Kamala Harris running a damn near flawless campaign, with just a month 1/2 of campaigning. She’s been holding rallies nonstop with Tim Walz & not making her talking points about her race or gender like Hillary. She’s offering expanded healthcare, reinvestments back into public housing, wants to take on corporate greed, protect reproductive rights and chose a pro labor, pro education running mate.
Yet, she’s either barely leading or ties in most polls with a guy that:
Is a convicted felon.
Liable Sexual Predator.
Gets sentenced in November.
Has several more pending cases.
Increased Drone Strikes by 300%. (Joe Biden dosent use drones anymore).
Illegally killed an Iranian General unprovoked with a missle strike.
Increased tensions in Israel/Palestine with the Abraham Accords.
Wants war with Mexico (his words).
Tried to coup Venezuela.
Will bend the knee for Netanyahu’s potential war with Iran.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
Told people to drink bleach during the pandemic.
Is the main driving force for America’s current division.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
Tried to steal the 2020 election (Find Me 11,000 votes in GA).
Did Fake Elector Slates to pressure Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election.
Caused a riot on the capitol that lead to his OWN supporters dying.
Just got washed by Harris in the last debate, was completely unprepared on anything but immigration (“I have concepts of a plan”).
And so much more. So seriously what is it? Is it just the attraction to bigotry/racism? Is it to end “wokeness”. Is it because Kamala is a woman of color? You can’t use the both sides argument like Hilary or Biden, Kamala is the obvious better choice. Could you imagine if Kamala had as much baggage as Trump? The media would lose their minds.
Seriously, how the f*** is this guy still in the race?
Trump could be rolled out drooling and leaking brain fluid from his ears and 40% of voters will fully go behind him cause he’s a republican. And the “undecided” voters will somehow see it as a strength. By the way, anyone still claiming to be undecided on Donald Trump in 2024 is full of shit
I guess, Trump himself said he could kill someone and they’d still vote for him.
This is a serious answer so it’s gonna get down voted to hell, but whatever.
There’s a huge portion of Americans who are suffering. Their personal lives are kind of awful, they live in communities that are impossible to get ahead and the communities are often that way to due the direct actions of the political establishment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Above all else, these communities don’t really feel heard by the liberal establishment. They feel as though their concerns are dismissed by what they see as the powers that be. They feel that their anguish is belittled as a personal failure, and often downright mocked. They also feel as though a lot of entities that fucked them are liberally coded.
To these people, Trump is the guy who makes those people seethes and tells them to fuck off. That endears them to him and offers extreme loyalty. They often dismiss the allegations against him because at some point every single conservative has been implied to be a disgusting person in popular culture.
Ironically I think a lot of Trump’s worst actions solidified the support of his base, because of where America has been at since his political ascendency. The US culture war has been raging for a decade now, and both sides have a habit of taking extreme positions while vilifying their opposition. That is naturally going to cause people to get more aggressive, which in turn villifies Trump.
An example I love to use is vaccine skepticism during covid. There were two huge groups of vaccine skeptics in America: rural whites, and black Americans. Both had suffered greatly at the hands of an aloof medical establishment, and both had their suffering ignored. While the Black community’s wounds run deeper, the rural white community was fresh off the opioid crisis. They had every reason to be skeptical about big pharma lying to them for profit, because that’s literally what happened just a few years prior.
The liberal response to the black community was understanding and outreach. The medical community made a huge effort to reach out to black community members and popular figures in black culture. There was a direct acknowledgement of the medical establishment’s bigotry in the past. There was not a culture of shame for people who did not choose to get vaccinated. This was also reflected in news articles and social media posts.
Their response to the rural white community was basically the opposite. The medical establishment’s outreach was extremely limited by comparison. The opioid crisis was written off as a failure by the Sacklers as opposed to any systemic issues that the medical establishment needs to address. Vaccine skeptics were repeatedly and aggressively shamed, with open discussion in regards to simply enforcing vaccination via mandates. Basically every MSM article talked about how the vaccine hesitancy was a character flaw. Social media went even farther. Not only did they call conservative vaccine skeptics things like death cultists, but there were forums dedicated to making fun of antivaxxers dying of covid. People would post private Facebook posts of people they knew by two or three degrees of separation, and then liberals would more or less celebrate their demise. You even had the return of the word “sky fairy” on reddit to describe when these people prayed to God.
