All of this… it could have been stopped. We don’t have to love (or even like) the Democrats, but it was such an important election, and everybody was screaming to vote against fascism. Well, a lot of people couldn’t be bothered, and it’s here now. Hope our country survives this administration…
It’s important for perspective that we remember how thin the line is between winning and losing. A very minor shift in voter turnout is all it takes to flip the game. The good news for us in this is that we don’t need to take the last election as a sign that the entire world is lost - we have every opportunity to change things. You could say it shouldn’t be this close, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but that’s also a pretty pointless whinge. Nothing worth having has ever been won without a fight, so we shouldn’t gripe about having to face one ourselves.
It’s in part because Biden ran on opposing fascism, got elected, and then did nothing to oppose fascism. He sold himself as a dragonslayer, but once he got in, he didn’t want to upset the pro-dragon crowd.
So, yeah, when his protege ran the exact same campaign, it didn’t instill a lot of confidence.
He slow walked us to this, Trump should have been jailed, convicted, and in the dirt by now. But no, the neo-liberals didn’t want to upset the MAGAts or something. His speech about needing both Democrats and Republicans made me SICK.
I can’t help but feel like it’s also in part because a good amount of folks are just… as delicately as I can put it… the kind of people that pick up a fork to eat a bowl of soup.
The rationale I have heard from tons and tons of voters just makes absolutely no god damn sense at all. There’s of course mass manipulation and all that but goodness gracious, the complete lack of critical thinking skills is astounding.
Yeah, like I went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole because of all the fuckery around 9/11 but then left the Alex Jones part of it when it became clear he didn’t really gaf about changing anything, which meant he either didn’t believe it or was working with them instead of against them (leaning more towards him just making shit up, though I did still believe that things weren’t what they seemed with how society was run). The nail in the coffin for me was a very high production value video explaining what was going on that ended with a “but I have an answer, wait for the next video to find out!” And I’m thinking “wait, cliffhangers are engagement bait, not something you should say after talking about how the elites want to reduce the world population to like 100 million. He’s just in it for the money, also how the fuck is he producing such high production quality videos?”
It wasn’t aligned with either US politics “side” and subscribed to the “it’s all an act, they are all buddy buddy behind closed doors” point of view, but I came out of it around the end of the Bush era, was happy to see Obama win but disappointed in how his actual presidency went (he seemed to have the resolve of a wet noodle when it came to actually fighting for the right things.
It was baffling as fuck when the conspiracy theory crowd was aligned behind fucking Donald Trump, of all people. Seemed like the poster boy for the elites rather than a saviour. I didn’t watch a ton of the apprentice but none that I did see gave me any kind of positive impression of him. He just seemed like the asshole type of boss.
Pizzagate was also stupid as fuck (why the fuck would a pedophile ring for rich people operate out of the basement of a public building?). And gamergate was one of the lamest whiny things I’ve seen (though not sure how much of that came from the conspiracy side, it might have been going after a different audience).
Like I get how it feels going down that rabbit hole, things that were confusing can make more sense and there’s truth at the core of it, but you need to continue using critical thought or you just end up becoming someone’s tool. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend!
What’s stupider? Trying to kick Lucy’s football again or walking away?
What would the Democrats be doing differently if they were actual fascist collaborators? I can’t think of anything. The Democrats make up excuses for why they can’t intervene, then they blame the voters. Voting D hasn’t solved the fascist problem for 50+ years. Democrats have overseen some of the most brutal genocides and mass murder campaigns against non-Europeans. They have total continuity in funding and protecting the military-industrial-media-complex. They have total continuity in ensuring there are no consequences for the most egregious violations of human rights, civil rights, and human decency.
Mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus. Prison slavery is a bi-partisan consensus. Black ghettos are a bi-partisan consensus. Solitary confinement is a bi-partisan consensus. Solitary confinement for toddlers is a bi-partisan consensus. Starving children and elderly around the world is a bi-partisan consensus. Spying on all US citizens through warrantless surveillance dragnets of all communications is a bi-partisan consensus. Militarizing local police is a bi-partisan consensus. Undermining labor unions is a bi-partisan consensus. Maintaining legacy apartheid structures in funding elementary and secondary education is a bi-partisan consensus.
