newrepublic.com/article/181287/can-america-possibly-elect-trump-again
How Can This Country Possibly Be Electing Trump Again?
Soft Paywall50 years of progressively decreasing funding for education.
Ironically, in an article I was reading, a republican was saying that if you used critical thinking...I stopped there. Critical thinking which they are trying to destroy, and now they re saying we should use it?
GOP spent 50 years convincing dumbfucks that they should vote against their own interests.
It turns out there were a lot of dumbfucks.
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15d
Yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize just how radical very powerful, very rich republicans are at this point. They've controlled the narrative that the left is extreme because of shit like "blue hair" but guys like Alito and Leonard Leo want to entirely reconstruct our government in their image. Thats radical!
Everything is set up by the system to benefit them. Their power is very disproportional. It's easy for them to stay in power and perpetuate the cycle.
Think about it. You can win a state by A SINGLE vote and get all the votes of that state. How is that just and fair? You can get ten million extra votes and it wouldn't matter if they weren't in the "states that matter." Very fucking fair.
Vermont and wyoming have the same power as California and Texas in the senate. How is that democratic? How can you say "One man, one vote" when one vote in this state counts almost a hundred times more than a vote in that state when it comes to the country's highest legislative body?
And the worst thing is, to fix this you need the consent of those who are in power BECAUSE of the broken system. It's like needing the consent of a felon to issue a fine.
It's all fucked in America.
Amen. The sad honest truth (and im not trying to instigate anything, and I dont condone violence, im just stating a fact) it would unfortunately take a lot of deaths to see any of that change any time soon, but finding a way to end to the electoral college would be the most important step in gaining any sort of meaningful positive reform. (Obviously)
I believe there is a process underway where starts will automatically cede all of their electrical college votes to the winner of the popular vote, and they're closing in on 270 EC votes, which will de facto eliminate the EC
This is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and is a pipe dream that will never happen. In the event that they reach the 270 votes to essentially end the EC, this WILL be brought before SCOTUS and be declared unconstitutional by a conservative bench. They will say the only way to rid ourselves of the EC is through the states' ratification of a constitutional amendment.
Don't bother with the logic and reason behind it, as well thought out a plan it may be, because SCOTUS doesn't necessarily need the logic and reason, either.
I've been wrong before (I famously told many people America would never vote in a black man called Barack Hussein Obama as its President) and I hope I'm wrong about this too but I really cannot see how this happens unless SCOTUS gets a liberal majority, and maybe not even then.
And then what's to stop a new court from demolishing this whenever they feel like, now that Roe was ripped to shreds even though it was established precedent.
There’s a store between my house and my gym with nearly a dozen “Trump or Bust” signs in front of it.
I live in the deep south. There are a few Trump signs here. It's not nearly as many as the previous election. But it's hard to predict this election.
The not-so-deep south here - very few trump signs and quite a few red-hat friends and relatives who say they're deeply skeptical of him. I mean a fair few will vote for him anyway but almost as many seem resigned to sitting this one out. Let's hope it's enough.
Sounds like some busting needs to be done then
🎵 Busting makes me feel good. 🎵
To paraphrase George Carlin: “think about how stupid the average American is. Then realize half of them are stupider than that.”
To paraphrase recent studies, the average IQ in the United States is 98
Now, there are some brilliant people in this country. Lots of them. I mean truly, incredibly intelligent people.
Think of how many subnormal idiots there need to be to drag shit down to 98.
The link you included shows the average us iq as 99.6 and the whole thing is set up such that 100 is average
99.6 is the average of the states, 98 is a different measure, average of all people.
You get 99.6 if you just count each state as 1 and then divide by 50. If you weigh by population, you supposedly get 98, but when I tried with their numbers, weighing by population estimate from 2023, I got 99.07. So not sure what's going on there, maybe they've made a mistake, or probably it's only counting the adult population or subsampling in a different way, but these are two different figures.
Average of the states, not weighed by population. (99.6)
Average of the population. (98, according to the article)
Stupid isn't hateful or evil, these people are the latter more than anything
Dude, 100 is meant to be the average. It's built into the concept of IQ. 98 is pretty spot on/normal if the population actually averages that.
I still can’t get over 74 million who voted for him. I thought his debacle with Covid handling would surely doom him but it seems his base are glutton for punishment even more.
Never under estimate the power of cults.
or stupidity.
favorite quote from the movie Snatch "Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity"
"Seems sadly ironic it's that tie that got you into this pickle."
Snatch is one of the most quotable movies ever. Mickey alone has nothing but quotable lines, and yet I barely understand anything he says.
You like dags?
Periwinkle blue
yeah I love the movie. I quote it all the time. I always say "before ze germans get here" or "because he dodges bullets Avi"
How much longer on those sausages?
Also, BrickTop's line about never trusting a pig farmer is a favorite too.
