most powerful and influential country in the world, you're just scum. Keep the downvotes coming.
Fix inequality.
[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2015/dea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz
This is precisely what I'm talking about. You really think this comment is going to do anything but push even more people to vote for the right? Because why would they side with your camp when you just called them scum, because you don't understand their intentions for voting for him/the party?
Which is extra unfortunate, because your comment up until that part was pretty good.
I also understand that they willfully choose to ignore massive red flags and are a bunch of hypocrites. These people have no shame and need to be shamed. It is the key emotion that leads to change and motivates to action.
Sadly, due to electoral interference by totalitarian regimes, media outlets, Musk, and the internet in general, these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.
Once you're set up like that, it's extremely difficult to get out of. I am afraid that the US has check-mated itself for at least an entire generation. The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.
Which brings us back to people wilfully being the exact opposites of those values. We've had lying oppressive demagogues probably since the dawn of humanity. Most certainly in the last century.
However, despite being afraid and frustrated, many people sided against such leaders. And this is why I consider not doing so a personal moral failing.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/trump-voters-li...
> these people who would otherwise be ostracized by the community due to their antisocial behaviours have been normalized.
The Internet (or global communication in general) does indeed mean shame won't work, because people can just ignore you and go find people who support them - whether that's Trump, Musk, or some randoms on the Internet is irrelevant.
So let's double down on the shame thing, which has worked out so well lately?
> The only thing that can drive a change is hope and basic human decency, ethics and morality.
I think the crux of many social issues is that people have different ideas about what 'basic human decency, ethics and morality' even mean.
Everybody knows that lying, stealing, swindling, rape, misogyny, selfishness, narcissism, taking pride in ignorance and probably a dozen more wouldn't make that list. Everybody.
People vote for who they identify with as this gives legitimacy and backing to their own views and behaviours.
In any case, I wasn't really referring to things like those on your list (one of those things is really not like the others, by the way. Seems very bad faith to me) but more things like trans issues, immigration, welfare, etc.
On the other hand, it's a fallacy to assume that there must be merit to an argument just because it's championed by a majority.
I'm aware that it's politically suicidal to say that "most people are stupid", but I'm not a politician (I'm not even American) and I feel like "stupidity" should not a priori be ruled out as an explanation.
That there is a divide between the two parties and the average intellectual ability of their supporters is a well-known fact. I'd contest that this is less of an issue than their racism.
If you're in the 90th IQ percentile, sure, most people are stupid to you.
I believe social media has widened the most extreme opinions and forced polarisation on most people, I can feel it with the UK too, where a very clearly corrupt government, with a revolving door of leadership: one losing the country enough money in 14 days to pay for the NHS for a decade… are being talked about favourably over a meek, awkward, slightly right of centre leader who happens to be wearing a red badge instead of a blue one.
Discourse is so swollen with bitter defence and snide attacks with soundbites of “sides”, I really do believe that its the fault of platforms showing the most divisive voices most often.
The thing that pushes me towards right for example, is seeing people dehumanising men for being men (not behaviours, just clear misandry against the gender) on social media so openly- and to much fanfare. I would otherwise be considered extremely left wing by UK standards.
Is this something you do actually experience in real life though?
Because I'm with you that social media is part of the problem. When I was using Twitter, many years ago, I also saw a lot of these super-woke people that I thought were just crazy.
But in real life, I don't see these caricatures so often (where they do exist, they tend to stick together in close-knit organisations and so are easy to avoid). Most women, gay and trans people, minorities etc. that I met just want to have some basic rights and don't care about culture wars about language use etc.
More impressionable people might hide stronger beliefs, like my mum, who is a reformer in the UK and parrots all their talking points and soundbites, but only down the pub with her like minded friends, or with me. Never to a labour supporter or in a public forum- so they almost never get challenged; and they become so deep rooted.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_movement
Messages from certain leaders can resonate deeply with people. If a message is well-received by so many, it could mean the opposing side didn’t present a strong enough argument—basic politics.
In my persoanl view, the discourse needed to challenge figures like Trump is limited by U.S. politics, which is heavily influenced by corporate funding. This influence likely explains why the Democratic Party often seems unwilling to take bold stances.
Policies like stronger unions, better social protections, higher taxes for the wealthy, and a meaningful minimum wage increase are hard to promise if campaigns depend on corporate backing.
Which seems to actually be the case quite often.
If that is the case, stupidity shouldn't be ruled out for both sides.
Trump promises to truly crater it, Musk stands behind him and promises said austerity.
Voters still vote for Trump on the basis of economy.
Are there any other ways to interpret it? Than that your average voter simply doesn't know the basics of econ?
Singapore has nationalized housing and is extraordinarily prosperous. Perhaps rent control isn't a good measure and we should simply do that instead.
When optimising globally, sometimes a backward step is required to escape a local minima. It is possible that progressive politics has made a misstep, and that correcting that is the right thing to do.
We have a first pass the post voting system which only allows for two parties.
We have this thing called the electoral college that further obfuscates the popular will.
Both of these flawed systems disillusion millions of people every election cycle. People in non-swing states who have a minority opinion feel they have no voice, and often do not vote.
People who have serious issue with the two major parties have no viable method to express their political will.
---
Media:
We have a highly polarized media environment where a large number of people only get their facts from highly biased sources. This can happen on "both sides" but it's particularly evident with conservative media such as Fox News. In this outlet, millions of people see an alternate reality to the one we live in. They don't see Trump's age-addled brain or his most offensive rhetoric.
---
Policy:
Many people seem to think that the Democratic party is responsible for the inflation of the past 4 years. Many people seem to think that Trump stands for lower taxes for the working class, in ways that won't hurt them.
If we take Trump literally, he wants to deport many millions of people who live and work in this country peacefully, but do not have proper documentation. He wants to give Ukraine to Russia. I believe he is at best ambivalent to a national abortion ban. He doesn't show any support for combating climate change.
I'm probably leaving some points out, it's late.
Would you find a popular vote system that entirely ignores the votes of dozens of states in favor of just a few somehow carrying less obfuscation of the will of the people?
There is probably no single thing that you could ascribe to 70M voters except that they vote. However, there are plenty of themes that are touted amongst supporters, many (all?) of which are easily shown to be false. Also, his biggest benefactors are people with a lot of money or influence... which are definitely not most of those 70M voters.
The man was convicted by a jury, impeached, and is known to have raped people. He is a known national security risk. ... the "critiques" are endless.
IMHO, to say that there is a useful message to be sent by electing him is naive at best. The fact that nobody can seem to discern that message despite truly trying is also telling.
Is the message, "people just want to watch the world burn?" Is it something else? As far as I can tell, nobody actually knows.
Meanwhile, he has declared victory before the votes are actually finalized. Is the probability high? Yes. Does it undermine the process? Also, yes.
Are there factors such as, "Kamala is a black female" at play? Almost definitely. Does Trump pander to groups that are covertly/overtly racist? Yes. Do all of his supporters understand/admit that? No.
Trump's victory, including popular vote and all, is quite astonishing and in many ways incomprehensible.
What kind of four years (and beyond) is this going to be, yikes.
You can chalk it up to "stupidity", which is rather silly on its face, or you can acknowledge that this result is the symptom of something far deeper, and try to explore what those issues are, and try to find solutions.
One's easier though, I imagine.
Trump is engaging in hate and divisive politics, he rules GOP. Democrats are constantly trying to play the high ground, they are loosing.
I think that the politics got to this point because the "sides" are graded on the curve. No matter how bad one side gets, you are supposed to project best possible intentions on them, worst possible intentions on their liberal opposition just so someone can say "they are the same". Like common. The long term plan to destroy Roe vs Wade for real and worked. The rights of gays and trans are going down the drain. There is literal plan to make anticonception harder to get. Trump was literally talking about this being last election and literally tried the coup after last election.
Can we please, stop with the nonsense? I remember center mocking feminists when they said abortion rights are at dangers. Guess what, they were right.
This is not about needing to listen in a more approving way. It is about needing to listen and oppose more strongly, because what they say about themselves is that they find "evil" to be something to aspire to.
Second, he literally said he aspires to be a dictator, talks approvingly about dictators, and he does engage in literal extremist rhetoric on his rallies. You can be Nazi, an extremist, a dictator while not being literally Hitler in every single detail.
He likes when people say that about him. Not saying those is just lying, insisting that others dont say those is insisting on everyone lying.
I put it - as an outside chance - that it is possible that the policies and outcomes of said policies have a bearing on the voting decisions people make.
Seems a bit of an overclaim. Strategic questions of how to handle the border was a defining issue in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Americans are continuously voting on border policy, it is one of the major elements of their national conversation. What the Biden administration did was a bit extreme but ballpark what was on the tin when he was voted in.
Erosion of democracy didn't seem to trouble the minds of the land of the free very much. I'm not too worried by Trump's second term, but I'm anxious about his third and fourth. One other issue is a fear of turning into Mexico, which people seem to think might happen by letting Mexicans in, but may yet be accomplished in a home-grown manner through insurrections and dismantling institutions.
So, not stupidity, no. But a lack of education can look similar.
https://www.uneducatedamerica.com/useful-links
You can be against Trump for many good reasons, but a good look at why he won is about much more than just deriding his supporters as ignorant.
Trump is currently leading by over 5,000,000 votes and there does not appear to be momentum to change that lead in the remaining precincts.
Obviously, I don't think 50% of the population is stupid, but every time I try to "understand" it's becoming increasingly clear it's about his "charisma" and "our team" and less about hard policies.
People out here voting against their own interests or blaming things on ignorance (inflation, etc.).
What is that? Supply chains have improved. The labor force has expanded, partly due to increased immigration, and that's helped to take some of the edge off of the supply-and-demand imbalances that we had when inflation was very high two years ago." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/examining-how-economic-pla...
Immigration: "After hitting a record high in December 2023, the numbers of migrants crossing the border has plummeted since then. Harris and the administration have credited their tough anti-asylum measures for stemming the flow, although increased enforcement on the Mexican side has also played a key role." https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/where-trum...
Abortion rights: "At one of her first campaign events, she stated that if Congress “passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States I will sign it into law.”" https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/how-kamala-ha...
If you don't like what her positions are that's your prerogative but it's just not true that she did not have answers to these questions.
I think this is one of the disconnects: inflation has been decreasing. What I think people hear, which is wrong: the prices of things are coming down.
They're not coming down, they're increasing _slower_ than before, and before was bad. Prices for lots of things are much more expensive than before covid.
The reason that "inflation is better now" didn't stick is because half the country was telling the emperor they were clothed, and half the country saw a naked person.
There was a massive international financial crisis that outed the Labour government and brought in a Tory/Lib Dem coalition government based on promises of government austerity.
There was an independence referendum in Scotland where the main campaign point for staying with England was to ensure they stayed in the EU etc.
Then the Tories managed to pin the blame for the failings of the coalition on the minor partner and drew a line under that for the next election.
Then there's brexit, which was really a vote to put an end to bickering inside the Tory party. But the population, narrowly voted to leave the EU! This was very much a protest vote.
Then there's a utter crazy story of quick rotation of prime ministers and scandal and sleeze and very very poorly-received budgets and things.
So then this year Labour are back, and their main strategy was 'at least we're not the Tories'. They are not popular, but they are not the incumbents.
... yeah, fuck it.
in reality this was maybe priority #10
the main campaign point was currency
And then there's Nigel.
That would be the charitable interpretation, the alternate is that they are knowingly misogynistic, deeply racist and have strong fascist leanings to follow a flawed corrupt politician with cult-like devotion.
Shitting on your voter base is no way to win sympathy.
If you talk to the median voter their thinking will be like "something happened three years ago I was mad about" or "my husband wants us to vote this way because he saw it on TV" or "the Democrats want to legalize incest" or "I like voting for whoever I think is going to win" (and yes these are all real.) They especially do not have coherent opinions on economic policy.
Mainly the problem is the US doesn't have a coherent media ecosystem anymore and Republicans were better aligned with newer media, ie Facebook posts and bro-y podcasts like Rogan. So TV ads and "ground game" don't work.
Part of the reason why political media has seen such a decline in quality is because of that fundamental lack of understanding by the people. Neutral nuanced analysis doesn’t resonate because that’s some combination of too incomprehensible and not entertaining enough, which has led to the media landscape we have now where it’s turned to the televised version of junk food: hyper-processed with lots of salt and sugar and practically zero nutritional value.
That said, to some degree I don’t place fault on the people for this. A lot of it comes down to inadequacies in the education system when it comes to civics, wherein young people are not well equipped to become highly functional, fully conscious voting adults.
There are aspects where we can compromise, or empathize and learn to live together on such as economy or immigration, basic human decency and healthcare are not it.
Also bit rich that we have to listen to their grievances, they haven't afforded anyone that courtesy, or respected the process of democracy.
If the results were other way round, we would be hearing conspiracy theories about election interference non stop. You can only compromise with people acting in good faith, it is clear that majority of Americans don't want to do that.
Echo chambers like HN or typical workplace of typical HN user give skewed image how much rational folks out there generally are. Most people that I ever met are trivially susceptible to smart manipulation via emotions, even to the point of shooting their own foot.
Misogynistic was my first qualifier, it is not an coincidence that Trump has won only against women twice, and it is not an oversight that in 250 years America is nowhere close to electing a woman president.
I can't see how anyone else in her position would have done much better. I don't blame Harris much.
I envision actual politicians and journalists calling trump what he is more rather then less.
Well, the US Supreme Court decided more or less exactly that presidents can break the law and get away with it: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrrv8yg3nvo
And "calling him what he is" has so far failed to sway his supporters, I don't see how it will do it now. OTOH, he (probably?) won't stand for election again, so the point is probably moot...
I stand by "politician should not mean being lawless". US Supreme Court being pro lawless when it comes to GOP is just politics of US Supreme Court. It does not mean law should not matter or that trying to apply law is fighting dirty.
It is funny how these things turn out and who actually does what in the end and how differently it is treated.
I agree, but I call it "dirty fight" because that's what it's perceived as by the Trump supporters.
It is not dirty fight, full stop. Dirty fight would be to act like Trump and his supporters do or approaching it.
I suggest Democratic party to become more aggressive rather then forever trying to paint themselves as "the adult ones" and forever put themselves into center. It just does not work and serves only to allow overtone window to move toward radical conservativism.
I suggest we stop demanding that "both sides" are described in the same terms. I suggest we stop following nonsense:
> We need to talk to them, we need to understand where they're coming from, we need to help clear the air between "us and them" so that there won't be an "us and them" and so we can _together_ avoid people that tell us what we want to hear.
For example, conservative Christians are coming from the point of view of someone who thinks women should be submissive to men, should have less legal rights, abortion and contraception are wrong because they allow for safer sex.
For example, quite a lot of people in GOP are coming to it with idea that being gay is disgrace, being trans deserve severe punishment and that being criminal is cool as long as you are rich white guy.
Actually engage with these rather then euphemism them away.
They reelected the DA that's prosecuting Trump on one of the populous counties, on the same election where the state swung further towards Trump.
Outside of the urban areas even "blue" states are red, or "purple."
The reality is that America voted for this guy. It's not nearly as regionally divided as liberals in America want to think.
For me, it means not going there anymore. I just won't cross the border for any reason.
Canada is next. There’s no escape from this kind of madness.
Not with a bang but a whimper, etc. etc.
But they can feed themselves.
And yet they hold democratic counties hostage. Somewhat like parasites.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/...
Alberta outright banned renewables development for 6 months and then slapped a huge set of restrictions on them after that "moratorium" was lifted. A tax on electric car owners added. The conservative parties nationally are on a constant drum beat about the national carbon tax and it's doomed. Weak emissions caps we have are also doomed. Any little things that have been done for the last 10 years will be undone.
At a recent party convention in Alberta, the ruling party passed a climate denial resolution as official party policy.
Amazingly lots of people on this forum trying to sanitize what these people are about.
Democratic counties produce goods that generally require an education and are significantly more valuable. Think big tech, big pharma, engineering, etc.
Democratic counties would be just fine without conservative counties. The inverse is not true.
I liked this podcast from Zachary Elwood:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5DYBm6we1WcTtktFpqHj7K?si=A...
Give them the show they want, promise them something and they happily make you their king.
They don't ask you to fulfill the promises. They just want to hear them.
That's it.
All they had to do was actually do anything about the tens of millions of immigrants coming over the board, but they ignored it and Trump used it against them.
The Democrat party is ran by a bunch of idiots. Hopefully this is a wake up call for them to get with the real world on issues.
Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.
Isn't that Nazi rhetoric? "Blood of the country" seems like exactly the sort of thing the Nazis would have been focused on. Are you going for irony?
They're poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire.
"All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning," Hitler wrote.
Obviously yes: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im...
> In the last four years, those “extra-continentals” have risen to 53 percent of all court cases. They have arrived from countries such as India, China, Colombia and Mauritania.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2024/...
