So many tears…
*liberal tears
That’s the issue with the FPTP voting system, it always eventually leads to a 2-party state like the US and the majority of the population votes for someone other than the winning party.
This happens in literally every country with the same voting system as the US.
69 voted for Krasnov. [-----NICE-----]
“69.16% of Americans are okay with fascism” isn’t really a resounding defense of the health of American democracy in the face of fascism, though.
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You can’t just blame a group of people for anything though, it’s not like geographic boundaries determine morality.
Instead you gotta look at what happened this last election. Yeah there was inflation, and the polls point to that as a thing that swayed a lot of people. But the bigger factor was media capture by far-right oligarchs. The top cable news station, the top podcast, and the top social media network for news were all turned into maga propaganda this election. In that environment, the only question is why was it so close?
And unfortunately, until that changes the next elections are going to be the same. Trump’s approval is down, but it’s still higher than it was at this point his last term.
You can’t just blame a group of people for anything though, it’s not like geographic boundaries determine morality.
Culture, in large part, determines morality, and culture is heavily influenced by geopolitical boundaries.
As an American myself, I have no interest in #notallAmericans defenses. We made our fucking bed, we can lie in it.
Instead you gotta look at what happened this last election. Yeah there was inflation, and the polls point to that as a thing that swayed a lot of people. But the bigger factor was media capture by far-right oligarchs. The top cable news station, the top podcast, and the top social media network for news were all turned into maga propaganda this election. In that environment, the only question is why was it so close?
The same reason why it was close in 2020, and in 2016. The same reason why the Tea Party in 2010 took off, why Americans gave Bush Jr. a second term in '04, why the GOP in the 90s saw significant success in running towards fascism. The same reason why Reagan got two terms with overwhelming popularity, why Nixon was elected on a platform of disdain for minorities, why Goldwater was a hit in the GOP and took the South from the Dems in 1964 for the first time since the Civil War.
We are a broken nation which has never managed to fully reckon with the deeply rooted authoritarian character within our culture. Trump is just the first time when a major party has given full voice to that inner fascist cretin, and it found that the base liked nothing better.
No excuses, no crisis staring us in the face, no illusions of a Truly Democratic Leader waved about. A creature whose prior term displayed the full range of incompetence and malice towards everything from leftists to Christianity, and whose campaign rhetoric promised nothing more than to get worse in its conduct if elected again. Trump was the final presentation of the question, unambiguous, “Do you, Americans, want fascism?” A mirror looking us flat in the fucking face, and daring us to speak.
And our response was an overwhelming “Sure, why not.”
More people didn’t vote at all than let this demented rapist burn everything down.
Fucking idiots.
I voted for Harris. But let’s be honest. There were two choices on the ballot in 2016, 2020, and 2024:
- Fascism
- Slightly delayed fascism.
I’m glad you voted, but i don’t agree those were the two options.
I think it was a functioning government implementing more progressive policies vs. absolute shit-spewing catastrophic chaos.
And as that has already been borne out in the first, what, thirty seconds? Those people who refused to prevent it can get fucked.
Those really were the options though.
When Biden won in 2020, I distinctly remember saying, “Trump is going to win in 2024.” I saw it clearly. It wasn’t hard to predict.
Trump didn’t come from nowhere. Learn history. What we are experiencing now is not unique. Whenever wealth inequality gets too great, people demand action. And if those in power aren’t willing to move the needle and improve the lot of the working class, then they will turn to demagogues. This happens again and again in sclerotic democracies. It happened in Rome. It happened in ancient Greece. It happened in Revolutionary France. People turn to demagogues who promise to ram change through if they are not taken care of. Yes, it’s fucking obvious that Trump isn’t going to actually help the people. That’s the definition of a demagogue. Yet demagogues crop up again and again whenever democracies face the challenges we are facing now.
Democrats have proven themselves, time and time again, to not be willing to actually move the needle. Imagine if Biden had showed even half of Trump’s willpower, except for good rather than evil. Think of where we would be now.
This is why the choice was “fascism” or “slightly delayed fascism.” Kamala wasn’t going to meaningfully move the needle either. If she had won in 2024, Trump or another fascist demagogue would have won in 2028.
Merely holding the line is not a viable strategy. If you are running against fascism, and you refuse to do anything to meaningfully fight it when you win, you are responsible for getting that fascist elected.
