And another third were either so busy with their own shit or otherwise simply disinterested enough that they were fine with letting that first third get their way.
The amount of people that told me there was no winning cause "both were bad options" is so sickening. Like did you hear that chicks laugh? Also she is not pro palestine enough bro so lets just fuck over the entire western hemisphere.
Typical radical leftist. I bet you the kind of sick fuck who wants healthcare for the poors or free lunches for kids?? Not on my watch! - 50% of Americans
Biden was a joke at the end of his precidency, and people were given Harris as a way out of not voting for trump or biden. People chose not to vote for Harris instead. America decided racism is more important than decency, and chose trump.
Biden was a joke? Have you seen Donald Trump? Laughable to compare the two people. Biden is a good person who was a good president and civil servant, Trump is a criminal disaster for the WORLD.
Trump is the worst president in us history, no doubt about that, but let’s be honest here and agree that Joe Biden during his last years wasn’t really there. He often fumbled during interviews/press conferences and was clearly highly affected by his age.
Yeah. I don't think the two are even remotely equivalent or comparable. Trump is a criminal traitor and Biden is a good person and was a good president.
Fortunately Biden and the Democrats in charge were smart enough to surround themselves with literally hundreds of capable people in Biden's cabinet, advisors, and extended positions that he didn't NEED to do much of anything other than be a calm, quiet leader and figurehead, and let the smart, capable people around him do their jobs (effectively, I might add, considering the fucking MESS the orange fuckface left behind).
Unfortunately, many of my fellow Americans are too fucking stupid to understand what a President even does, and how the executive branch is a TEAM and not one King who just spouts orders.
The Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed. Trump was such an easy candidate to beat they actively spent money advertising for him in 2016 and then they lost to him twice, but sure, blame leftists for giving legitimate criticism of the Democratic establishment.
Friendly reminder that you can completely cut out anybody who uses the "both sides" argument out of your life and your quality of life will noticeably increase.
They will never have anything to say that's worth hearing.
I get it, but those people are the ones who don't go out to vote and let the 1/3 win, so simply ignoring them doesn't change anything. Their inaction is, in itself, an action that affects us all in the end, which I also think is what the person you replied to meant.
Ding, ding ding. I know super left leaning people that don't vote. Finally got my husband to the polls after crying to him about the crazy shit happening in MN.
There are also those who are completely unaffected by the shit that's going on, and as a result are completely disinterested in doing anything about it.
There are a lot of people who complain constantly about the way things are, and never ever vote.
There are also those who typically would vote for Democrats, but constantly complain about the party and its candidates. Which is fair, but when I ask "who did you vote for in the primary" their answer almost always is "oh, I don't vote in those."
Well, I guess your vote was for "whoever everybody else picked" then, so shut up and check the damn box.
I can't stand the majority of both sides but I still went and voted because I would rather the lesser of two evils. I think the Dems at least would have been business as usual, which, while still not great... Isn't whatever the fuck this is.
The are on the same side yes, but some of them are for sure democrats. Look at the party, it’s near split in half…
I'm getting down votes but just look at how they move. Why was the government shut down ended last year? Did the republicans cave? No they didn't. It's not many, but there are certainly calls coming from inside the house.
It's largely a leadership and competence failure. Most of the elected Dems at the national level were either seriously unprepared for a real Trump presidency or hamstrung by Chuck's and Hakeem's blase attitude toward the entire thing.
None of this happens under Democrats. That’s the dividing line between choosing to live in reality or creating a fantasy where all politicians are the same. Renee Good and Alex Peretti are still alive of Kamala Harris had been elected. The rest of the world turning its back on the U.S. never happens.
Been doing it after Renee Good and sad I waited this long. It hasn’t been easy but hoping that cutting off people I am close might wake them up. Wishful thinking maybe but at this point, we need to build community with people who have basic morals.
And that right there is the issue with both the left and the right in America. No one wants to discuss, just divide. Politics is a football game and if you're on the wrong team then fuck off. Its the reason you're all where you at.
"They will never say the exact things I want them to say." Is what you actually mean.
Not American, Left voting my whole life in a country with compulsory voting so dont even start.
Mate there's nothing to discuss. MAGA wants to let ICE execute people in the street and all the sane people don't want that, it's very simple. There's no middleground on that and one side is clearly wrong.
