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You just know that guy on the left has a swastika tattoo somewhere on him.
It is escapable. It’s propaganda. Show them different news and they are communists.
The worst part of the Trump era is the realization of just how few people don’t fall for the divide and conquer manipulation.
It’s also amazing just how incredibly tacky the MAGA movement is.
The Nazis were evil, but at least they wore clothing designed by Hugo Boss. At least they borrowed from impressive looking Roman-style banners and eagles. They understood how to use colour, light and so-on to project strength. Even if you acknowledge that the Nazis were evil, at least you can sort of understand why the German people were drawn in.
But the MAGA movement is so weak, so tacky. Even if I were somehow 100% aligned with their beliefs, I wouldn’t want to associate with them in public because their whole aesthetic is so embarrassing. I can’t understand how anybody can look at Trump and see competence, intelligence and strength. I also can’t understand how anybody can look at a typical MAGA rally and see anything other than a design scheme that would make even Wal*Mart cringe.
One of the good things about living in the bay area is seeing these people on TV, it’s like seeing an NPC in a video game. It’s hard to believe they are real. The 1st time I saw an IRL maga hat was 2020, and I’m pretty sure it was a tourist at the beach I had to point and laugh. The 2nd time was last month, and I gave that bitch the bird. She was wearing the cringe ass Elon Dark Gothic Maga hat.
Unfortunately, realization is amazingly escapable.
I’ll never recover, personally. The way my world-view was shattered by how many not just nameless strangers, but people I actually know and interact with, are the worst sort of hateful monsters.
My world is a different place now, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same.
And then they wonder why I try to escape from the reality.
I know. I have flat Werther’s in my family. Real life people who think the earth is flat in 2025. Like did anyone think this is where we would be growing up.
Not as malicious but covid opened my eyes up
It’s stupidity and immaturity more than maliciousness, at least in the case of the US lumpen. The results might be more or less the same but the reframing helps with living in this world and believing in people’s ‘well-meaning nature’.
I appreciate this, and it does help turn the ire into pity a bit, but I do worry that unfortunately the effect sort of remains the same regardless
The guy with the Trump tatoo looks like the typical guy who gets a 23&ME saying he’s actually part Mexican.
Face flag looks like a fun bar guy though. Maybe he’s just stupid?
To be fair, when was the last time you had as much fun as this guy?
Pretty recently, honestly. Last Thursday the girl I’ve fallen in love with asked me to be her girlfriend.
Congrats!
that guy isn’t having fun, he’s having a manic episode with violent fantasies.
nobody with that look in their eyes is in control of themselves.
Its a funny jogge bro, he is probably influenced by the whole “lead=profit”-thing or his parents were, its murrica after all. But still, when was the last time you felt this happy? Being serious in non serious posts lowers your life expectancy, we need to laugh more even though its hard nowadays.
See! Maybe he’s just dumb! I bet he’s a fun guy at the bar.
He certainly looks the part, even though I don’t think I’ll agree with him politically.
THAT has been the most demoralizing part
That half of my fellow Americans willingly embraced Nazi Fascism
I think it’s about time that the progressives start pandering to the dumbass class. Promising to do all sorts of dumbass and unconstitutional things and then supporting actual progressive policy when they get into office.
If this worked for the current Manchurian dumbass candidate - progressives can surely get their deception game in order.
Wouldn’t work.
That is unless they go all in and start carrying crosses around and talking about Jesus nonstop and somehow convince those folks that their opposition are all secret Satanists.
Makes my stomach hurt.
Without a doubt this is the worst part. It was an immediate and irreversible swing from being an optimist who believes in the good of people to the complete opposite. I now believe humanity is fundamentally flawed and will destroy itself.
Watched too much Star Trek as a kid I guess.
I used to think similarly. The outright hatred, apathy, hostility… its sickening.
But I stand by Mr. Rogers’ message. Look for the helpers.
Humanity has always grappled with its angels and demons. No fictional evil could ever compare to the cruelty and apathy of real humans being real shit. But despite all that, humans keep trying, and have always kept trying.
This isn’t the worst it’s ever been. This isn’t even the worst it’s been here. This isn’t even the worst it’s been, here, in living memory.
If you know someone over the age of 60, you know someone older than the civil rights act.
Even in a life where discrimination wasn’t possible so much as it was fundamental in society, John Lewis and MLK Jr. still had faith in humanity. They still believed in its potential. They still had faith in the face of all of that hatred and ignorance. Faith that a better nation and a better future could be forged in their lifetimes.
And you know what? They were right.
Even today, with all of these threats to return to a time when America was “great”… even now, this is still a better nation than the America of 1963. That is undeniable truth, and it is in large part thanks to heroes like them.
If they could believe in the potential of humanity, I think it’s arrogant of us to disagree.
I really do appreciate the words and the sentiment. I would normally agree but right now my faith is still shattered. I think there are good and amazing people, who have done magical and wonderful things. I just think that small and petty tyrants are more common and more indicative of humanity as a whole. That the righteous have to look up from underneath the bootheel of those who deserve to be crushed under one themselves. Instead, those type get to run the show, and obviously always have.
This weekend has been bad mentally. I hope I can find some optimism again. I’m just so tired of expecting the worst and being proven right.