Trump is responsible for his own sins. But Democrats are the reason he is currently in the White House. He’s doing the evil, but they are the ones who put him there.
Yeah that’s not how I see it. If we cheated like the republiQans, packed the courts with 15-year old fanatics for us, redrew all the maps against court orders, plowed billions into vote suppression and propaganda, we could end up with enough Democrats in Congress to get big things done.
We’d have done it fraudulently, as the republiQans have, but we’d all be better off.
Instead, we try to win honestly with well reasoned arguments and we lose by 1-3% every fucking time and have to govern with incompetent Qanuts who bought their seat with daddy’s chicken plant money.
Then a new crop of supergeniuses who just got out of polisci 201 light up a phattie and decide this is all part of the plan, man and we’re not gonna participate in this crooked show!
By the time they’re old enough and experienced enough to laugh at that, it’s been 20 years more of unrelenting Christian Nationalism and Gross Corrupt Incompetence.
I’m all for the Democrats Fixing It All (again) but saying they’re fascism-lite is stupid. We failed to elect them because we sat at home, and now it’s all on fire. As we’d spent the last year explaining it would.
Don’t insult people. Do not assume people are young or inexperienced. I’ve been voting for Democrats since 2008. And they’ve failed again and again. I fully understand why people would just throw their hands up and refuse to vote for the traitors. Don’t belittle people who are simply sick of the bullshit and decide “a pox on both your houses!” It’s not youthful inexperience, it’s disillusionment and exhaustion. People are fucking done with corporate dems. And honestly, the best long term strategy might be just to let the entire Democratic Party be burned to ashes.
We’re not the first country in modern times to fall to right wing autocrats. And one common thing? It’s not the captured opposition nominally liberal party that actually drives the autocrats out in the end. Usually the equivalent of the Democratic Party needs to be completely eliminated before the autocrats can be defeated. They suck up all the oxygen and prevent a real opposition party from forming. Typically, a popular front needs to be formed that completely sidelines and crushes the traditional liberal party and the autocrat.
Realistically, we are probably going to have to let the Democratic Party go the way of the Whigs. There’s really no other realistic way we end up defeating MAGAism. A feckless and useless opposition party is often far worse than no opposition party at all.
If we cheated like the republiQans, packed the courts with 15-year old fanatics for us, redrew all the maps against court orders, plowed billions into vote suppression and propaganda, we could end up with enough Democrats in Congress to get big things done.
And they still wouldn’t, because they don’t want to. Not with the neoliberals in charge of the party.
The one thing – the one thing – that would’ve saved American democracy would’ve been the Democratic Party giving the middle finger to their crony-capitalist major donors and deciding to follow Sanders/Warren/AOC/etc. and meaningfully help the working class instead. But that was precisely the one thing that they abjectly refused to do.
And they still wouldn’t, because they don’t want to. Not with the neoliberals in charge of the party.
So - serious question - would you want to? Cheat.
Damn, I have tried at least a dozen times to write comments expressing that idea, and I still haven’t managed to phrase it that well. I think I’m just gonna start quoting you instead.
I think you’re right, and it really pisses me off to think about because the republicans were almost guaranteed to win no matter which candidate they put forward. Yet they picked Trump the traitor.
For the best really, if they had chosen a more competent candidate they could be doing a lot more damage with far less bad press and diplomatic fallout
Empty votes plus Trump votes still mean the majority of US was for, or at least indifferent about getting a fascist as a president.
I mean this is wrong for many reasons, not the least of which is all the road blocks put in place to dissuade people to vote. Look into how some places didn’t put prepaid postage on mail-in votes, meaning people had to pay for the luxury to vote. Look at how the election is held the evening of a work day, and many people are unable to leave their jobs to go vote without risking their livelihood. Look at how people are randomly unregistered to vote without their knowledge (this happens to me every year, despite actively voting even in local elections and living in the same place.) Look at how they offered a boatload of money to people who voted Republican, despite how that has always been illegal.
You may say that these people are still at fault, and to some degree I agree with you, but if you haven’t been so poor that you couldn’t eat, couldn’t keep your utilities on, couldn’t drive anywhere extra because you have no money for gas or public transit, then you have no idea where a large portion of the would-be eligible voters are coming from.