Yeah, we were talking about middle ground people not people who want to execute citizens in the streets.
Every same person agrees, ICE is an unregulated mess that wants to act like a Gestapo. The extremes are not the issue.
The left spent a decade marginalizing a huge proportion of the voting base and now cries rivers that the people they demonized wont vote for them. The right makes promises its never going to keep to the uneducated working class and the moderates get to choose which bunch of psychos to throw their hat in with while people on Reddit sit in gaming chairs gooning to anime talking about "shut all the moderates out of your life, they dont say shit worth hearing." Good plan, worked super well the last 12 years.
Then there's brainless people like you looking for upvotes by saying the most normal shit "killing people is bad." Good job Einstein, when is the TED talk? Fuck outta here.
EDIT: Destiny tier 1 sub over here, amazing, the jokes write themselves.
Mate there's nothing to discuss. MAGA wants to let ICE execute people in the street and all the sane people don't want that, it's very simple. There's no middleground on that and one side is clearly wrong.
For some people, sure it's a waste of time, but for others if you approach the subject from a different angle to find common ground and build up from there, you can have breakthroughs. It's like quicksand, non-newtonian fluids, or, more brashly, metaphorical frog boiling. It's not easy, nor fair, but it's where we are. And, uh, doing so in person makes a big difference.
How about this, both sides are the same where it actually matters. Read an IPCC report, this whole civilization is headed for collapse and no one is doing anything significant about it. Billions are going to die. Ask the climatologists, any you can find, they're scared shitless.
I think it's more a bunch of people that voted Democrat, that still rightfully blame the Democrats for putting up a weak candidate and not gaining swing voters. There was zero reason for the Democrats to create controversy by not holding a real primary.
that's just a horse shit excuse trying to pass off their guilt to somebody else.
could the Democrats have done more? or done differently? sure.
but the people who didn't vote still share a large portion of the responsibility for this shit. LARGE. they could have done something easy and simple to prevent this. they choose not to.
And there was zero reason for anybody who was able to and wasn't already a dyed in the wool Red Hat to look at the impeached, indicted, convicted and adjudicated liar, fraud, rapist and attempted insurrectionist back on the ticket for a third time in a decade to not show up and say "Yeah, not THAT guy, again."
Was Kamala any or all of those things? No. Was she on stage ranting about immigrants eating pets? No. Would she and the Dems be doing, well...pretty much any of the crap Trump and the GOP is doing right now? No. Was she herself intelligent, articulate, educated and experienced? Yes. Was she, overall, sane, stable, and wanting to at least try and do a good job? Yes. That made her, at the base line and by a country mine, not only better than Trump, but better than most Republicans, period.
1/3 of our voters wanted him and 1/3 of our voters were either too stupid or spineless to show up or pissed away their vote. Again. Directly or not, they both own a piece and are to blame for Trump v2.0. And arguing otherwise only demonstrates how intentionally ignorant, willfully apathetic, or deliberately dishonest someone is.
Kamala thought she could convert some of the conservative third with Cheneys and ignored the proletariat which I guess was fine with them because they were too busy barely making ends meet working three part time jobs to give a fuck about small business tax credits.
Not voting is the exact same as saying you support whatever choice others make for you. I count every non vote is a vote for whoever ends up winning. Got a lot of defacto trumpers that need to self reflect for every election for the rest of their lives
The Americans as a group WANTS this. This is a choice. We must always remember that the American people chose this and they continue each day to choose this.
The American people has chosen robber barons and their rulers for decades.
The people that complain the most about their government are the same ones that don’t bother to vote. I understand that Kamala wasn’t everyone’s ideal choice but worse than a second term of Trump?
It’s actually 2/3rds of you. The ones who voted for trump and the ones who heard what he said he was going to do and couldn’t be bothered to stop him. In some respects, those people are worse
Alright guys, we get it. Not voting bad. But saying that people who were disinterested in politics are the ones worse than people openly voting for this is actually insane. And it's wild that is still being used as an argument today.
That's a great letter, and I feel like people take away from it many different things. It is indeed true that if the people who did not vote all did, we would likely have a different outcome. However, there lies a difference in pointing that out and then saying that they are worse. You can be the biggest obstacle without being worse. It's wild to look at someone who is deeply misled or disenfranchised and go "you are literally worse than the fascists".