At what point do we conclude that the Democrats couldn’t be worse if they were actively supporting fascism? At what point do we say that their limited and milquetoast rhetoric against a few bad things, and only some times, and only some of them, is not a sufficient reason to believe they are on our side?
If your only options are the fascist or the guy who promised to bring the fascist to justice but actually didn’t even try, then your problem isn’t getting solved by voting in that election.
Who said I thought voting would solve the problem? You aren’t engaging with my core issue: non-voters were content to let Trump win. Are they worth my time and effort morally? Why?
I already know the DNC doesn’t align with me perfectly, as a mutualist I’m against private property. But they’re not fascists. I mostly just hate the DNC because of their weakness and ineptitude even more so than the liberal ideology.
That said, at least with the DNC, there is something I can get out of them politically with theoretically much less effort compared to the masses of non-voting 2024 morons who engaging with would be akin to trying to herd cats.
Hell, at this point: I don’t even care anymore. I kind of hate the non-voters enough that I’m now fueled by spite for them. I don’t care who wins elections anymore because I just can’t fucking give a shit. Its obviously out of my hands and the non-voters are getting what they deserve.
I only feel sorry for the people who are faultless, like the millions starving to death because Trump’s admin illegally shut down USAID, or the ICE round ups of innocent immigrants where they’re probably being human trafficked, raped, and murdered.
The DNC is a bunch of completely corrupt people who were okay with Trump winning in 2016 and 2024 due to their own stupid antics fucking with elections and ignoring the will of the voters.
But again, the other side is literal Nazis. It’s not completely weird to think that the DNC should have gotten away with their BS.
Scratch a neo-liberal a nazi bleeds. The fact ANY Dem has voted for any Trump nominee is a disgrace. They’ve lost the argument they’re the paid opposition with me entirely. I don’t subscribe to their BS talking about the actual left now because they marginalize us when we’re winning or they’re in charge, the whip us as the blame for losing.
As much as that’s true this was all necessary. Biden wouldn’t have gotten anything passed that would fix our current situation. The MAGAts controlled the house.
Look at all the progressive candidates that are already winning elections. After this if there isn’t a supermajority in both house and senate than the country was lost long ago.
We had some of the highest voter turnout in US history in the last several federal elections. The problem was not turnout as much as tune out.
The exit polling made it very clear what our problem in the US is, and that’s the same tactics that destabilized Crimea and many other places that have fallen to authoritarianism, and that’s social sabotage of our issues. People paid or incentivized to amplify and radicalize the messaging on both sides of every debate and social issue, so that it turns every conversation into a screaming match about utter nonsense disconnected from reality, and the average voter tunes out and defaults to whatever memes are popping up on their twitter or the liberal network news on TV.
I am saying that the polling showed people who voted for Obama and supported Bernie Sanders voted for Trump. People who said they wished AOC would run, voted for Trump. Black and Hispanic voters voted for Trump. Not in one-offs or flukes, but by a large margin. The rest didn’t even know what the candidates represented, they say they just associated Biden/Harris with the cost of eggs at the time, and only Trump seemed to be screaming for any change, so they shrugged and voted for him because they had no idea what else to do.
If this sounds absurd, good that means you still have a functional brain, but this needs to be understood if we are to make changes. The situation out there is much, much worse than we know.
All ya’ll reflexively downvoting this because it makes you more uncomfortable than just “They cheated!” that’s the feeling you need to face and chew on, and direct that frustration towards the old liches who are running our world like circus ringmasters. Dumb fucking circus-ringmasters, people who have all the money and think they earned it and think they deserve more.
But what if we can find a way to scream at people that agree with us on 80-90% of issues instead? That seems more productive than focusing on the actual Nazis!
Not lifting a finger against fascism is actively voting for fascism. Yes, the choices were all bad, but one was obviously much, much worse and they made a choice. Nobody gets a pass for gross negligence simply because irresponsible decisions were lower-effort than others.
