…me, neither…
Because so many Americans hate America and what it stands for. They hate anyone who isn’t like them, and they like that it bothers you. They enjoy your frustration and your confusion, because it gives them a feeling of power they would otherwise never experience on their own merits.
The only reason a sizable chunk of the country wasn’t there partaking would have been the cost of travel and time.
Because you don’t understand the American voter, but Trump does.
So, given the mounting evidence for vote manipulation, I can’t believe that anymore.
10mo ago, I would have agreed though.
He defeated every Republican rival and took control of the GOP through the voters. Even if he cheated, which he did, him having support of even 40% still proves he understands the American voter in a way few do.
I’m not sure. You may be giving him credit that belongs to Roger Stone, but in essence I don’t think you’re wrong about the zeitgeist that he’s latched onto.
I guess in all likelihood, it’s that, plus the cheating, and without both he wouldn’t have won.
It all feels very inorganic to me though. Astroturfed, especially this second time.
It doesn’t matter though. Probably the last president.
Simple. Back then were still naive enough to believe that there would be justice served.
Many conservatives have convinced themselves that the 6th was a false flag operation by the libtards. For “reasons”
Most of them won’t talk about it, that’s how they are dealing with it
This is the one I’ve heard. By my own father, no less. I had no idea how to respond to it.
Someone once said, “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.” Something along those lines, anyways. That expression has saved me from many a pointless argument.
Trump was the perfect storm. Everybody that held some form of bigotry could see themselves in him. Because how could he be a bad person if they weren’t a bad person.
anti-vaxxers, flat earthers all went to the right.
Decades of propaganda and large regions of our nation with inadequate public education.
Perception is reality.
Control news, social media, and church and you can distort/gaslight reality.
Only the better educated can sometimes see through bullshit.
Mine was when I was a kid and learned Americans had a right to carry firearms.
January 6 gave the Nazis hope and basically exposed how easy it is to topple the government if they have law enforcement on their side.
If the pussy grabbing thing wasn’t, nothing ever will be.
Or claiming Veterans who were killed or were captured were losers. I thought Americans were proud of their armed forces.
Or the making fun of the disabled news reporter. Or the not renting to black people, or the using a charity as his personal piggy bank. I’m sure the list goes on and on
Of course everybody with two functioning brain cells knew from the start that this fucker is spectacularly unqualified. But when this came out, it was very plain to see for everybody that all the values “conservatives” claimed to stand for meant absolutely nothing to him.
Or trying to have 5 young brown children executed for a crime they were later proven to have not committed.
Honestly the racism I (sadly) understand. But to see the support for him not only continue but increase after violently trying to overthrow the government was truly a shock. For a brief moment it looked like he lost the support of Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham among other “traditional” Republicans but within days it was back to business as usual.
You can excuse the racism?
Not my comment, but “understand” is not “excuse”.
I love how people in the fediverse have a finger ready to wag at all times. People like you cannot wait to go off half cocked and judge something incorrectly as long as it makes you feel morally superior.
It’s just a reference from Community, it’s not even a serious comment.
But it’s okay, it was ambiguous enough that people don’t pick up on that right away
Apologies. Yes, I didn’t get the reference.
The people we are talking about are seeking simple answers, because they are overwhelmed by the complexity of our times. A strong man telling them what to think, an autocrat telling them that elections are unnecessary ballast, a führer telling them who to hate. Someone who leads them by their emotions, not by their intellect. The less educated the people are, the better this works, because the educated and those who have been in contact with other cultures know better than to fall for the simple path that demonizes an outgroup - they know it’s not a solution. The US education system has been under attack for a long time, while the economy did their best to modify higher education to their needs, warping higher education from something which offers critical thinking skills to a conveyor belt feeding the industry.
I agree with all you said, but I also think that “complexity of our times” is whitewashing what I would describe as an “intentionally stressful situation forced upon working class people by the wealthy”.
I believe that humanity has the technology and resources to make our times feel quite simple!
For the average person life is overwhelmingly more complex than 200 years ago. Industrialization and Globalization have created a whole host of issues that simply didn’t exist before - stuff like climate change and awareness of global issues weren’t a thing before, and there is a lot more pressure due to the increased complexity of our societies.
An average villager didn’t have to care about things like ethical consumption or conflicts half a globe away, our family networks were a lot larger and individualism lead to a much less homogeneous society than before. Even the reach of the wealthy was a lot more limited and the messaging was a lot simpler - you had to care about the local nobility, and we weren’t bombarded with the huge amount of information that technology has brought to our doorsteps. Propaganda was a lot less pervasive before the creation of mass media.