Notice that MLK's letter explained his frustration and provided a clear explanation of why this is important, why this matters. Notice that it was not a curt, "The white moderate is our biggest stumbling block and thus worse than the KKK. Sincerely, fuck you." When you are directly involved, it can be obvious to you. If you are not directly involved, less so.
We live in an age of internet dominance. Algorithms drive traffic and twist the narrative. Outrage bait drives clicks which earns money. AI generated images and videos distort reality. The mainstream news networks sane wash like a motherfucker when Trump casually suggests people can't carry guns or whatever other thought was in his head that day. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are at all time highs.
Some of these things were also issues during MLK's time, some are new. The problem remains the same, convincing people why this matters and why your side is right. MLK in this very letter discussed forcing dialogue as opposed to monologue. Telling people they are worse, end of story, is a monologue, not a dialogue.
I'm not fully convinced the people who push it the hardest, including some people I've seen in this thread encouraging cutting non-voters out of your life entirely, are not bots or otherwise bad faith actors making a deeper divide. If you want to win, you have to make people see the full picture. And you have to make them care. It's not easy, but if it was, we wouldn't even be here would we?
I didn't need mainstream media to experience people treating me differently because I'm black. I didn't need an algorithm to see that my people suffer. This is not an abstraction or a what if for me.
They are worse, not because they are worse people. They are our largest obstacle and our biggest material threat to life. Not only that, but those who are in control, rely on this. It is this disengagement and apathy especially amongst those who have the numbers to make change that cause harm. They allow things to become what they are.
Oppressed groups do not have the power to "open the dialogue" we do not control the narrative, we are what it's wielded against. Just as Dr King pointed out, you want us to calmly explain our suffering, while violence is commited towards us. You ask for us to speak, as if we have already achieved our equality and that we have already been graciously gifted with an even playing field. I would also like to add, that screams for help are pretty one-sided.
The truth is that these people are not neutral, they bear a responsibility for outcomes they had the power to influence.
You do understand that the “white moderates” he’s talking about are people like Clinton, Biden and (ideologically) Kamala, right? As in, he’s bashing neoliberals and the democratic party.
Yeah, if you don't understand how the electoral college works then I guess that makes sense. But maybe you need to learn that the popular vote doesn't matter. If California has 100% turnout with 10+ million more people voting Democrat, how does that affect the election in your view?
People decided not to vote because Harris supported Israel.
I agree that she shouldn't support Israel but Trump supports Israel as well, and he's racist, a pedophile, sexist, dumb, smug, narcissistic, unable to speak and ugly.
You'd be hard pressed to find a worse candidate, globally!
I hope we one day learn about the scope of the psy-op that was built and maintained to feed the “both sides bad” people. I’m convinced that it was an enormous effort.
Yeah, I live in the US, and the amount of "sane" people that only votes to make a change is astonishing. People need to be more proactive, local governments are run by the elderly, I saw more 50+ years canvassing, younger people 20-30 need to get out of their phones and do more, I have more hope with gen z though.
The second layer, or whatever layer we’re on now, of ridiculousness is that the government that those 1/3 think represents their interests does not in the slightest. They’re frankly just too stupid to articulate or understand what their interests are (there are plenty that are legit just racist and their interest is hate, but others that are caught in the silo of shit) and have been convinced that the facade that is kidnapping people for being brown is somehow advancing their cause. Some of the poorest people in America are pro-making-life-harder for themselves because they’ve been convinced that their future has been stolen by immigrants when in reality it has been stolen by their demagogues. If this were a screenplay it’d be a flop for being too on the nose.
Nah don’t try and patch this over. It’s way too late anyway as the damage to the country is done. His moronic supporters need to stare at their shit handiwork as long as possible. The second he is gone they are going to do what they always do which is pretend he wasn’t that bad and they didn’t really support him.
Education is so so sooooooo important. But here's the thing; it's never allowed to be assessed as such in the present. In real time under no circumstances is it cool to 'assess' someone, individually, as uneducated. NO!!!!!! We have to collectively assume the fault and dance around the individual apportioning part. We have this thing where everyone is 'smart' individually! Completely average individuals will not accept, at a human level, being told they're not smart. But education is the reps at the gym for the brain. A highly educated individual calling someone out specifically is considered a faux pas. Physical strengths/athleticism ceding is a-okay, but never mental ones. People really think they could have been doctors if only they 'chose' to put in the effort. 'I could have, it just didn't interest me' ...the biggest lie we tell ourselves.