Fine. I'll bring some of my own statistics. There might be ten million undocumented immigrants living in the United States total. There are fewer than half a million illegal border crossings a year; if the expected lifespan following an illegal border crossing is, I don't know, forty years, then it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of illegal border crossings don't convert to undocumented immigrants. These numbers are easily available on the relevant Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni..., which itself has extensive citations from a wide variety of sources. Saying that there are "tens of millions crossing the border" is clearly and blatantly incorrect.
And, of course, that's not even getting into the real meat of the issue, that's just sarcastically calling out the surface-level lies. No, what I really want to say about illegal immigration is that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than either documented immigrants or outright citizens, that they pay more taxes than they cost in government spending, that they do not affect job access or pay of legal residents, that they prevent offshoring, and that they contribute to GDP via spending and labor. Undocumented immigrants are, as far as I can tell, purely positive contributors to America at every level I look at, for the people working alongside them and going to school with them all the way up to the grandest statistics. If we truly wanted a healthy economy - if we wanted more citizens to have better jobs, if we wanted more money for education and healthcare, if we wanted less crime and less exploitation of labor - we would legalize all of them and invite more in after them.
Also, I thought competition was good and that we needed more of it. That's the usual fiscal-conservative line, right?
I'll further note that there are more job postings open right now than there have been at any time since 2000, that unemployment right now is incredibly low considering the pandemic and 2008, that the unemployment that still exists can be fairly easily traced to the previous trump presidency rather than any other cause, and that multiple detailed studies (refer to previous Wikipedia link) fail to find that illegal immigrants have any effect at all on the jobs or pay of American workers. Having more workers in total increases spending which opens up more jobs, for example, standard jevons paradox stuff. Your conclusions are not supported by any kind of evidence, your models do not describe or provide accurate predictions of reality, and your proposals will not work the way you think or claim they will.
Many people are coming in, some of them don't integrate and cause problems, the center says it's not a problem and the left says let's have more of them.
More people are coming in, problems are getting worse (both real and imaginary), people are getting upset, the right realizes they can use that and they build their whole agenda or that and win the elections.
The number of countries this has happened in increases, so non-right parties need to rethink their strategy if they want to stop losing.
A 10% increase in 'right' votes means roughly 10% more influence for the 'right' opinions.
In the USA, a tiny increase in 'right' votes means 100% more influence.
One bigly reason I voted for Trump was because his first term was by far the most peaceful both this country and the world at-large ever was in my lifetime.
For four years we didn't start or join any new wars, we even flat out refused to when the military industrial complex begged to Trump to start one with Iran after they shot down one of our drones. North Korea didn't fire a single missile and China wasn't anywhere as loud with their saber-rattling (I'm Japanese-American, I care deeply about Japanese security). Russia didn't invade Ukraine. Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah/et al. weren't brutally killing each other.
For four god damn years life was actually peaceful, and I want that again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile...
> Russia didn't invade Ukraine
Russia invaded in 2014 and the conflict stabilized (but didn't stop) in 2015.
In the meantime, the Syrian civil war was raging on.
Similarly, if we ignore all the events in the prelude to WW2, the world was a very peaceful place. According to Hoover, Roosevelt was a threat to world peace, not Hitler.
I'm not implying anything with the analogy, I'm only trying to illustrate that the world was not peaceful between 2016 and 2020, despite the president's efforts.
Perhaps if we had gotten 2 consecutive terms, it might have provided more long term stability.
So you vote for change, yet the economics policies stay as unequal as always. But in the process you supported a rapist and a criminal who calls execution of journalists, suppression of women, blatant racism and just death and destruction of non-privileged people everywhere.
(Not to doubt it, I just don't know as I'm on the other side of the world.)
And Republicans are against increasing the federal minimum wage so that's also not true.
Disinformation is what won this campaign.
Trump has a responsibility in escalating the tension between Israel and Palestine following the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.
He also escalated bombings in Syria.
His terrible Afghan deal also made it so that there was no time or guarantees to fly Americans and people that helped America to the US while also leaving a lot of American military gear to the Talibans. This also ridiculed the US on the international stage.
Considering how the Obama administration handled Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt they would have acted any differently wrt Syria.
Alas if I recall Trump managed to have ultimate responsibility for that fiasco occur under Biden's watch on account of losing the 2020 election. Whoops.
Yes, he was completely out negotiated by terrorists and his successor had to clean up the gigantic pile of poop that leaked from Trumps diaper.
Not much Biden could have done about this.
It wasn't the case last time with Melania. And it won't be the case this time with Musk.
It is not even that since what they basically propose is to dial down the war in Eastern Europe but get more involved in the war in Middle East and possibly soon in East Asia. That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.
Europeans seem to overestimate how close America is to Europe.
If you live in the Western half of the United States, Asia is much closer than Eastern Europe, most US military deployments are in the Pacific, and most foreign trade the US has is with Asia.
Both parties campaigned on leaving the Middle East, but it is difficult to disengage from the region without devolving power to a regional ally (similar to how the US historically let France take the reigns on African relations). Historically, that ally has been Israel and Turkiye, but relations between the US and them have fallen precipitously.
More like stop trying so hard to bring us closer to a WWIII. The USA's current foreign policy is the main cause of all the turmoil we're seeing in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Anything that can change it should be welcomed by anyone with a desire to live.
Faltering US support for the Ukraine will tempt Russia into more territorial expansion towards or even into NATO.
China will probably ramp up aggression against Taiwan and against the Philippines. It is a minor miracle that no lethal shots have yet been fired in the persistent and aggressive military incursions into Philippines territorial waters. Several navy vessels have already been damaged this year.
I believe that the best way to release tensions in the Middle East would be by improving relations with Iran - but Trump bombed the deal that would have enabled that. The relqtive economic stength of the US could have been a good motivatir. Now Iran is aligning itself with Russia.
Nobody has attacked the USA since Pearl Harbor. Military strength has been used to impose hegemony over other parts of the world, not to protect the nation.
> There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.
How can you say that after the countless deaths, pain, and strife caused by the USA in the Middle East, Asia, and South America?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Seems big to leave out especially since your next remark is about strife caused by the USA in the Middle East...
The 11 September is the perfect example of the USA bringing instability to the world and giving life to future enemies through their reckless interference in the Middle East.
But the utility of military build up is non-linear. There comes a point where further gains for your side are marginal while further losses for your adversary are existential. A neutral Ukraine represented a sufficiently balanced state of power that rendered war negative sum for Russia. We overextended ourselves in trying to peal Ukraine away from Russia's orbit. NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape. The Ukraine war is blowback for American policy towards Russia, i.e. expand NATO up to Russia's border, bait Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, foment anti-Russian movements in Ukraine that lead to the expulsion of the Russian-friendly president of Ukraine and install someone western-oriented.
pretty much the democratic party has to introspect and stop blaming voters for their failed campaign.
> The Democratic Party.. lied to the American people about the cognitive health and fitness of the president. It prevented, threatened, litigated and otherwise eliminated the ability of other [Democratic] candidates for the primary to compete, to get on ballots, and to even participate in a debate.
The reality is, nobody who was wringing their hands about Biden's cognitive abilities, or his son's legal problems actually cared about either issue. If they did, they wouldn't have voted for an mentally declining criminal today.
I agree that Democrats denying Biden's cognitive decline was a disaster.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-che...
Maybe I'm a bit too optimistic, but rather than "people want Trump" I read all this debacle as "people want something different from the Democrats".
Democrats still play by the rules for some reason and don't call out the shit done by the other party with simple enough terms.
At the same time, the Republicans have perfected the twin strategies of sowing distrust in neutral media reorting and playing the victim card consistently to everything, even their own attacks.
By the time the first ad-libbed bold faced lie is checked and sourced, he has told 42 more. It's not a game you can win by playing by the rules.
Such is my belief. I could be entirely wrong.
The lesson of the day is that the U.S. is far more conservative than I thought. Trump is the President we deserve and we deserve what comes next. White rural voters will not be helped by him and I will not shed any tears at their plight.
A large percentage of Americans aren't interested in what the Democratic Party is selling. The party can either stick to their policies and live with these kinds of showing, or take some time to really think about what the American voter is looking for.
What does it say about Trump that so many of his lawyers and advisors ended up in jail and that so few former cabinet members endorsed him? What does it say about his supporters who cared not that he raped children with his pal Epstein?
Remember when Cruz and Lindsey Graham spoke honestly about Trump just before November 2016? Recall what they said then to what they say now. It’s a cult.
Maybe you're too young to remember Bill Clinton?
He was accused of sexual harassment by a number of women (including a rape). His relationship with Lewinsky (22 years old), is highly exploitive in terms of the power he held over her career. While he might have supported women's right politically, he was certainly exploitive in his personal life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_assault_an...
There were also a number of "questionable business dealings" in his past. Arkansas land deals, Whitewater, almost impeached by Congress for lying.
But I'm sure you'll say "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Republicans". Ok, then don't blame Trump voters when they think "oh, those were just trumped up charges by the Democrats".
So while people got worked up, he got re-elected handily.
It's funny to me when people entirely overlooked Clinton's life because they liked him as a President and they liked his policies.
You'd think the Democrats would know this.
It would benefit humanity if people were taught to be consistent in their views. If they understood that extremism is when the cause is more important than the truth.
You’d be wrong. I don’t have your apparent level of inconsistency.
America isn't an idea any more than England is an idea. We're a specific group of people with a specific heritage.
I’m not saying Trump will fix any of this. I’m just saying people feel like PC culture has gone over the top while a 20oz Coke has tripled in price. Harris campaigned on “we’re not going back” but a lot of people would trade Trump’s insanity for housing prices of yore.
In addition, people tend to associate outcomes with the administration in power even if it’s due to a prior administration. Inflation appeared under Biden, not Trump. Inflation decreasing also does not mean prices decreasing.
It's nonfalsifiable. People will settle on the simplest observation:
it happened under Biden
But of course that’s far too much nuance for the average voter anywhere.
Also how many people blame it on Biden while giving Trump credit for Obama's work.
Political memories are very short. Trump can get excused for the botched Covid response because it’s ancient history, but Biden can’t get excused for global inflation which followed from the same disaster.
This comes across as very out of touch. By "navigated it" you mean brought inflation under control. But it's not like prices came down.
The $1,500 per month grocery bill that was $1,000 in 2019 is still $1,500.
People don't look at the CPI and think "phew, glad the Fed was able to get inflation back to target" they think "I remember when I used to have $1,000 left over each month".
And they remember that every single month.
The lack of basic macroeconomic education is truly becoming an ever more problem in free societies.
Living in capitalism while not really understanding basic tennents makes one ripe for manipulation and that way endangers freedoms we all cherish.
8 years later, after all of this political baggage, prosecution, and media repudiation the Democrats managed to lose in resounding manner – not just the electoral college, but the senate, house, and popular vote.
This is after what is arguably a great Biden presidency, economy-wise. The Democrats have centered their entire identity for the last 8 years about being anti-Trump. There are no bright spots in the results for them, no messaging that they can hang their hat on, and build on going forward. From a base building perspective, this is brutal. The next election is square one for them.
(Which was good! But voters hated it because they don't like change and don't like inflation.)
In this case they were blocked by Manchin/Sinema from anything like filibuster reform, but they did get some big important economic reforms in.
No one is forcing anyone to turn any sons into daughters, are they? What you're really saying is that you don't want anyone to be allowed to change their gender. That's a quite prohibitive stance for a country that puts so much emphasis on freedom.
What's this "male perverts sharing locker room" stuff about? Who's campaigning for letting random adults into kids locker rooms?
Who's being forced to take an injection?
Parent got voted down because HN is largely extremist left.
Governor Youngkin got elected in Virginia riding on a wave of anti-trans sentiment based off of a single reported assault where the accused wasn’t even trans, didn’t identify as such, wasn’t allowed to be in the bathroom where the assault occurred, etc. but that was such a volatile claim that it was all over the news for the end of the campaign even though it was a single assault out of thousands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/magazine/loudoun-county-b...
I think it’s possible to recognize that a position is not factual and based on emotional impact but we need a better term than trolling to describe it.
Some people are better than other people at convincing other people to do things in a certain way. Might have a little to do with genetics, probably more to do with education and size of platform, which is mostly a function of whose legs you popped out of and a little bit of whatever magic sauce makes you, you.
Most people that are good at convincing other people to do things a certain way are doing so in a way to personally enrich themselves. Sometimes they have a little more empathy, or perhaps intelligence, and know the personal enrichment can't be too flagrant, but regardless they all share that goal.
Unless one becomes too much of an outcast from the other good-convincers (think e.g. Lenin, Mao, CKS, Washington and his friends) and they convince everyone to go kill the followers of the other good-convincers until an equilibrium can be reached where either only one good-convincer is being enriched or at least both are to an acceptable degree.
This dynamic will play out eternally. Part of the mechanism of good-convincerness being sustainable is that you never disturb that equilibrium too much, so in this case to ground it, hence why the democrats tried to pivot right to fight accusations of being leftists (an ideology very much opposed to this idea of the best convincers being extremely personally enriched). In the end, they didn't really lose. Kamala will continue to likely have a powerful political career, and if not she can at least write some books and die phenomally wealthy like Hillary will. Democrats can switch from having much federal power to being an opposition party. Nothing actually changes, the message simply switches from "give us votes and money to enshrine whatever it is you care about" to "give us votes and money to fight fascism rah rah." Both messages are of course a lie, the real message is "give us votes and money in a way that allows us to continue to collect votes and money."
The message is that in the global zeitgeist, the natural human tendency among everyone, good convincer and not, for liberation, personal agency, and fulfilment, is obviously not being met when no matter where they turn there's someone telling them that if they want these things they have to all support a given good convincer. In the early Soviet Union, communist leaders too advantage of the opposite zeitgeist to achieve the same thing. Right now, the reactionaries have acquired a greater share of the zeitgeist, maybe because their messaging coincides well with several refugee crises and the inevitable climate refugee crisis.
In my personal opinion these tendencies can't be rewarded in this form of top down hierarchy where it's good-convincers pitting their supporters against each other. Imo we can overcome the nurture and saecular aspects of what makes someone a good convincer (education, self determination, material conditions provided for) to make everyone more level in their ability to convince others to do things. Early societies had this more "flat" organization, where the best convincers lived basically on raw rhetorical ability (look up some old Cherokee transcriptions for their interactions with missionaries, they were genuinely hilarious and viciously good at humiliating rhetorical opponents), and even that could only go so far.
During the Spanish civil war I believe the anarchists did a phenomenal job educating and "leveling the playing field" among an astounding number of people - off memory as I'm on my phone, something like 70% of their economy had been syndicalized. Somehow they convinced a shitload of the population to think deeply about their engagement in society and politics and become active, daily, if not hourly, participants in that process.
This fascinates me and I want to try this again. It of course involves sucking it up and talking to Trump supporters which I...
What was the opposite zeitgeist?
That’s a good attitude, because nothing is truly solved with a Trump presidency. His victory was always just an expression of the undercurrent. The electorate has just voiced it, for a second time, but that’s all.
Also, the DNC should really stop forcing unwanted candidates down people's throats. It doesn't work, even when you spam social platforms with your narrative.
https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/q-and-a
Can you point to any examples of this? I don't think the official Remain campaign did anything of the sort. Insulting the people you are trying to convert is a poor strategy, which is why I don't believe they did it.
When you say "were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc", what I think happened was that the Leave campaign alleged that that was what the Remainers thinking/saying and it gained traction.
Another argument would be that Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules. In countries with legally binding referenda, that would justify rerunning the referendum. But in the UK it was "only advisory".
Which is also why Republicans calling Democrats childish names such as "Dummy-crat" or saying "socialist" (or "commie") for all things to the left of their Overton Window doesn't convince any to their left to change their minds rightward.
I used to live in Cambridge; I knew only one person who was a long-time UKIP voter in EU elections, who was "delighted" by the result of the referendum.
Even though I'd already been openly discussing moving to Germany ahead of the referendum, and went on an InterRail trip immediately before it to find a place to move to in the event of Leave winning, he did not comprehend that my reaction to the result included cutting him out of my life entirely.
He wanted the Cambridge to shrink, I left. That's his face leopard.
(As for intelligence: he also sometimes boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, this was Cambridge after all).
Worse: many different and mutually incompatible fantasy futures, which they denied ahead of the referendum, and which after the referendum became a source of infighting that made all possible Brexits impossible to get past Westminster until Johnson came along and lied to everyone to get enough support to actually close a deal.
(The only time I can think of when digging a deeper hole got anywhere, even if the where was a… I guess in this metaphor: a disused basement where the stairs were missing?)
Judging by this thread, it's still not possible to have a discussion on this...