Of course, and I don’t fault them the impulse. No one likes being told they fucked up, which was why so many of us were so vocal before the election. I don’t even want to assign blame, instead to just help them to understand that (if our democracy can withstand this), we genuinely need them…
Like you, I was a consequentialist before the election. I’m struggling to stay that way and now I might be a virtue ethicist who hates all US citizens who were not consequentialist before November 5th 2024 because I think they’re just shit fucking people not worth saving.
Part of me wants to be wrong. I want to be convinced. And yet I’m always going to be deeply fucking resentful if I find myself helping these people ever again. I shouldn’t have to lift a fucking finger. Doing so literally psychologically hurts.
I often do hope it survives but then realize I don’t even really know why. Its still a country dominated by people willing to throw people under the bus for personal gain, nationalism/racism, and their hatred of LGBT. And among the non-voters, you have proudly ignorant morons, & people pearl clutching over their personal virtue, & people hoping for the slight chance of a violent revolution where their ideology comes out on top of all the corpses in their delusional imagination.
Like, why should I care? Why do I care? It makes no fucking sense.
I want the Nazis to lose because it should be apparent. But you’re on the money, this country at its core and history has had issues long before this. The Dems were pretty radical anti-LGBT before they became a significant force in politics. They were content to just ignore them at best.
All of this… it could have been stopped. We don’t have to love (or even like) the Democrats, but it was such an important election, and everybody was screaming to vote against fascism. Well, a lot of people couldn’t be bothered, and it’s here now. Hope our country survives this administration…
It’s important for perspective that we remember how thin the line is between winning and losing. A very minor shift in voter turnout is all it takes to flip the game. The good news for us in this is that we don’t need to take the last election as a sign that the entire world is lost - we have every opportunity to change things. You could say it shouldn’t be this close, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but that’s also a pretty pointless whinge. Nothing worth having has ever been won without a fight, so we shouldn’t gripe about having to face one ourselves.
It’s in part because Biden ran on opposing fascism, got elected, and then did nothing to oppose fascism. He sold himself as a dragonslayer, but once he got in, he didn’t want to upset the pro-dragon crowd.
So, yeah, when his protege ran the exact same campaign, it didn’t instill a lot of confidence.
He slow walked us to this, Trump should have been jailed, convicted, and in the dirt by now. But no, the neo-liberals didn’t want to upset the MAGAts or something. His speech about needing both Democrats and Republicans made me SICK.
I can’t help but feel like it’s also in part because a good amount of folks are just… as delicately as I can put it… the kind of people that pick up a fork to eat a bowl of soup.
The rationale I have heard from tons and tons of voters just makes absolutely no god damn sense at all. There’s of course mass manipulation and all that but goodness gracious, the complete lack of critical thinking skills is astounding.
I feel this. My in-laws voted for Trump because Biden was going to outlaw Catholicism in the United States. Absolute lunatics.
Jesus fucking Christ, the man is himself a practicing Catholic!
Propaganda works.
Yeah, like I went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole because of all the fuckery around 9/11 but then left the Alex Jones part of it when it became clear he didn’t really gaf about changing anything, which meant he either didn’t believe it or was working with them instead of against them (leaning more towards him just making shit up, though I did still believe that things weren’t what they seemed with how society was run). The nail in the coffin for me was a very high production value video explaining what was going on that ended with a “but I have an answer, wait for the next video to find out!” And I’m thinking “wait, cliffhangers are engagement bait, not something you should say after talking about how the elites want to reduce the world population to like 100 million. He’s just in it for the money, also how the fuck is he producing such high production quality videos?”
It wasn’t aligned with either US politics “side” and subscribed to the “it’s all an act, they are all buddy buddy behind closed doors” point of view, but I came out of it around the end of the Bush era, was happy to see Obama win but disappointed in how his actual presidency went (he seemed to have the resolve of a wet noodle when it came to actually fighting for the right things.