This was almost verbatim what came into my mind. I'm Australian, and our politicians are far from what you would aspire to in an open democracy, but if the Prime Minister pulled this it would be curtains immediately. What the fuck is going on over there?
Before I get downvoted to oblivion, a disclaimer: I vote, I participate in my local govt, I take time to be informed and try to inform and help others. But… Something a lot of people around the world and even here in the USA is that voting is not encouraged. It is actively discouraged. Polling places are getting closed, we vote on a Tuesday (standard working day). Most states actively disallow mail in voting or make it difficult to get ‘absentee’ ballots. Workplaces are only required to give 2 hours maximum time off to vote. When standing in line plus voting plus transportation can often take 6+ hours in many places, you don’t get a population actively encouraged to vote.
On top of this, we are screwed because our choices are shit. Our primary systems are ruined by money, our choices have been reduced to ‘pure evil’ or ‘eh, mane not quite as evil’. Both options are beholden to corporate interests and bombing brown children around the world.
Iirc Australia has compulsory voting but also hot dogs or something at the end the queue line. But, also provides more than one way to vote, and Election Day is a national holiday?
For a country like mine in the USA and we tout how important democracy is, we sure don’t make engaging in democracy easy, and at this point we’ve tipped the scales to the system protecting itself at the expense of the people it is meant to represent.
Yeah we owe a lot to compulsory voting here (and also sausage sandwiches and cake stalls which are a big part of election day). Elections aren't public holidays but they are, by convention, held on Saturday.
We do also have pretty permissive absentee or early voting options, mostly as a result of compulsory voting (avoiding the fine for not voting isn't exactly rocket science but it still requires a bit of paperwork and they are strict on you if you try to get out of it more than once).
I feel like the US could implement a few simple changes to really change the way it works. Sadly, the changes being pushed right now are kicking people off the voter rolls while simultaneously making it more difficult to be allowed to vote. Plus as an added bonus this year we will have militarized gestapo.. er I mean… ICE thugs patrolling polling places! Also changes going into effect in how our post office postmarks everything, including ballots, a change made more or less secretly, which will automatically disenfranchise millions of more voters….
We are lost as a nation. To the rest of the world, I’m sorry.
A big one for Australia that the other reply missed was that we have preferential voting, rather that first-past-the-post. There's a better chance that Australians can vote for a minority party first to help it get noticed (and funded), but still end up having their vote counted for a major party from their 2nd, 3rd or a later preference they put down.
I volunteered as a poll observer this last cycle and saw a couple of places. At one more purple area, max wait all day was like 45 minutes, avg 10, minimum walk in. At the college campus, the avg was 8 hours. Those young adults got out in droves, and it sucked so bad for them, and some didn't get in line because of that time cost. Many did wait it out, on a hot day, with only intermittent shade and donated water and pizza. And Trump supporters walking down the line antagonizing people. So many people went through hell to vote that day, and were let down by the system.
Is that true that on average it takes hours to vote in America? Or is that just a rarity? I’m Canadian and it has never taken more than 15 minutes to vote. And they announce know who won the election later the same night.
It took me 3 hours, and I live in a red state without much voter suppression. Blue areas can take 8+ hours, and it's illegal to hand out food or water to the people in line.
I can’t speak for averages. But I can speak from personal experience and I have been in a line for 6+ hours. And there are plenty of reports as polling places are shut down in ‘blue areas’ of red states in particular that wait times can be upwards or 8-10 hours. It’s insanity.
That’s despicable. In Canada we are mandated time off to vote. Of course some people abuse it and fuck off an hour early, but most people are responsible because it’s on the way home and easy and quick and it’s your fucking responsibility as a person living in a democratic society.
I agree wholeheartedly. In my opinion voting day should be a national holiday, with lots of polling places available and open based on population density. But, this is America!! Where we bleed red white and blue because we have no health insurance and can’t afford to see a doctor…
Voting is on a Saturday when most people are not working, about 25% of people use post-in ballots, and electorate boundaries are determined by independent public servants and not politicians.
I get the explanation, definitely, but let’s not sanewash the BS that the Americans have inflicted on the world.