- we can have all the trade benefits without freedom of movement (specifically denied by EU at the time, didn't materialise)
- we will have 'more trade' afterwards (fails to understand how trade works)
- we won't have to follow EU rules (in reality, we can't really diverge that much from how the EU works without incurring penalties)
- we won't have to pay anything to them / we hold all the cards / ... (we did pay for our liabilities and we definitely didn't hold the cards)
- we can become much more left wing if we leave the neoliberal EU (fails to account for the fact our country isn't particularly left wing overall)
- politicians will have to take responsibility/can't blame the EU (brexiteers keep blaming the EU even now, BJ et.al. have faced minimal or no consequences for their actions)
- we can fish again (ignores relative importance of fishing vs the actually productive economy, disregards that EU is a big market for said fish)
What do you suggest we engage with?
But why? Why is it the job of the people who are on the side of established truth who have to understand the views of the fantasists? I saw more "disparagement" from the pro-Brexit crowd than the Remainers. Why isn't it their responsibility to understand the realist position?
We told them Brexit would be a disaster. We were told we were scaremongering. It went ahead anyway, and it turned out to be awful. It was a stupid decision, and it was terrible judgment.
Why can't we tell people that some proposals are stupid? And why can't we tell people after the fact that they made a stupid decision? How is it our fault that they make bad decisions?
Immigration is also a big factor in the Conservatives' defeat in the general election. People felt cheated as immigration hit a record high and voted Reform UK, which handed Labour a huge majority despite actually getting fewer votes than at the previous election.
So it's quite extraordinary to see the comments here with zero reflection on why all of this happened. This is the real, dangerous divide between the well-offs in and around London and the rest of the country.
I have read that the two main issues on voters' minds in this American Presidential election were immigration and the economy, so result is not very surprising.
I'm not ignoring that Starmer got elected by keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, but the Tories' smash-mouth politics did not win the day anyway. What I can see from where I am is that Brexit was a very special case and it's all gone back to normal now.
What happens is that Conservatives voters voted for someone else, mostly Reform UK. And the reasons have been the same as what's been festering since Brexit with the added factor that the Conservatives increased immigration to record level...
YMMV but I call a lead of 290 seats and 2,879,791 votes a landslide.
It was the Lib Dems that seem to have taken most of the Tories' voters: 72 seats (up 64) and 3,519,143 votes. The latter at least checks out. Reform was up 1 seat from 2019 for 5 seats total. Not quite a big splash then.
Labour also won big in Scotland against the SNP for the first time in years (but that was rather the fault of the SNP).
Data from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el...
Labour got 9,708,716 votes in 2024 vs 10,269,051 in 2019. Starmer and Labour did not convince voters adn lost votes to the Greens.
What happened is that people did not vote for the Conservatives and instead voted Lib Dems and, especially, Reform UK, which got a massive 14% (3rd place and more than the Lib Dems). The Reform UK vote is because the Conservatives did not deliver on Brexit and even more importantly did the opposite of what they said on immigration, which reached record level.
The number of seats to Labour is a result of the above (Conservatives dropped so Labour candidate was elected) not because people voted Labour more than before. The surge is Reform UK.
So the same issues that have been at play in the Brexit referendum are still the key issues.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nglegege1o
Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.
Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.
Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.
Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.
I was under the impression that the Dems were doing more for the working class, and that Trump was alienating women.
I really do think this is the beginning of the end for the US. At least I have front row tickets to the show.
That has nothing to do with anything. Every single person voting on the economy for Trump, blaming Biden for inflation is an example of a lack of education. Just for one example.
There's a reason college educated people vote so differently to non college educated people on average.
Costed policies that are feasible and attainable in one-term? Boring
Promises of fantastic wealth and glory? Much more appealing
Same thing the Brexit campaign failed on.
Project 2025 also helped, since Democrats answered it with shock and horror instead of countering with their own improved version. Say what you will about the depravity contained within those pages, but Trump voters hold it up as "at least it's a plan" without having read it, much like their other beloved book, The Bible. Knowing that, it was quite easy for the Trump campaign to whip up support.
As much as I want to end with some pithy comment like "manipulation is a hell of drug," I can't. Half the country just got permission to put their ugly truths on display and they certainly did not disappoint. I have trouble laughing about that anymore.
Isn't it the Democrats who sling words like nazi, fascist, racist, deplorable, trash?
The rest of it is self evident, but I’m not going to be the one to say it out loud.
COVID stimulus and an economic slowdown from 2020 caused four years of inflation in the entire world, and people see the price of milk going up and punish the incumbent (not even the person who was in charge in 2020.
At which point, it doesn't matter how you campaign, or if the opposing candidate is actual Satan, nobody's going to vote for the incumbent.
It also doesn't help that the press normalized actual insanity that would not have been tolerated from anyone else, and collectively pretended that it's normal and reasonable behavior.
Any chance you know where to find some more?
It's a handout to anyone buying those services and a loss to anyone selling them (trade workers).
Companies can't "just hire" illegal immigrants in most states - the majority of the ones Trump won.
Trump is the incarnation of a thin-skinned bully, he allows himself the worst but will cry as loud as possible on the first sign of a backslash.
If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.
Being stupid is not a prerequisite to being apathetic.
> If people who voted for him are not stupid, they certainly act like it.
This attitude of "you must be stupid if you don't see things my way" I expect on Reddit, but am disappointed to see it here.
This attitude of putting words in people's mouths I expect on Reddit, but I am disappointed to see it here.
At the end of the day, "it's the economy, stupid".
Also, why is bacteria life on mars but a clump of cells is not life on earth? ;p
There's no winning this. That's why it's actually smart to let the states decide this - that way Trump has no say in it.
Do you also think neurons, muscle cells, etc are also not alive?
The abortion debate is not about whether or not the thing that gets removed during abortion is life--I doubt you can find any competent biologist who would say it is not--but rather whether that particular cell or group of cells should be treated different than other cells or groups of cells in your body.
E.g., why should abortion be any different from removing tonsils or from circumcision, both of which also involve the removal and death of living cells from the body?
There is a difference between something being 'alive' (although I think the examples you give are dubious), and being a 'life'.
That does not mean that it is necessary a tool for genocide; conversely almost anything can be a tool for genocide depending on how it is used.
My comment was about people misusing the terms life and alive. The correct way to argue that abortion should be legal is not to redefine life and/or alive so that some living cells or collections of living cells do not qualify rather than trying to redefine common terms used by biologists.
The correct way is to argue that we only only protect some cells or collections of cells and not others and then to argue that fetal cells belong in the not protected group. The question then comes down to deciding what it is that makes some groups of living cells protected but not others. Probably the best argument would be something along the lines that before that collection of cells has grown and developed to the point that it has a brain that can think and feel it is not really different from a tumor or other collection of cells that we don't protect.
You probably meant "human life".
> You probably meant "human life".
No, I said exactly what I meant to say and meant exactly what I said.
Interesting. What makes a bacteria "a life" and zygote not "a life"?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Because the bacteria on Mars would plausibly exist on it's own. On a different planet.
A newborn by literal definition can exist on its own. It has been born.
A newborn can breath, metabolize foods, and does not depend on being connected to another life giving organism.
The more appropriate work you're looking for is "care". You need to care for a newborn for it to survive.
You can provide care specifically for a newborn. You cannot specifically provide care for a fetus, you are providing care for the mother.
I know all of this is falling on deaf ears though.
Compromises must be made!
Does any reasonable person believe that zygote at that stage is truly equivalent to a human life?
Next up no one should be masturbating because each sperm is potentially the next Mozart or Einstein.
That is conflating life (the ability is eat, shit, reproduce, and the potential to late become sentient) with actual sentient life, which is not correct.
Also, no one is planning to ban antibiotics because bacteria is considered life so we can't do anything to save the host by killing it.
“Can the fetus survive without the host body?”
That’s a medical question that will slowly move toward not aborting ever. And it solves the medical issues as well. “This fetus is killing the host” always allows for removal, because we can either keep them alive, or it can’t survive.
Then the folks who want more babies to reach term can focus on improving medical technology instead of getting involved with the mess that is people’s love lives.
Oh god, you're one of them, aren't you?
It's not like there's literally decades of evidence showing climate change to be objective truth...
Sigh.
Great job.
What you probably mean is how humans influence this cycle; whether accelerating or delaying it, in effect disrupting it. For that, there's no evidence; however, there are many politician lobbyists (and yes, also scientists taking advantage of juicy grants to deliver what was ordered) going to capitalize on the fear that it might be.
Le sigh.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Do you get it?
I'm not denying climate change as a whole or in absolute, I just want to point out that there's enough evidence to think that the world as we know it won't actually end in 2012 as some studies indicate.
We know, with absolute certainty for an undeniable fact, that Exxon's own climate scientists skillfully and accurately predicted climate change as a result of increasing fossil fuel use [1].
And we know that Exxon's response to that was to systematically sow doubt for decades, using tobacco-lobby style FUD tactics.
And yet you want us to err on the side of apocalypse. "What if we create a better world, and it was all for nothing".
You've been conned. I know how difficult it is to show someone they've been made a fool of, and I won't try. In fact, I agree with you that in many cases science ought to be questioned - lobotomies, mockery of germ theory, racism presented as science based, Daszak's infamous Lancet paper, etc.
On climate change though, there's very little to respect on the side of deniers. I would argue that, at this point, denying anthropogenic climate change amounts to treason against life.
0 - https://phys.org/news/2021-10-humans-climate.html
1 - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...
Red herring, whataboutism, false dilemma, straw man, tu quoque, hasty generalization, moral equivalence, and appeal to extremism.
And with a dehumanization cherry on top.
My secondary concern is your refusal to acknowledge/engage with the data which was presented to you, both in text and in interactive graphs.
And that's more than enough concern for me to refuse further engagement.
... Also, yes, the West is responsible for the vast majority of CO2 release. It's not remotely close [0].
* The United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions [at 4% of world population].
* This is twice more than China – the world’s second-largest national contributor [18% of world population].
* The 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28) – which are grouped here as they typically negotiate and set targets on a collaborative basis – is also a large historical contributor at 22%.
* Many of the large annual emitters today – such as India and Brazil – are not large contributors in a historical context.
* Africa’s regional contribution – relative to its population size – has been very small. This is the result of very low per capita emissions – both historically and currently.
0 - https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
People should understand there can be healthy middle grounds, which Parent obviously struggles with.
I don't deny anthropogenic climate change, on the contrary, I'm believe it's real and there's evidence for it.
I am, however, sceptical of how it's being presented and used.
> I am, however, sceptical of how it's being presented and used.
Then say that. Poe's law is rampant on this topic. If you want to be understood, then you need to write clearly and plainly.
> People should understand there can be healthy middle grounds
We're so, so far from a healthy middle ground on the discussion around climate change; and comments like yours above push in the wrong direction.
Questioning "what we are told" on climate change without differentiating between what 99.9% of scientists are saying, and what political/industry goons are saying, is guaranteed to receive clapback from any right minded individual.
So, don't act surprised when there's pushback. It's not "small-minded", it's people responding sensibly to the words you wrote.
My tone is, after all, pushback, precisely because we didn't start from a middle ground to begin with (parent's comment). I am pushing in a direction. You might disagree with it, and that's fine.
> differentiating between what 99.9% of scientists are saying, and what political/industry goons are saying
Even if what scientists say can be inaccurate, as has happened throughout history, the point is rather that I question what politicians or the industry says, based on Science, because while the science might be correct, the message is easily corrupted.
Missouri and Florida were won by Trump and both passed constitutional amendments to guarantee abortion access.
> think vaccines cause autism
I don't think this is a partisan issue. I've spoken to plenty of liberals who believe similar things. Basically the "crunchy mom" stereotype.
As a species we took on some climate debt to improve our standard of living, and we’ve been talking bigger loans every year. Those loans are coming due in the form of larger and more frequent weather-based disasters as well as health problems for millions. If we start paying off the loan more aggressively now, we can help prevent harsher payment plans for the next 50 years.
You don’t pay off a house all at once, but you’ll thank your future self for paying it off earlier rather than later.
> I don't see why current generations' lives should be tougher just to help out future generations.
Most people want a good life not only for them but also for their children, and their children's children. I don't have children, but I still want a good life for future generations. Is that not simple basic human decency?
Note that the longer we wait, the more difficult we make it ourselves to change things, and the more tough even our own lives are going to be, even ignoring future generations.
> There needs to be a healthy balance.
Yes. The status quo is not a healthy balance (or arguably any kind of balance).
How is that avoidable?
200,000 BC, were we still humans? 2 mya? 20?
Or for individuals, why care about a fertilised egg rather than (as per Monty Python) "every sperm is scared"?
No matter what we pick, it's arbitrary.
At what level of development is a human foetus anatomically distinguishable from a cow foetus?
There's no fact-based reason to draw the line in any particular place. We, humanity, don't know what "personhood" really is beyond the laws we write while guessing and the just-so stories we tell each other to justify those laws.
That's why I'm vegetarian, and why I'd become vegan quickly as soon as someone can get milk from GM bacteria. (And sell it in supermarkets).
It's also one of two reasons why I try to be nice to LLMs: just in case. (The other reason takes it as read they have no experience of existence: by being trained on humans, they'll do better and worse exactly when real humans would do better and worse, and that means worse on holiday season and when getting insulted).
It's self-awareness, at least in general and as considered by a court when granting it to a chimp.
It's also why I would likely never go vegan, although I do advocate for a drastic overhaul of animal welfare standards.
* or 5, if this list also has "personhood" in it
No, not really. It has pretty standard definitions in philosophy and science, or it wouldn't have been able to be tested for over several decades. I suggest spending some time reading the wiki, it gives a pretty detailed overview.
The only point you have is about consciousness, and we don't need to understand the entire thing to understand parts of it or observe it, just like gravity.
• The ability to recognise one's own body as distinct from that of others, as demonstrated by plants.
• The ability to pass the mirror test, which some AI pass, but whose relevance is widely debated in animal psychology both on the grounds of sensory chauvinism and because it may cause both false positives and false negatives owing to us not being able to converse with the animals we're testing.
• Introspection, except that now we've got LLMs responding much the same way Turing hoped they would when outlining his eponymous test and suggesting that a "viva voce" interrogation would have us know if the machine was innovative or "learnt it parrot fashion"*.
As humans are also demonstrably great at confabulating reasons for their acts (see: split brain surgery, specifically experimental research on patients' cognitive functioning after surgery), it is unclear whether humans score any differently than LLMs in this test irregardless of if LLMs do or don't count as people in any other sense.
• Qualia: nobody knows.
• Mindfulness, meditation and spirituality: arguably only those who explicitly practice the appropriate mental techniques, e.g. Buddhist monks and similar.
• Public/social awareness of self-standing in community: everyone who is "cringe" fails.
* fun fact: AI critics have been stochastically parroting the stochastic parrot criticism since at least 1949
Like I said, it's actually very well defined because it's been being studied for decades at this point. Just because it can sometimes be an overloaded term in colloquial usage doesn't negate that.
I again suggest you give the wiki page a read. It's quite in-depth and detailed with plenty of good references.
That makes it not well defined.
I did in fact read the Wikipedia page, and also have an A-level in philosophy, which means I've written more about this in three homework esseys than the total length of the English Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness
Besides, if you believe animals are not self-aware, why d you care about "welfare"?
What about the rest of the world who've also been experiencing the same?
It's a very shortsighted take, and we've seen the same in the UK where Liz Truss 6 weeks as PM has taken the blame for global inflation in the court of popular opinion
This is why we call Trump's voters "stupid", the US is still under Trump's tax plan until 1/2025. So if someone has an issue with taxes, it's not Biden's fault even though he is in office.
I know this and I'm not even American
Making it a left or right issue makes no sense given the content of my post was to point out the mismatch in arguments.
EDIT: This post is the same thing fwiw.
But it’s not like that is why someone votes for Trump, right? It’s maybe more of a way to disincentivize conversions back.
I… really wish there had been a primary though. Biden deserves to be hated for the rest of his life for this (along with all of his other decision making)
I can vaguely understand fixing a primary for H. Clinton, but for Biden? One of the things Biden ran on in 2020 was a vague indication that he would leave after one term.
How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?
> but at the same time Trump says much worse things about women than Harris about men
One would think so, but Trump's talk about women is just how society in general talks about women. As sad as it is, women are used to that rhetoric.
> How does the hatred for the Democrats get so big?
Multiple high profile members of the Democratic Party actively demonize rural Americans and especially men.
1. Stop calling average people ignorant.
2. Average people are misogynistic.
Of course, for people who are directly targeted by the ignorance and misogyny, it's their right to directly call it out, but they might not call it out at all, because they would be targeted further.
Trump is just Trump. A rhetorically violent, deeply unpleasant convicted rapist, but not the vanguard of an explicitly misognist movement. At least not one thats culturally hegemonic. So while American progressives may label Trump voters sexist or racist, the overwhelming majority of them don't see themselves that way. Meanwhile, a highly vocal minority of progressives do actively demean men, while people, straight people etc, and have for a decade. They've enacted DEI practices, and scholarship and funding practices that exclude men from fair participation in the workforce, education and the arts. As efforts to correct historic imbalances in that participation. At the same time, they've ignored how male participation in higher education has dropped off, the epidemics of alienation and underemployment affecting men.
