If only journalism was this blunt at an earlier point than after he won, again.
We can no longer hide behind the excuse of “the electoral college”. We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said “Yes. We want more of that.”
We are not better than this.
I dont get how someone can vote for Obama twice and then just say fuck it at some point. Isn’t that what more or less keeps happening, how does one make sense of all this?
How is there so much turnover and churn every election, how can someone who says he’s going to make everything harder for you have any appeal?
My only guess is he’s promising to go even harder on people they don’t like which magically makes it all palatable
That was my brother-in-law. In West Virginia. Votes for Obama twice then Trump.
Near as I can tell, they want “change” and doesn’t matter much what that means. They feel powerless in the face of the “other”. The government itself is “other”. It’s who they blame for problems whether it’s taxes or complicated rules for their small business or the way “elites” get away with doing the stuff they can’t do. They have some legitimate gripes with the government and “elites”.
Obama sold “change” really well. So did Trump. It’s not the same kind of change. And, he employed many more “others”. Trump’s change is a lie but Obama’s change never materialized even though he was probably more sincere about it.
These people are dealing with feelings of frustration, inadequacy, envy and shame. They’re lashing out and their only power is their vote. Trump fed those feelings and gave them a target and convinced them that only he could help them.
If you were to put on your diagnostician hat, what do you think he actually needs and would be satisfied with. Like what actual change does he seek and would it actually satisfy him?
What kind of change was Obama actually selling, what ideas did your relative have that Obama was going to fix that he became disillusioned by?
Every cycle there is a fresh new batch of voters. I’m sure most of the people who voted for Obama the first two times didn’t throw their vote in for Trump.
I hate to say this, but from what my kid tells me, Trump is more popular at his middle school than Kamala, just because he’s the goofy meme president and they aren’t aware of much else. This is in the middle of Baltimore. So I imagine a lot of voters choose based on that alone. We never got any Biden or Kamala centipede memes. Just that lame, forced, “dark Brandon” shit. The Democrats have become the stuffy old boomer party in the eyes of the youth, even though that’s almost the exact opposite. Their Internet game is weak as hell, and that’s what matters these days.
That’s crazy, the Democrats also had a better internet game. Are you saying the Democrats success with memeifying Trump is actually what made him more accessible to younger voters?
I’m German, and non-Germans always find it weird that most of us don’t have a very strong sense of national pride and are even very critical of our country, sometimes maybe even excessively so.
We have learned what uncritical, unreflected national pride leads to. What the price is to not confront the dark side that every society has.
And now, sadly, the US has to learn the same lesson the hard way too. I only hope the US and the rest of the world can come out of it with as little bloodshed as possible. But I fear for the worst.
“Remember, remember the 5th of november.” has a altogether new meaning now.
Yeah, that’s the tragedy of it. Even in a country where it already happened once and millions of people died because of it, there are people eager for another run at it.
Instead of doubling down on our beliefs with authenticity as the Right does (I mean, many abortion referendums did pass), we repeatedly cede ground to the Overton Window.
The problem is we don’t actually engage in the same degree of activism in the off-season and always let conservatives control the narrative on largely manufactured issues and half truths.
I do think we can blame the electoral college to a certain extent. How many people sat home in deep red states because their vote never matters? Unless you live in a handful of states there is almost no point. Take that away and let the people have a voice, not some bullshit system which was designed to prevent leaders like him getting elected.
We absolutely are not. We are a nation of bigots, racists, and simpletons.
This is us, this is America.
No no no. That’s who voted. Those that sat on their ass and pouted about other shit is who did not. There are only 67 million of us that said no to the orange man.
This is basically the big thing that has been weighing on me. It’s very clear that the culture I thought I was brought up in, the thing that gave me pride, was not really US culture. It’s very clear to me that US culture values justice, democracy, truth, and the general wellbeing of people in no meaningful ways beyond the PR value of pretending to value these things. It’s very clear to me that this culture is way more racist, sexist, and classist than I was led to believe. It’s also very clear that this culture has an active disdain for education. In aggregate we are a gullible, irrationally emotional, entitled and greedy population with a nearly insatiable bloodlust for violence. We are, on the whole, a profoundly evil country made up of willfully ignorant masses that are ruled by duplicitous oligarchs. Now, I know that there are a lot of good people here. But there is nothing intrinsically American about their goodness. If anything they are an aberration from the seething awfulness that is America.
This hurt me to read because I believe it. I wouldn’t have yesterday. I feel shame to live among these people anymore. I can’t reasonably leave but I’m not sure what else to do. This feels like defeat in a way I thought could never happen. Probably because I believed in those things that made America great. Not the government, but the people. You’re right, they are not the norm but the exception to what it means to be American. Fuck me.
This is the thought that I’ve been trying to articulate. Those that are decent people aren’t good because they are Americans but in spite of being American.
Yep. Our culture teaches our children that being uneducated (or at least acting the part) is cool. That money and physical attractiveness are the only truly important things. We embody everything that all moral philosophies warn against. Even the good ones among us in this country are tainted by the toxic culture.