Trump, for his part, encouraged people to get vaccinated. He stated multiple times at his rallies that vaccines could end covid, and that they were making him look bad by not doing so. He was, at his own rallies, booed so loud he had to stop talking. He quickly changed his tune.
A consistent trend in liberal circles is the belief that they have complete moral and intellectual authority, as well as the belief that this authority gives them the ability to treat people who don’t conform like shit. I’m pretty sure I’m voting for Harris, but there are also times where I felt like I should just say home. It’s completely fucking insufferable, and ironically has a ton in common with evangelical christian politics that dominated the US in the 1980s. So long as that mentality is there, you’ll have people like Trump gaining undeserved support.
There’s a difference in attitude when they keep doubling down and proving their critics right. That’s how misbehaved children act. Except when you’re not a child but full grown adults who refuse to budge like when mommy used try to give you that cough syrup you don’t want it so you twist and turn your head with your mouth sealed up tight. Yeah of course people are going to laugh at you. People laughing at you on social media is no excuse. What the hell even is this logic. This is not much more than a thinly veiled reddit tier pseudo-intellectual reply. Complete with the “ill be downvoted but”, “btw I’m actually voting liberal”, and the pièce de résistance using Black people as a rhetorical cudgel.
Btw I’ll get downvoted for this reply but whatever.
Look man I don’t know how old you are, but this type of comment is what I’d expect a teenager to write. it’s not just that you’re acting like a massive asshole; You’re using insults and arguments that I’d expect a teenager to come up with. It’s the sort of argument that only works if the vast majority of people in the audience are already both deeply in your corner and also immature. Otherwise you’d just come off looking like a massive jackass.
Do you have any experience talking to people outside of an echo chamber? How does that go for you?
And there you go from the moral/intellectual high ground, mocking them as toddlers and saying it’s right and normal to laugh and make fun of them.
I can’t stand vaccine hesitancy and anti-science bullshit. I’ve had to deal with this becoming a Fox News thing in my own family, and lost too many people from alternative “Eastern” medicine over “Western” medical science. But the mockery and ridicule only feeds into the Christian persecution complex most of that rural white population already embraces, and causes the wagons to circle.
I feel like a common trend is that if people generally showed more compassion for others, quite a bit would much better already. I mean for instance with vaccines, , not immediately vilifying people for not wanting the bacon, but trying to understand why. Also on the other side, antivaxxers trying to not just get pissed but trying to understand the other side. Not sure if I’m now thinking “understanding” or “compassion”, but i guess the later would be a first step to not just giving up on people, instead of getting pissed or writing them off like stupid.
But lol not gonna lie that’s hard.
I think it was easier to interact with people who made poor decision due to being illiterate on the topic because they just did the shit to themselves and that was that. Don’t get the vaccine, that’s fine. But now we are dealing with a world where every single person feels the need to not only speak their mind but scream it as loud as fucking possible.
What’s ridiculous is that we now have concepts like “canceling” someone for something they said. That the natural result of saying something stupid or bigoted. In the past people ignored you if you were an idiot or asshole. But now that people think that others should be compelled to listen we keep having platforms for obvious nonsense to be disseminated.
The culture war has been going on for a lot longer than a decade, it’s just only in the last decade or so that it’s been amped up to 11 in terms of how aggressive it’s being fought. Conservatives are almost always on the losing side of social issues that require a culture shift. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, seatbelt laws, anti-smoking laws, gay rights… the list goes on, and the fight is never quite done for some, but they always lose in the end.
