Re: The 47th POTUS - Donald J. Trump

[BurtReynolds]

I meant the second three things, not the first three (which aren't inherently fascist, though fascists could certainly do those things)

[tree_]

I can already see what the next four years will be like. "Trump is fascist" is Russiagate 2.0.

Deportations? Just like the fascists!
Firing federal bureaucrats? Just like the fascists!
Withdrawing support for Ukraine? Just like the fascists!

Then in four years when he hasn't cancelled democracy or invaded Poland or started putting people in ovens, everyone will pretend that they didn't overreact like lunatics.

Unless he does do all those things... Boy! Won't I have egg on my face then!

His own people have disavowed him time and time again for all his misdeeds, and more importantly for what he wanted to do but couldn't because of the guardrails in place. But they won't be there to bump up against this time around.

[Bammer]

I can already see what the next four years will be like. "Trump is fascist" is Russiagate 2.0.

Deportations? Just like the fascists!
Firing federal bureaucrats? Just like the fascists!
Withdrawing support for Ukraine? Just like the fascists!

Then in four years when he hasn't cancelled democracy or invaded Poland or started putting people in ovens, everyone will pretend that they didn't overreact like lunatics.

Unless he does do all those things... Boy! Won't I have egg on my face then!

Not to worry. The difference between Hitler and Drumpf is that we have Facebook Communities now, where people can come together and stop all this stuff from happening by hearting each other’s posts.

[Superblood Wolfmoon]

Wonder if anyone on the left in DC has considered trying to actually work with Trump rather than against him. He’s so malleable that it seems less about him and more about the people he surrounds himself dictating policy. Kim Kardashian saw how it worked and was able to get him onboard with criminal justice reform. Maybe it seems futile but I kinda feel that putting him into rage-filled defense mode doesn’t end up working out too well.

[epilogue]

But please keep telling me I'm being emotional. It's not an emotional argument, my guy.

as your “guy,” I’m just gonna leave this here from the day after the election:

I openly cried today at work (I know, I know, no surprise there) while talking to a customer.

way to shame a guy for crying and being emotional! No wonder Trump won....

I kid. Sort of.

Look, regardless of how/why Harris lost, the deomcratic party needs to figure out how to win elections and win over the working class/rural/suburban voters. The demonizing of the other side needs to stop. Clearly most of the country has greater concern over their own well being financially than what they are supposed to call transgender people. And, of course.

Without reaching these voters, they wont win elections, and if they dont win elections, then the rights for the marginalized communities we hope to protect, could be stripped away and we all lose.

Time for the deomcratic party/people like me, to do some soul searching.

The progressive left has a hard time denouncing Hamas' attack on October 7th because "israel".

Defund the police.

We do look insane. I get it.

That doesnt mean we stop fighting for such causes/ideals. But, the left better fucking figure out how to not alienate now more than half the electorate.

And, of course, there are few cures for sexism/racism/mysogny , which absolutley exist.

Its all of it.

Thank you for this. It's a great age accurate post. And we need it from posters like you who don't have the baggage that some others making the same point have.

I probably won't post much on this sub for a good long while but I'll check in and I look forward to seeing this conversation a advance.

[Kevin Davis]

Look, regardless of how/why Harris lost, the deomcratic party needs to figure out how to win elections and win over the working class/rural/suburban voters. The demonizing of the other side needs to stop. Clearly most of the country has greater concern over their own well being financially than what they are supposed to call transgender people. And, of course.

Without reaching these voters, they wont win elections, and if they dont win elections, then the rights for the marginalized communities we hope to protect, could be stripped away and we all lose.

Time for the deomcratic party/people like me, to do some soul searching.

The progressive left has a hard time denouncing Hamas' attack on October 7th because "israel".

Defund the police.

We do look insane. I get it.

That doesnt mean we stop fighting for such causes/ideals. But, the left better fucking figure out how to not alienate now more than half the electorate.

And, of course, there are few cures for sexism/racism/mysogny , which absolutley exist.