Five minutes Turkish.
Also, since there's essentially only two options, you only need to convince enough people to hate one of the options. "I don't like Trump, but at least he didn't raise the oil prices" or something to that effect.
Honestly, the USA essentially having only two options is the biggest reason why someone like Trump gets votes.
"I don't like Biden and I don't have any other options so Trump it is. 🤷♂️"
Not that I think it's sane to think like that as Trump is beyond awful in every shape or form and no matter what you think of Biden you shouldn't think he's worse than Trump but that's the reason really.
I think there are very, very few people who would switch from voting for Biden in 20 to Trump in 24. What's more likely is that people just don't vote at all because Biden is too old, or inflation, or whatever stupid reason.
And they help Trump, because his supporters will vote. They think that the country has to be saved from communist democrats.
A Democrat will refuse to vote over a single character flaw. Trump has 100s, and Republicans still double down
There are a lot of troubling views about the middle east lately and using that (coupled with foreign influence) to proclaim they won't vote for Biden since he isn't handling it the way they want him to handle it.
Like... y'all think Trump is going to be better? Dude literally made a "muslim ban". He has a good chance to take the win. Do I wish it was other choices? Sure. Do I wish we had ranked choice? Absolutely. But I'm not going to court fucking fascism because I think Old Man Biden isn't acting perfectly.
Edit: Here come the Trump bots and astroturfers
This so much. do they really think Jared Kushner will solve the Middle East this time in a fair way that maximizes human welfare and sustainable nation-building? 😛
And a massive influx of skewed “news” and direct lies pumped over and over again
Which helps create insane leaps of logic people make due to their utter lack of understanding how government works.
I am regularly amazed by some of the untrue conclusions otherwise educated people come up with based on either starting off with untrue basic facts of how things work or a nugget of truth they've extrapolated into a conclusion which can't possibly happen.
This happens here in Canada a lot with right wingers. For example, righty tighties say Justin Trudeau is blocking shipments of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to our allies. It's true he has turned down requests from Germany and Greece. But it's also true we do not have the east coast infrastructure to process and export LNG to Europe, and the timeline to create this infrastructure is far longer than the actual European need for this product will be, and more than a few very wealthy private companies have dropped their own plans to build this infrastructure because it makes no economic sense.
So, Justin Trudeau is blamed for 1) denying energy aid to our European allies and 2) doing his best to kill the oil and gas industry in Canada because he's woke.
Neither position makes any logical sense.
It's "too many words" for them to care.
Not enough people really pay close enough attention to even realize he did such a bad job with COVID response. And then there are so many people who do "pay attention" but they are paying attention only to right wing sources that have never once criticized Trump's pandemic response.
We have a catastrophic problem right now in that the majority of the country does not know how to distinguish what's false from what's true, doesn't even know how to distinguish partisan sources from sources that are really trying to report the truth. We have to go way back to Eisenhower to find a Republican president who genuinely was just trying to make the country work better for the greatest number of people. Even Nixon was at least president at a time when partisanship had not yet taken a strong hold of Republicans, so Republicans had some reasonable policies under Nixon like trying to get universal healthcare and pushing environmental regulations. But after the Republicans successfully rolled out Reagan's slogan "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," they found they could use this basic logic to justify reshaping the economy increasingly in favor of a small faction of wealthy elites while still keeping enough uninformed or poorly informed middle class voters who would think Republicans were doing a good job while simultaneously screwing us.
People love the idea of "we need small government" -- everybody wants to think that our system barely needs the government to work at its optimal level. But they don't recognize what this promotion of the "small government" slogan really means and the insidious harm that it does in practice.
I love when people are like, “Gas prices were so low under Trump!”
Yeah, because there was a massive pandemic and no one could travel so the price of oil tanked ya dumb fuck.
Presidents also don’t have nearly as much influence on gas prices as a lot of voters think they do. And even if they did, these people would happily sacrifice democracy to save 10¢ a gallon.
People who vote according to how the economy is going are funny. They must think that the president is an omnipotent being who controls everything. Oil price? Worldwide capital movements? You will easily find opposition sources that claim these have something to do with the administration, but you're gonna be hard pressed to find concrete evidence that actions X,Y and legislation Z caused any meaningful changes in those.
I think a massive problem is that most Americans know there are multiple branches and levels of government…. They just don’t understand the different roles of those branches.
The media makes such a big deal of the presidency, if you don’t know the difference, it would be easy to think that the president is all powerful.
Also, we live in a culture of grievance. The president is the easiest target in the country for people’s grievances.
If people really understood how the government was supposed to function, one of 2 things would happen - no Republican could get elected dog catcher or, there would be a serious revolution.
The US constitution is both genius in its form of government and diabolical in how it protects property (wealth).