It was baffling as fuck when the conspiracy theory crowd was aligned behind fucking Donald Trump, of all people. Seemed like the poster boy for the elites rather than a saviour. I didn’t watch a ton of the apprentice but none that I did see gave me any kind of positive impression of him. He just seemed like the asshole type of boss.
Pizzagate was also stupid as fuck (why the fuck would a pedophile ring for rich people operate out of the basement of a public building?). And gamergate was one of the lamest whiny things I’ve seen (though not sure how much of that came from the conspiracy side, it might have been going after a different audience).
Like I get how it feels going down that rabbit hole, things that were confusing can make more sense and there’s truth at the core of it, but you need to continue using critical thought or you just end up becoming someone’s tool. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend!
Maxim 29: The enemy of your enemy is your enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
They aren’t stupid, they are selfish and ego driven, and they base success/goodness on the number in their bank account.
The fact the most Americans sell their morals is a part of the culture and something that needs to change before things get better.
That is a really stupid reason to let a fascist win though. Like, why should I respect or align myself with such a stupid group of people?
Which is exactly the question they were asking. You want someone to blame, it’s the DNC.
You don’t have to align with someone you vote for in a FPTP system.
And no, your suggestion is based on a false dichotomy. I blame the DNC AND the non-voters. I can despise both and do.
So you have no care of causal relationships whatsoever so long as you get to spew your hate at everyone.
What’s stupider? Trying to kick Lucy’s football again or walking away?
What would the Democrats be doing differently if they were actual fascist collaborators? I can’t think of anything. The Democrats make up excuses for why they can’t intervene, then they blame the voters. Voting D hasn’t solved the fascist problem for 50+ years. Democrats have overseen some of the most brutal genocides and mass murder campaigns against non-Europeans. They have total continuity in funding and protecting the military-industrial-media-complex. They have total continuity in ensuring there are no consequences for the most egregious violations of human rights, civil rights, and human decency.
Mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus. Prison slavery is a bi-partisan consensus. Black ghettos are a bi-partisan consensus. Solitary confinement is a bi-partisan consensus. Solitary confinement for toddlers is a bi-partisan consensus. Starving children and elderly around the world is a bi-partisan consensus. Spying on all US citizens through warrantless surveillance dragnets of all communications is a bi-partisan consensus. Militarizing local police is a bi-partisan consensus. Undermining labor unions is a bi-partisan consensus. Maintaining legacy apartheid structures in funding elementary and secondary education is a bi-partisan consensus.
At what point do we conclude that the Democrats couldn’t be worse if they were actively supporting fascism? At what point do we say that their limited and milquetoast rhetoric against a few bad things, and only some times, and only some of them, is not a sufficient reason to believe they are on our side?
If your only options are the fascist or the guy who promised to bring the fascist to justice but actually didn’t even try, then your problem isn’t getting solved by voting in that election.
Who said I thought voting would solve the problem? You aren’t engaging with my core issue: non-voters were content to let Trump win. Are they worth my time and effort morally? Why?
I already know the DNC doesn’t align with me perfectly, as a mutualist I’m against private property. But they’re not fascists. I mostly just hate the DNC because of their weakness and ineptitude even more so than the liberal ideology.
That said, at least with the DNC, there is something I can get out of them politically with theoretically much less effort compared to the masses of non-voting 2024 morons who engaging with would be akin to trying to herd cats.
Hell, at this point: I don’t even care anymore. I kind of hate the non-voters enough that I’m now fueled by spite for them. I don’t care who wins elections anymore because I just can’t fucking give a shit. Its obviously out of my hands and the non-voters are getting what they deserve.
I only feel sorry for the people who are faultless, like the millions starving to death because Trump’s admin illegally shut down USAID, or the ICE round ups of innocent immigrants where they’re probably being human trafficked, raped, and murdered.
The DNC is a bunch of completely corrupt people who were okay with Trump winning in 2016 and 2024 due to their own stupid antics fucking with elections and ignoring the will of the voters.
But again, the other side is literal Nazis. It’s not completely weird to think that the DNC should have gotten away with their BS.