The very fact that conservatives are very pro for things like coal mining that liberals are trying to legislate away create strong reasons for some people to hold their noses and vote Republican regardless of how noxious the candidate is. When their livelihoods are literally at stake and the liberal response is “Well you should have gone to college to learn a new skill or trade” it makes sense that they are corralled right into the arms of conservatives. Economic drivers are the most powerful force behind the conservative movement right now, not culture bullshit that deep down they don’t really care about. It doesn’t help that very few people understand the relationship between “the economy” as outlined by experts and “the economy” as experienced when paying for groceries or filling up their car at the pump. It doesn’t matter that conservatives almost never deliver on their promises to fix the economy and often end up sending the nation into a recession, if bad decisions on a national scale lead to temporary relief on a local scale for some, that’s what they will remember when voting next time.
Liberals need to be doing more to bring disenfranchised voters into the fold. Educating them without being condescending or dismissive would be an excellent start. Turning down the temperature in politics is not possible without also lowering the stakes, backing off of hardline positions in the short term might be the most effective way of undermining support for terrible conservative candidates.
I think this is accurate. But I’d like to restate it.
The Left (as the apparent big tent party full of literal minorities) has been learning to deal with disenfranchisement and the feeling “that their anguish is belittled as a personal failure, and often downright mocked” for its entire existence. Because of a huge variety of factors, the Right is losing some of its influence. They are not handling this well. The Left (being well acquainted with feeling unheard) should have been able to help the Right through this transition. Due to deep seated insecurities on both sides, we are no longer able to help one another as a people. Buckle up.
This is actually a very good and nuanced reply.
We’re going through similar problems in Britain. There are a lot of people from deprived communities that suffered during the seventies (Winter of Discontent, high inflation), had their manufacturing/mining jobs and access to social housing dismantled under Margaret Thatcher during the eighties, were ignored by successive leaders (John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown), then suffered through austerity at the hands of David Cameron.
Meanwhile, the media had been pushing tonnes of hatred towards immigrants and to nobody’s surprise, hate crimes against Muslims and Eastern Europeans have skyrocketed. Things are so bad that we voted to leave the European Union in 2016, voted in a corrupt Tory government that pulled us out of the bloc in 2020, and given the trend of our most recent election, it’s becoming increasingly likely that we are going to vote in a far-right government by 2029 or earlier.
It’s simple. Bigotry and greed. Trump plays to people’s fears that “others” will soon have the same rights they do while also assuring his rich handlers that he will make them richer. He’s convinced the poor to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Conservatism is a mental illness, it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning
it can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning
YouTube channel Knowing Better made a video about the Seventh Day Adventist. Basically the same conclusion.
Found it! It’s almost 3 hrs long, so you know what that means: a glass of wine, your favorite easy chair, and of course, this YouTube video streaming on your home system. So, go on, and indulge yourself. That’s right, kick off your shoes, put your feet up, lean back and just enjoy the rational documentary. After all, knowledge soothes even the savage lemming.
Offspring?
Yeppers, peppers! 🫑
Have an updoot, Offspring-fan.
Have an updoot, recognizer of Offspring-fans.
FOX “News” has effectively divided, conditioned and massaged Republicans for decades to regurgitate the message disseminated by Rupert Murdoch through their favorite flavor talking heads (Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and more recently Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters).
They went from ‘Russia bad’ in the 1980’s to ‘Russia good’ and ‘America had it wrong’. The viewers lack critical thought under scrutiny and regurgitate the talking points of their favorite broadcasters.
Yep, I lay the majority of our political insanity on Fox’s door. Look, we all know they’re the GOP’s propaganda arm, but how many of you have actually watched a good bit?
I was stuck with a week of it during the Snowden revelations. In the space of an entire week, I didn’t hear a single word on what was worldwide news. Stunning, and I still can’t explain it, but it happened. Point being, a lot of the lies are in what they don’t say. Early afternoon of 01/06, not a blip on the website. (Which BTW, is far more sane than the TV version.) I checked the wayback machine and FOx reported nothing until hours after kick off. I presume they prayed it would blow over or at least die down. Imagine the spin control behind the scenes! Hell, even Tucker Carlson pleased with Trump to make a sane statement and cut it off.