In any event, the president has very little power under the constitution outside of foreign affairs. Congress is supposed to be the engine of democracy but partisanship has ended that.
As for a large minority of the American people - they are functionally illiterate- they read/speak/comprehend at a 6th grade level so that’s why they are easily duped by a guy who doesn’t read and can barely put together 2 coherent sentences- they see themselves in him.
We have a catastrophic problem right now in that the majority of the country does not know how to distinguish what's false from what's true, doesn't even know how to distinguish partisan sources from sources that are really trying to report the truth.
That is absolutely by design. By creating a mountain out of a mole hill, a narrative that teachers are all indoctrinated and trying to indoctrinate kids has turned a lot of people who already hated the public education system even more aggressive about teaching critical thinking skills. Worse even when they say they want it, they only want it as far as the conclusion people have is the same as their's.
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14d
Between COVID and Jan 6, anyone voting for him a third time is a 100% an un-American traitor.
I shit on my 16 year old nephew (who’s Puerto Rican) for liking trump and he brings up Hilary Clinton when he was 8 when that all happened , it’s toxic masculinity that’s the culprit and the culture in school right now
I think conservative media is really the root cause here. Toxic masculinity being a subset of that agenda. Don’t forget how many white women voted for Trump…
I think a lot of people are just glazing over that
Yeah I have a niece who used to wear Trump shirts because she thought it was funny. Older now and no way she would vote for him but it definitely made me wonder wtf is going on in the American school system that kids are supporting him without seemingly even understanding they are.
I think the damage that has been done to kids is worse than people realize. For most sane adults politics in this country seems to have gone completely off the rails. For kids this is all they really know. A 17 year old kid was 9 when Trump was elected. They probably only have vague memories of Obama and weren’t paying close enough attention to realize how different everything is now. I fear we’re never going back to “normal” because in just 8 years a generation of kids now thinks of what we have now as normal.
At some point; people are going to have to accept that a third of the voter base are losers who live simply to “win” and are contrarians simply because learning is hard, possibly sociopathy due to a lack of proper care from their own parents, alienation from community, straight up racist, or possibly just cruel for the sake of cruelty.
I recall tolerating certain people in my life who believed in and voted for Trump. I no longer do and my life is better for it.
I have cut off most people who support Trump except my parents. And that is a very limited relationship. Putting it simply, I don’t trust any of them and if Trumps elected I fully anticipate them supporting whatever horrible shit he does. Taking over the justice dept and going after Dems. Rounding up brown people (which could easily become dissenter). Forcing civil servants to take an oath of loyalty to Trump (I’m a civil servant). Using the military on American soil. You name it. They’ll back it all.
I understand the first time. There was a novelty to it, but the second time he got 70+ million and surely again this year is fucked up.
Okay for the record, the people who voted for Trump more than Hilary:
White
Male
Non-college educated.
Trump loves the poorly educated
It's really just white and uneducated. Trump got a plurality of the votes from white women over Hillary, and then got 53% in 2020. Support for Trump increased with white women. We need to stop pretending like the problem is limited to men.
I can answer in a single sentence, based on observing my coworkers talking about it.
"Everything is more expensive since Biden became President."
That's it. That's why everyone's gonna fuck this up.
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15d
It goes back to people being stupid. I've been reading a lot about trump amensia.
If you ask voters how the economy was in 2020 they say "worse than now!!!" But if you ask how the Trump economy was they say "oh better than now".
2020 was the Trump economy.
I think Covid helped him too. People can't remember the truth of anything. The media is meant to help but its all billionaire captured and just talks about trans kids.
Talk to my inlaws. They don't want "Biden shutting the country down for COVID AGAIN". I'm like.. That was May through August of 2020. Trump shut it down and only after completely fucking up how we handled it. Then he gave out billions of dollars, and inflation hit 2 years later.
All the shit that these assholes are complaining about go straight back to how Trump handled COVID. But they remember it as Biden doing all these things. Fucking morons.
I've heard people blame Obama for Katrina (and the 2008 crash), so, yeah...... It's not just Trump. And it's absolutely bizarre.
Where was Obama on 9/11?! /s
Oh, you mean Barack HUSSEIN Obama!?!? He was obviously flying one of the planes! /s
It happens at all levels of government.
Republicans kill a policy that helps old/ poor/ sick people, but they market it as "the government does a bad job and shouldnt be spending your tax money on these things"
Then voters blame the entire government for sucking instead of the individuals in government who are trying really hard (republicans) to make it suck.
Like that whole episode a couple of days ago where MTG insulted Crockett and AOC requested a vote to have her comments striken. Then the republicans voted against it, which led Crockett to make her comment about how they completely ingore the rules.
Now everyones talking about how the House is like the Jerry Springer show, but if you actually look at what happened, one side is trying to follow the rules and the other one is throwing them out the window.