Scratch a neo-liberal a nazi bleeds. The fact ANY Dem has voted for any Trump nominee is a disgrace. They’ve lost the argument they’re the paid opposition with me entirely. I don’t subscribe to their BS talking about the actual left now because they marginalize us when we’re winning or they’re in charge, the whip us as the blame for losing.
As much as that’s true this was all necessary. Biden wouldn’t have gotten anything passed that would fix our current situation. The MAGAts controlled the house.
Look at all the progressive candidates that are already winning elections. After this if there isn’t a supermajority in both house and senate than the country was lost long ago.
Thing is, the reality is even more depressing.
We had some of the highest voter turnout in US history in the last several federal elections. The problem was not turnout as much as tune out.
The exit polling made it very clear what our problem in the US is, and that’s the same tactics that destabilized Crimea and many other places that have fallen to authoritarianism, and that’s social sabotage of our issues. People paid or incentivized to amplify and radicalize the messaging on both sides of every debate and social issue, so that it turns every conversation into a screaming match about utter nonsense disconnected from reality, and the average voter tunes out and defaults to whatever memes are popping up on their twitter or the liberal network news on TV.
I am saying that the polling showed people who voted for Obama and supported Bernie Sanders voted for Trump. People who said they wished AOC would run, voted for Trump. Black and Hispanic voters voted for Trump. Not in one-offs or flukes, but by a large margin. The rest didn’t even know what the candidates represented, they say they just associated Biden/Harris with the cost of eggs at the time, and only Trump seemed to be screaming for any change, so they shrugged and voted for him because they had no idea what else to do.
If this sounds absurd, good that means you still have a functional brain, but this needs to be understood if we are to make changes. The situation out there is much, much worse than we know.
All ya’ll reflexively downvoting this because it makes you more uncomfortable than just “They cheated!” that’s the feeling you need to face and chew on, and direct that frustration towards the old liches who are running our world like circus ringmasters. Dumb fucking circus-ringmasters, people who have all the money and think they earned it and think they deserve more.
And those people are still insisting that we don’t blame them for the consequences of their decisions.
I just think that the blame should be squarely on the people who actively voted for the fascism.
But what if we can find a way to scream at people that agree with us on 80-90% of issues instead? That seems more productive than focusing on the actual Nazis!
There were more non-voters than there were voters for Orangina
I’m going to keep holding them accountable too!
Not lifting a finger against fascism is actively voting for fascism. Yes, the choices were all bad, but one was obviously much, much worse and they made a choice. Nobody gets a pass for gross negligence simply because irresponsible decisions were lower-effort than others.
“don’t blame me, I voted for 90% Hitler!”
Of course, and I don’t fault them the impulse. No one likes being told they fucked up, which was why so many of us were so vocal before the election. I don’t even want to assign blame, instead to just help them to understand that (if our democracy can withstand this), we genuinely need them…
Like you, I was a consequentialist before the election. I’m struggling to stay that way and now I might be a virtue ethicist who hates all US citizens who were not consequentialist before November 5th 2024 because I think they’re just shit fucking people not worth saving.
Part of me wants to be wrong. I want to be convinced. And yet I’m always going to be deeply fucking resentful if I find myself helping these people ever again. I shouldn’t have to lift a fucking finger. Doing so literally psychologically hurts.
Why does America deserve to survive, as a nation built on stolen land and slavery and maintained through imperialism and colonialism?
I often do hope it survives but then realize I don’t even really know why. Its still a country dominated by people willing to throw people under the bus for personal gain, nationalism/racism, and their hatred of LGBT. And among the non-voters, you have proudly ignorant morons, & people pearl clutching over their personal virtue, & people hoping for the slight chance of a violent revolution where their ideology comes out on top of all the corpses in their delusional imagination.
Like, why should I care? Why do I care? It makes no fucking sense.
I want the Nazis to lose because it should be apparent. But you’re on the money, this country at its core and history has had issues long before this. The Dems were pretty radical anti-LGBT before they became a significant force in politics. They were content to just ignore them at best.