After hearing “Obama” thousands of times, over and over and over, I was sick of him! The whole time my friend’s step-mom was screaming at the screen, “The KKK ought to do their got damned JOB!” These people sat in their armchairs 24/7 (never saw them go to their bedroom), smoking weed and watching nothing but Fox. We tried to put on a movie or another show exactly twice and it promptly got switched back.
One time I was stuck with Fox at the doctor’s office, some kind of round-table show going on. A metric showing black people doing better under the Obama administration came up, something about pay I think. One of the hosts slams his fist of the table and shouted, “Obama’s a RACIST!” Constantly listen to crap like that and you are, eventually, getting brainwashed.
We tried to put on a movie or another show exactly twice and it promptly got switched back.
That’s the irritating part for me. Every time I visit a certain segment of the family, it’s as if I was stepping into 1984 with the big brother screens, except that they must be on all the time. I was forced into it during the missing MH370 news. They blatantly, incessantly push fear, and it hooks the idiots into believing if they aren’t watching 24/7 that they’re going to miss the apocalypse.
You made me remember! Yes, this was on a HUGE TV, probably 70", and that in a time when those were insanely expensive, had never seen one in a home. It was like the house walls in Fahrenheit 451.
“Come look! The White Clown is talking!”
An LSD party back in college taught me a thing I’ll never forget. There were 3 TVs in the living room and my best friend and I were tripping balls. He pulls me over to where I can see all 3 screens.
He said, “Notice who the number of people watching is directly proportional to the size of the screen?”
Mind. Blown.
don’t forget rush limbaugh
Yes thank you, and for some time Glenn Beck as well. Also a dishonorable mention to Jeanine Pirro.
“Conservatism […] can’t be defeated with logic and reasoning”
This is the key point that a lot of people miss.
If you wholeheartedly, or at least performatively, believe that there is a “natural” hierarchy where some people are better than others, then what one might see as equality is seen as oppression by hardline conservatives.
This is why emotion is the key component of Trumpian messaging, regardless of veracity.
The key is to never play the game. Always proactivity act with questions, never “defend” and react with truth; they’re not interested in the truth.
His debate performance was stunning because he spent 75% of his time talking about how we are being invaded by an enormous wave of criminals and insane asylum escapees who are violently claiming buildings and territory. I was like excuse me? Do I need to go check my yard for invaders? I didn’t realize we were being overrun. And yes I live in a state that borders Mexico.
It’s not conservativism, conservativism has been captured by think tanks funded by oil and banking billionaires. They’re framed conservativism, gutted it, and replaced its insides with Libertarianism (and sometimes technocratic fascism), as that’s what gives them the lowest taxes, the most corporate welfare, union busting capabilities, and defends their wealth accumulation most efficiently.
They’re not good members of society, this is demonstrated in Trump’s fascism (which is based on Roy Cohn’s fascism). It seeks to destroy society, the nation, and government.
If the race were between The Literal Devil ® and Jesus Christ (D), the vote total would be 45%-55% just based on the letter they choose to run after their name.
Policy doesn’t matter when people base their entire personality on their political party identification.
Jesus was a socialist Jew. We had one of those run for President, too, but couldn’t make it past the Democratic primary.
But see how evil he looks…
/s
Wanting us to become fiscally responsible, like not get into new wars into we’ve paid off previous ones? i.e. pay less money to the rich via the Military Industrial complex?
Wanting to tax the wealthy?
Wanting to redistribute money to take care of the poor?
Yeah, obviously evil indeed 😂 (from the POV of “I got mine, now I’m pulling up the ladder🪜”).
He got my first D primary vote… but NOT MY LAST.
Amen, preach it!
If you completely forget everything about Bernie; who he is, what he’s done, how he speaks, everything; he does look like a CEO who would lay off half his staff for a discount on a sandwich. But thats more because he’s an old white guy in a suit and they all look like that
He has joyful eyes
needs more puppies and rainbows
Jesus is a Mexican name. Check mate.
Closer to 50/50 with the electoral college.