Its all of it.

I appreciate this post, Strat. A lot of it rings very true to me.

I rarely post in political threads, and don't really consume a ton of political content in general, partially because it helps keep my anxiety in check (I learned during the Bush era that excessive immersion in the news is bad for my mental health, even if some intentional distance comes at the expense of a level of being "informed"), and partially because so little of it seems sincere and unbiased enough to trust. (And, because of this, I always question how valuable my input really is among others who consume this stuff in greater detail.)

Mostly, though, what puts me off is the nastiness. The cruelty, the snark, the condescension, the superiority complexes, etc., coming from both sides -- all of it has just gotten so incredibly old. It is rare that I read a political article and don't find myself immediately sympathizing with whoever the article is trying to make look bad. I just have no patience for being in the mix of that much vitriol and cynicism, no matter who it's coming from or directed toward.

In a lot of ways, we are all year-round campaigners for candidates that haven't even announced their bids yet, and so often our leading (if not only) message amounts to little more than, "You're an idiot and we hate everything you stand for. Also vote for us." People are suffocated by this garbage all year long on social media, in mainstream media, from their friends and family, etc., such that when they finally get to the voting booth, regardless of who the candidates are, they're carrying around four years of baggage from being called "stupid," "hateful," "racist," "homophobic," etc., because of their feelings about Olympic women's swimming, or called "woke" and "Antifa" because they don't want their kids to be massacred during math class. The bar for being flippantly labelled some kind of "-ist" or "-phobe" (or "woke" or "radical left") is at an all-time low -- really all it takes is deviating from the going party rhetoric on a sensitive topic, at which point people start drawing all kinds of imaginary lines between a checkmark on a ballot and a malicious heart and/or a defective brain. This defies reason and is unsurprisingly not an effective conversion tool.

It would be much easier for me to accept that all voters for a specific candidate are racist, hateful, etc., if there were 100 candidates on the ballot, or 1000. But in a world where there are only two realistic choices, to me it seems like common sense that not every voter is casting their vote based on their chosen candidate's worst positions, and to some extent that has to form the baseline for compassionate dialogue. In 2016, I was pretty self-satisfied to simply write off every Trump voter as a bigot with a low IQ, but over the last 8 years (despite some really major challenges), I've been forced to reckon with some nuance. Yes, some of the Trump voters I know are MAGA stereotypes; others very much are not, and for me to allow one vote in a multi-issue, two-candidate election to dismantle everything else I know to be true about them would be to give political emotion priority over my own lived reality, which is precisely the tradeoff that has led to some of the scariest moments of the Trump era. I've found, at least in my own experience, that there is often a chasm between what someone's character tells you about them, and what you think their political preferences tell you about them. Either we see that chasm as a space for asking compassionate questions and seeking understanding, or we see it as a space to continue vomiting our own ill-gotten assumptions into, in which case it seems foolish to assume we'll ever get anything other than the same in return.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Preach

[spike]

Look, regardless of how/why Harris lost, the deomcratic party needs to figure out how to win elections and win over the working class/rural/suburban voters. The demonizing of the other side needs to stop. Clearly most of the country has greater concern over their own well being financially than what they are supposed to call transgender people. And, of course.

Without reaching these voters, they wont win elections, and if they dont win elections, then the rights for the marginalized communities we hope to protect, could be stripped away and we all lose.

Time for the deomcratic party/people like me, to do some soul searching.

The progressive left has a hard time denouncing Hamas' attack on October 7th because "israel".

Defund the police.

We do look insane. I get it.

That doesnt mean we stop fighting for such causes/ideals. But, the left better fucking figure out how to not alienate now more than half the electorate.

And, of course, there are few cures for sexism/racism/mysogny , which absolutley exist.

Its all of it.

I appreciate this post, Strat. A lot of it rings very true to me.

