Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Yes, I think I'm better off than I was four years ago.
Don’t forget how Trump expertly healed a nation struggling with racial injustice. Under his watch we had weeks of riots and fires in every major metro area in America.
Elementary school aged children in cages was also a real gem.
Trump 2024: Cages, corpses, and chaos.
Oh, and in respect to that: don't forget that it was Trump's administration that signed off on unmarked federal vans black-bagging protestors in Portland, and Trump himself who had DC Police disperse a protest just so he could take a photo in front of a church, AND that Trump actually wanted to deploy military force against the protests - he explicitly wanted the military to "machine-gun them in the streets" like he's Tsar Alexander.
The collective memory of this country could maybe fill a thimble. Jesus Jumping Christ
Nobody has made a serious attempt to overthrow the government this year
Oh come on. You know that statement isn't going to last through Thanksgiving
I laughed at this comment, but also a half second later think, "unfortunately there's a chance they're right."
It is highly likely that there will be a concerted effort to overthrow the government at election time. The right is actively recruiting people to go and get involved with the election process to make sure the results of the election come out the way they want it to; threats of violence against election workers have already led to a bunch of them quitting because they didn't sign up for that.
Honestly, one of the most patriotic things a young able-bodied person could do right now would be to volunteer to become an election worker. From what I saw when I voted just recently, they're not equipped (nor should it be their responsibility) to handle an influx of people who are ready to threaten them with for-real violence if they don't step aside and let the men with guns dictate what the outcome of the election is going to be.
That's without even considering what people inside the government could do to steal the election (as they already have done in the year 2000, when they had a lot less on-the-ground muscle and popularity than they do now).
Nobody has made a serious attempt to overthrow the government this year
...Yet
Soothsayer: "Beware the Ides of March"
... many moments later
Caesar: "Well, the Ides of March are come..."
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone"
Incidentally, the 15th of March, today, is the Ides of March.
Has the weird goulash of overwhelming profit-driven chaos that is the modern news media produced in you a vague emotional sense that things are getting better, or worse, since you're too exhausted with simply having to survive in our ever-more-hellish reality to have a second to take stock of where we're at and think back, even if our educational system had equipped you with enough critical-thinking tools to take the question seriously and produce a reasoned response?
Things can always be better, but we are better off now than before, imo at least.
I'd recommend you exit the right-wing media loop - it's well established that it is designed to provoke fear and disgust responses that'll burn you out pretty quickly. It'll also fill your head with the kind of transparent nonsense that would motivate you to vote Trump, but that's a different issue.
I am much less likely to become a corpse myself. That was a genuinely scary period, people going crazy buying TP, minimal food on the shelves, getting stared at (and clerks surreptitiously wiping the grocery conveyor after I used it, but fortunately nothing violent) because I am Asian. And just the not knowing enough about transmission and prevention.
Republicans: but gas was so cheap!
I'm voting for Biden, as I did last time and Clinton before, but I can't help some dark part of me knowing he does represent the US and is practically our mascot.
The embodiment of greed and gluttony, reveling in schadenfreude, cartoonishly shameless, crowing about who he beat and who he's enjoying the suffering of, and drunk on wholly undeserved vanity. A sociopath who stands against the very concept of empathy for others. If someone is suffering, he'll tell you what they did to deserve their suffering and suggest ways to really turn the screws. 🇺🇸
I'm ashamed of being an American precisely for all the American traits, that are also destroying us from the inside btw, that Trump unironically personifies. He's more American as America actually is, not all the pretty lies we say about ourselves, than Apple pies or school shootings.
I wish more Americans would look in the mirror that is Donald Trump and be ashamed of who we are, because we can't begin to do anything without recognizing what monstrous values we have.
I wish more Americans would look in the mirror that is Donald Trump and be ashamed of who we are, because we can’t begin to do anything without recognizing what monstrous values we have.
You are saying something I haven't heard in a lot of discourse. Kudos and my upvote.
I appreciate that, sincerely.
I'll never forget what elevated him into mainstream discourse, a game show literally about "I'm rich, so kiss my ass for half an hour" that somehow made him popular. You aren't supposed to like Gordon Gecko/Mr. Potter. They are to be hissed for their antisocial greed. Our people celebrate it. Many who hate him for his violent rhetoric today still loved him for his proud celebration of greed then.
I'll also never forget what singular event took him from paying extras to attend his rallies to basically owning the Republican party:
“We’re not allowed to punch back any more,” Trump lamented. The billionaire said he missed the “good old days,” “You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this?” Trump said. “They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-punch-protester-219655
He's a fucking monster, yes. But what does that say about US that the above elevated him, through public popularity, to basically being worshipped as a God(GodEmperor as some called him) by 40% of the electorate, while making still more consider his message?
