The true colours of much of the US is revealed.
As much as some pay lip service to gender equality, ignoring race and ethnicity and taking care of the environment in public, once they’re in a private voting booth, the mask comes off to reveal an awful lot of racist, sexist, bully boys who only care about themselves.
“who only care about themselves.”
To be fair, this is true of 99% (or whatever high percentage) of people.
99% is hopefully way too high. I honestly don’t mind my taxes going to healthcare and education for people who need it.
I do however want far tougher enforcement on crimes. I’d be very happy to see Singapore-style canings applied to repeat offenders here now. It wouldn’t kill them but they might think twice if the punishment was being beaten bloody every time they reoffend.
I hope so too that 99% is way too high.
And I understand your wish for tougher enforcement. Studies do show that tougher punishments do not lead to less crime (even worse, the severity of crime increases since you get the max punishment anyway), so that is something to take into account. But I understand that people want an end to the low accountability of one’s actions.
Frankly not just for less crime, just payback.
Would probably make a victimized person or shop owner feel better seeing the convict get beaten bloody.
I know it would make me feel better if I got pickpocketed and beaten to see some equivalent payback.
I have a lot of thoughts on it, mostly unhappy thoughts.
Two things stand out:
First, I’m having a hard time with the voting turnout numbers. More people showed up to boot Trump out of office (voting for Biden), than every before. If you look at the numbers, the Republicans have gone up and up in vote count, albeit, not by a lot. While the Democratic vote count varies wildly year over year. It tells me that if people, specifically democratic voting people, show up, they win. When they don’t, then the GOP wins. It is clear to me that they didn’t show up.
Clearly, more people believed he was a threat to the country in 2020 and turned up in droves to drive him out, but in 2024 when we needed all of those people to turn up again, and keep him out, they just, didn’t bother. I’m sure, a nontrivial amount of the voters flipped between Dem and Rep… Or vice versa… But the total votes when Biden won, were simply a lot more.
So I’m having trouble reconciling that fewer people turned up to vote and keep the orange one out of office, than the number that showed up to kick him out of office to begin with. I don’t understand why they thought they needed to show up in 2020, but felt that they didn’t need to in 2024. I just don’t get it.
The second thing is centered around project 2025. Holy shit that entire plan is cursed. I feel bad for every American that isn’t a straight white male right now. You’re all going to get fucked over in some way, shape, or form. Even if you are a straight white male, you’re probably still fucked because of all the fucked up things that Trump is going to do to the economy that will benefit his billionaire friends (at your expense). You’ll get fucked slightly less than everyone else, but you’ll still get fucked.
The only solace I have in this, is that Trump is done. He cannot run for a third term. Assuming that he isn’t successful in dismantling the democracy at the heart of what the US is, it will only be four years and they can start the very long journey to repairing all the damage that this clown is about to do.
I have no illusions, that even if America survives his second term, they will be fucked for decades to come.
Domestically, they made their bed, they can sleep in it. Yeah, I feel sorry for a lot of Americans, who will certainly suffer but then I also feel sorry for lots of people around the world who are suffering. In the US, they have a democracy, even if flawed and imperfect. At the end of the day, this was the will of the people. Maybe not so much that they wanted Trump (many certainly do) but rather enough people weren’t bothered enough to care.
Unfortunately, this is a central Russian propaganda aim in democracies. Why bother voting? Politicians are all crooks. Mainstream media is all lies. Just give up, don’t engage, just… surrender. Why even try? It’s found fertile ground in an increasingly disillusioned public, and you don’t need to convince everyone to sit out the election, just enough.
Not to stress you out, but have you considered a Trump dynasty? What if Trump endorsed one of his children? This could go on long past this Presidency without even amending the constitution.
I don’t think any of his kids have the charisma to follow in his footsteps.
One thing that I can say Trump does not lack is charisma. I have not seen the same from any of his offspring.
Charisma alone, a good leader does not make; but in this case, I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing Trump has in spades.
Nervous. Fascism is getting more popular, not less. We WILL see the same trend.
When I saw the convoys in Canada, I knew you guys were in a similar situation. Europe is wavering too.
Long term? Democracy will persist. Short term? It will be tested worldwide.
My biggest fear is that climate change is pushing people to the extremes, and we get distracted in petty wars over nothing while we don’t treat the underlying problem at its core. Humans in desperate situations do idiotic things.
I’m still amazed at climate deniers. You see the evidence year over year, how can you not fucking see it?
10 years ago (or thereabouts) we had snow in my area so severe that most things were shut down. People couldn’t get out of their driveways.
I had to go out after the snowfall and it took more than an hour to dig my car out enough to leave.
Last year, we had maybe two snowfalls, and there was snow on the ground for less than one hour all winter.
The changes year over year are small, but over 10+ years? It’s an entirely different planet. IDK why some people are so blind to that. WTF.
I’m a dual citizen from the UK/Canada.
I feel the same way after Brexit. I felt a huge sense of dread and my coworker said to me, “we work in a high paying position and we’re men, we’re mostly going to be okay. The people that voted for Brexit have just f*cked themselves and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
I do feel a lot of animosity to any Trump supporter and I feel that’s warranted. I don’t care to elaborate further. I’m thinking of dropping social media for the next six months because there’s a lot of shit going on that I have no control over and I can’t change.
I’m thinking of dropping social media for the next six months because there’s a lot of shit going on that I have no control over and I can’t change.
That was pretty much my exact thought. I still log in (obviously). But I used to doom-watch the news after work leading up to the election. And for the last couple of nights I’ve been watching reruns of Quantum Leap on Pluto TV instead.
Feels good.