And it pisses me off that people will vote for the dipshit because he’s an R, but i would vote for a half-dead horny toad on the other side.
Like the real Jesus would run as a Democrat. At least with the Devil you know where you stand! /s
Elections in America are all about vibes. People who care about facts are nerds.
Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).
Obvious tax cuts for the rich.
That’s all his financiers hear.
Constantly attacks marginalized groups.
That’s all his voters hear.
Everything else goes in one ear and out the other, muddied up with enough “whataboutism” and “both sides” rhetoric from the financiers to keep the voters from actually considering alternative options.
Did everyone just collectively agree to forget 2016? The polls were all favoring Clinton by a dramatic margin. CNN famously had a headline where they predicted Clinton had a 99% chance to win off of the polls.
And what ended up happening? 538 (before bought and neutered by ABC) gave the odds 65-35 or so, in Clinton’s favor. Trump ended up winning that 35%. This year, according to polls, Trump’s odds are better than in 2016. Kamala has the upper hand, but
A) lots of things can change suddenly before the election (like the Hilary emails thing)
B) polls are not the ultimate arbiter of who will win an election- actual real votes are
C) Trump more than likely has some “extracurricular plans” in store, much like Jan 6th, that has a chance of working.
Tldr: don’t get drunk on positive news. Keep a level head and you’ll see this election is still very close to a coin flip
I firmly believe he’s going to lose the popular vote, the electoral college, and yet still “win” by having the assholes that filled important election official positions refuse to certify the results and have the election kicked to Congress where the Republicans have a majority of states in their control and so one state one vote means Trump wins…
Every single mother fucker better riot like there’s no tomorrow if they do this
This is what I’m afraid of too. And it’s entirely within the realm of possibility, and likely too because he’s seemingly incapable of accepting public loses. He’s going to do something, anything in response.
Exactly, remind people to get out and vote
I also believe that there are a significant number of Trump voters who have quieted down out of embarrassment (but will still vote for him)
gave the odds 65-35 or so, in Clinton’s favor
I don’t think people realize how close that means the race was. 50/50 is like a coin flip. 35% is like rolling a six-sided die and getting either a 1 or a 2. It’s not the most likely outcome, but it’s not a surprising result either.
lots of things can change suddenly before the election (like the Hilary emails thing)
This is just hilarious to even think that this affected the election outcome after reading about all of the horrific shit Trump has done and has promised to do.
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if you are rich and souless
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if you are a moron. I am tired of people saying trumptards are “misguided” or some bullshit like that. If you voted for him in 2016, sure, you could have been misled. But after his trainwreck of a presidential run, if you vote for him, you are just stupid. Straight up a dumbfuck.
Moron is no longer enough. Republican voters at this point are malicious, not stupid, not poor gullible fools, they are malicious people who actively seek to harm others, no matter how ‘nice’ they may seem.
I am not interested in hearing about how someone knows a Republican who is such a nice pleasant person, willing to help just about anyone, kind, caring, etc. It is a mask, like that of…I forget the precise medical term, either psychopath or sociopath. But the irony is they are worse because they do have the capacity for empathy, but they choose not to.
And this is, and always has been, who they are. This is not new. This is exactly who they have always been, people who, if they lived in a different time, would happily own slaves, or watch someone tortured for the evening’s entertainment at the coliseum, or any number of such things.
That’s the people we’re dealing with, and they are a significant portion of the population as they always have been.
I am tired of people saying trumptards are “misguided” or some bullshit like that. If you voted for him in 2016, sure, you could have been misled
I’ve watched my in-laws change since they first voted red in 2016. Their reasoning at the time was that Obama didn’t reach across the isle enough so they voted trump. The other option was Hillary Clinton, and Trump said some weirdly populist stuff that made him further left than her on some matters, so can ya really blame them?