On top of this, the Democrats didn’t focus at all on how they were going to make poor people’s lives better. While the Republicans straight up lied, they heavily covered how Trump would supposedly lift the working class out of poverty.
I live quite comfortably now, but I haven’t always, and a huge part of what my fellow Democrats miss is just how desperate it makes you not having your daily needs met. Poor folks fall for the lies because the only thing they have a privilege of caring about is getting food on the table.
Sure, there are the bigots and the racists, and if someone voted R because of that, they are 100% the problem. But I’m pretty sure the majority of people who voted R or didn’t vote were just busy trying to survive and hopeful that the lies Trump told would change their lives forever.
The attack on public education paid its dividends. A huge part of that 36% likely didn’t even know where, when, or how to vote. Never underestimate the stupidity of fellow humans, it’s a capacity we have in abundance.
Maybe those empty votes were all the non-existent and dead people stealing/defrauding social security like they’ve been saying!
/s
No.
There are reasons other than abstaining from voting that prevent people from doing so (being homeless, not having ID, etc.). However, fuck voting in a US election - democracy is an illusion.
This is democracy manifest!
Hands off my penush!
I think 100%. Both these parties don’t work for middle class. Exceptions are Bernie and AOC. Without a third party pressure, we cannot win this oligarch war.
Also 6 million suppressed votes say: Kamala won!
“AynRandLibertarian” username. Is that… chosen ironically?
She was all about a persons worth being about their output and self sufficiency, and that empathy was evil, and yet she died penniless, in a city, using public government support to feed herself. Her ideas didnt meet their own proposed standard. Thats your hero, a poor who hated poors because they were poor, but worshipped the rich?
I’d think you were more on point if you just admired her for her lack of dental care and you hated dentists.
Not a fan of the fountain head I take it?
cite?
The really shocking stat is the growing number of eligible voters who have just stopped voting or participating in the system at all. When you look at the #1 reason why it is “no matter who wins my life doesn’t get better and no candidate represents me”. We have a quasi functional democracy at this point.
I mean, ~30 non-voting is, historically, really good
Things have been smooth enough in the last 80 years that people just don’t think they need to.
They’re wrong, of course. But this is a high-turnout election.
GOTV (Get Out The Vote) is always the actual part of elections. It’s also why the republiQans have focused so much on destroying that part.
If you look at the data as to why they do not vote the answer is not " things are so smooth that I dont need to vote anymore".
This is misleading.
According to those stats, the majority of people voted for someone other than Harris as well.
The real takeaway here is large percentage of people that don’t vote.
Apathy will be the death of America as we knew it
Already is. I’ve had my funeral for Uncle Sam. Done my mourning. There’s nothing left but a homunculus in the vague shape of the flawed dream we once called the USA.
Hitler got about 33% back when he started. He achieved his position by simply ignoring the law after that. Sounds familiar?
So they reformed the state after ww2, right?
No such change here. People literally swear their lives to “defending” the olde slavermaster pact.
They basically overhauled the politicla landscape completely. Actually, the allies installed a parliamentary system that fixed most issues of the German, British, and US system, and it has worked quite well, better than the originals.
I think you’re on to something. Presidential Republics are inherently unstable. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that South Korea is facing similar issues to America and both have Presidential systems.
After this settles if we aren’t all fighting in anarcho-capitalist communes, America might consider similar structural reform and consider a Prime Minister style of bicameralism (but they can call it President instead).
You make a good point and it’s a hopeful one
~70% of the US adults either wanted trump or at least OK with him, and by extension are ok with the muskrat
Maybe it’s time for the rest of the world to realize it’s not “just trump” but the USA as a whole is very racist, stupid and backwards country.
Maybe the pushback against trump we see all around social media is just the small loud minority.
Maybe it’s time to not consider Americans friends, and to stop supporting it as much as possible. I’ve started cutting off the american-made stuff I buy.
As someone who lives in a pre-determined state… It’s shocking how much these libs don’t understand the electoral system at all.
Maybe it’s time for the rest of the world to realize it’s not “just trump” but the USA as a whole is very racist, stupid and backwards country.
Why do you think people refuse to vote for genocidal candidates? Sure, their votes don’t matter but it’s also that there’s nobody to vote for.
It’s kinda strange to complain that people don’t vote while acknowledging that the whole system is racist trash.
~70% of the US adults either wanted trump or at least OK with him, and by extension are ok with the muskrat
Well, no. It sure looks like that from the corporate news spew, but no.