Edit: Just to clarify I'm addressing the question - not advocating Trump, or suggesting that life for men or white people or straight people is in fact materially worse. Just pointing out people strongly dislike being disliked, actively biased against and demeaned and this does in fact affect their voting preferences.
America started when it rebelled against being ruled. I'd say that's not entirely off the table. First it has to become clear that we're getting ruled, not represented.
He is everything people claim and nothing at all. He says so much bullshit constantly that you have to just ignoring or discounting shit he says. So he reflects what you believe.
It can go worst as in a civil war. To a full split of the country in x countries. Now I don’t think it will happen but saying it can’t go worst is both factually false and not anchored in reality
My perspective is European & Australian, so I wonder if that skews it.
The US left (federally, not talking Alabama dems here) is generally more left on immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ and affirmative action type policies than Europe, broadly speaking. Drug policy is a wash IMO. There's a lot more variation in Europe because the EU doesn't arbitrate social issues the way the US federal government does.
This is what's crippling them. We initially built the social security net to counter this issue. Then we increased employee rights to maximum levels. I think one of either would be beneficial, but not both.
As an Alabama Dem, this is something that is just so disappointing to see when we're assumed to be not "generally more left"
There are so many here supporting and doing good, hard work with things like the Yellowhammer Fund, ¡HICA!, and Magic City Acceptance Center and Academy but we have to fight for any acknowledgement. We had more people vote for Kamala than several states but they amount to nothing in the public eye. It's so deflating and discouraging
"far right" and "far left" are terms for contextualizing a political stance, based on the world view and actions. It's doesn't matter where the majority of people stands, they can be all far right or far left or in the center, it wouldn't change the definitions.
If you think a party is ticking many boxes, you may label it as "far-right".
> nationalism, authoritarianism
Sure, you could say he supports this.
> anti-socialism
Not a fair right position. This I'd what anybody who is right of the center left position thinks.
> economic libertarianism
Trump doesn't support this. He wants all sorts of tariffs and the like.
> racial and gender hierarchies
I haven't seen any proof he supports such a thing.
> anti-establishment sentiments.
This is not a far right position. This is a populist position.
Sorry if that feels like a strawman, but I find the idea of using popularity to determining what counts as "far" stupid and dangerous.
Digging into the page for radical conservatism, "Elements of ultraconservatism typically rely on cultural crisis; they frequently support anti-globalism – adopting stances of anti-immigration, nationalism, and sovereignty – use populism and political polarization, with in-group and out-group practices.[3][4][5][6] The primary economic ideology for most ultraconservatives is neoliberalism.[6] The use of conspiracy theories is also common amongst ultraconservatives.".
Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
>>Trump is well-known for his populist, anti-globalist, anti-immigration, and pro-nationalist rhetoric. He has also promulgated conspiarcy theories such as the Obama birther conspiracy and claims of stolen elections.
You can be patriotic and anti-immigration without being far right. I think the claims of a stolen election are yet to be properly investigated. I'd welcome a truly impartial look into all the covid postal vote shenanigans last time.
>>As for authoritarian, Trump forms a textbook example of a personality cult. He frequently attacks existing institutions and an independent media, undermining trust in a free democratic process. He frequently issues positive messages about authoritarian dictators in other countries such as Bolsonaro, Orban and Putin.
You can criticise institutions now? And I'm sure he'd be in favour of an indepenndent media if America had one.
Putin is a obviously a dictator. Bolsonaro and Orban not so much (especially Bolsonaro as he was, er, voted out which would seem to automatically disqualify him from being a dictator).
It's not just
"there's something wrong in our society"
it's
"there's an insidious dark force at work, it's brought us down from our glorious past, these groups of people are involved, violence against this threat is understandable, only a few men are strong and capable enough to lead us out of this...".
In 1930s Germany and Italy the "groups of people" were marxists, jews, gypsies, homosexuals and a few others. In modern Russia it's LGBT, central Asians, objectors to the war, and various religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses. For Trump and a lot of Europe's right-wing it's LGBT, immigrants, intellectuals, and liberals (though he calls them communists).
If they’re asking for a definition, it’s likely because they already know it and just want you to fall into a “gotcha” they can then divert discussion toward in their favor. It’s cheap theatrics.
At a quick glance, I found 10 definitions of far right that differ slightly. An assumption of malice here fails. Remarkably so.
It's not pedantic to ask that your statements be taken clearly and in the right context.
It's worth noting as well that in the context of inclusion, pointing out pedantry at all is going to exclude a group in the "common" understanding of exclusion.
Most importantly, this person is trying to understand your perspective and instead of trying to sway their opinion, you criticize them. One thing that the "far right" has accomplished recently is an understanding that everyone is a person and worth respect and voice. Which is evidenced by the countless videos displaying such behaviour and the ubiquitous response of blessing attributed to people with such inquisition in comment sections everywhere.
In stark contrast is the term uneducated and it's supposed link to intelligence. Don't they teach logical fallacies in college anymore?
Some definitions are not opinions.
The definition of "far right" is an opinion. Failing to define it in discourse will inevitably result in a lack of positive outcome.
If you think you’re exceptional, vote Gorgoiler ‘28!
Were they conservative? No, they wanted to upend society and create one that is nothing like anything ever seen before. They were also anti-religion. In many ways, they were anti-tradition, and I wouldn't consider their obsession with bringing back dead traditions to be traditional.
Were they hateful, racist, etc.? Yes, up to you if that's considered 'right'.
Were they, like how American political parties are, friends of big business? Not really, they wanted to sponsor monopolies and whatnot but also wanted the businesses to have no influence over the state, rather the other way around, the state can force the big business to do what they want. As far as if it actually worked that way when they were in power, I'm not sure.
They are not centrist by any stretch of the imagination.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Gender is a social construct, mostly determined by genes & genitalia. It's not quite enough to believe you're a woman, other people have to believe it too. Another issue at play is that there are far more "intersex" people (who have some characteristics of the opposite sex, sometimes to the point doctors don't quite know whether to list them as male or female), and from what I've heard trans people often (possibly generally) are "intersex" in a way that wasn't visible at birth. The idea of a female's brain in a male's body isn't that far fetched.
> They believe in censorship.
I believe this one is more popular in the far right (when in power) than in the far left (when in power)
> They believe in supporting and growing the military industrial complex.
Militarism sounds like it's more popular on the right. Though it can be more complicated: military backed imperialism can indeed support stuff like welfare at home.
---
Now the elephant in the room: last time I checked, democrats were firmly capitalists: they believe the means of production should be owned privately. Even if you exclude actual communism from acceptable discourse, they're fairly poor at public services and keeping inequality in check.
So they would kinda feel feel far-rightish to us only because the democrats are more conservative than ours
Do you have any data (except for interpersonal psychology) on whether letting fascism slide or calling it out ultimately makes the situation worse? At what point do you call fascism fascism? When it's too late?
You call it fascism when it is fascism. Once it is openly fascist then it is probably too late to stop, but you don't call it fascism until it is fascism.
I fail to see how the Republican party is fascist. I think it's a term the Left uses to demonize their opposition. Ironically, that is kind of fascist-like.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
I assume you have good reasons to believe Republicans are fascist. I'm simply asking you and any others who believe this to share your reasons. Is that not reasonable?
Like right now, by editing your comment you're desperately trying to pose there is no accepted definition of fascism. Dismissing definitions only fits the bill.
> you’d simply dismiss them
I'm a random internet stranger. How could you possibility know me so well? Again, it's just a blanket stereotyping and demonization of people who have different beliefs that you do. A mass ad hominem attack. That attitude is a root of many problems in the political arena. I expect that kind of rhetoric on Reddit, but am disappointed to encounter it here.
> Even if I listed all reasons
I'm a busy person and I assume you are too. Why don't you list one and we'll go from there?
In this discussion, we've already defined it? where? That's news to me that I can dismiss something that I wasn't aware of.
> Do you think you sound like a person that is welcoming criticism
I am very welcoming of criticism of my party and the one I voted for. Trump can be a bombastic jerk. I voted for him because his policies align more with my values than Harris'. He was the lesser (much lesser) of two evils. I didn't vote for him in the primaries and I wish he wouldn't have won them.
Anyway, you continue to make assumptions about me rather than discuss/debate the issue of why you think Trump is a fascist. It's not much of a discussion and so I'll opt out now. All the best to you.
We don't have to define it. That's the point. It's already been done for us.
It's the same with asking me to list reasons or sources that explain the republican parties fascist tendencies, while that's been done thousands of times through the course of their campaign. If you were truly curious as to why people might feel that way, you could have done so at any point during the last few months.
You did't accept the definition you bothered to look up and you didn't accept the valid concerns people had during the campaign.
The real reason you're walking away from this conversation is because you don't care if I am right.
You're not afraid of fascism, because you think you're in the right group.
If you replace nationalism with partisanship, in very many ways the modern left is far more closely aligned with the vile components of fascism than the republican party, or even Trump supporters. The left have done everything they can do vilify anyone who disagrees with their core beliefs, which they hold are a matter of morale superiority and to which, in their minds, no person of moral substance could ever find disagreeable.
By very definition, conservatives are conservative. When they disagree with someone, they continue to treat them respectfully and move on with their lives, comfortable in the reality that there exists people around them with very different beliefs than their own. The left, on the other hand, do no such thing and yet look in the mirror and convince themselves that they're the better people in all this.
Trump less won this election than the democrats did lose it by arrogantly putting up a candidate with strong ties to the current unpopular administration and whose other policies and attributes did not appeal to the swing voter.
And I'm factually correct when I say that Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. He has motivated even a reasonable person like you to defend him vehemently. He made you part of his group, and by the looks of it you’re already starting to hate those who are not in it.
Separating children from parents at the border, reverting hard fought women's right to their own body, that is the stirring of fascist behaviour.
That wasn't his main intention. It was to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the country. And after popular criticism, he reversed that policy and never enacted it again. That doesn't sound authoritarian/fascist to me. It sounds more like bending to the will of the people you govern.
> reverting hard fought women's right to their own body
And a large swath of the country believes abortion is murder. I guess for that, they are fascists in your eyes?
The term really has lost it's meaning and is just used by the Left to demonize the other side.
> The term fascist has been used as a pejorative,[74] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum. George Orwell noted in 1944 that the term had been used to denigrate diverse positions "in internal politics". Orwell said that while fascism is "a political and economic system" that was inconvenient to define, "as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'",[75] and in 1946 wrote that '"Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable."[76] Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales wrote in 2000 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[77]: 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
It's a fact that Trump shared and promoted these. It's a fact that they are conspiracy theories.
The counter-argument is that a culture of violent police suppression is just modern America, and it’s not fair to tar one particular party with that particular brush.
This has happened at Harris rallies as well.
I do commonly see “fascist” used to describe things in similar ways where the person seems to be expressing a general disdain for something. They do successfully convey some meaning but it’s very non-specific. Just food for thought for readers who want their opinions heard more than they want to hem and haw over the specific meanings of words.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-fascis...
They claim "harm reduction" but that's not how just not voting works, 95% is still a super majority and anything you "win" is just tokenism at the end of the day.
Am I crazy to think that?
The voters made their choice clear, and those of us most impacted by GOP authoritarian policies now get to spend the next four years (at least) trying to make sure we survive attacks against us while also maybe still salvaging this grand democratic experiment.
So no, you can take that “find common ground” and shove it. We adhered to decorum for decades, even as the GOP marched ever further right and ignored, plowed through, or destroyed any and every uncrossable line or improper decorum in their path. You don’t get to try and apologize on behalf of an electorate that willfully has chosen violence, nor should we (those affected by said violence) have to tolerate their excuses.
They don't believe in climate change, want zero controls on guns, are generally anti-immigrant - even the legal immigrants are lied about e.g. Haitians in Springfield, don't believe women should have certain rights concerning their own healthcare, want to keep cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, etc.
They are impenetrable. Yes they'd claim I'm unwilling to compromise but we're talking about different starting points - I have to get them to accept certain actual real-world events and facts as true before starting a meaningful conversation.
I don’t believe (1). The other two would mean our kids’ life expectancies just halved.
Who's in charge now are not republicans. Now it's just far right believing in genius and ability of their cartoonish leader.
Non-american here, but I feel pretty much the same way. I also do niche research in computer science. People working in the supermarket, people driving trains and busses, medicine workers, construction workers, they all do work that is vastly more important to society than mine. A single educator in my child's kindergarten most likely does work that is orders of magnitude more important to society than mine is. Maybe this attitude comes from the fact that both of my parents never set a foot into higher education, but it is something I feel very strongly, and which is quite humbling.
I remember my father predicting in the early 2000s that the academic elite was increasingly crippling the country by adding more and more non-pragmatic rules in seek of some idealistic utopia, and that they would lose the support of the masses pretty soon. As a young teenager, I did not believe him, and in my arrogance of youth, I also dismissed it as the ramblings of an uneducated worker. But sure enough, most of the things he feared back then turned out to come true.
Today, for sure. I think it's far more nuanced in the long term. Most of these jobs would be non-existent without the researchers of yesterday.
Of course, if you disregard today completely for building the tomorrow, a lot of people who don't get access to wealth today will be pissed. Which is very roughly what's happening in the USA. "What we have now is perfect, and can sustain forever, stop with the progressive BS", chant the conservatives.
It's a hard balance. Dems messed it up, Reps will mess it up further, I bet.
I'm just observing from an another continent.
The research of yesterday was on another level than most of what is done today. Not to say that it's worthless, pursuit of knowledge is always worth it.
In what ways? The impact? That can't be proven until "tomorrow" comes, no?
Nobody is calling anyone stupid just because of the lack of education.
However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy to marginal tax as a grave danger to working people - you don't have to go far for examples. And when someone does believe this sort of blatant bullshit, then, yeah, they don't come across as particularly bright individuals.
> However the lack of education makes people gullible and easy to manipulate. From bleach as a Covid remedy...
You may not realize you said it, but you said it.
- Trump floated bleach as a covid remedy
- Bleach as a covid remedy is obviously stupid (we should both be agreeing on this one)
- Trump supporters support such statements from trump
- But pointing that out is "calling them stupid" and thus we shouldn't do it?
I'm genuinely curious about this because it makes up so many discussions with trump supporters in a nut shell. I don't want to condescend to them, but I also shouldn't be pointing out things that genuinely are stupid about trump, because doing so would offend them too? What should I do, just pretend all the dumb things Trump does (and that his supporters support him for) don't exist? Just so I can find common ground? (I mean, strictly speaking this is exactly what I do in polite company with trump supporters. I just pretend all the really dumb shit doesn't exist and just talk to them about policy and stuff, and in the end I end up finding that we agree on 90% of stuff and we go on our way. And they continue to support trump for reasons I don't understand.)
I can find you dozens of examples right now, in the press, from today. That the entire election is the fault of uneducated people.
Not "uneducated", but expressly "stupid".
He didn't.
Seems to me you need to look in a mirror.
In the interest of full disclosure I am totally guessing that neither did anything to materially improve the lives and fortunes of working-class Americans and neither Donald Trump will, nor would Kamala Harris. Working people in the US, as in the rest of the world seem to me to be shafted for good, by all sorts of economic forces that they have no control over. I'm speaking in this as a current academic but one-time unskilled, immigrant worker.
It used to be that you could feed yourself and your family with "the sweat of your brow". Not any more. Who is working to change that?
Uneducated working class folks compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and cheap housing. During his presidency illegal immigration was lower and wages rose for the working class and housing costs were relatively stable. He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, and crime tends to impact the working class much more than the middle/upper classes.
Mostly folks who voted for him voted on the premise that their experience of the economy was better when he was president rather than on the basis of individual policies.
Is that true? Legal immigration was lower especially during the lockdown (for obvious reasons). But the number of deportations of illegal immigrants barely changed, e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immi...
> wages rose for the working class
That happened. And it happened even faster under Biden.
> He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate
And yet the murder rate rose to the highest level since 1997.
> their experience of the economy was better when he was president
I feel like it might be more accurate to say "perception" than "experience".
Trump’s first term and Obama’s second term were fairly steady, then you see a massive bump under Biden.
Objectively, they are stupid, even the ones who went to college.
I don't see any policy there, just platitudes.
Having said that, it's hard as an outsider to look at the things Trump is campaigning on and not see that as not just calling "non-educated" people stupid, but he is literally relying upon it. Either his voters are extremely ill-educated, or they simply don't believe a word he says and actually make his lying a feature of his candidacy. Either aren't great.
When just about every economist says that the US economy -- quite literally the best economy on the planet -- is going to implode under the policies Trump has stated (even just the tariff proposal, not even getting into the crackpot "abolish the IRS and write on a piece of paper that crypto wipes out the debt", or Elon magically cutting 2/3rds of the federal budget, etc.), for people to then vote for Trump to "fix" the economy is not educated. Being isolationist in one of the greatest eras of peace in human history will not bring peace to Earth, it's literally guaranteed to bring war that will end up on your doorstep, etc. Nuclear non-proliferation dies with this election, and there are a lot of powers that existed under the US umbrella that are going to fire up a nuclear program, covertly or not.