The resulting chaos only helps the "big government bad" republican party.
Yeah I watched that. The house might as well devolve into a springer show at this point. One side can openly insult the other and then act like a victim if anyone finally gets sick of it and responds. They clearly had no control over the house the other day.
I wonder if people conflate the money they were saving due to COVID-19 from not going out, not traveling, etc., with more economic prosperity.
The irony might be that even though the economy was worse under Trump, some people may have felt subjectively financially healthier simply because they weren't wasting so much money on consumerism.
That probably has something to do with as we saved a good bit fast because of that reason alone. The other thing I think of is I still hear people talk about the checks the USA government sent with Trump’s name on it.
Don’t forget shady PPP stuff they never had to pay back. They grifted hard.
trump amensia
I know you meant amnesia but this is a lovely typo. I guess a-mensia would mean something like completely lacking thought.
Unfortunately, far too many people labor under the delusion that that is in fact how that works…and no amount of reasoning will convince them otherwise.
I have friends and in laws who have made absolutely terrible financial decisions in the past 5-20 years, and they are hurting for money. They blame Biden and are sure the only thing that will save them is a Trump economy. (And somehow he's going to make their 100% home-equity loan and $50k of credit card debt go away overnight.)
Thats pretty much what the PPE loan forgiveness did for business owners and pumping 14 trillions dollars into the stock market. Any business owner or stock holder made a lot of money under trump basically over night.
Which ultimately led to the inflation and high food prices we're dealing with now. These dumb motherfuckers can't understand consequences, so they cannot fathom the fact that the shit they're now experiencing is directly attributable to Trump's fuckery. While also failing to recognize the brilliant job the present administration did in averting a major recession and the fact that the US weathered that storm with less inflation than anywhere else in the world, and we're still in better shape economy-wise. The Dow just broke records.
When Trump inherited Obama’s economy, they say it was Trumps doing. When Trump borked what Obama had left for him, and passed it onto Biden, it then became Biden’s fault.
The point is that Conservative ideology is tainted with the belief that Liberal values can't produce positive outcomes, and that the only time we experience prosperity in modern times is under Conservative leadership.
It's cargo cult thinking.
Bush number two sucked, Obama was good, Trump sucked, Biden is turning the Trump economy around, and it takes time.
That's how it always has been for a Democrat president since George Bush in 1993. A Republican president leaves a Democrat with a fucked up economy and some type of crisis that they have to fix. Then Republicans block and say to idiot Americans that the Democrats didn't fix the mess THEY MADE fast enough and these idiots then in the midterm vote Republicans in and MORE obstruction comes. Hoping to win the presidency. This is what they are doing again. Saying they didn't fix stuff that they made fast enough especially during COVID.
And no doubt Trump knows this. He’ll get all the credit for things Biden did if he’s elected.
And he’ll use that credit to gut federal programs and replace them with private companies run by people he owes favors to and he’ll appoint more judges and before the negative effects start showing he’ll lead a campaign saying he finally drained the swamp and then he’ll use that to emphasize the unitary executive theory interpretation of the constitution Cheney style and then he’ll grant himself immunity and go about enacting all of the totalitarian goals of Project 2025.
Obama got us through a depression brought on by a war from Bush. Trump took a $2 trillion tax trickle down tax scam, no taxes for the rich and added $8 trillion deficit to the budget . Biden cut that in half But GOP want a balanced budget Where are the journalists??
Where are the journalists??
<crickets>
I find it amazing that Biden has messed up the inflation up here in Canada! /s
Australia too, amazing!
Didn't you hear... Trudeau has messed up the global economy
And trump is the one who caused the inflation and Biden actually substantially slowed it down, much better than pretty much every other country on earth
A big chunk of that were fraudulent ppp loans in 2020. Guess who purged the individuals from overseeing the $3 trillion relief package.
And guess who profited: MTG who is not paying anything back
The current situation has little to do with either of those things. It was actually the COVID-19 pandemic that made the U.S. Treasury print a whopping $4.5 trillion under Trump's watch, but any president would've probably done the same. However, the inflationary effect of all that money is gonna be delayed. Now that we haven't printed another trillion-plus dollars for a while, inflation rates are starting to go down.
bUt HeS a BuSsInEsS mAn!
“He will run this country like a business!”
So fucking over the working man and doing everything possible to cut corners just to make a profit in service of pleasing shareholders
I never vote for business people to be president. They should start at the bottom like they make everyone else do and run for local office first.We don't need rookies running the country.
No one is even attempting to explain that though. Weirdest fucking thing.
Not only that, the US is doing pretty well, considering. Take this BBC article, for example. "Could the US economy be doing too well?" This is mostly the kind of messaging that the democrats need, yet don't have. Hardly anyone is really pushing this kind of message stateside, but the opposition message is sure getting pushed. It's time to stop completely losing the messaging battle.