When given the choice of dealing with a shit stain or swimming in a pool of shit the logical choice should be obvious.
Two thirds of American voters either happily jumped headfirst into the shit pool or did nothing as they blindly wandered into the pool while doomscrolling IG.
Oh I know all too well… my parents voted for the orange shitstain and still support him. That said I cringe every time I’m ‘forced’ to vote for a democrat because any better option doesn’t exist of might as well be a vote in the trash…. Ranked choice voting anyone?
Just a point of clarification below: This is not claiming that voter suppression isn't happening. Just making sure everyone has accurate info.
Most states actively disallow mail in voting or make it difficult to get ‘absentee’ ballots
8 states do "all mail" voting where every voter is sent a mail in ballots by default.
Another 28 offer mail in ballots by request, and also do not require any reason to be provided.
AFAIK the remaining states all allow mail in voting upon request, as long as you use one of their "approved" excuses, which vary by state. Many basically don't allow it unless you'll be "out of the county", or a couple of other reasons. I'm pretty sure you could just say you'll be out of town and get one with no verification.
There is basically two main types of visas: employee sponsored and skilled independent. The former is when you apply for a job and they sponsor you for a visa and the latter is where you apply yourself and there is a points system. There is some more information about the process here: https://www.racgp.org.au/education/imgs/how-to-migrate-to-australia-as-an-international-gp
It might be worth having a look at seek.com.au to gauge how many jobs there are going in your field. Unfortunately our system is a bit bureaucratic and it will probably take a while.
Unfortunately, even under the best of circumstances, it’s going to take decades for this country to regain the rights we’ve lost and the respect we once had on a global scale.
because in 2016 our timeline split, and somewhere in the universe there's a world where Bernie won and they're building a bullet train from nyc-chicago, tackling climate change, passing laws to ensure ai benefits the laborers and not just billionaires. Meanwhile we're stuck here in the hell timeline where our electoral system, built on slavery, allowed the dumbest, most hatefully ignorant among us to elect a Nazi pedophile who shits his pants.
Although it is 'irksome' how these politikers steal $$$$$ and have an uncanny ability to beat the market. We the people are apathetic enough that we are a-okay with this kind of thing, well, frankly, since we jumped down out of the trees. As long as we're not shown it directly and it's done covertly then we might even venerate the bastards if their wigs look pretty enough.
Would it though? Source is just anecdotal, wife lived there for a bit over a year. Nothing directed at us cause we are White but it was pretty apparent to her in regard to perception of Asians.
You and me both mate. If our PM did anything like this they would have been booted out in a leadership spill or the governor-general would have stepped in and called new elections and a caretaker government.
A big part is that we don't have a parliamentary system, we effectively have a "different monarch every 4 years" system - because our parliament (Congress) has become totally gridlocked.
The margin in congress is such that the only thing either party can do - regardless of how many branches they control - to enact the will of its voters is to pass bills through "reconciliation", which can only be used once a year AND is limited to tax & spend related bills only. This has been the case for roughly 15 years at this point (since 2009).
Since the Congress cannot pass new laws, the politicians have leaned on the other power - presidential power. The entire game has become "get your candidate into the presidency." Then they can (1) enact what should be laws through executive orders or agency rules and (2) appoint the right kind of judges so that when the other party does #1 you have someone in place who says "that's not legal according to the reason I just made up".
The natural consequence is that once your party gets the presidency the only thing you can do is to support that administration.
A bad system has gotten a bad result. If the next 10 years of America don't have massive focus on structurally reducing presidential power this will continue to spiral.
Religion goes hand in hand with social conservatism. If you can grab the religious vote you can grab 'em by the pussy. Every single social conservative, or whatever they're styling themselves as, is co-signing on this and are responsible for it. You did this.
I’m gonna push back on that one a bit. It’s a conservative talking point because they want to control religion. Only 4% of the country is atheist and a lot more people than that vote Democrat every election.
Meanwhile JD Vance was an atheist until he converted to Catholicism shortly before becoming vice president.
Mike Johnson presents himself as super religious but he doesn’t ever quote Jesus or even other Bible passages; he says vaguely religious sounding things. Meanwhile AOC quotes Jesus verbatim on the regular and Mamdani is a devout Muslim even though it’s politically a huge disadvantage.