I fear that many Americans just have no idea how much they have to lose. There is a sense of comfort and complacency to assume that this is the baseline. But it isn't. It can get much, much worse, very quickly.
I doubt it. Think about how connected the world is, you can't even apply for jobs without the internet.
Both jobs are equally important. The main difference is that you can get started doing construction without many pre-qualifications, while a construction worker may take a year or more to get the basics of computer engineering down.
The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought. That Trump got a majority of the vote is a huge win for him. No one can claim his win is because of a backward electoral system and not because he is popular. This is huge. Democrats will be dead for 2 years minimum. Trump will be able to enact whatever legislation he wants to.
He is the President we deserve. The DNC needs to be abolished. Democrats had the opportunity to reform the system. It’s been over 100 years since the number of Representatives has been updated. They could have imposed election reform. They could have gotten rid of archaic Senate rules like filibuster.
When? How? Any change like that in the last few decades would be very hard, and probably before that as well.
I don't disagree with you, I've argued "fixing the system should be #1 priority" for years, but even if the Democratic party wanted to, I don't see how they could have done so.
I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population. If the ratios are the same then I don’t think 435 vs 4035 matters.
You are wrong on this. You should look up Reapportionment Acts. The number of Representatives does matter in an electoral system and for other reasons. A Representative from California represents far more people than one from North Dakota. This is a major power imbalance in both electoral matters and in matters of federal legislation.
The number of Representatives hasn’t been updated in a 100 years.
No, the size of the House is determined by Congress; a century ago they decided to cap it at the current number, and never increase it since then, regardless of population increase.
> I don’t think number of representatives matters as it’s mostly representative of population
That's not the case, though. A quick look at constituents per representative across states is all it takes to see how stark that is.
It's extra important because the number of electoral votes each state gets is dependent upon their number of representatives.
As much as I'd like to think the waning days of the 2022 Congress were wasted, I don't think this would have been feasible.
Manchin and Sinema refused to get rid of the filibuster. And with that in place, nothing else that you mention was possible.
> The U.S. is far more right wing than people thought.
Yup. In 2016 we thought Trump was an aberration, a temporary cultish fad. In 2020 we felt justified because he lost, but we ignored how barely he lost. And now, knowing everything about Trump there is to know, we've elected him again, and we can't even say he lost the popular vote this time. The GOP took the Senate, and may even keep hold of the House for at least the next two years. Thomas and Alito will likely retire from SCOTUS, and Trump will appoint young, carefully-chosen, extreme right-wing justices. The makeup of the court will be hard-right-majority for the rest of my life. I'm sure he'll also appoint more hard-right judges to the federal judiciary in record numbers.
This is who we are, and it's time we start accepting that. Dem leadership needs to internalize that and drastically change their strategy. I'm not sure
https://checkyourfact.com/2024/11/04/fact-check-did-trump-re...
People love to hear Trump saying he will drain the swamp.
Whether democrats finally learn that lesson is another thing. I am not optimistic on that.
The Democratic campaign did no such thing. Can you point to any examples? As far as I can see they went to great lengths to avoid saying anything like that.
As far as I can tell there was far more venom from the Republicans. Maybe the lesson is that a winning strategy is to be more insulting.
Anyway, you're moving the goalposts. The allegation was "calling half the country racist sexist fascist inbred stupid genocidal monsters".
Can you quote what Obama said that seems relevant to my post? I doubt he outright insulted anyone.
> And what a surprise that they went hard for Trump instead
According to an exit poll, Black voters voted 86% Democrat this year, compared to 87% at the 2020 election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Next time, run a 6’2” white guy with good hair.
shrugs
I say this every election when democrats play the "but we won the popular vote" card as well - that wasn't the game being played, so it doesn't really mean that much.
Now you can question 2nd order effects, but that’s not a message that’s easy to communicate through media.
Is the EU vote in Brussels passed by countries or by individual citizens?
As I recall the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union .. if the US has moved to a single unified country of individuals then it might be time to reset the rules (the US founders would be in favour if I read their comments on evolving systems correctly).
Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
If you mean "state" in the sense of "nation-state", then no, the US is not a democratic union of 50 states. It's a federal republic. While each state does have its own identity, government, and laws, the US federal government has much more power over US states than the EU has over member countries.
> the current electoral system was set up to weight the votes of states that were members of the union
The current electoral system was set up to appease the southern slave-owning states who would have had little representation if the straight popular vote was used.
> Perhaps 'dated' is a better description than 'broken'.
Potato, potahto. Distinction without a difference, in this case.
Trump's legacy already speaks for itself.
As far as Europe and other overseas countries are concerned, Trump's most remarkable accomplishment was quite some time ago when he was President the first time.
He made unprecedented Presidential history already, and for the rest of his life (as well as the lives of millions of other senior citizens) he can bask in the degree of admiration that he brought to such an esteemed executive office.
He clinched it like no other in over 75 years of very strong & respectable leadership, recognized worldwide which really means something to international partners of all kinds.
He made sure that President Barack Obama will go down in history as the final US President to effectively be the "leader of the free world", in a long line of illustrious Republicans & Democrats who may one day regain such a level of respect again.
Only not possible in the lifetimes of millions of people around the world, for whom it's just a little too late now. Biden couldn't recover that mantle in only 4 years unless he was a miracle worker of some kind, that's how elusive it really was.
Completely eluded Trump, and once again the traditional American kind of world-class leadership on an international stage fades further into the past, with no recovery on the horizon any time soon.
This is something that nobody can deny.
It’s amazing to me that this can stand and efforts to change never seem to get very far.
Look at this [1] - Oprah warning women that if they don't vote they may lose their ability to vote. This is ridiculous. Trump is not a saint and January 6th was a dark moment but they (the Big Tech, the media, the celebrities) blown the negative image of Trump out of proportion and are making stuff up. Whether you like him or not he is the candidate of the other party. There is no democracy without the other party. The reality is that the megaphones have been cornered by a single side and are used in the most unfair way with additions of fake news and negative coloring about Trump and the "Far Right". Elon Musk saved the day by buying Twitter. It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
There were plenty of reasons to not vote for Kamala. Perhaps the biggest ones are her views that align with communism. [2] And by the way, Merry Christmas! [3]
[1] https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1853659788678156648
[2] https://x.com/theconread/status/1853834480944881871
[3] https://x.com/MattWallace888/status/1853234344187355332
Seen a good few Trumpers complaining about the label "far right". If you don't like the label that's on you, it's like an orange complaining about being called an orange, it's a fact.
What am I supposed to think when I see a campaign ad like this? [1]
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/04/politics/video/will-ferre...
Please explain how Project 2025 (written by the Heritage Foundation etc etc, not big tech / the media) is not a threat to democracy, specifically its sections on consolidating power in a single person (= autocracy) and dismantling various federal systems of checks and balances in favor of loyalist political appointees.
> It's the last social media platform where Republicans and their supporters could have any presence.
Truth Social was built specifically as a safe space for Republicans and their views. Musk did not make Twitter a bastion of free speech, not when using words that personally offend him get you banned.
I have never heard of it. A niche social media site built specifically for expressing right-wing political views could never compete with Facebook, Instagram, Reddit.
I absolutely sympathize with individual reasons to vote Trump and don't automatically look down on Trump voters (immigration, for example). But, Trump himself and explicit "Trump supporters" (i.e. people who make it clear they support his general identity - negativity and all) 95% of the time don't leave any room for sympathy when I encounter them, online or in person, and they are extremely common. What the average liberal is shown (and I assume you care about the average person in each camp, since lauding the common man is a prominent value) is an unheard-of-in-their-lifetimes amount of verbal encouragement (with varying degrees of explicitness) for hatred of others, violence against others, imprisonment of others, and disrespecting of the law/constitution in the name of those things. It's not comparable with any past Democratic candidate (or Republican, for that matter).
On the personal scale, my wife and I don't express anything close to extremist positions, or any cheerleader-type love for Democrats, or any name-calling of conservatives, and yet we are called every slur that's popular with Trump supporters. And we're white, cis Americans. My wife, because she's so friendly when strangers talk to her, has been stalked by one Trump supporter and had another call her a slut (to another Trump supporter, not to her face). She's terrified of these people now. It's insane that they even state out loud their support for Trump in the short time we encounter them.
You can't expect humans presented with that to think, when that candidate wins, "Wow, I guess political issues X, Y, and Z are really important to those guys. Maybe I was too harsh on them." They're going to think, "Wow, those guys really are leaning in a fascist-y direction and have a big problem with evil people in their ranks. I'm scared for my country, community, and family." I don't think that's an extreme or unnecessarily provocative thing to admit.
I'm pretty sure they won't. And for that reason alone… https://www.youtube.com/@TacticoolGirlfriend
You can't pretend that we we haven't been forced into the political eye over past several years. The winning party has been extremely loud and extremely clear about their plans for us. I don't buy the ignorance argument anymore, not after three election cycles of this. If you voted for them, then you're okay with more of us dying in exchange for whatever you think you're getting out of the deal.
(Using the nonspecific "you" here—of course I don't know how the person I'm replying to voted.)
I have a couple acquaintances that are trans and they seem like normal happy people that aren't overtly oppressed. I'm under the impression that the state of trans rights is more or less equivalent to black rights, is that not the case?
I don't think we should try to draw any conclusions about the mental state or hopes and fears about people who we consider acquaintances. We just don't know them well enough, and they don't know us well enough to open up about the hard stuff.
With Biden getting 80M+ votes in 2020, where did those millions of voters go? Harris was supposed to be Biden++
https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-20...
There was a blip with the sweep though which is also interesting - https://polymarket.com/event/balance-of-power-2024-election?...
They were wrong by about 3 points nationally, which is a normal error.
Anything else would have been surprising.
How has this happened and what went wrong?
Discuss.
Edit: Flagged as usual.
For elections this includes all the things that people think about a candidate that they don’t feel comfortable saying out loud, or even operate subconsciously.
A candidate without a primary is extremely risky.
People claiming economy was better under Trump's first presidency then under Biden / Kamela's recent presidency. E.g. people mentioning super high inflation.
There were other arguments, but it seems to me this is the major one.
Time will tell if the US really is the greatest democracy and can withstand a wannabe dictator, or if he really can subvert it all. It’s going to be a wild four years, and I fear more wall building.
He's not that powerful
Unless you think Robert Mugabe was democratic?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-e...
I think citation needed here that FBI or any law enforcement agency for that matter is anti-trump.
If anything given their deep racial history not that long ago, I would characterize them as very pro trump.
Also, whistleblowers within the FBI have come forward in recent years to:
• Accuse Timothy Thibault of running cover on Hunter Biden's laptop.
• Accuse the FBI of manipulating case files to inflate the domestic threat perception towards conservatives.
• Accuse leaders within the FBI of "weaponizing" the agency against conservatives.
• Complain about retaliation when raising concerns about these and other instances of bias and misconduct.
Isn't this common knowledge?
I think a lot of people give Trump benefit of doubt when he says these things, but he literally said them.
Aside from Trump not many people deny Biden won 2020. How would Biden have become president?
The "you won't have to vote again" was clearly him saying that he didn't care if the people vote again, because it won't benefit him.
He didn't say that he'd be pleased if the press was murdered, in those words. Though I agree that what he said was awful.
This is the thing about Trump. He says things that are dumb or incendiary, then his opponents make it sound 100x. Then people who aren't terminally online see it and think, "is that all there is?" and it makes them think that he's not that bad, ignoring the actual bad things he's saying.
The rhetoric and lies you've repeatedly said about Trump is exactly the reason your party was so soundly rejected in the landslide electoral college, the popular vote, the senate, and the house. Your lies and hoaxes don't work anymore.
Every executive order can get erased wholesale by the next President, and Trump only has 4 years.
We’ll live.
He’s gonna do his tit for tat because he’s a simple man, not a great one, and certainly not an epic dictator.
I’m not defending him, I just think the grand dictator spin has always been nutty.
“
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140252528304631808
Not saying that this won't stop MAGA from trying - but at least there's a cultural element to this, that will stop the American people from just folding over and accepting dictatorship.
It's a crazy read
Sounds like clickbait was already alive and well in the 1940's.
The US voting scheme is far from being the most democratic.
It's always been a kind of mix between an oligarchy and democracy, just look at the 2 party voting system, extreme wealth required to candidate and the lobbies expenditures.
That's very close to the antiquity democracy, they just need to remove woman right to vote (next one after abortion).
At least with trump we will have a good laugh once again.
I would say it's the greatest based on how long it has endured for and the impact it has had on the world.
There's a check list of similar statements he's on record making.
And the other thing to listen to what his primary voters - conservative evangelical Christians were saying they want for years. It is literally ridiculous how these people are saying exactly what they want, then they literally do what they said they will do, again and again. But somehow, I am supposed to assume they don't mean it, this time for a change.
Please stop commenting "Where?", "What?", "How?" to everyone in the comments here. They do not add any value to the conversation.
Everything from quoting Mein Kampf to praising Hitler's generals to using Nazi rhetoric has been done in the last few months.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/27/trump-madiso...
But I've come to believe that folks like you will continue to make excuses no matter how low he stoops.
"and again, voters are not stupid." Isn't it?
According to Snopes[0] he claims he was urging Christians specifically (who don't usually vote in high numbers) to vote "just this time", then they wouldn't have to vote anymore for four more years, or something (which they wouldn't anyway...)
He was definitely addressing Christians (he repeats it several times) but at the end of the video he says "[...] we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote", which does sound a bit suspect to me, even in context and taking into account the fact that he's often loose with his choice of words and phrasing.
[0]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vote-four-years/
The absolutely true fact is that that statement had nothing, even so much as a hint of a dog whistle, to do with that you’re saying. Like not even a shred.
He was speaking to a populace that doesn’t typically vote. So he’s saying that they can just vote this one election, because it’s important for them to for their own good. Then, he’s saying “just this once” because, again, they typically don’t vote. And again - after that he says “I’ll fix it so good you won’t have to again” - this is in reference to him fixing the government so well that they won’t need to vote again since it will be so well-functioning.
By the way, this was my take originally, on first listen. It was reinforced further my listening to it again. It’s completely clearly the true take, and I think if you have trouble accepting that it’s because you’re disturbingly mislead by bias, probably not your own fault entirely, but undeniably so.
Which is actual political goal of radical evangelical christians, if you actually read what they write and listen what they say. It is not about them being allowed to be lazy, it is about them successfully creating religious state.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/10/fac...
So yes, that one. Did you actually read your link? Or did you get duped by the headline?
> Based on our research, the claim that President Trump fired the "entire" pandemic response team is PARTLY FALSE. The Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was disbanded under Trump's then-national security adviser John Bolton. But Trump didn't fire its members. Some resigned, and others moved to different units on the National Security Council.
‘Impeachment’ in Parliament systems only works when MPs are willing to think for themselves.
Not automatically. A minority government of course more at risk of losing the confidence of parliament but it's also a powerful incentive for such a government that want to survive to use cooperation and compromise with the opposition.
*https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67015137
Also, it can enforce a ban on the discrimination we saw at Harvard and UNC (and which pervades institutions, both university and business).
If you disagree what are the examples?
If you pluck that out it completely freezes 50%+ of their operations, people really don't get how much stuff in modern companies is reliant on MS stuff (and thus why they are one of the richest companies on the globe)
Moving away from that would be a massive change management undertaking, but it's not the "Office" part which is our primary challenge. To be fair, I'm not sure we could actually survive the change management required to leave the Office and Windows part, as it would be completely unfamiliar territory for like 95% of our employees, but the collective we at least think that we can. We have quite a lot of Business Central 365 instances, the realistic alternative to those would be Excel (but not Excel). SharePoint is also a semi-massive part of our business as it's basically our "Document Warehouse".
I guess maybe I'm using the 365 term wrong?
You have countries that are willing to turn a blind eye toward their tech companies when those companies ignore laws to grow.
In some ways it's "obvious" they'll outgrow companies from countries which have a culture of corporate adherence to laws.
Left wing politics doesn't promote economic growth.
Agreeing with you though that the EU as a whole isn't really "left-wing".
Furthermore, the Greens are blocking real progress in the name of NIMBY-ism. The current government is actively killing markets by introducing harmful policies.
And for the most part it doesn't matter, nor should it.
There are plenty of European customs and views that make developing these companies unpopular (eg data collection and privacy) but the single-massive-market is the economic reason why the US is so powerful.
In the end all these regulations allow Europeans to have access to "safe" products but it kills most of our innovations in favor of the US or China.
And keep in mind, if he installs nothing but loyalists and sycophants, who's to stop him from these half-baked ideas?
Try importing California wine into France or Spain as an example. Try importing American cars into China or South Korea.
There is also the de facto tariffs from Chinese currency manipulation.
Hard to be intellectually honest about tariffs without looking what much of the rest of the world already does.
But imposing all-encompassing tariffs is just plain nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense. Replacing federal taxes with those tariffs is even worse.