“John Lewis and MLK Jr. still had faith in humanity”
Those guys were under the boot heel, and had no direction but up. I’d be more optimistic for the future of humanity if they were white dudes with everything to lose, agitating for an oppressed minority.
That’s the entire point. They were under the boot heel, but still looked up.
To suggest that a bunch of agitated white people would be more inspiring than those historical heroes is… it’s beyond words. It really is.
Please reconsider… everything.
I once proudly said “when the internet is cheap and easy, everyone will have full access to all information and it will be effortlessly easy for people to stop believing falsehoods and it’ll start a swing towards reason!”
I just want to hug teenage me.
30-yo me was just as naive. Jesus, what have we done.
To tie star trek into an admittedly foolish level of hope: I believe there was a catastrophic war and social failing that, eventually, led to their pseudo-utopic future… right?
Well it was WW3. Which started there in 2026. Sooo… good news?
Wow, that’s kinda on the nose, isnt it?
the kind of people who dont give the least bit of fuck about pretty horrible things until it happens to them after which they love to play the victim
When I examine my German family tree, this is the kind of shit they fell for too. The only difference, the USA had a healthy economy before Jan 2025, while Germany was a wreck.
I think it’s a different kind of unhealthy economy.
The US were exporting dollars. That’s not healthy.
It didn’t take Trump to make this real for me.
I remember how our country treated Muslims after 9/11. I remember how we treated people with AIDS and HIV when I was little. Right now I’m watching Nazi salutes on national TV and no one’s getting punched even though the room is packed with the supposed opposition, and the people who consider themselves progressive are unironically enjoying people’s families inability to afford food staples.
Yeah, the aftermath of 9/11 was shocking to me as well and, in many cases, deplorable. The use of the terms “sand n-word” and things like “rag-head” were flying around all over (at least in my part of Ohio), Sikhs and others were getting targeted by racists, and the whole thing was such a surreal time.
The small town I grew up in did have a fair amount of anti-semitism (uncool things were referred to by some as “that’s Jewish”) and I’m sure I heard slurs around that as well. I didn’t expect the big, farther-left cities to descend into that.
I grew up in these toxic conservative cultures. It became very clear to me at a young age that there was something deeply wrong with them. I’ve heard exactly what they talk about when they only think that the people in their fucked up tribes are listening.
These aren’t potential allies to reach out to. They are enemies to overcome.
Progressives are becoming more radical as a response to right wing extremism.
I was raised republican and was completely caught up in their propaganda. During that time I would’ve let you starve to death while holding food if I was told you were part of the ‘bad’ group. You need to treat Republicans as the dangerous entity they are, don’t bother being empathetic, they won’t ever reciprocate.
don’t bother being empathetic, they won’t ever reciprocate.
If your statement is true, then you are evidence that we need to at least leave the door open to allow people who come to their senses a path to redemption.
You’re not wrong but they have to be the ones to take the first step. If they don’t want to we can’t force them and we don’t have time for that nonsense anymore. There should be Redemption paths but if someone’s just awful that’s their problem and we have to defeat them
Could not agree more.
The ‘progressives’ who voted Democrat remind me of abusers who punched their SO in the face and then got angry that they broke their hand.
For four years the vast majority of voters got poorer. Then, they ran Biden knowing his brain wasn’t working and when he embarrassed them, they crowned a weak candidate who looked at all of these poorer people and said she’d change absolutely nothing. Even worse, she told them to be joyful about it. Just absolute political stupidity.
Trump did not broaden his coalition on extremism. He broadened it on Democrats’ political priority to give more money to the rich at the expense of the poor. It’s just stupid politically to be seen rooting for people’s misery, because those votes are ripe for the picking thanks to Trump’s unilateral wrecking of the economy.
The message shouldn’t be: “Your vote was stupid and we hate you.” It should be: “Hey, there’s an election next year, and if you vote for us we’ll fucking stop this shit.” (Granted, that’s hard to believe watching Schumer and co do nothing, but that’s still the message they need to run with.
Yes, and I’m disgusted by people who threw their vote away or refused to vote blue over genocide despite the fact that things were clearly going to get worse under Trump. We’ve had this argument before and I’m not going to waste my time on it again.
things were clearly going to get worse under Trump
It’s not reasonable to blame people for voting for change when the Democrats did nothing meaningful about poverty for four years and then blamed poor people for being angry about it. The 2024 election was simple cause-and-effect.
That’s what partisan Democrats don’t get. We were already at ‘things got worse’, and it happened under Biden.
It is incredibly stupid to value “change” on its own as a key metric. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are mixed.
It’s like saying “I want to go fast” without specifying a direction. You want to get from NYC to Boston and on foot is too slow? Get on this jet, it’s a change of speed. Except the jet is going to LA. But it was a change!
Hitler junior was change so just let Hitler junior rule the country? That’s pretty stupid, my friend.
That’s how it works when your guy lets the majority of the country become significantly poorer. They care less about where the change comes from.
It’s not stupid. It’s cause-and-effect, specifically, what you get when you vote blue no matter who.
It is reasonable, because of what change meant in this scenario.
Don’t forget hundreds of years of ongoing slavery and genocide.
Or as Southerners call it “The Good Old Days”.
When they say “Make America Great Again”, they have a very specific time in mind.