Conflicts and issues were a lot more concrete and clear-cut than they are today, because the average person was a lot more rooted in a slowly changing environment. Especially technology has created the exact opposite of what you are postulating.
Climate change is actually a great example of what I was getting at, because it has a relatively simple and known solution, and humanity has possessed the technology to implement that solution it for essentially as long as we have known about climate change itself.
To put it in context of this conversation: climate change has only increased the “complexity of our times” for working class people, because the people with power and money chose this path. They could have been building windmills, and nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams to power our electric cars, but there was less profit in that.
The mental stress of “ethical consumption” doesn’t exist in a world of ethical production.
Because he wins elections. Once he dies and no Trump Jr. can get the same number of votes, they will turn their backs on the Trumps and denounce them.
I am telling you. This all falls apart without the one guy. Just you watch.the question is will the gop fall apart with him, most of the OLD guard republicans are gone, or neutered. i doubt putin will stop the propaganda for right wing on social media though.
Sadly, I don’t think it will soon even matter if the leader is unpopular.
vance is nothing more than wet noodle, he wont capture the maga, thiel thinks he can reign in maga through vance.
Only if there still will be elections when he dies…
My conspiracy theory is that the Epstein stuff staying on the front pages of social media for long (despite tech CEOs all being strongly MAGA) was an attempt by the Peter Theil / Russel Vought faction to move on from Trump. Which if you think about it is even scarier if they feel they don’t need him any more.
mitch and lindsey lost control of trump, and jumped shipped after that. mitch was afraid of getting continually be the blame by the magas, so he had another patsy take his place, HE uses “his freezes” to avoid talking about anything.
Yes, exactly what I am referring to
I’ve repeated this many times.
After the ‘pussy’ tape came out, a Conservative woman went on The View TV show to defend Trump. One of the other women on the panel kept repeating ‘pussy’ over and over. Finally the Conservative woman demand that the other panelist stop using that vulgar term.
I remember you saying this in a previous comment!
Eyebleach
that’s when you ************ so much your ************ turns ************ right?
I was actually going to go for something else, but when I saw it in my queue I had to share it.
Go Team Venture.
Mine was George Floyd. When I saw so many people stand up and say that man deserved death over a bounced check I knew they lost their damn mind.
Nobody deserves to die… Even if they’re… uh… charlie kirk… No I think that one’s ok.
My take on Charlie is that I’m not surprised.
My take on Charlie and similar killings is that we’re in a war, and war is never nice. I don’t believe anyone should be assassinated, but I also don’t believe we’re playing by the rules of civility when we have hundreds of people being disappeared every day by masked agents on our street; and the government is tweeting out Nazi propaganda.
I heard his neck just did that
A few years after 9-11 for me. I grew up watching my classmates sing songs about indiscriminately bombing people in Afghanistan, and news reports of people being beaten or killed in the US for wearing any clothing that appeared Middle-Eastern. It made me sick to my stomach.
The idea that death is an acceptable outcome from being suspected of any minor infraction underpins the conversation around basically every police killing, with every single person on the side justifying it being tacitly accepting of that premise.
It’s lunacy.
Look, all you have to do is accept my one and only axiom: Most people on this planet are total and absolute idiots.
Actually this always was a point against democracy
I’m not inclined to agree with “most”, but the idiot:not-idiot ratio in society is way higher than I’m comfortable with. It’s almost enough to make the question the wisdom of putting so many people on the road, driving their own cars.
The part that really shook me is when I talked to enough people to figure out that stupidity isn’t always obvious. A person can speak well, be exposed to a lot of different news sources, have ample access to information, graduate from a decent school, and still be a total moron when it comes to a lot of things. Like functional illiteracy, grown adults learn how to cope and mask in ways that are shockingly good, considering they cover for huge deficits at the same time.
I mean 50% of the population literally is less intelligent than the average.
Only if the median and mean coincide
If we assume IQ is a proper representation of intelligence than sure they do.
I agree, and I think I’m among them too (no I don’t say that because I voted Trump, I’m not American)
Admit it, you voted third party! Just so you know: that like voting for Trump but indirectly.
Huh?
varnia is suggesting you didn’t vote for the Democrats. Which, considering you’re not American, seems highly likely.
Oh haha okay I had no idea what they meant.
I did vote for Nicusor Dan in Romania and that guy is as much of a democrat as they get around here haha
Even the smart people aren’t smart enough.
I understand it.
People are paying 30% more to live now than they did before. No one cares about a person’s politics if they claim they’ll put food on your table.
that may explain how desperate idiots fall for the ruse the firtst time… but over and over again?