Again, Trump is fixated with tariffs. At least his idea of it. The last time he tried, ask farmers how that went.
They don't promote a climate where European tech companies can grow and they hamper the usage of US tech companies products.
I'm not innocent of knee-jerk down-voting but I would like to cure myself of the habit. I wonder to what extent the extreme political and cultural polarization that prevails in the West results from a general reluctance on the part of adherents to engage in debate. At least that's my impression.
However, the numbers are much worse than before and on the previous Trump presidency they crashed(recovered with Biden but crashed again): https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/appendix-a-fav...
The anti-establishment movements in EU are also predominantly anti-US, leftists are often anti-US too.
I got the impression of many Americans online believing that Europeans are tech and progress loving, bureaucracy hating people under tyranny of EU which is a building in Brussels that churns rules and regulations.
However that's not true, most Europeans love the big government hate new tech and prefer the slow and worry free life over the daily hustling.
If Trump follows up with its promises, I only imagine EU parting with US on more stuff. I also see many Americans apparently believing that EU is mostly museums and there's no technology. Also not true, EU is made of countries that are traditionally tool-makers and Europeans are anti-tech and anti-change only when it comes to adoption of tech into their daily lives, not when creating tools and machines. ASML is not a coincidence, all kind of precision tooling and machinery is the bread and butter of European industry.
So, if EU parts with US, I imagine that American stuff will be quickly replaced with European made stuff. The dominance of American tech in the daily lives is mostly due to network effect, a forced change will result in what resulted in Russia and China: local alternatives.
Europe is worse off than the US only in Energy and demographics. Two massive issues but there are no quick-fixes for those, so they are European realities with or without the US.
I am in the process of (very slowly) decluttering my life. One weird observation that I had, is that I have very few hardware from the USA, even when I think liberally about "from" as designed and not just manufactured. I found a (crappy) HP printer, (wonderful) Apple hardware and two Zippos. There may be more, but it's not obvious labelled.
Software and some online services on the other hand are different.
From this European perspective the USA is very much a service export and not a stuff export economy.
US invested huge piles of money on the computer age and they cornered the web and software markets and now extracting grotesque profits from it mostly because its a winner takes it all industry. It's not that Europeans don't know how to write software, it's that it doesn't make business sense to go after the established American companies. Linux is invented in Europe, just as the Web but the American entrepreneurs were those who turned these technologies into great businesses. If forced by blocking, it wouldn't take much time to create European alternatives as the hard work of discovering what works and what doesn't is already established. In fact, during the internet age there were many European alternatives for most of it, there's still local alternatives to many.
Take Uber for example, it's not anything special. In places where it's banned, local entrepreneurs quickly made local alternatives.
There's of course industrial software, gaming etc and that's also plenty in EU. It wouldn't take much time to replace everything.
There are plenty of examples from the last 10-20 years where embargoes simply propelled local alternatives even in the most improvised countries.
Americans will have to be stupid to ban software to EU, so it will have to be the EU who bans American software and that probably wouldn't happen until things get really bad.
Edit: I’m amazed all 3 replies to the parent comment used the phrasing “would like a word”.
All polls have indicated that economy and inflation was the number 1 issue that voters on the right cared about, and yet they haven't flinched at the proposals that Trump have laid out. Musk even said it in clear language, that there will be "austerity" moving forward.
The greatest grift in modern times - and the people that stood most to lose walked straight into it, cheering.
I guess the only hope is that the economy is fine, and improving - which makes any radical changes much more visible and risky. If Trump and Musk want to set off the bomb and likely crater it, then they'll own that mess. But hopefully they'll just do nothing, and try to take credit for the trajectory they've inherited - for the sake of your average citizen.
But the courts will be screwed for decades.
What's dangerous about this is not the plan itself, but that there won't be anyone to confront Trump about his half-baked, or downright disastrous plans.
The economy isn't shit. The economy is booming. Job growth has been good, summer consumer spending was good. Real wage growth has outpaced inflation the past 18 months.
Inflation is going down. Interest rates are going down.
America came out of this victorious, compared to other countries that faced the exact same post-COVID woes.
The problem is that democrats couldn't convey this stronger. Republicans managed to spread the doom and gloom more than facts.
Now it's going to be trade wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, more crony capitalism. Trump is fixated with tariffs, because in his mind, deal-making comes down to strong-arming the other party. Trump seems to be oblivious of the soft power the US has wielded for decades. That's also about to get flushed down the toilet - all countries in the world are embracing for Trump-style "negotiations".
I know it is not good to engage in victim blaming...but maybe the voters do get what they deserve?
Peter Santenello has a good YouTube channel where he goes around the country (and world) and interviews regular people. It will give you some insight on the economy for the remaining 70%.
https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello
She proposed controls on gouging, which is already codified in even the reddest of red states.
Biden is wildly unpopular. People are extremely unhappy with his management of the economy, immigration, etc.
Democrats could have changed directions. Instead they doubled down on Biden. Harris said she would do nothing different. So people didn't vote for her. That's very logical.
That's not to say that Trump will do a good job or that his policies are better. They're worse and he's a crook. But voters everywhere made this sentiment clear for an entire year and were totally ignored by the Democratic party.
The economy has been on a up-swing for a good year now, and things have improved all-over. People can't live under a rock and think that a global pandemic wasn't a huge part of this - most countries experienced the very same economic effects.
But, again, Trump laying out his disastrous tariff plans is the canary in the coalmine - that his voters either don't understand economics, or simply chose to live in a make-believe world where they imagine Trump will just "fix" things.
It doesn't matter what some economist says the economy is doing. Most people are be unhappy with the economy. That's what matters. Democrats listened to economists instead of voters.
Of course Trump's votes don't understand economics. Why do you think overwhelmingly we see educated people now vote Democrats and non educated people vote for Trump?
Trust us some economist says we're doing a good job was a crappy message. This was an own goal.
Reagan had a plaque at the oval office that said: "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit"
Biden should have used executive orders to deal with the border. Just like Trump did. Biden didn't because he didn't care that voters were extremely upset about the border. Now we get to "enjoy" Trump again.
My reading is "This election has been a testament to the complete and utter obliviousness of the Dems to the American voter".
Seriously, politicians who are out of touch with their constituencies should not really be expecting to win.
With very few exceptions I've never met people there who outwardly seemed like they'd like someone as a leader who habitually lies and tries to usurp democratic institutions for personal gain.
What the hell is going on there guys? Are you just voting for the person who promises the most "interesting" times, for better or for worse?
JD Vance hopefully can 25th Amendment the Trump before senile behavior wrecks the office. But I'm worried that Trump stays in all 4 years and does irreparable harm.
25th Amendment powers have never been used before. So it's not clear how far Trump will degrade while still holding onto power.
That's the preferable option to letting Vance near the presidency, sadly.
More like a Fortunate Son who's an adulterer, felon and burried his ex wife somewhere in the backyard.
I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
Or abortion, or misogyny, or social justice, etc.
There was a big turnout, after all.
> I think that this election almost definitively demonstrates that trans issues are not important to the voters.
I don't know about the politics of your state, but in mine over half the ad campaign of the Republican senator who just won was focused on transgender issues. His losing Democratic opponent did not touch that issue.
> Or abortion
Statewide ballot measures aimed at abortion rights succeeded even in many states where Democrats lost.
Then maybe the Dems shouldn't have run on that as their major platform?
I mean, the message "Elect Me Because $ABORTION_RIGHTS" is pointless if the states are going to get their abortion rights anyway.
I think the name-calling really hurt them.
Calling half the voting population bigots of some type just makes that half dig their heels in to give you a bloody nose.
If your main priorities, when running in a political race, does not match the main priorities of the voting masses, it's easier to change your main priorities than to change the main priorities of the voting masses.
For a long time now, the Dems have been trying to change the priorities of the voting masses instead of aligning with them.
They are so used to preaching at their voter base ("This is what a real man is, not what you think it is") that they forgot what the aim of running is - to win.
You can't change the world by losing.
Their primary goal should have been to win. The primary way to do that is to (ugh) pander to the voters' will.
It's because they are so out of touch that we are seeing the result that we see. Politicians that are disconnected and disengaged from the voting masses deserve to lose.
This was also the biggest problem of the Remain camp pre-Brexit.
It was too easy to label Leavers as stupid/racist/xenophobic, and that was a huge mistake.
Pretty sure this would work with "Trump" instead of "Brexit".
What do you want racists to do? Not vote? They're gonna vote for somebody after all.
As I pointed out in a different post, trying to shame people into silence doesn't magically change their vote.
Unfortunately, when you are going to call every Rep supporter a racist with no evidence other than who they voted for, they are going to stop answering your polls honestly.
Still not gonna change their vote though...
Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
They already know, they don't care, because that specific belief is not rooted in reason or rationality.
> Going back to the original quote, you need to see that it's not calling all voters a particular thing. There's a simple Venn diagram, one circle of racists inside a larger circle of a particular block of voters.
> Educating people out of racism, and removing racism from your society, will change votes as racism is only one aspect of a person's beliefs.
I somewhat agree with the first part[1], but vehemently disagree with the second: I don't think that eradicating racist thoughts will move the needle on who gets elected, as there are, IMO, simply too few racists around to influence an election.[2]
[1] IOW, I don't believe that education will change a racist's belief, but I do see value to society in eradicating discriminatory stereotypes and discriminatory actions, of which racism is merely one.
[2] There aren't even enough racists to form a party of their own, so I doubt that them moving from red to blue is going to be any difference from statistical noise.
* Voters approved measures that would protect abortion in their state (with the exception of Florida, which only got 58% out of the 60%) needed. Said voters did not consistently vote for Kamala Harris.
* Another set of voters thought Kamala Harris was too progressive, and had no opinion on Donald Trump
* But at the same time, in local elections democratic candidates generally sweeped the ballots
I think ultimately the presidency is just an election purely on the basis of 'vibes' and whatever is directly in front of you. It doesn't matter if you can achieve your promises nor do said promises even really matter. And people vibe more with the reality TV president because they've already forgotten 2016-2020. Maybe Trump directly crashing the economy will be the thing to snap people out of it, maybe not.
A woman who worked at the hotel I was staying at had never visited the centre of the city the lived in, because she was afraid of being "knifed". This was Dayton, Ohio. Downtown Dayton is lovely.
A colleague who appeared reasonably intelligent and competent absolutely did not believe that Evolution occurred. I explained that this while this view might be common in the US - and it is - the rest of the world mostly considers this settled science.
Religion is absolutely far too influential a force in people's lives. This is decreasing, but it's still problematic I believe.
The Armed Forces are idolised. Airports have special lines for service personnel. You get to board early if you're in uniform. This is almost unique in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
When your border is wide open allowing millions of people in each year, you don’t care as much about the political circus.
When your grocery bills 3x, you don’t care as much about the loose speech.
With Trump wanting to support Russia over Ukraine and his talk about leaving NATO, yeah.
Blowing some shit up in the grey zone (or even Kursk) is one thing - his state hasn’t been threatened in any real way (which is their nuke threshold policy).
However, lobbing western made (and make no mistake, western operated) weapons into their internationally recognized territory is an entirely different ballgame.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/has-putin-threatened-us...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls
Ukraine send well trained troops there while they were needed in the east. Now they are loosing the ground there but cant really pull out. While loosing trained soldiers as well.
If anything this played quite well for Russia.
No, the fact that Russia didn't use nukes in response to Kursk incursion says nothing about his willingness to use nukes when the security of the state is actually at risk. Nuclear weapons will change the complexion of this war in ways that neither side can fully predict. It is rational to avoid moving the war to an unpredictable stage when the current stage is manageable in your favor. Not every border skirmish is created equal. They do not all rationally warrant the use of nuclear weapons.
With that said, NATO members (France, UK) have nukes. That's a line Putin can't cross.
In mainland Europe, France with La-Penne and Germany with AfD and now Sarah Wagenknecht[1] have far-right problems of their own and don't have political will for anti Russia stance so they won't be able do much either, rest of Europe are minor players or far-right governments like in Hungary under Orbàn.
[1] I refuse to call her party far left, now matter how she is described in media.
I really hope I'm just not seeing all the pieces, and that such option is not even remotely viable, but it would be bad.
I'm quite sure the US will see a military coup, in the event that Trump tries to ally with Russia and become enemies with NATO countries. I mean, I don't think it is possible for Trump to pull out of NATO. Worst case is he simply decides to shut off all funding.
Politicians are short term, military officers are life-long and ideological.
Let me put my clown mask on ...
The mask goes well with the candidate.
And from a local perspective - a grumpy neighbour that helped kickstart World War II, that enslaved my entire region for ages and raped their way through.
I'm not risking much by saying that the world was never as equal or stable. People migrate more now because they can (thanks to tech advances and permissive politics). Before, it was an order of magnitude harder.
I know globalization is inevitable. Where people disagree is on the rate of change: let's speed it up (progressives) or slow it down (conservatives). The average people - the ones who are paying the bill - want to slow it down. Let's just accept it.
If the EU declines to do this then the Polish government and possibly the Swedes will do it. It's a toss up whether Germany will in my estimation.
Nuclear proliferation incoming.
The EU has no army. NATO (which UK is part of) is still in effect and it is not going to change.
If you want security can you really rely on someone who may or may not have your back, especially if they have a policy of transactionalism?
So, the EU needs to look to their own security, and the ultimate deterrence is nuclear weapons. And if the EU doesn't take up the mantle then the Poles will definitely do it, and probably Sweden, and possibly Finland / Germany. And so the EU needs to figure out if they are happy with a fragmented nuclear policy or not.
Nothing is going to happen to NATO.
Hollywood's opinion has been proven worthless and have no influence on elections.
In 2014, nothing was going to threaten the UK's membership of the EU.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall was going to stay put for another 50-100 years.
In 1938, the UK Prime Minister waved paper promising peace in our time.
Nobody saw the Great Depression coming in January 1929.
The mesh of treaties including the Triple Entente was supposed to prevent WW1.
The southern states were convinced they had both legal right to secede and the economic support and military power that the north wouldn't try to keep them.
The British were convinced that democracy was a stupid idea and that the 13 colonies would come crawling back when they realised they needed some proper aristocrats to govern.
The world doesn't much care about things like this, pro or con.
That being said I don't see EU being able to develop a consensus on this - even if just because of Orban and Fico being Trump allies.
Can't mess with them or Trump will raise hell.
"We're gonna lower your taxes so you have more money to spend" "We're gonna take a sledge hammer to bloated policies so everything will run smoothly. Then we will build a million houses per year"
I would very much consider voting for that person. That said, Trump is a madman, he lies all the time, is a danger to institutions etc. At the same time, I am so disgruntled by the current system and by not a single politician tackling or even speaking about relevant issues that I am easily swayed.
But this is the doublethink that the right-wing is somehow able to pull off. They aren't promising that people will be better off, that wealth will be distributed. Instead they're pointing at even poorer people like immigrants and saying "they're taking your jobs".
Yeah the quality of life for the average person is stagnating, but that's down to politicians and the rich, not to whatever boogeyman they're pushing.
What makes you think he'll have anything ready this time?
I remember an interview at a large evangelical event about how they could vote for the decidedly un-Christian liar, fraudster, etc.. Their answer was that a "deal with the devil" is okay as long he delivers on supreme court justices. That was their literal phrasing.
But I guess this is something that will never change. The older I become, the more apparently I see that it does not matter WHAT you do, it only matters how you SPEAK about what you (will) do, whether it be in politics or in a corporate environment. I'm not the kind of person who regrets things in life, but if I could travel back in time and give my younger self one advice, it would be "focus on becoming a great orator", as this opens any door regardless of the level of experience.
Edit: to clarify, in order to not reply to each comment individually, I might have used the word "terrible" harshly. The thing with politics is that as a complete outsider to the US, I don't have a reliable way to know what policies were proposed and what were adopted/rejected, nor the long term effect of them on the country. The only thing I can rely on, is information available online. His track record is not covered in a good light online.
Sure, you can say that information online is skewed in one direction, but this is true to an insider, as some comments have demonstrated. The results of a particular policy and its application are subjective rather than objective. My entire premise was to demonstrate that actions are meaningless in the eye of the public.
Theoretically, this means that you get a "get out of jail" card no matter what you do in life, as longs as you can articulate your words properly.
Which was partially a good thing, since he failed to dismantle Obamacare or build a wall at the Mexican border, even though those were two very explicit campaign promises.
Who knows what he'll do or not do this time around.
Remember that Obamacare was saved by a single vote from McCain, who is now dead.
“From my understanding, his past performance was terrible too”
Depends on what you focus on. If you listen to soundbites it sounds like a circus. There’s a lot of drama displacing and stepping on toes of the entrenched players in the system.
Are we remembering the same 2010s?
Also, all of what you’re quoting stemmed from the Obama era (except the moving of the US embassy)
It’s not so much that people remember the actions, it’s that they remember the right’s white washing of those actions.