The problem is there’s no way to make the argument that simply without coming off tone deaf, because things are more expensive.
It’s hard to explain in a 200 character tweet that inflation was because of post pandemic pent up demand coming up against supply chain issues, combined with a war involving a major oil producer with a major grain exporter. And that inflation has dropped significantly, and is better than any other developing country, and is slower than wage growth now. And that there’s nothing Trump can do to bring prices back to what they were (no matter what he says) and that he also contributed with equal (necessary) COVID spending and (poorly targeted) tax cuts. That’s too much for one tweet.
People mostly vote on vibes. And the vibe is, stuff costs more now than it used to, in a noticeable way.
I've seen so many people openly, sincerely hoping for deflation.
Our economic illiteracy is going to fuck us.
Yep. Just had a co-worker tell me, "I don't like Trump, but I think I'm gonna vote for him anyway, because gas was cheaper when he was President". 🤦♂️
Tell your coworker that gas was cheaper in 2015 and 2016. And went up each year while Trump was POTUS. But it’s not related to whomever was sitting behind the desk.
That coworker isn't going to pay attention to that. That coworker is just going to remember when gas prices crashed the first year of COVID, and then think that was Trump getting the prices down.
I'm guessing that because I've heard that same stupid line of thought from dozens of MAGAs in my area, because I live in the heart of blinding stupidity.
Won't matter. That's too much thinking for somebody like that.
That person was going to vote for Trump regardless. People like that are just ashamed to come out and say it.
They know their position is based on hate not policy or morals. That is what they don't want to admit
Which isn't even true except for when we went into lockdown because our shitty president didn't have a clue on how to handle COVID. How much gas were you buying at $2 a gallon when your government told you you're not allowed to leave your house?
Ask your coworkers what Biden should do about that. Ask them if the government should regulate the price of goods and services in this country. Because if that's what they want, then they're going to need to elect politicians way further left than Joe Biden.
Better yet, don’t ask him what Biden should do. Ask him what Trump will do. And then wait for deadpan silence.
Which makes absolutely no sense. The president does not control prices. Like at all. Not gas prices, not grocery prices, not housing prices, car prices, none of it. God people are so freakin’ dumb.
Inflation is happening all over the world, not just USA.
And compared to our peers our inflation is actually pretty low
Indeed, we came through this inflationary period as world beating champions. But nobody will bother to notice this, because it doesn’t really matter to the average consumer. High prices = bad = blame the current government.
The people who vote for Trump are delusional as you said. They see that prices were cheaper under Trump so they think he is great for the economy.
But politicians of all sides in all countries take credit when prices come down.
You nailed that one. I have a friend I've known my whole life. He lives in a blue state, and in his 40s, he became a gun nutter and started voting red. When we talk, it's always the same thing with him. "Biden fucked everything up and now I can't afford gas in my car. I am just trying to make it till next year when Trump is in office again so everything gets fixed."
I'm like... Bro... You are complaining you have no money, but in the past 10 years, you bought:
- 4 full size cars on which you spent another 20k on upgrades
- An entire 'vintage game room' with thousands of NES games and consoles "for investment purposes!"
- 150 RC cars that are in your basement. (No exaggerating.. he just finished counting them.)
- A couple of racks of guns which of course need all the tactical gear.
No shit you have no money. That's $250k on top of your normal living expenses plus luxuries like new phones, big TVs, etc. You have 2 kids and a house. You can't buy all that shit as a mechanic with a highschool diploma!!
Your friend sounds like a 14 year old boy with the resources of an adult.
That's a pretty accurate assessment.
People drowning in debt need to understand the importance of the CFPB (consumer financial protection bureau), and where each candidate stands on it.
Trump tried to kill it. Biden put Elizabeth Warren on it. Under Biden, they've moved to end unfair excessive overdraft charges and late fees.
A Trump-appointed judge is fighting the most recent cap on late fees.
I don't disagree, I just find it stunning. Anyone who bothers to compare the US Economy with the rest of the world would should see through that in a moment.
When you hear people say something like this remind them that gas prices were lowest in ‘15 and ‘16; before Trump was inaugurated in Jan. 17. They misremember much of what happened and also attribute these things directly to whomever was in office despite disconnect.
Things aren’t 100% back to how it was before Covid so they blame Biden for everything. People are seriously dumb.
How could they be? Trump gave away a trillion dollars in his mishandling of COVID. No shit that's going to drive inflation. You can't just make that up in one year.
Just like 2008, the Republicans crash our economy. We get a Democrat in office just long enough to turn it around, and it goes back to a Republican who puts us back in the shitter.
Honestly, think about how good Obama's economy had to be for it to withstand almost 4 years of terrible economic choices by Trump. It almost could have made it if it didn't all get blown up by COVID.
Eh, I am not convinced.