But since then their critical thinking skills have declined so much, their comfort with risk has increased significantly, and their ability to empathize has dropped like lead. They’ve also shown their true colors in having zero willingness to make even the smallest changes to plans to account for severe allergies or their special needs grandkids (and refuse to see the obvious mental illness and distress in some of their family too)
Quite frankly, Trump’s base is a cult of personality. These poor souls need to be deprogrammed and taught once again how to think critically, and probably temporarily disconnected from social media and cable news
I know how democrat reeducation camps are a conspiracy theory of the right, but for these people it actually needs to exist. They will not become normal again without them
Society has to acknowledge that half of its members are of below average intelligence. And we need a way to handle the lowest tenth, since they are a danger to themselves and others.
- Everybody against everybody off a ledge, means the weirdest turd of a bully floats to the top.
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You’re in a media bubble. It feels like there’s no way anyone could see it differently. The people who disagree with you are also in a media bubble and don’t understand how you could believe what you do.
For everything you said they
- don’t believe happened
- think it was a deep state plot
- believe it’s good actually and believing anything else means you want to kill babies or destroy the economy
- have never heard of it
Reality may have a leftist bias but most people don’t live in reality. Most people live in a reality constructed by corporate media. Social media is largely derivative of it.
Judging by some of my distant acquaintances it’s something along the lines of HURR DURR GASOLINE WAS CHEAPER 8 YEARS AGO. They focus on a global commodity of all things.
Seriously, the only stuff I’ve seen from them that even approaches a policy comparison rather than “lol black lady is a ho” caliber stuff revolves around money. And some of that might actually be a valid discussion if it were correct and if it weren’t for the absurd amount of other issues.
It’s just a low-information team sport, regardless of how insane reality is.
But that doesn’t keep him in the race, there are moron candidates with moron voters in other countries but they generally drop out pretty quickly. What keeps Trump in the race is mostly the electoral college but also the first past the post voting. Trump wouldn’t have a shot at winning if the electoral college didn’t skew the value of individual votes and first past the post effectively limits the amount of candidates you can have.
That’s true, but I would amend it to say that the EC and our stupid FPTP system, plus the bias of the senate, are what’s keeping the entire Republican Party relevant.
The rabid and mean stupidity is what is keeping Donald Trump in particular in the race. The establishment might actually like to get rid of him and get back to “money good, human well being bad” like God intended, but they could not get away with it yet.
Nothing I’ve read has ever explained Trump’s appeal like this article.
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
Nothing in there makes a cute soundbite. “They’re racist!”, is far easier than having to digest what the author lays down.
Seriously, read it. It’s important.
It’s a good article. It explains rural America. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in Huntington Beach CA. It doesn’t explain the well off assholes living in suburban Inland SoCal. It doesn’t explain rich privileged shitheads like Musk and Thiel.
Honestly, hadn’t read this one and it’s got some seriously solid points in it.
I remember reading this and thinking it had some points. Then I remembered that despite having some of the same issues, we have vastly different responses. When I’m lied to and beaten, I don’t look to the person that did it for help.
For instance, the church being the only social space. They could have a community center or a library. Sure funds are hard to come by but what kind of political party would even consider that? The answer is probably further left than democrats but fifty years of red scare won’t let anyone accept that.
The “writing them off” part comes from their willingness to not ostracize evil people when they get something they want. We can all be bullheaded or blinded by bias from time to time but accountability and decency shouldn’t be political.
Great read. There’s 70+ million people out there choosing to vote for Trump, why? Even if the answer is complicated you can’t dismiss them all outright.
I see a decent amount of comments painting all republics with one brush. I think it’s low effort and unproductive.
I feel like this is just gift wrapping being a dumb racist hick in prettier paper. They are scared of cities because their full of black people, gays, and Mexicans. They like assholes who show the same level of hate as they do - who will keep the black people, gays, and Mexicans away. And they like someone who justifies hiding behind religion so they can tell themselves that God made them this dumb and rascist. So they can delude themselves into thinking they are really the good guy.
Good read thanks
Good read. Thanks!
Fun piece. I don’t know about best explanation ever.
It starts out talking about how movies idealize simple honest people from the heartlands (Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Braveheart) but then says:
the whole goddamn world revolves around them. Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes
So which is it? Does pop culture feed rural America’s sense that it is “Real America” or does it make them hillbillies?