A lot of people are going to flip out mentally over this, maybe Ted Kazinsky level. I’m hoping to not lose my sanity, but I will never believe in America again. It cannot be trusted with not killing itself in a haze of selfish rage. Fuck this country.
This post does a good job of articulating how I’ve been feeling. I think last night made it very clear what the character of our country really is. Unsalvageable garbage, unworthy of our efforts to improve it.
Yeah, it was bad when Bush was reelected. But even then, I felt people were treating politics more like a team sport than actually chosing the most qualified leader. But now I feel like it’s gone from “rooting for me team” to full on cult mode. My neighbor across the street has 6 Trump signs on her house. That’s not normal behavior.
Voting booths are secret places where people can admit how they really feel without feeling judged. Trump won the popular vote because he appealed to a lot of people who didn’t wear MAGA hats, or walk around in garbage bags.
The sad thing is that this isn’t really a shock to the rest of the world. There’s a reason why, for decades, Americans going on backpacking trips have put Canadian flags on their gear.
The only saving grace here is that it might not be that most Americans are cruel, racist, sexist, classist, etc. It might just be that they’re incredibly dumb. I’ve listened to a lot of interviews of Trump supporters and the vast majority are idiots. They believe in crazy conspiracies. They say they love Trump’s policies then can’t name any of them. They can’t accept that he actually legitimately lost all his legal cases. They regurgitate things they’ve heard, but clearly haven’t even spent a second thinking about, because they go blank as soon as they’re asked to elaborate on anything.
And, if the problem is really that they’re morons, it may not be their fault. For some reason, the US obsession with free speech and free markets means that Internet companies can keep feeding people bullshit that makes them angry, which keeps them engaged, which keeps the ad dollars flowing. US TV networks can tell absurd lies under the guise of news, and they’re apparently immune from being sued for doing it. “Concerned parents” funded by lobbying groups can fuck up the education system so that kids never learn anything that might make them feel bad. The US is allowed to have a government funded state media network that delivers factual video, audio and written news and information around the world. But, most Americans have never heard of it because it’s not allowed to compete with the for-profit media in the country itself.
I dunno, maybe the world can save the US. The fact is, Europe does occasionally have strong influence in the US. Americans have to deal with cookie banners because of a GDPR law that doesn’t apply in the US. Maybe if the EU took on the US tech monopolies it would actually affect the way Americans are brainwashed. But, unfortunately, I have serious doubts about whether the US can dig itself out of the hole it’s in. Right now it looks like the hole is just getting deeper and deeper.
I’d say we tend to still have a few good qualities from our culture (or at least a product of a subculture), but there absolutely no doubt about the bad ones. I especially hate how they are regarding education, since that’s one of the most important things we have.
It’s a shame we’re slowly losing those good qualities, though. Individualism, for instance, is at it’s extreme in the US and is one of the ways it’s attracted so many artists and creatives. Too bad corporate interests are eroding that steadily for decades, and fascism is likely to stifle the first amendment once and for all.
Even the far left is stupid in America. They’re supposed to be the educated ones. But instead of doing their civic duty, they stayed home. And you can blame it on Democrats all you like, but it’s your duty to go vote, no matter who you vote for. The turnout this election was pathetic.
I don’t understand how these people are going to complain now for the next 4 years, when they didn’t even want to take part.
Ok this line of thinking is pissing me off.
As of this right now the turn out is 140,144,378 and counting (it will be weeks before the final number).
If we look at the last 90 or so years we can see that this “sad turnout” is the second highest only behind 2020s 158,481,688.
90 years ago the entire US population was less than that 140 million, let alone eligible voters. Percentage of eligible voters would make a better argument than absolute numbers when you’re comparing over time.
That said, 140m versus 158m is a huge drop. An astonishing drop. The final total could still amount to a >10% reduction in turnout, despite a slight increase in the number of eligible voters. I don’t understand how that could be viewed as not sad, regardless of who you vote for.
But instead of doing their civic duty, they stayed home
Do you have anything to back this up, or is this typical Democrat blaming people they never tried to appeal to?
Democrats didnt want people voting. This was the year of fighting against ballot access. They directly disenfranchised so many people.
That’s bullshit. Dems win when turnout is larger. Turnout was significantly below 2020.
Dems have learned to never nominate a woman again, because this country is so fucking sexist.
Yeah turn on each other immediately. That will give you hope for next time.
Good chance there isn’t going to be a next time, dude. It’s hard not sounding hyperbolic when saying things like “its the end of the world” but the next four years were CRITICAL to climate change, and we’ve voted to pour even more gas all over it. We don’t even have violent resistance to fall back on. The ‘progressives’ who stayed home this election because they couldnt hold their nose and vote for harris? Have damned us all. They’re just as much to blame for whats about to happen as the pathetic campaign harris was running.
It doesn’t matter if we’re fracturing the left. There was never any unity there in the first place.
The ‘progressives’ who stayed home this election because they couldnt hold their nose and vote for harris? Have damned us all.
I think it was the Trump voters that did that, actually.