Isis was already losing in 2017 after they lost Raqqa and Mosul. Trump played no part in it.
> Tax cuts
America is already stacked with an insane deficit and debts. Tax cuts don't see like a good thing in that situation.
> Booming economy
Yes, the economy he inherited from Obama and perpetuated by spending ever more public money and increasing the deficit.
> Remain in Mexico
This only concerns 35k people which is a laughable amount.
> Far lower illegal immigrantion
Not if you compare to the end of Bidens term.
We're also still waiting for that wall to happen. Another lie of course.
Republicans also voted against a bi-partisan bill to reduce immigration.
> If you listen to soundbites it sound like a circus
Fucking a pornstar while you're wife is at home with your newly born kid that might also play a role. But somehow the party of the nuclear family doesn't see a problem with that.
What was terrible for you? He didn't start new wars, he did the abraham accords. He put in a policy of -2 regulations for every new regulation. He was much better on spending UP UNTIL COVID than Biden was.
What was so bad? He might speak like a crazy person, but his policies weren't that bad.
In what way was he better on spending? He managed to increase the deficit every single year, even before COVID.
> He might speak like a crazy person.
He does speak like a crazy person. He advocates for crazy policies. People from his administration are crazy people and advocate for crazy policies.
It's simple marketing and if there's something he's good at is that.
Harris was trying to appeal to people's intelligence with complex answers and arguments, they just tuned out and went "lol, weird laugh".
But this is another example of a string of selfishness in modern politics; it's a "got mine, fuck you" line of thinking. Whereas post-WW2 there was much more of a cooperative mindset, collective national or european-wide trauma, and a drive to cooperate to help each other out, regardless of their employment status. But WW2 has been forgotten and both Europe and the US are shifting back to the right-wing, because there's immigrants after your jobs, benefits and women apparently.
He actually promised the opposite of this last time, because suburbanites don't want any new housing built. I haven't checked what he said this time around.
And then his party reminded him that that is specifically NOT what they do. They like to let the private sector handle everything, because that’s who funds them and how they get rich too.
- Biden's Inflation
- Fortunate timing
An international perspective is useful here:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/15/in-the-u-...
Tried to Google it but all I find is a bunch of American news website like CNN and website like https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-t...
I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
https://www.economist.com/letters/2024/11/04/letters-to-the-...
Most pro Trump arguments seem to be some vague statements about freedom of speech and "weaponizing of the Justice Department", which I find unconvincing given the things Trump said several times during the last few months, indicating he would do exactly that and worse.
The letters are as vague as this example:
> My concern is that Ms Harris will at a minimum continue the leftist direction of America that has been pursued, or at least tolerated, by Joe Biden. Not to mention the violation of basic constitutional rights that the president tried to introduce with his vaccine mandate during the pandemic.
or
> Mr Trump will cut bureaucracy and regulations to unleash creativity and productivity in the American economy, especially manufacturing. Ms Harris will inflict taxes and spending that will spur higher deficits and inflation.
or
> You overlooked the unacceptable risks posed by the Democratic Party and Vice-President Harris. These include support for censorship, political correctness, selective prosecution and soft totalitarianism. The Republicans spend more, impose tariffs, and obsess on immigration whereas the Democrats tax more, regulate more and censor. Neither party confronts the hard choices required to limit monetary expansion, deficits and entitlements that gnaw at the dollar. I choose the Republicans because I value freedom of speech and oppose the totalitarianism implied in weaponising the Justice Department.
and that's most of the pro-Trump statements already.
I have no doubt the arguments exist, and those I wanted to hear, because I too share OPs question.
Well there's this sort of thing:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/colorado-baker-lose...
If you think there are plenty of places out there to get a wedding cake or a gender transition cake, and people should just leave people alone whom they disagree with, who do you vote for?
You may think they're wrong, but I find it entirely plausible and convincing that that is just exactly what they believe.
I'm not "dismissing" anything either. I have no opinion on Trump vs. Harris, as strange as that sounds to those with strong believes.
I merely observe that OP asked for arguments, and that link points to opinion letters that don't even attempt to make one. Which is fine for them - this is about this sub-thread's context. OP asked for arguments and the link does not provide them, this is not a dismissal of whatever is going on in that linked page itself, only whether it serves to satisfy OPs request here.
(Why else would they own such "lossmaking" businesses).
You especially see it if you pay attention to framing. On every mainstream platform, social issues are always first and foremost framed as "how can we afford this expensive social program!?!". It's always business friendly and worker hostile.
It was a major deal that Biden's health was declining and he showed signs of dementia. But when Trump displays similar symptoms there's dead silence.
There's a consistent "sane washing" of the crazy things Trump says across nearly all media and the double standard is unreal.
Trump has a rambling oratory style, but that is more of a stylistic affection.
The question isn't if he's better or worse than Biden, the question is if he's well enough for the presidency. And he's shown very clear signs of mental decline the last months.
Neither Trump nor Biden should have been chosen as candidates, yet all the focus has been on Biden.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times/San Diego Union Tribune, and other newspapers, LA Lakers, billionaire biotech person
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, owner of Time magazine
- Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns The Atlantic Monthly
- Masayoshi Son, Softbank CEO, USA Today/Gannet media group owned by New Media Investment Group via Fortress Investment group via Softbank
[edit - added below]
- Michael Bloomberg (former mayor of New York city) owns Bloomberg
- Sumner Redstone owns Paramount/Viacom/CBS
- Thomson family (Canada) owns Thomson Reuters via Woodbridge Company
- Brain L. Roberts, CEO Comcast, son of company founder, NBCUniversal, Sky Group, owned via 33% controlling supershares
- Donald Newhouse, son of company founder, Conde Nast (New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue), newspapers, controlling stake in Discovery Comms.
- John Malone, former CEO of TCI cable, largest shareholder of Liberty Media, et al.
If it's the oligarchs in the media who were a factor in this second victory, then it was through one truly spectacular mass-scale reverse psychology of getting exactly the opposite of the narrative they almost consistently pushed. That would be one very interesting story if it were at all true.
More realistically: to a very big (and apparently growing) swathe of the American voting public, the kind of shit that mattered most was what much of the media and their progressive political supporters in the major cities derided enough for all those millions of voters to dig in their heels and ignore them. Trump symbolically and often also literally, vocally represents this resistance to that media narrative, and thus he won again.
Several of my neighbors wear Trump's mark.
It is strange how there is this superficial notion that areas are 'Blu' or 'Red'.
And when I say you have to understand people I mean truly understand, not intellectually lazy crap like "oh they're just stupid" or "they're racist" like you already see in this thread. Stupid/racist/etc people do exist, but that isn't most people and it isn't most Trump voters either. They are normal people with real concerns and needs, not caricatures of evil.
"The economy is terrible" -- well, no it's not. We had some inflation a few years ago, but so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places. The Biden administration has been doing a great job with the economy. And you know those business people who want Trump to win because they want lower regulations? Yeah, they're not on your side -- they're trying to screw you over. You feel economic pressure, and so you're going to vote someone who's going to make it worse?
"Libs are weaponizing the justice department" -- People who have flagrantly tried to flout laws and undermine our democracy need to be held accountable. I mean yeah, "Always prosecute the outgoing party" is something we want to avoid, but "Never prosecute anything any politician does" is just as bad, if not worse. And at any rate, if that's something you're actually concerned about, why is your solution to vote for "LOCK HER UP!" Trump?
"Biden / Harris are just as bad" -- I mean, no? Trump literally sent an armed mob to attack his own vice president. Nothing you think the alleged "Biden crime family" comes anywhere close (and BTW there is no "Biden crime family").
"Immigrant gangs are invading our country" -- I mean, just no.
Not everyone is like this, but a lot of people are just living in a fictional reality constructed by Fox, Newsmax, and now Musk.
Often I have found the same fears, desires and hopes in my opponents as myself. For example: "I want my children to grow up happy"
From that level of similarity we can reach people. It takes effort.
And you fail to see why that might be uninteresting and unconvincing to a low income voter struggling even harder to make ends meet? Maybe even infuriating enough to vote against whoever said it?
Imagine someone buys a Kia hoping to reduce how much they pay in gasoline; but then the price of gasoline doubles, and they end up paying more than they were before anyway; and so they say, "Kia is a terrible car, it's so expensive to fill up, I'm going to buy a Hummer instead".
That's what voting for Trump in this situation is like: at minimum he's going to enable rich oligarchs to squeeze low-income voters even harder, and at worst he's going to trash the economy by raising tariffs, deporting working immigrants, and politicizing the federal reserve (lowering interest rates and triggering even more inflation).
I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to.
I offer in rebuttal the election results (which, to be clear, I myself am not happy about).
The Democrats could have promised a lot more programs and initiatives to relieve the pain of the working class than they did. They could have made economic relief a lot more central to their advertising. People want their pain acknowledged and sympathized with, not waved away with an airy "it's not so bad".
One thing that Trump is incredibly talented at at is getting everyone to talk about him. I've always thought that the way to get him beat wasn't to trash him, but to talk about the great things about the alternate candidate. So I made it a point to avoid talking about Trump on my social media. After the DNC, I thought we were going to get the same thing from the Harris campaign -- but it seems like in the last few weeks, Harris went hard on attacking Trump, hoping to get women out to vote for reproductive rights, leaving me nothing really to share or talk about on FB.
Trump, on the other hand, went hard on getting young adult males, who typically don't vote at all, to come out and vote for him. Both efforts had their effect, but Trump's bet seems to have paid off more, and put him back in the white house.
It's not wrong to try to understand another.
Biden is wildly unpopular, Harris is his right hand, she didn't get put up by any competitive process, and she never promised change to a country that very much wants it. The nyt always considered her the worst possible option from day 1, aside from Biden. This shouldn't be a surprise.
But if you are lucky he will allow you vote for the other side in 4 years again and then you will vote republicans after and back and forth we go.
Is a lot a things, economy for sure, but the demiocrafts passed 4 years calling half the country nazis and facists, and denying things that everyone could see like Biden health issues. This comes with a price.
I doubt most people like those two things. The difference is, they get insulted, shamed and targeted for social ostracisation if they let on what they don't like.
Which results in the election results that you see - just because you've successfully silenced someone from expressing their opinion, that doesn't mean that you changed their vote.
Americans (and people in general) do not care about social issues when they are hurting financially.
They discuss a paper "The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy.”
Which asks the Q:
"H]ow can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘authentically appealing’ (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?”
one A is:
"Trump’s boldly false proclamations—about himself, about his rivals and critics, about the world—are not a bug. They’re a feature. They demonstrate he is sticking it to the other side. To the elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the libs, the woke crowd, the minorities, the…whoever it is his supporters resent, despise, or disregard."
The solution at its heart is to reduce conflict and bridge the gap. I have enjoyed Zachary Elwoods most recent podcast episode showing how Trump is misquoted by traditional media outlets which has the negative effect of furthering the perception of bias.
It’s framed as an equality movement whereas it takes as an axiom that society is built on systemic oppression - that’s the unquestionable tenet. And then the prescription is using governments power to impose “preferred” outcomes, no matter the cost.
Thanks, but no thanks - I prefer to live in a meritocracy.
Also my personal pet peeve - having a cultural preference is not racism, god damn it! Not all cultures are the same, and we should be allowed to state and fight for our preferences! (Unlike discriminating on the basis of physical appearance or features, which is actual racism).
The fact that America equates the two is asinine to me (as an immigrant)
You didn't say, but I think strongly implied, this is untrue. Why do you think so?
Well, maybe he has, but he aligns his campaign to match the voters' will instead of trying to change the will of the voters' to match his campaign.
Dems: "Listen up: these are the issues that are important to you."
Trump: "That's important to you? Well, in that case it's important to me too!"
You can't expect to win if you are out of touch with what the voters want.
It.. unironically seems so? Not long ago Trump used to be a Democrat. He has often backtracked and tweaked his public ideology to whatever gets the most populist support, e.g. Abortions.
And inflation is almost down to normal levels, and Trump is promising wide ranging and massive tariffs that it is hard to see not causing a significant rise in inflation.
So its hard to see how people who are concerned about those issues would vote for Trump.
Even if they don't like Democrat approaches to those issues, or really dislike Democrat ideology which might explain voting for Trump now when the only real choices were Trump and Harris, what about during the Republican primaries?
Republicans used to have many reasonably competent people in the primaries. How the heck could they not find anyone better than Trump?
50% of the voting mass look at Trump and say "that is my president!", and millions cant even be bothered to show up to vote for someone else. This is America.
There are people who vote because they want the insular America and to bring jobs back from China/Mexico/etc, those who vote to burn down 'the establishment' because they feel no hope, and those who just hope that any change means cost of living drops.
Pretending like "this isn't us", "this isnt real america" is just keeping them from doing any real introspection.
Of course not statistical, but seems to be a large trend in discussion
I also think that's the same reason the exact same guy was voted out four years ago. Pretty bizarre if true, so it's probably not the whole story.
Americans (with the help of the media) are just plain stupid and vote against their own interests.
But in the end that doesn't matter is the media isn't willing to talk about that. And people keep listening to those media.
Remember age didn't matter anymore once Biden dropped out? If the NYT hammered Trump the same way they did Biden, the outcome would be different.
Of course, that's also what the Republicans / Heritage Foundation are aiming for, if they have their way they will do away with democracy. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of.
Some perspective is called for.
There are two senators per state regardless of population, so low-population rural states have an outsized influence in the Senate.
In the electoral college, each state is weighted by population. It’s unavoidably biased (just by the nature of chunking votes into seats and states) but it doesn’t consistently favor either side.
That said, so far she hasn't won the popular vote either, so that's not what we should be blaming in this election.
is not a sentence.
Hell I'm from a rural family that voted majority trump. I'm a bud not a stem. I'm also 33 with no kids.
http://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
In reality every Trump voter has their own reason to behave this way. And their behavior is perfectly rational according to their own beliefs. My personal theory is that we have been grossly underestimating the potency of misinformation and disinformation propaganda on social media. Especially those which weaponizes peoples actual grievances with authority, and directs them in this way. Anybody can be a victim of misinformation (we see this in action with people that fall victims to scam), the misinformation you personally don’t fall victim to was probably not directed at you (see e.g. the Nigerian Prince filter for wire fraud scams).
I think that even though humans are smart, and we have our own agency, there are also number of ways which our intelligence can be exploited. This is the case for scams, but also for misinformation propaganda. I think the real lesson here is in the failures of our democratic institutions to protect us from this exploitation.
I never called Trump voters stupid. I think there may be a misunderstanding here because traditional discourse has people believe that only stupid people fall for misinformation propaganda (or a scam). I was explicitly rejecting that.
However misinformation campaigns are a fact of social media. There are several documented cases of misinformation spreading. It is possible that I have just been lied to about that the media et.all lied about the scale and severity of misinformation and I believed it (although, wouldn’t that be a misinformation campaign which proofs their existence?)
I mean sure: depending on your media diet you might find all his flaws acceptable, but ask yourself if Obama (or any other candidate) displayed the very same flaws if that would cause you outrage. If yes, you might need some introspection.
You don't get to be president without being a pathological liar who only cares about themselves and not the people. I'm not saying this to excuse Trump, far from it. I am ashamed to have him as a president (to the extent I'm ashamed of anything outside my control anyways). But I've been just as ashamed to have Biden, Obama, and Bush as the president too.
The Donald Trump that your media reports on isn't the real Donald Trump, or at the very least the one his supporters see.
Example: Trump talks to a group of people who normally don't vote, and asks them to make an exception and vote this time, noting that this will be the last time he runs, and so they won't need to vote for him again. The media then takes "you won't need to vote for me again" out of context and uses it to claim that Trump will end elections in the US. People who only listen to the media see one thing, and his supporters (who are aware of the context) see another.
Im not American and barely engaged with politics at all but all of that sounds like a pretty good idea to me without looking at any stats or trying to find out why my fellow citizens were confused into making the wrong choice.
I wouldn’t trust literally anything in this guys hands’ and even less a country.
But sure, on the surface they sound good I suppose.
One explanation from Hochschild is that you have a group of disenfranchised votes, who see "everyone else" get to "jump the line" for help. Not only do they get to jump the line, they see the president (Obama back then) help these other people (immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ, an so on) move ahead of the line, while they are left behind to fend for themselves.
I haven't read the books yet, but I definitely plan to. From the article it certainly sound like it would help me understand why some Americans vote the way they do.
Even if you claim it’s noble bigotry because you’re discriminating against people with evil ancestors or who happen to share a sex with bad people.
And this illustrates the problem. Hochschild is a professor emeritus of sociology at Berkeley. Why in heaven's name would you think that good insights will be garnered by reading a Danish article about a book written by a Blue professor about another group of Red people... when you can go on x dot com and read for yourself why people voted as they did?
I can say for certain - from reading and listening to what Trump voters have said themselves - that Trump voters are absolutely done with this kind of framing.