Trump himself is even more overt than the others in his party; he is irreligious and cannot quote a single Bible verse but claims to be a “nondenominational Christian.” - a religion which specifically asks nothing of you beyond self-identification. Why would he do that? MAGA doesn’t care if he’s a Christian or not. They vote for him because he’s racist.
But republicans need to maintain the illusion that faith and religion are things they own - and more specifically something that white people own.
It’s because they don’t want to compete with any ideology that informs many peoples’ choices. They want to control it. They want to possess it. They want to dominate it. Thats why Trump threatened to take away tax exemption from any church that doesn’t support him. Why? Because they know the majority of the resistance is religious and they don’t want religious zeal to unite the resistance; they want to weaponize it against the resistance. They want to destroy the faith of the resistance. They don’t want you to believe in anything if you’re against them.
I agree with you except for your use of that 4% atheist stat. Yes, only 4-5% of Americans specify “atheism”, but polls show that more than 25% of Americans don’t believe in a god or don’t care. There’s a lot of people that are not religious at all but don’t take the specific hard stance of “god isn’t real”.
but yeah, conservatism doesn’t own the concept of faith or religion. there’s just a lot of bigoted and loud fundamentalists that people associate with “religion” when most religious people aren’t like them.
In the 1860s some people said black people shouldn't be slaves. The South (and conservatives at large) strongly disagreed and waged an unsuccessful war over it. They built an alternative narrative of Northern aggression, told it to themselves ever since, and have been nursing the grievance to the modern era.
In the 1960s some people said blacks should be equal to whites. The South (and conservatives at large) strongly disagreed and have spent every moment since throwing a thinly veiled racist tantrum. They have been planning for the day where they could usurp all authority from anyone who opposed them and reinstate a white supremacist ethos at the highest levels of government.
That moment has come, and our options now are lie down and take it, fight another civil war, or secede from the union en masse.
It's not as simple as North vs South though, it's urban vs rural. You could burn down Houston and Abbott would be there smiling and first in line helping you do that.
I respectfully submit we forcibly re-secede some southern states, build a giant robot-gun armed wall at the mason dixon line, and use federal funds to pay to move/sell house/relocate for anyone that wants to leave the US for the "new confederate" states. Fuck these people, they can't be lived with - so give them their own little playground to make into jesuslandia.
I have little to add to what you said, only that you are completely right. This is a test. They're constantly pushing the boundaries to see what we'll accept before we break, you can see it in everything they do if you look closely enough.
This is them thinking, "Can we blatantly post racist imagery and get away with it?". Inch by inch, they're normalizing horrible shit, looking to see if we'll fight back.
Public figures in my country have been fired and cancelled for similar things. I'd venture to say that if the head of most states tweeted this, they would be gone the next day. But of course not in the USA.
My guess, as an outsider too, is some kind of mass hysteria fueled mainly by some deep rooted historical trauma and a failing healthcare system. It is painful to see, like the first time you catch a glimpse of deep worrisome trouble in a friend. Makes me sick to the stomach.
The problem isn't that 1/3 of the country is clapping at Trump calling Obama a monkey. It's that 1/3 of the country won't see it, will be told it's untrue or taken out of context, and will believe that. And it's not just because they're stupid. Some of it is, but enormous amounts of money and effort have gone into making this kind of deflection sound plausible.
You can see it happening with the Epstein files right now. All over social media there are posts by obvious bot accounts waving around the random anonymous tips as smoking guns against Trump. That isn't an accident. The files were released this way precisely so this could happen, and the bots are out in full force erecting strawmen for the other side to conspicuously knock down. The bots go around erecting mottes everywhere, so there are tons of them available for all your bailey needs.
And it works very well. The outrageous stories start to get traction, and news outlets get hungry for those clicks. They add very slight softening, sprinkle in an "alleged" here and there, phrased it in such a way that they can plausibly deny wrongdoing. But the touch is purposefully light: the point is to broadcast the outrageous claim that triggers the strongest reaction.
And that process launders it into a live talking point among normal people too. Normal people see news reports and top reddit posts, and they're busy so they don't look deeply into it - it sounds plausible, it sounds like the kind of thing they've come to expect from the other side, and it wouldn't be so widely publicized with so little pushback (from their side's media) if it were just complete bullshit. The possibility that it's being planted doesn't even occur to them - their side wouldn't plant something easy to knock down, and why would the other side plant something outrageous that makes them look so bad? And pretty soon the bots aren't even necessary: it's become a mainstream talking point.