Propaganda is a helluva drug
It’s because every time until the NEXT one they were hindered into the process by the “bad” others. So you see, it’s once again time to remove others who are preventing success.
/s obviously
This chart is the whole story. Unfortunately people don’t understand how the economy lags behind everything and Trumps recent actions are going to make the surge from COVID checks look like a blip.
It didn’t lag behind for the rich.
It only lagged behind for the poor.
For four years, and Biden had all the power he needed to make real change for the poor, as evidenced by the last ten months.
Joe Biden isn’t supposed to fix anything, Congress legislates, and the president executes the laws. Your Congress hasn’t represented you in 40 years and you expect the president to fix it in 4? That’s what trumps doing with this unitary executive king shit 🤣 Horseshoe theory strikes again
Holy shit, someone else understands how things work around here.
It’s not about the President, but it is about the party, and the President is also the head of the party. Biden was also the party establishment candidate that they ran against Bernie specifically to kneecap any chance at actual reform. So no, he doesn’t get a pass for the results, just because he was only the President. Look what only President Trump can do.
I mean no one would have consented to Biden breaking all the constitutional norms of the country, nor was there any popular policy to push. There was a lot of resistance to Biden from both parties. Judge him how you will, I’m not here to defend his honor or convince you of my opinion of Biden. I just wanted to express my frustration. How both sides want their presidents to act like Congress, while Congress constantly gets a free pass for fuck ups. It makes no sense to vote in an establishment congress and expect the president to make changes.
Question… didn’t congress attempt to impeach trump several times and then have a January 6th committee? They then handed their findings to the justice department who took forever to bring up charges. 18 months in total before special counsel jack smith started his own investigation. So I mostly blame the justice department for delaying so much. Namely Merrick Garland doing fuck all when they had trumps ass for launching a terrorist attack on our nations capitol. Brazil moved super fast and now Bolsonaro is fucked and won’t be launching another assault any time soon.
Four years of the Biden Presidency came and went in which someone could be completely forgiven for forgetting who was sitting in the office. There was absolutely zero political or social leadership coming from the Biden Presidency. None. That was half by design, and half because he was too far gone to be in front of the American people that much.
He was a capable administrator, and under his presidency the liberal oligarchy did choose to make some concessions, and I think he had something to do with that. He had a capable and competent cabinet. But, he was chosen for the role specifically to stall any further continuation of progressive momentum.
EDIT: I forgot to add that permission comes for breaking the norms by creating a movement that demands the breaking of those norms. That’s specifically what the Biden Presidency was designed not to do.
I agree with that sentiment. No one really cares but me; but Biden did a lot to repair the broken ties internationally from the first trump admin. I just don’t know why everyone expected Biden to break norms: he followed the norms for his entire political career which stretched 50 years.
Do you think there was a unifying call from within America that he was ignoring? It seems like everyone loves this fucking oligarchy or doesn’t really care about it. No one was begging Biden to stop the oligarchy.
People still think Elon musk is a brilliant visionary. I don’t think he has more opposition than support.
Dude, the only unifying call that they actually asked of Biden was to step down due to his age. He did and now America is great again. He really was a populist.
Look what only President Trump can do.
Look what
onlyPresident Trump can do, when the GOP also has the majority of the House and Senate, and - oh yeah - the Supreme Court.Trump had more influence over the United States Congress and Zeitgeist than Biden did while Biden was President, and that’s a fact. That’s also the reason WHY he now has Congress.
Yeah when the SC gives the President immunity for overstepping while he’s in office? You’re damn straight he should have done more. To quote Trae Crowder, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to win, motherfucker?”
That’s a fair criticism, and I share it with ya. The executive branch should have gone a lot further with the power they did have. They let appearances get in the way of justice and democracy again! I’m starting to think there’s a pattern with that behavior
There’s no one in the party that knows how to fix any of the problems they continue to create. Like forgiving college loans, but not changing the incentives to raise college prices. They could have allowed student loans to default, anything really. No one’s suggesting real change, just hand outs and corporate marauding.
The voting base went right along with this, “ ya forgive my loan, but leave the exploitative system for my children. “ that’s politics, fix my immediate grievances and pay no mind to the future or bad structures we build
Well you can forgive loans with executive orders, I don’t think you can change the system without an act of Congress. Our legislature is no longer functioning, it’s been locked in a cold civil war since at least Trump, maybe as far back as 08.
The last time Congress agreed on anything it was the patriot act of 2001
They agreed on bailing out the banks in 08, which is why I picked that year. Then the tea party movement pushed us into a deadlock and we’ve been there ever since.
That’s true, the bank bailouts, war in Iraq, and the patriot act were all bipartisan. They will always agree on robbing you and killing you.