I rarely post in political threads, and don't really consume a ton of political content in general, partially because it helps keep my anxiety in check (I learned during the Bush era that excessive immersion in the news is bad for my mental health, even if some intentional distance comes at the expense of a level of being "informed"), and partially because so little of it seems sincere and unbiased enough to trust. (And, because of this, I always question how valuable my input really is among others who consume this stuff in greater detail.)

Mostly, though, what puts me off is the nastiness. The cruelty, the snark, the condescension, the superiority complexes, etc., coming from both sides -- all of it has just gotten so incredibly old. It is rare that I read a political article and don't find myself immediately sympathizing with whoever the article is trying to make look bad. I just have no patience for being in the mix of that much vitriol and cynicism, no matter who it's coming from or directed toward.

In a lot of ways, we are all year-round campaigners for candidates that haven't even announced their bids yet, and so often our leading (if not only) message amounts to little more than, "You're an idiot and we hate everything you stand for. Also vote for us." People are suffocated by this garbage all year long on social media, in mainstream media, from their friends and family, etc., such that when they finally get to the voting booth, regardless of who the candidates are, they're carrying around four years of baggage from being called "stupid," "hateful," "racist," "homophobic," etc., because of their feelings about Olympic women's swimming, or called "woke" and "Antifa" because they don't want their kids to be massacred during math class. The bar for being flippantly labelled some kind of "-ist" or "-phobe" (or "woke" or "radical left") is at an all-time low -- really all it takes is deviating from the going party rhetoric on a sensitive topic, at which point people start drawing all kinds of imaginary lines between a checkmark on a ballot and a malicious heart and/or a defective brain. This defies reason and is unsurprisingly not an effective conversion tool.

It would be much easier for me to accept that all voters for a specific candidate are racist, hateful, etc., if there were 100 candidates on the ballot, or 1000. But in a world where there are only two realistic choices, to me it seems like common sense that not every voter is casting their vote based on their chosen candidate's worst positions, and to some extent that has to form the baseline for compassionate dialogue. In 2016, I was pretty self-satisfied to simply write off every Trump voter as a bigot with a low IQ, but over the last 8 years (despite some really major challenges), I've been forced to reckon with some nuance. Yes, some of the Trump voters I know are MAGA stereotypes; others very much are not, and for me to allow one vote in a multi-issue, two-candidate election to dismantle everything else I know to be true about them would be to give political emotion priority over my own lived reality, which is precisely the tradeoff that has led to some of the scariest moments of the Trump era. I've found, at least in my own experience, that there is often a chasm between what someone's character tells you about them, and what you think their political preferences tell you about them. Either we see that chasm as a space for asking compassionate questions and seeking understanding, or we see it as a space to continue vomiting our own ill-gotten assumptions into, in which case it seems foolish to assume we'll ever get anything other than the same in return.

Just really hard to find common ground with folks who voted in a convicted felon, racist, misogynist, con artist, etc. You have to question their judge of character, and thus, their own self awareness.

[spike]

Look, regardless of how/why Harris lost, the deomcratic party needs to figure out how to win elections and win over the working class/rural/suburban voters. The demonizing of the other side needs to stop. Clearly most of the country has greater concern over their own well being financially than what they are supposed to call transgender people. And, of course.

Without reaching these voters, they wont win elections, and if they dont win elections, then the rights for the marginalized communities we hope to protect, could be stripped away and we all lose.

Time for the deomcratic party/people like me, to do some soul searching.

The progressive left has a hard time denouncing Hamas' attack on October 7th because "israel".

Defund the police.

We do look insane. I get it.

That doesnt mean we stop fighting for such causes/ideals. But, the left better fucking figure out how to not alienate now more than half the electorate.

And, of course, there are few cures for sexism/racism/mysogny , which absolutley exist.

Its all of it.

I appreciate this post, Strat. A lot of it rings very true to me.

I rarely post in political threads, and don't really consume a ton of political content in general, partially because it helps keep my anxiety in check (I learned during the Bush era that excessive immersion in the news is bad for my mental health, even if some intentional distance comes at the expense of a level of being "informed"), and partially because so little of it seems sincere and unbiased enough to trust. (And, because of this, I always question how valuable my input really is among others who consume this stuff in greater detail.)