Maybe it’s time for the rest of the world to realize it’s not “just trump” but the USA as a whole is very racist, stupid and backwards country.
We knew.
Maybe the pushback against trump we see all around social media is just the small loud minority.
I think so too. They are not big, just loud.
Americans should finally demand a not so stupid voting system
And maybe have 7 presidentsdeleted by creator
1% did and we’re blaming them.
Yea, I did not know that so many did not vote compared to how few voted third party
It’s so fucking infuriating that practically every election, if it were possible, “did not vote” would win the presidency.
We’re always looking at some stupidly close, razor margins bullshit, when there’s a MASSIVE group of people that unfortunately just couldn’t possibly give a shit less…
I vote that if “did not vote” wins, that means “nobody” wins, and therefore “nobody” is president for 4y, try again next time.
I also vote that we as a country take a que from Talkeetna, AK. We should elect a cat president, if one can be mayor why not? And a cat will do better than any human I’ve met, so…
They would have to be 35 and a natural born citizen. Maybe a turtle or a parrot would work?
Fair, turtle it is, parrot too “can talk” to be president.
Also would go further into pointing out… of those 31.74% that did vote for it… it’s not a mandate for things that he didn’t run on… or even ran against.
Say trump took a shit ton of credit for promising to never cut social security and medicaid. When his mind changes from what he promised, the “mandate” arguement is even worse.
In a hypothetical world where lets say someone did run, promised a lot of things, and won with 98% of the vote, so that we could say they have a mandate. The mandate still only would apply to the things they actually claimed they were going to do on the campaign trail. If they are doing the opposite of what they promised the mandate is completely bullshit even in that scenerio.
Hitler also got roughly the same third of votes…
If you didn’t vote then you were fine with this outcome. The majority are ok with Trump winning.
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It’s not what they said.
By not voting, you are complicit with whomever ends up on the White House, that could be someone you like (and obviously it is for probably a lot of people who didn’t vote) but assuming you were eligible and able, by not voting, the statement you effectively make is ‘I am ok with any option’
who says I didn’t vote?
and if you vote for the democrats, and they decide to NOT take office after winning again, like they did 25 years ago, then you’ve done worse than waste your vote-not that it was ever worth much.
if you vote for the democrats, and they throw that shit, you’re basically saying "I am okay with these dipshits who will always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when it’s most important, and will never actually fix what’s been damaged, they just won’t damage it quite as deliberately’. which is not good.
No, if you vote for Democrats, and they win, you are saying you voted for Democrats, this is simpler than you are making it.
Not voting (when eligible and able) just means you are apathetic to the outcome.
Saying ‘democrats bad’ isn’t some gotcha response to this concept. Voting for someone who goes against their constituent, is a bad person, or otherwise isn’t what you expected is not the same thing as not voting at all, nor is voting for someone with a slim chance of winning or voting for someone that the general population disagrees with. All of those are actions taken to have some stake in the process and they are conscious decisions to support a specific person or group.
When you don’t vote, you implicitly support the winner, because by definition, you chose not to support anyone else, that’s just how the concept of voluntary voting works, it has nothing to do with the politics at play.
I wasn’t saying you personally didn’t vote, I was speaking colloquially, using ‘you’ to refer to the subject of the discussion (a person who didn’t vote).
again; I’m not saying I didn’t vote.
that said: there is no voting. there was an election last year, and, fairly or unfairly: you fuckers stuck the landing, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. past tense. done. MOVING THE FUCK ON
I don’t know if there’s going to be another election, or, if there is, whether it’s going to be real or fake. I think counting on that is foolish. I think obsessing over electoral shit instead of the actual mechanics of community and machinery of power is why we’re all in this mess.
so please touch fucking grass, talk to your neighbors, and do something that will literally ever matter.
So you just didn’t read my comment where I addressed the fact that I am not claiming you didn’t vote, and instead you want to sling shit?
I get the feeling that you don’t want to have a conversation, you just want to yell. I get it, but I won’t participate any longer.
This is downvoted…?
I get downvoted every time I bring this up too. However, the voters saw January 6th and they saw the repeal of Roe V Wade. If that wasn’t enough to get your butt to vote then you’re fine with this.
I still think big tech backed Trump because of Lina Khan. Well also the tax breaks. Urgh …