As if explaining politics through TV and movies isn’t reductive enough, it can’t seem to keep its own story straight for ten paragraphs in row.
I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.
At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?
I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.
When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?
It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).
Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.
Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.
He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.
The media is owned by rich old white men that would gladly accept fascism for lower taxes. It’s that simple.
That sure is part of it but don’t forget about voters. Even with all the gerrymandering and other sh*t, he does actually have a base of real supporters who can and do vote. Now the question is, how does he have supporters? I think the general answer is for decades if not generations, the Republicans have been systematically destroying public education, presumably because it’s much easier to trick an ignorant electorate into voting against their own interests than it is to trick a well educated electorate. They have been preparing for this for a long time… To really protect our democracy, we must invest in our population - and specifically in education. We need smart, critical thinkers to take this country forward.
We need to invest in our citizens, cause suffering struggling people will pick any easy option to try and make themselves feel safe. Its not just education but work and healthcare and community and local events.
Its just that we have done everything to not bother spending money and steal back every tax dollar for the rich to hold onto.
It’s seen as financially “smart” by all parties for decades now. We need to go back to trying to build society instead of deciding it’s done and getting as much money back from it.
There’s this bizarre assumption that debates shape public opinion rather than sharpen prior biases.
Liberals watched the debate and concluded Harris was normal and therefore won.
Conservatives watched and concluded only Trump is willing to speak The Truth to a hostile media and therefore won.
Undecideds don’t like either one of them for a variety of reasons. But nothing these two said on Tuesday really turned heads. It was classic Trump and classic Kamala.
I know several magahats in my family that are having doubts, not because of anything Harris said.
I think this debate was an unequivocal victory but I’m still telling everyone I know to vote
That’ll fade by election day. Trump’s strength comes from the deluge of right-wing media that bombards people. These debates are going to blotted from their brains - if not completely subverted by talk show re-edits and talk-overs - in another month.
The same thing that is powering most other political figures, all of which can be termed “Populists”
People are angry about a number of things. The wealth gap is very large, they are constantly told that the reason they aren’t doing well in life is because of their own failings, whilst they watch elites with political access get away with things they can only dream of. They’re being told immigrants and/or AI’s are coming for their jobs. They’re being told they can’t have what their parents or the wealthy had because Climate Change, or because inflation.
This generates a great deal of friction, which in turn pushes people to radicalize their beliefs. You can’t continue to sell a liberal, centrist viewpoint of the world when it simply isn’t working for them. They might cotton on to “dumb” ideas, but this does not mean that they are stupid. It means that they are angry. This is is demonstrative of a deeper problem that is being very deliberately ignored or papered over, because those in power have a vested interest in keeping the gravy train running for as long as possible. The sheer scale of the problems we now have to deal with are exceeding the kinds of moves and actions most Western politicians have learned over the years, so we aren’t getting appropriate results out of our political apparatus.
In times such as these, many people will look to the past for ideas on how to deal with their current situation. They sometimes come back with bad ones, sometimes they come back with good ones, and the pre-existing power structure will do everything it can to resist both of them, because to change is tantamount to completely losing grip on power for many of the people invested in the way things are. They cannot adapt, and once gone they will never get it back.
So we have a kind of a worst-case situation with a maladaptive leadership, extreme public resentment and actual natural/physical catastrophes forming a kind of crucible that this civilization needs to endure.
The trumps/erdogans/farages/orbans/lukashenkos/putins/meleis of this world are symptoms of these issues.
I live in Taiwan and met a guy yesterday who is moving to Taiwan because Austin is a “liberal hell hole”.
When pressed on any issues about Trump, his answer was that Biden is worse than Trump. When I asked about Harris, he just mentioned she will just copy Biden.
The funny thing is that Taiwan is by far more liberal and more progressive than Austin Texas. He seemed to like the universal healthcare and the many social services. He didn’t mind the high corporate taxes companies have to pay.
My assessment is that he is only basing his vote on vibes and feels alone. Judging from the conversation, he is more of a Bernie supporter.