Mostly, though, what puts me off is the nastiness. The cruelty, the snark, the condescension, the superiority complexes, etc., coming from both sides -- all of it has just gotten so incredibly old. It is rare that I read a political article and don't find myself immediately sympathizing with whoever the article is trying to make look bad. I just have no patience for being in the mix of that much vitriol and cynicism, no matter who it's coming from or directed toward.

In a lot of ways, we are all year-round campaigners for candidates that haven't even announced their bids yet, and so often our leading (if not only) message amounts to little more than, "You're an idiot and we hate everything you stand for. Also vote for us." People are suffocated by this garbage all year long on social media, in mainstream media, from their friends and family, etc., such that when they finally get to the voting booth, regardless of who the candidates are, they're carrying around four years of baggage from being called "stupid," "hateful," "racist," "homophobic," etc., because of their feelings about Olympic women's swimming, or called "woke" and "Antifa" because they don't want their kids to be massacred during math class. The bar for being flippantly labelled some kind of "-ist" or "-phobe" (or "woke" or "radical left") is at an all-time low -- really all it takes is deviating from the going party rhetoric on a sensitive topic, at which point people start drawing all kinds of imaginary lines between a checkmark on a ballot and a malicious heart and/or a defective brain. This defies reason and is unsurprisingly not an effective conversion tool.

It would be much easier for me to accept that all voters for a specific candidate are racist, hateful, etc., if there were 100 candidates on the ballot, or 1000. But in a world where there are only two realistic choices, to me it seems like common sense that not every voter is casting their vote based on their chosen candidate's worst positions, and to some extent that has to form the baseline for compassionate dialogue. In 2016, I was pretty self-satisfied to simply write off every Trump voter as a bigot with a low IQ, but over the last 8 years (despite some really major challenges), I've been forced to reckon with some nuance. Yes, some of the Trump voters I know are MAGA stereotypes; others very much are not, and for me to allow one vote in a multi-issue, two-candidate election to dismantle everything else I know to be true about them would be to give political emotion priority over my own lived reality, which is precisely the tradeoff that has led to some of the scariest moments of the Trump era. I've found, at least in my own experience, that there is often a chasm between what someone's character tells you about them, and what you think their political preferences tell you about them. Either we see that chasm as a space for asking compassionate questions and seeking understanding, or we see it as a space to continue vomiting our own ill-gotten assumptions into, in which case it seems foolish to assume we'll ever get anything other than the same in return.

Just really hard to find common ground with folks who voted in a convicted felon, racist, misogynist, con artist, etc. You have to question their judgement of character, and thus, their own character.

[Bammer]

If you don’t like it you could always flee the country

[tree_]

It's still the best country in the world even if over half it's citizens are politically misguided. I ain't leaving.

[Bammer]

Some of the best people I know happen to be Trump voters.

I know it’s hard to believe, but when I see and talk to them, I focus on their other qualities and don’t singlemindedly box them in as a Trump voter and nothing else. I guess they don’t like to fork over a huge chunk of their income to spend-happy democrats or some weird thing like that.

[tree_]

Yeah, Trump and Co are fiscally responsible and trustworthy lol. But I agree many of them are probably good people, just misguided

[Higgs]

It's still the best country in the world even if over half it's citizens are politically misguided. I ain't leaving.

Nope. Australia is unequivocally better. Soz.

[Higgs]

And Noo Zeelund

[tree_]

Ok maybe I'll come there

[wease]

It's still the best country in the world even if over half it's citizens are politically misguided. I ain't leaving.

Nope. Australia is unequivocally better. Soz.

Please elaborate. Make me want to move there.

[Higgs]

Nah to both of you. In the words of our standard immigration catch cry "Fuck off - we're full".

[wease]

America wins! We’re the best.

[wease]

I was actually being serious btw.