Personally I'm not interested in going on Twitter, or Facebook, because those are going to be the most extreme people, at both ends. I'm also no prepared to do the filtering required to identify trolls or propaganda. My interest is in the vast majority of people who don't really have a voice online. I can't go out and talk to them, I'm on the other side of the planet. I'd still like to know why they vote the way they do, because I'm directly affected by how rural America votes. I wish I weren't, so I guess that's one opinion I share with Trump.
> If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor
Indeed. This is a major ongoing crisis in academe. And journalism.
As a self check, if you think that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" remark referred to white supremacists as "very fine people", then you need to upgrade your sources. Find the extended original video. It is hard to do! If you give up, let me know and I will send you a link. The search is instructive, however.
If you go back and read carefully, I suggested going directly to the source because we live in an age of unprecedented direct access, and it is no longer necessary to have same-side "explainers" about what the other side thinks and says.
To hear what Team Blue thinks, I'd recommend Team Red simply read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, et. al. Or watch CNN, MSNBC, BBC America, network news... Even Wikipedia.
That said, I'm not sure stuff like "He's annointed by God", "He tells it like it is/Isn't afraid to speak his mind", "Liberals are evil/devil/<insert literally any reason to hate them> " is stuff you want to hear, but it does represent a somewhat overall sentiment (generalized of course).
More centered around ignorance and perceived old "conservative values". I find very few people actually able to articulate their points.
1) Voters think “the economy” is “can I afford to live” NOT “we are doing better nationally than others”. Inflation is politically more important than GDP
2) Immigration matters, both the sense of control/uncontrolled and the raw numbers, particularly when money is tight. See 1
3) Don’t take voters for fools: in this case don’t insist a clearly gaga leader is up to the job
4) Don’t try to fight a charismatic opponent with someone who can’t answer basic questions about why they want to be in charge. The ability to communicate is not an optional extra for politicians, it is a core part of the job description
5) Go woke, go politically broke
6) What the metro elites regard as an illogical vote is not necessarily illogical for people who are struggling and angry - see 1,2,3,4,5 Personally I think democracy matters very much and some/much of what Trump says is appalling but until his opponents learn the lessons above, voters will keep voting for someone who manages to encapsulate what they feel"
https://x.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1854055061925560448
They think correct, in the only sense that matters.
They aren't, really. That's just what a vocal minority calls them, said minority actually deluding themselves into thinking that they are the majority.
I'm not a Yank nor do I vote or care to ever vote, but if I were and all I ever saw was every mainstream source of news and media, including sites like Reddit and apparently even HN, calling me a retard (which funnily enough is a pretty bigoted insult coming from the supposed moral & good side) and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
From where I'm sitting across the pond, the Republicans want stricter border control, smaller government, lower taxes, free speech (which itself is a loaded term that means different things depending on who's saying/hearing it), which is basically what the populist parties across the EU are promising as well.
Admittedly the US had a choice between someone unfit for office and a lawfully convicted felon, I don't envy this situation.
The Dems are terrified of accidentally seeming too left. Republicans have no problem embracing the more extreme right, whereas Dems would rather cowtow to the imaginary swing voter and lose than get called the S word.
So it's not really surprising he won, and the margin isn't surprising either.
(I suspect the problem, of course, is that the newfound prosperity is not shared evenly amongst the population.)
Yep, it's an own goal. Similar shit has led to the rise of right-wing populism all across the world, time and again. Yet they never learn. They never realize that shitting on the average Joe is not how you get power in a democratic setup.
This is why democracy is broken, because not everyone gets a voice.
And there are many examples like these, where he's quoted WAY out of context, and that kind of stuff. If you believe that for years and at one point learn that it's actually bs and he didn't say that or the context reveals he was quoting someone else, or negates the comment the next sentence, etc, you start to question ALL your beliefs.
They pushed too far, fabricated just a BIT too much, and people caught on.
And most people would say that would categorize you as mentally deficient. Voting against your own best interests because you feel people are mean to you isn't usually seen as very intelligent.
I worked for Best Buy. They fired us and hired an Indian offshore team. They had H1B representatives in the U.S. that I had to spend three months training to do my job.
H1B is supposed to be to fill critical shortages. There wasn’t a critical shortage because I existed and my entire team existed.
Best Buy’s CEO preaches “inclusivity” and “the value of each employee” — while simultaneously firing Americans (and permanent residents) to lower costs — while making the vast majority of their profit selling products to Americans.
The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
On a more subjective level — anyone that the establishment tries so hard to oppose-arrest-bankrupt-kill is worthy of my vote. When Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, the decision got really easy to support Trump. Also, see the Abraham Accords for why many support Trump on a foreign policy level.
I don’t care about engaging in a debate and plenty will downvote simply because I’m not in their tribe — but while you asked for a scientific study, there isn’t one yet, but there are tens of millions of anecdotes like mine which should give you a good start.
Not that it matters — my wife is an immigrant from Mexico and her entire family in the U.S. (who are all first generation citizens) — all voted Trump as well. Some make the mistake of assuming “immigrants” are all “undocumented.” There’s a huge difference in being anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigrant. The left-wing media fails to make the distinction. Also have a look at the so-called “Black” vote — they have a lot more nuance than the media would have you believe.
Bingo. All of the “my body my choice” rhetoric rings very hollow when you need to show proof of vaccination to sit down at a Starbucks to drink your $4.69 Americano (and still be required to wear a mask, despite being vaccinated twice in a state with something like a 90% vaccination rate).
And calling republicans facist and anti-democracy after closing small businesses, schools, playgrounds, etc. setting up phone numbers to dime out your neighbors?
Saying you are anti-1% when your covid policies directly enrich the 1%? Saying you are anti-racism when your covid policies directly hurt those without?
And then the massive economic fall out after when surprise surprise, doing all that will fuck shit up?
I was a loyal democrat my entire life before 2020. Never again.
- The economy is what ultimately matters to many people, and the impression is that the economy has been bad for the last 4 years under Biden but was better under Trump. The actual data is more unclear and confusing, but the average person has this impression.
- Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
- A general sense of rage/dislike/push-back at "elites" in Washington DC, the coasts, the mainstream media organizations, etc. If you google "trust in government" or "trust in media", they will elaborate on this issue. Trump, although a billionaire from NYC, is generally disliked there and is perceived as being an outsider and rebel vs. the elite group mentioned.
- Some protectionist policies Trump claims to support will benefit people in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc
Ultimately it comes down to two things, IMO: personal charisma and the economy. Everything else is only relevant in close elections.
I would argue it was the other way round. They both went on podcasts etc and I'm debate and in rallies Trump was verging on incoherent and boring his own supporters. But on policy he was far stronger. I'm not American and I'm left wing but the trade and tax policies he's proposing do speak to traditional left wing, trade union workers: put up barriers to lower cost countries undercutting American workers. I don't know what Harris vision is, it seems she has trouble articulating it clearly.
IMO the average voter is quite in-line with Rogan and Theo Von culturally (more than they are with Trump or Harris, for that matter) and so for Harris to skip those was a major misstep that just further made her seem like an aloof member of the DC/Coastal elite.
Biden didn't have this problem because he was more of a blue collar/middle class guy from Scranton and despite his gaffes, was more likable by the average person.
Harris just wanted him to fly to another city and do a 1-hour interview in their studio. To make an exception for a single guest seems unfair and I don't blame Rogan for not agreeing.
https://youtu.be/_aT2grMe1I4?si=jMtsUggT2eaOZdpo
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/29/joe-rogan-ka...
https://newrepublic.com/post/187601/fox-news-joe-rogan-donal...
Why spread misinformation?
Rich people getting richer doesn't matter if your rent goes up.
> Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts,
Harris sure does have the time to go on Rogan now...
Joe Rogan found it convincing enough to endorse Trump afterwards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZl_5xHoBw
You could also watch the episode interviewing Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY
Or his VP, Vance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRyyTAs1XY8
Presumably the majority are people who agree with the message conveyed during such interviews.
Ban short form media.
This continued from Clinton to the Obama era. While Obamacare was a step in the right direction, it was seen as too little too late. It also had unintended consequences. For example, some of my part-time service job colleagues reported that pre-Obamacare, the employer could have them work 40 hours a week, because they weren't forced to provide them health insurance that met some minimum standard. However post-Obamacare, their hours were limited at 29 hours, which made it much harder to make a living.
By 2016, there was an opioid addiction crisis composing largely of working whites with only a high school degree, and the economy was still suffering from the slower-than-possible recovery from the Great Recession. (Economists say it would've been faster with more stimulus, but Obama was cowed by his neoliberal econ advisors). Due to gridlock in the political system, immigration system reform was impossible, and Presidents could only use Executive Orders to try to mitigate (but not solve) the problem of an increasing number of illegal immigrants from the Southern border.
All the pieces were in place:
- Scapegoat: illegal immigrants
- Weak economy: check
- Disgruntled populace: check
Feeling abandoned by both parties, the electorate went with an anti-establishment strongman demagogue who preyed on their hopes and fears. It's almost identical to the political environment that gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini.
The saving grace for the US during Trump's first term has been her strong democratic institutions. Pray they hold up during his second and hopefully final term.
Totally agreed that neoliberalism is a cancer though
I'm afraid this is the problem - your implication is that Trump voters need explaining using scientific analysis as some sort of aberration.
One day, there will hopefully be an analysis - but it will be of how among huge parts of the media and establishment this ideological view became the null hypothesis to the extent that people - in good faith - thought they were looking beyond the propoganda while asking questions like yours.
The majority of people have picked a side long ago and are sticking to it. You want to talk to independents or people that have changed sides recently.
The interesting thing for me was seeing the blowback from the woke movement. People I know that were raised Democrats and supported gay rights could no longer identify with the party supporting a movement that appeared to be telling them that they are racist (and BTW be careful or you might get cancelled) and that it would be great if their kids changed genders. This led them away from legacy media and towards opposite points of view.
I am not claiming this was the decisive reason- just pointing out something that I don’t see talked about much. Listen to people and you will find other reasons.
Party affiliation is a huge part of people's culture and personality in the US, "We are a Republican family" is something people outside of the US wouldn't say out loud. They have always voted Republican and will always vote Republican even if it's against their interests.
> I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
Exactly, they "propaganded" so hard that they created a narrative that they are the definitive winners. So you bought into their propaganda and now you are surprised. The reality is that the democrats are not that good and the people voted.
You could try to ask HN'ers who voted Trump why they did ... statistically speaking, folks on HN do not exactly strike me as fitting the "bunch of redneck retarded bigots" profile.
Oh but wait, that would only be possible if admitting on HN that you supported Trump was not guaranteed to have the following effect:
And turns out HN is IMO a reflection of what happens in US society at large: in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" social circles, telling people that you support Trump is career/social suicide.Except that more than half of the country supports him, so if you pick 100 people, even in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" circles, chances are, you know ...
There is something deeply dysfunctional about a society where you have to hide your democratic choice for fear of being socially destroyed.
Trump voters are not casting a protest vote, how much ever now it is going to be retconned as disinformation, stupidity or anti Gaza vote, the reality is they fully expected to win if not democratically then by force.
*Which also happen to be a guy that needs a 'get out of jail free' card, that Trump can offer
Due to how Twitter works I think it generally better reflects how people are feeling, especially these days with many filters removed.
I don’t know about you, but I quite like the first amendment right that guarantees safe spaces to speak our minds.
Musk says sensible stuff. But his actions are completely opposite.
"Free speech is essential to democracy" OF COURSE
No one is taking that away. They said the same thing before Biden won. It's just fear mongering and people eat it up.
He talks free speech and then buys Twitter and removes community notes from his account just to push his agenda. It's free speech but it's all fabricated propaganda.
Trump on jan 6th commanded his goons in the bubble to try to steal the election with the fake electoral plot. Look it up. No mention of that on free Twitter. They are literally trying to install Trump as dictator under your nose. While you fight here about free speech. It's ridiculous, and people eat it up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It would be interesting to hear from someone more familiar with the inner workings of the democratic party why this is. I.e., if it's a cultural issue in the party, if it's economical, or if my view on this is completely off.
Dems will continue to make the mistake of coasting deeper into the right wing, picking up 0 voters in doing so (why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?), meanwhile disenfranchising any left wing voters left in the USA and creating no new left wing voter bloc by presenting a coherent alternative to the reactionaries.
The same mistake is being made by neo liberal parties across the world.
I'm always surprised by how bipolar US politics is. There's no place for nuance or third options, it's always one or second extreme. In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing. That's OK, people don't have to only hold extreme opinions.
As this election shows, then, you would vote for Trump, who is "better on immigration." You would tell yourself, as many Trump supporters demonstrate in interviews, that "he wouldn't actually do that."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/inside-trumps-plan-mass-dep...
Can I ask - let's say before 2028 the democrat party gets tea partied and gets a genuine fascist candidate. What would that candidate say? What would their policies be? Can you do the same thought experiment for the Republican party? Or do you, unfairly, believe it's simply impossible for one, or the other, party to become genuinely fascistic? Perhaps you even believe fascism was permanently defeated when Mussolini was hanged? I would admire such an optimistic view!
Just in case you're genuinely curious why people say these things, it's not like we're all just making it up. Trump's rhetoric simply, to one who studies history, sounds very similar to Hitler's. It doesn't mean he's as bad as Hitler, it just means he talks like Hitler talked.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-a...
As for hitlerian policy, there is simply no way to deport the millions he has promised to deport that doesn't involve roundups, trains, and concentration camps. It's a physical impossibility to achieve otherwise. Do you disagree? Will he not follow through on his campaign promise to deport every undocumented immigrant?
Not really, I don’t even give it that energy anymore.
I just move on to the next lunatic overreacting and stomping their feet.
The majority of Americans are tired of “everyone I don’t like is a fascist”. You have four years to learn that I guess.
Those are words Trump has used. He said the eating pets thing during the debate.
It's not exaggerated. These are literally things he has said, word for word, over and over.
That's what Trump's circle wants, though. They want to deport 25M immigrants. Generously, the number of people here illegally is only half that. They don't care if people here legally get caught up in it and deported as well.
Deporting even a couple million people will require mass raids, round-ups, and the construction of concentration camps. It is physically impossible to deport that many people quickly or quietly or efficiently.
They're afraid of losing the white majority, plain and simple. The sad thing is so many non-white people don't see this and voted for him.
Which is why they forced an unpopular, unelected candidate? I don't see it.
That said, the Republicans would have the same problem if Trump dropped out or if that bullet didn't miss.
And maybe you’ve forgotten how the RNC rules were changed to support their candidate?
Well these rules surely benefitted them.
Refusing to see one self as part of the problem, fundamentally.
The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.
How is that a conspiracy theory? It literally exists and was created by Trump loyalists.
> who's calling the other camp fascist and nazi on cable TV?
But that's not bullshit. Trump is following the fascist playbook fairly closely (as agreed by experts in fascist history).
"Project 2025" may be unhinged, but in what sense is it a conspiracy theory? It's right out in the open and produced by one of the most prominent conservative think tanks.
Also if they're having their way, they will break the current system; Trump has said people would never need to vote again if he wins, and Project 2025 aims to give much more power to the president (autocracy): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
And if the Project 2025 plan works as they planned it, that's the truth. America will become a single party state and that won't change without a civil war.
They will stack the courts and every appointable position with pro-Trump (not Republican) people who will make sure every election goes their way in the future.
I personally can't see any other way out unless Team Donald messes up badly enough to make their own people shun them.
Trump's story is pretty ridiculous, there's no way that his plans on how to fix the economy or the border or the whole department of efficiency thing work anywhere close to as well as he says. Regardless, his demographic believes it.
Kamala's story was a lot weaker, involved a ton of hard truths and concessions about things that people in her base care about such as Gaza. Additionally her story on the border was mostly the same thing as Trump's. If you like the border story, why not go for the guy pushing it harder?
Obama had a pretty good story in 2008 (the whole hope thing). Dems need to get back to that.
The fact remains that more Americans vote Democratic than vote Republican, those votes are just badly distributed for the EC system.
So you're asking the wrong questions.
What about the democrats ideology is unpopular? Because that is what people are voting on, not strategy.
As opposed to "we need to help everyone, especially highly victimized groups". And then people infight over which groups require more attention vs everyone else.
It's same for both sides. Pro-life stance cost them a lot of votes and could easily cost them election.
There is not the same opportunity to exploit human weaknesses for Gain.
That’s the issue. When Dems control the amygdala they might have a shot.
Presidents can't in reality take all that much credit or blame for the economy. A lot of it is out of their hands, and many economic shifts take longer than a presidential term to play out. But of course presidents will try, and succeed, because most people don't understand this.
On top of that, the GOP complains about how much money Biden "printed" during the pandemic, but Trump did his fair share of that in the first year of it as well. They just make dishonest arguments.
I really don't know how you counter this.
The opinion makers know if it wasn't this close there'd be visible backlash.
If you think Trump, Vance, Vivek, Tulsi, RFK and the just the same but newer versions of Trump, Cheney, Rove, McConnell, Romney, McCain…
Well… I guess we have four more years to see about that.
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