We’re in a better place than when Trump left office. All he has done since leaving is whine, play the victim, and intermittently shit his pants. Nothing he has done is ‘new,’ just the same tired collection of grievances.
People complaining about prices were likely going to vote for Trump no matter what. They clearly have no vision beyond the end of their nose and vote based off of their feelings that day. Wages have grown substantially in the last four years and outpaced CoL increases. Many of us recognize that it is a net gain.
A sizable chunk of voters are tired of Trump because he is just an exhausting person; like a child who never stops complaining. His mental decline is becoming more visible and his legal woes are getting more coverage.
I’ll never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate, but Trump has more headwind now than he did in 2020 and he keeps falling asleep.
This. There's been so many doom-and-gloom articles recently acting like former guy getting re-elected is inevitable, so we should all start making our peace with it now. And I'm just sitting here, looking at them all like... the guy who can't even win 80% of his party's primary elections when all his opponents have dropped out? The guy whose party keeps getting slaughtered by historical margins in every off-year and special election since 2022?
Like, come on. Y'all realize demoralizing yourself like this over absolutely fucking nothing is just as dangerous to our chances of winning as getting complacent would be?
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15d
many many people
Many many many people
That many?
even more
Now multiply by a few
At least half if you trust statistical averages
Its not all stupidity.
As much as some proclaimed the election of Obama was proof positive that America was a post racist society the election of Donald Trump proves racism is alive and well in North America (his MAGA zealotry has now spread to Canada).
Donald Trump made it okay to be a bigot again. Many take comfort in that.
"When the individual is no longer a true participant. When he no longer feels sense of responsibility to his his society, the content of democracy is emptied. When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society." - MLK Jr.
Trump feels zero sense of responsibility to his society. He sees it as a a store of raw meat to get fat on. He cares only about what he can get out of it, and has made ignorance and hatred his crown princes in the process.
The man is a living abomination.
That's the same attitude his voters have too.
Honestly, who COULD represent these selfish ignorant cattle better than Donald Trump? They've truly found their leader.
Their baby golden calf
Yup, that's the conclusion I have drawn, too. Trump actually represents who they really are. He is immature, profane, crass, immoral, bigoted, dishonest, cruel, greedy, and selfish without apology. Apparently so is close to a third of the adult population here in the states.
Yeah this, if the leader of your country can be a bigoted, misogynistic pos it basically gives everyone the permission to be like that, too.
Racism is stupidity.
Sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it’s pure malice. Those are the most dangerous racists.
It's stupidity. It's something they've been working towards since the 70s. Project 2025 lays out their plan for a Trump presidency/ dictatorship. The truth is that many live in a different reality. The news they see, the education they received, opinions presented as fact, and religious leaders embracing the lies are all part of the cult brainwashing. And many have been subjected to it their whole lives. It's the only reality they know.
Cults and delusions require more tactics to break down. You can't attack the delusion directly, but you can chip away at it. Showing them facts rarely work. I've had more success just asking questions about their reality.
Propaganda is a hell of a tool. Thanks Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Assholes!
stupid makes it seem like they don't get how bad he's going to be for the country
people are voting for trump because they hate America and want a dictatorship, the stupidity comes from them thinking they're the in-group that will benefit from said dictatorship when they're already getting the shit end of the deal just living in a red state
He's already said what he would do, and I truly believe he will weaponize every agency he can to punish those he believes don't like him. Everything he claims the Democrats are going to do, he has already done. He will use the military like a goon squad just like the dictators he admires so much. The entire world is laughing at us for the notion that a criminally charged wanna be dictator could once again be put in any position of power instead of the prison cell he so justly deserves. He has made us a mockery, He has endangered our allies, and he has sold us out to the highest bidder because he wants to reduce us to a 3rd world country that instead of evolving will devolve into a police state, just like his pal putin.
Trump supporters don't hate America - they hate what American has BECOME - a multi-racial, accepting, socially tolerant society where everyone is encouraged to vote and that tries to take care of the less advantaged. Trump supporters want the early 1960's back, where the White man was clearly top of the food chain and a union job at the plant was all you needed to raise a family of six. Those days are long gone (for MANY reasons), and Trump supporters need a scapegoat so they blame illegal immigrants and the liberal media for it all. And the smarter ones are just riding the hate wave.
They want the 60s back in all aspects except for those billionaire tax brackets of 60%.
And te unions... they don't want the unions.
Life is really getting better too. I was on a flight yesterday and it was packed the airport was packed. When I go shopping it’s packed. BUT life isn’t 100% exactly like it was before COVID so people are complaining. The county is full of pessimistic bobble heads.
For so many conservatives COVID will be their scapegoat until the day they die. They will always see the world as "before covid" and "after covid". And they'll always claim everything was better before covid.