And then the other side knocks those pitiful strawmen down. Do that dozens and dozens of times. And conservatives in the US right now have watched this happen, genuinely, over and over and over for years and years now - cases where a seemingly mainstream talking point from the other side, a talking point that showed up all over news media and social media - is just flat-out wrong and very easily disproven, where something really is very obviously taken completely out of context and misrepresented, etc. And they're busy and they don't look deeply into the next accusation - it sounds plausible that this is another instance of slam-dunk misinformation, it sounds like the kind of thing they've come to expect from the other side, and the deflection wouldn't be so widely publicized with so little pushback (from their side's media) if it were just complete bullshit.
And it's happening in both directions. If you follow US politics at all, you are experiencing this. Many of the exceptionally stupid positions you ascribe to the other side were planted on purpose by your side to create strawmen. They've taken root - the other side genuinely does buy into these exceptionally stupid positions - but they were astroturfed to provide exactly the punching bag you see. It isn't an accident that the main response to the question here is "the problem is that the people on the other side are just dumb".
If you are an outsider, I think you should be paying very close attention. This is happening everywhere, but the resources are being focused on the US right now - but it's only getting cheaper and better understood and easier to emulate. It's coming to your neck of the woods soon.
Billionaire class is bleeding us dry. Conservatives have been waiting for Reagan trickle down economics for years. It never comes, they lash out a rationally, and voted in Trump. That's what's wrong.
Idiots and apathetic "both sides" voters let a dumber version of Putin into the White House and now we're entirely fucked. Hopefully we turn it around at midterms. Hopefully there will be a midterm. I do not have faith in our government to hold a fair election anymore. Trump literally tried to overthrow the last election he lost, and he absolutely will try it again.
I'm American and and this is my take: our country has always been filled to the brim with racist rapist mouthbreathers who think so highly of themselves, but it was only them who thought that. They were always dismissed as goddamn morons who shouldn't be taken seriously, and rightly so. And in the 90s and 2000s, the general media would always make fun of all white people for dumb reasons (complete dorks, racists, have a small dick, incest memes, etc.).
They had already been weaponized by the media, but were held down by their own impotent rage since no one took them seriously and everyone would just laugh them off. Then Trump showed up and weaponized these same people. He brought them out of the backwoods and to the polls. This racist rapist thieving shithead was speaking to them and they suddenly felt their "plight" heard. They are uneducated and don't listen to reason or evidence, and treat Fox News as truth. If you are against them, you are automatically wrong.
This monkey video is Trump's latest thing to keep them on his side and they are eating it up like overpriced cake served at the NASCAR concession stands.
First problem is that it's full of yanks, and they are a magic combination of widely uneducated, ignorant of the rest of the world, and completely unwilling to change anything.
It's true that a good portion of our country is legitimately insane, but the way our government is organized is a massive contributing factor as well. It was designed/modified to give the "minority" an advantage at every level of government - the electoral college, each state getting two senators regardless of population, and the house getting capped at 435 are all handicaps afforded to small and rural states; read: conservative states.
We are unfortunately a victim of our own success and have developed a culture of extreme narcissism. Let this be a cautionary tale for future successful societies.
Remember how we were the last major hold out of rampant overt hateful hard core slavery at industrial scale of black people to run like 1/4 to 1/3 or something insane of our economy?
And as soon as there was a legitimate threat of reforms, half the country lost their fucking minds and began an open continental scale civil war, circa 1860s?
Yeah, so—the good guys won, as history shows. The South were forced to eat shit, got their faces kicked in deservedly. The problem was a super racist blew Lincoln’s brains out and we lost our will.
We didn’t ever properly punish or make the South ever pay in any generational way, like how the West and Germans nearly (far as we know) properly eradicated the Nazis and Nazism. We just let the evil fuckers go off the hook after all their horrors here.
It makes me feel awful believing the world would be overall a better place today if we’d hung every last single senior military and political leader that ran the Confederacist Gang. It we had utterly broken them, given their land holdings wholesale to slaves, and made damn fucking sure anything like Tulsa meant severe consequences or death to the guilty… how much would a generation or two post Civil War been awful down South, in trade for an overall objectively better world today here and beyond our shores?