Who the fuck are “voters” and why are they so goddamned stupid
You've got to remember that these are just simple voters. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Because the news misleads them, all the time and constantly
A lot of people also really don't understand how our government/elections work. The war on having an educated populace has been pretty successful in my opinion. Especially in Conservative areas of the country.
Liberals will complain to high heaven about how the NYT or WaPo or NPR has lied to them once again, then mechanically kick in another bucket of money during fundraising season.
Because we need a free, fair, and independent press, you see?
People picked Biden because they were angry at the incumbent and now their picking Trump because they're angry at the incumbent.
In America you only get two options. Historically, those two options were different flavors of empty suit. But every now and again, you get a real piece of shit a la Nixon or Trump who figured out how to weasel their way through a primary.
And then it's just a 50/50 as to whether they win
People picked Biden because they were angry at the incumbent and now their picking Trump because they're angry at the incumbent.
People picked Biden because around a million people died during Trump's botched Covid response, and because he was clearly an incompetent naked criminal fascist who kept talking about undoing democracy in the United States and actively trying to do it. People are now picking Trump because their news media has told them outlandish lies about Biden that make him sound like Kim Jong Un came to the United States, and they're trying to do the right thing by getting rid of him. Sometimes, simple innate "anger" at the incumbent leads people to vote against him, but I think in this specific election that's a very small part of it.
People picked Biden because around a million people died during Trump’s botched Covid response
More people voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than in 2016. Biden flipped swing states that Hillary lost because of her shit reputation on labor issues. But then Biden took office and broke a railroad strike, undermined the UAW during their auto worker's strike, and failed to pass the PRO Act with a Dem majority. He's significantly less popular in these Midwestern states than he was four years ago.
People are now picking Trump because their news media has told them outlandish lies about Biden
What? That he's old? That appears to be the entire media critique of his candidacy.
They support his Israel policy. They want to see him funnel another $100B in military spending to Ukraine. They love how he's bent over backwards to curb inflation, just as wages were beginning to rise. But since climate change and war are a bummer to read about after three nightmarish years, we're getting a slew of stories that amount to "Yo, did you notice how old this old guy is?!"
Sometimes, simple innate “anger” at the incumbent leads people to vote against him, but I think in this specific election that’s a very small part of it.
Sometimes media moguls just want another big Republican tax cut. Sometimes the conservatives smell blood in the water with abortion, environmental regs, LGBT rights, and labor rights all up for grabs. Sometimes the guy who gave Strom Thurmond's eulogy just isn't able to stay in touch with the youth vote.
Biden's got a lot working against him. The singular point in his favor is "Trump Will Destroy America!!!" And when the major American exports appear to be carbon emissions and bombs targeted at brown people, its getting harder and harder to convince people that this would be a bad thing.
The article uses a single black college student who says he might vote for trump, and a single "liberal climate group" poll from a recent New York Times article. So a single student and poll mean that America is not realizing how bad things would be? If that was true there would be far more republicans winning special elections and the house would have swung to a much larger majority for the republicans. The problem lies in the polling and assuming polls are at all accurate. Polls haven't been super accurate for a while. Polls said Biden would be in a dead heat in 2020 but he won a decent victory, far more than the polls expected. The polls said 2018 was gonna be a good year for democrats, which was right, but the polls far underestimated the turn out. In 2016 the polls had Clinton winning over trump but that didn't happen in the states it needed to happen in, despite most of the polls saying it would. In 2022, the polls expected republicans to get over 20 or 30 seats. That didn't happen. Using barely any evidence to show how America isn't understanding whats going on just ignores that the majority definitely understand. Its just that 43-46 percent of voters, who are the most likely ones to respond to polls, will always support trump. We can't base our view on the election just because of polls. Look at the actual elections that democrats usually have been winning where they need to be winning.
Also, it's not that I don't think there are people who don't understand how bad a second Trump term would be, it's just that those are a minority and will get smaller as the election gets closer.
Of course at the end of the day, we just have to vote. Ignore the polls, they're all bullshit, you just gotta vote.
Hey, hey - are you trying to whip up a horserace to drive clicks for your billionaire masters?? Well then let them do their job!
Even if it was the same, it's certainly not something anyone should aspire to.
Even if it gets to the point of putting people on trains, I'm not sure some bothsiderists, tankies, enlightened centrists, etc., will realize their mistake.
"Vote for Biden or you're a fucking moron"
Interesting tactic.
I mean, at this point that's what it boils down to. On one side you have a milquetoast shit sandwich, on the other side full fledged christo fascism. The choice is pretty clear.
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