In their brains, if we'd have just done nothing about it and let it kill millions more than it already did, everything would be fine now.
Trump made the pandemic a lot worse yet folks are blind to it.
Trump was pro-COVID in his actions and anti-national response policies
He claimed Covid was not his responsibility and 450,000 died under his watch. He didn't care. If those that are going to vote for him think he cares about them they will get the biggest shock in their lives when he increases their taxes AGAIN and removes any programs that they have depended upon from the government. He has no friends and they will be thrown under the bus.
People see things as “expensive” and blame Biden, but it’s the companies being greedy. They’re making record profits by bilking everyone. They realize people have to buy these things and there are no repercussions for fucking us over. There is no inflation really, just collusion to raise prices.
Rest of the world is watching america like it's the wierd uncle at the family barbecue about to dip his dick in hot sauce - again - despite being hospitalised for doing exactly the same thing before
Because the corporate media has everyone hopped up on fear and politicians like Trump play to their fears.
But also, the system is incredibly fucked. You can have ten million more votes, and it wouldn't matter if they weren't in the right states. How the fuck does land vote? And why aren't the votes proportional? You can win a state by one vote and get all the votes of the state! And then you have the senate where fucking vermont has the same power as california... think about that for a minute.
The system is so very fucked, and to unfuck it you need the consent of the side benefiting from it to give up their disproportional power. Let me say that again: to fix the horrible injustice, you need the consent of the perpetrator.
I had to scroll way too far to find an answer that wasn't just a variation of this
The article itself also fails to mention any of the systemic issues that many americans currently face which prevent them from experiencing the "remarkably good biden presidency"
I still believe Biden will win in November. It’s certainly not going to be a cakewalk! But we beat Trump in 2020. We can beat him again in 2024. Trump and his lackeys want us to give up…to think that it’s hopeless. It’s their literal stated objective to flood the zone with so much shit that we throw our hands up in defeat and accept his authoritarian fever dream.
Not me. Not now…not ever.
I ignored the polls in 2020 and I am ignoring them now. Pollsters just can’t admits that polls in the era of cellphones are useless, and online polls generally get packed by people pushing agendas. Then we finish Election Day and the polls were way off and people are crying about rigged elections because they lost.
There used to be too much money in polling. Pollsters are going to ride that regardless of what it is doing to the perception of the fairness of elections.
Exactly. Ignore the polls, and ignore the media horse race. The Justice Department isn’t going to save us, and neither are the courts.
It’s dependent on us to come out and vote in overwhelming numbers.
Vote like our democracy depends on it…because it does!
The only 'polls' I care about are exit polls, and almost all of those the last FOUR YEARS are telling one story, and it is very not good for Republicans.
Just look at the Primary results for Trump. He's lost overall vote share in REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES. I don't know how that is anything other than a death-knell for him in the general, but the media and 'so-called experts' keep beating the drum of horse-race and doom for ratings and people across the country are just gobbling it down without a moment of critical thought.
For example, in a February 2022 survey experiment, we asked opt-in respondents if they were licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine. In the opt-in survey, 12% of adults under 30 claimed this qualification, significantly higher than the share among older respondents. In reality, the share of Americans with this type of submarine license rounds to 0%.
The problem was even worse for Hispanic estimates. About a quarter (24%) of opt-in cases claiming to be Hispanic said they were licensed to operate a nuclear sub, versus 2% of non-Hispanics.
This. Trump is broke, in court, visibly brain dying, no accomplishments, up against an incumbent. The fundamentals of this race are laughably one sided, and that's before we mention ABORTION.
Cannabis too. We have Republicans on record in Virginia voting against and then vetoing recreational weed sales bills. It's already legal in the state but the dumbass governor doesn't want the market to decide and rejected the tax revenue.
Republicans have, for a very long time, both-sides'd the legalization question and claimed they're pro-cannabis too... But everyone knew it was pandering bullshit and it's now laid bare. Biden is inching closer to legalization and the cons are resisting.
If trump wasn't a complete fucking moron he'd get a lot of new votes if his platform included full Federal legalization... But he doesn't want it and cons don't want it.
"They win by making you think you're alone." - Zorii Bliss/Poe Dameron
If he wins it wont be because of Trump voters but because of complacent voters. I had a friend visiting me in Austria, educated, nice person but she has that dangerous mindset of "well both candidates are bad so Im not even voting". This is what Trump is counting on.
I don't know what's worse- I've met loads of people that voted for Trump, and have said things like "I just find him hilarious and I want to see how bad things will get". Spoiler- they have ALL been white males over the age of 50.
Conservative media shrieked like banshees every time Biden did so much as eat ice cream in public.
Easy. Most Americans are dumb af.
With democracy itself on the line, the 2024 election will almost certainly be the nation’s most consequential since 1860. It will also be the weirdest.