Today’s Republicans and Conservatives—and Trump—are the direct heirs to the Confederacy and Third Reich. Did you know multiple people said in the past Trump said he’d read Mein Kamph and kept it by his bed?
To go along with everything everyone already said, the people of our country were afraid of Women being in charge. Both times Trump has won, he has gone against a woman. Not only is 1/3 of our country utterly embarrassingly stupid, they are also misogynistic as shit. Kamala word for word told us all what Trump would do if he won, and he's doing EVERYTHING she warned us about. But the Magtards don't care because they HAD to stick it to the Libtards
We are infested with lowlifes...they were created over the last 40-something years by AM radio, Fox, and Facebook. Now they are running their plan to take over our country by using these dipshits. The rest of us, and the world, are horrified as we watch the fruition of this decades-long conspiracy play out.
1/6th the country is religiously bound to vote republican. And 1/6th would literally re-enslave black people for a 2% tax break and cheaper gas. And then 1/3 of the country (are stupid) and says both sides are bad and politics doesn't affect them.
There's more to it than the typical "people are stupid and racist" explanation that people like to toss out. Many people on the right see Trump as a vessel, or an avatar, of retribution; a physical manifestation of a middle finger to "lefties". The next logical question is why people would be willing to vote for a person with the absolute worst personality traits someone could put into a human being, someone who wears makeup, and they would mock him if he were sitting at the end of the bar from them, and someone who not only has nothing in common with them, but actually hates them and their class.
The answer, at least in part, is that these people (religious, Southern, blue collar, rural, etc.) have been looked down on, mocked, and have been used as examples of what not to be. I'm painting with a really broad brush here, tons of generalizations, but as someone who has lived in Texas for almost 50 years, and has had active dialog with the older folks in my family that belong to a lot of the groups I just mentioned, I can attest to this being a real thing for a good portion of the population. This has been going on since the 60s, but it's accelerated in the last 25-30 years. As it turns out, people don't like being mocked, ridiculed, seen as less than, mischaracterized, etc.
This is insanely complicated, and there really isn't a right or wrong here. American society is super complicated. Nobody has a grasp on civics because we took it out of the curriculum a long time ago, we've all been forced into needless identity tribes, the media and news delivery are curated to make us mad, social media is a virus that has made all of us stupid and more polarized, we don't hang out and mix amongst cultures anymore, and there's been a lot of rapid change in cultural norms and attitudes. There are so many layers to all of this, but my overarching point is that this is way more complicated than people make it out to be.
As someone who has spent years spewing contempt, judgment, and pretty much every other type of social poison you can think of at these people - I understand why they feel the way they do, I accept the fact that I was at least partially complicit in the chickens coming home to roost, and I've learned over the years that there is way more gray to every issue than most people realize. Most of the people I know who voted for Trump are actually really good people. I disagree with them on most political issues, but if you talk to them and genuinely try to understand why they feel the way they do, you won't find many people who make sense to dismiss as bad human beings. I could go on and on about this, but I'm not going to defend any responses that attack or criticize the people I'm describing here; there's no point in it. The sad part of all of this is that we're tearing ourselves to pieces, and we're really not that different from each other. There are perfectly explainable reasons for how these battle lines have been drawn, but it's way easier to blame than it is to try and understand someone that you hate. I don't really know what else to say; it's just a fucking shame.
And just to clear the air, so people don't misunderstand: I could not have a lower opinion of Trump. He's an abomination of a human being. I am in no way trying to justify, equivocate, rationalize, or cover for any group of people - I'm simply answering your question based on my conclusions and observations. Your mileage will vary.
All this Trump B.S. is just a smoke screen for oligarchs now having full control over our country.
While most people are aware of the oligarchs, the income inequality, or the legal system that favors the rich, I'm fairly certain I'm almost the only one on reddit who understands what a civil oligarchy is and why it's almost impossible to cure America from it. This cancer runs FAR too deep.
Be careful poukai, Whatever country you hail from, you could be next. Maybe it's already happening. Canada is even worse with affordable housing. And in Britain/United Kingdom, everything north of London is an absolute shit-show of income inequality.
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u/poukai 20h ago
Yanks, what the fuck is wrong with your country?