There are two fundamental facts about this campaign that do not appear to be making much of an impact on what, at least today, seems to be close to a majority of the electorate. The first and more obvious one is that few people in history have ever been less qualified to hold a position of any responsibility, much less the most powerful position in the world, than Donald Trump.
If elected, he will certainly deploy that power to destroy virtually everything Americans have historically held dear about the nation’s democratic traditions.
I very much agree with the assertion at the end of this article, that democrats need to pick 3 issues that they can hammer home. The party is way too disjointed about a cornucopia of issues. The in-fighting needs to stop.
That's because you're trying to force a bunch of people into the same political party when we should be 3-4 separate ones. With something like ranked choice voting, we could all vote for the best person to represent us, while still counting our vote against the republicans. Some states have already passed electoral reform, so this is possible.
Things don't have to be this way. We can give both ourselves and the republicans better options to choose from.
“America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable”
- Hunter S. Thompson
“If Nixon wins again, we’re in real trouble.” He picked up his drink, then saw it was empty and put it down again. “That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”
I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
From the same book you're quoting from
I dunno. I gave up trying to think rationally about Trump ages ago. I now accept there's a good portion of people in America who want a fascist dictatorship. And a douche nozzle light Trump running it.
Democracy isn't a given, and we very well could lose it a lot faster than most people realize. There are plenty of failed democracies in recent history, and just learning about them teaches that even a government with the best intentions can fall if the people allow evil people to get away with crimes.
Also, I fear the information age may be the very thing that destroys us. When there's too much information, and not all of it useful, or even true, humans can't seem to recognize the difference, and we are awash in a sea of falsehoods that gain a lot of traction.
We will walk into fascism and authoritarianism wide eyed and choosing it. But also unknowingly so because the people who fell for it will only finally understand when it's far too late.
Like the British voting for Brexit. They walked right into that one, and the disaster is still unfolding, and the citizens are continuing to realize how badly they let the wool be pulled over their eyes about it.
I fear that's our fate in America too. We're incapable of recognizing the wolf. It'll soon be grazing on the sheep and we'll wonder how the hell we didn't see it.
Well, some of us won't be surprised. But we're powerless to stop the dumb flock from asking for it.
We are way past the Information Age, we are firmly in the disinformation age.
Humans can’t recognize when things are bullshit? I think you just explained 5,000 years of religious power.
Vote Blue.
Vote, get your friends, family, neighbors & coworkers informed & hyped to vote. Offer to take folk to the polls, set a time, get commitments. r/VoteDEM has a ton of info on voting and volunteer opportunities.
They aren’t, but the media have created a vs. and are treating him like a legitimate contender instead of a loser dementia patient.
Because this country is full of fucking morons
I attribute this to two factors: first, people are really hurting from the cost of living crisis, and are perhaps desperate enough to believe that Donald Trump is the answer because they remember how food prices were cheaper pre-pandemic. (He’s not the answer, to be clear, but it’s easy to see why Johnny Lunchbox might see it that way.)
Second, there is a tremendous array of forces working in Donald’s favour: the entirety of conservative media, a fair portion of non-conservative media, an army of evangelicals, a large swath of social media (including the hellsite formerly known as Twitter), rich people who want to keep their tax breaks, Russian trolls and more than a few idiot lefties who look at politics as an all-or-nothing exercise - either they get everything they want or they kick over the gameboard.
However, there are also factors working against Donald: his criminal trial, his worsening finances (and that of the GOP) and his deteriorating mental state. In six months, it might be a completely different ballgame.
Second, there is a tremendous array of forces working in Donald’s favour:
This is the oft unspoken truth rihght here. The most powerful people in the world - from the supreme court to media CEOs to Putin and Musk and an entire universe of right wing podcasters and youtubers with huge reach - all want to make Biden lose. If he wins it will be the greatest victory of people over The Powers that Be and they'll STILL frame it as the elites keeping regular folks down.
Just want to mention another little factor that should play its part in the election: Dobbs v Jackson
Without the media, Trump would be shitting in his diaper in complete obscurity.
The question here is, how can such a large percentage, 40%, of this country be so fucking stupid?
Have you talked to a conservative recently? They’ve changed from the George W days of saying “yeah W isn’t a good speaking but he’s a family man and fiscally responsible. Plus I like how he wants a smaller government.” (Which as we all know is untrue but sounds like decent points) to the new “ugh I hate Donald trump, but I hate the libs more. I just don’t want this trans stuff put down my throat. Plus gas prices are high and I want to drain the swamp and stop inflation. Trump sucks but Biden will be worse.”
Because he's not in jail for treason yet.
People's values have changed, especially when they don't understand their fears and the complexities of the world they live in.
The average American is…. A moron
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14d
Let's make it not happen 2024
I’ve found my peace.
If Trump gets elected , that’s just sadly who we are.
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