How has the Trump phenomena changed you?

[Noangel]

turned my parents against eachother.....


in a terrible terrible way...

[Orpheus]

What little faith I had left in many of my fellow Americans is gone at this point. I would say I'm waiting for them to die but it seems like they've convinced enough youth that they're right that we'll have to endure at least another generation of this shit.

I already had difficulty planning for the future but now it seems there's genuinely no point, so I live in the moment even more now. Things like having kids seem genuinely pointless, if not outright stupid to me right now.

Oddly enough I'm in complete agreement with this sentiment. Me and Orpheus are in complete agreement!

Truly the darkest timeline

[Green Habit]

The biggest thing it's changed for me is coming to grips with the reality that there's likely always going to be around 20% of any population that is going to harbor racism, xenophobia, and other discriminatory thoughts--or at least be highly susceptible to them--and really don't want to see the demographics and culture change. This is not unique the US--you've seen the UKIP in the UK, the National Front in France, Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, and so on. The difference is that those countries are able to marginalize those parties, where in our strict two party form of government, one of the major parties has to carry that burden. For a century after the Civil War it was the Democrats, and now it's been the Republicans' turn for the following half century. I was quite convinced that the GOP was not going to let Trump get the nomination, nor was I convinced that he had a shot of actually getting elected. You can probably find plenty of posts on this site of me expressing those thoughts. Well....wrong on both counts!

I don't know what this will mean going forward, whenever Trump is gone. The optimistic side of me is that the younger generations, starting with the late wave Xers and Millennials who weren't alive for Jim Crow and on balance are more familiar and comfortable with the most recent wave of immigration will help to stem this current problem. The pessimistic side of me says that when we're all old fucks our cohorts will just find another demographic and/or culture to "otherize", and the cycle starts again.

[VinylGuy]

Its a global thing right? I see the same kind of protest all over the world. The same polarization and sometimes, even the same banters about democracy, freedom, racism....i feel its becoming more and more a global issue.

[Green Habit]

Its a global thing right? I see the same kind of protest all over the world. The same polarization and sometimes, even the same banters about democracy, freedom, racism....i feel its becoming more and more a global issue.

I agree.

[Peeps]

I've learned to just ignore people on social media

a higher number of my former classmates are major conservatives and trump supporters and conspiracy theorists. there is no point in engaging them any more there is for them to engage my more liberal of friends


i just dont have the time or energy to deal with it

maybe after the election ill unblock them from my news feed but i doubt it

[liebzz]

What has changed for me is the stress level. Politics was always a big interest of mine, going back about 30 years or so. The difference is the extent to which Trump and those who enable him are setting the stage where the long term and short term damage to the institutions that protect American democracy are so evident. That stresses me out. That these things are considered okay as a means to an end stress me out.

The other thing that distresses me is that I at least felt like we looked for ways to solve problems in the past, Republican or Democrat, now the country is so divided that we aren’t trying to solve problems - only pin either the cause or response on political opponents and personalize our visceral reactions. I am totally guilty of this now too - I don’t see Trump as someone I profoundly disagree with, I think he is a vile human being and a disgrace to our species. I hope he loses this election, feels the pain of that loss personally, and then suffers more through criminal and civil penalties for things he has done in his life that I find so abhorrent. He won’t ever see the light. Contracting COVID and pretending he is Superman proved that. So in place of that, he should be inflicted with everything he has threatened his political opponents with the last 5 years.

In sum, the last four years have made me less of a good person because I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone before.

[BurtReynolds]

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[Monkey_Driven]

I generally considered the left to be more rational than the right before 2016. That sentiment has been cured. Not that the right has become more reasonable--certainly not--but the left has also been driven insane by social media.

I wouldn't go as far as insane, but the constant virtue signaling is exhausting.

[Orpheus]

It helps to ask yourself if virtue signaling is worse than say, fascism, and respond accordingly.

[Monkey_Driven]

It helps to ask yourself if virtue signaling is worse than say, fascism, and respond accordingly.

True, but but only a minority of the my friends on social media are fascists.

[BurtReynolds]

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[Orpheus]

It might seem crazy if the POTUS wasn't constantly telling people the press are the enemy, that he won't except election results, that he won't guarantee a peaceful transition of power, and that his supporters should suppress the vote.

Seriously, what else are we supposed to call that?

[BurtReynolds]

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[Peeps]

The average Republican voter hasn't changed in twenty years except that they've woken up to the fact that the Republican party has sold them out repeatedly.

Democrats were content with that as long as they were generally getting their way, either not noticing their own leftward drift or hoping the other side wouldn't notice. Now they see the same right wingers, that they generally got along with until recently, as Nazis bringing about a global explosion of previously nonexisting fascism, mostly because people aren't ok with unchecked immigration.

Like I said, it's insane.

i dont think the average republican realizes they have been sold out. most i know embrace the party

[elliseamos]

The average Republican voter hasn't changed in twenty years except that they've woken up to the fact that the Republican party has sold them out repeatedly.

Democrats were content with that as long as they were generally getting their way, either not noticing their own leftward drift or hoping the other side wouldn't notice. Now they see the same right wingers, that they generally got along with until recently, as Nazis bringing about a global explosion of previously nonexisting fascism, mostly because people aren't ok with unchecked immigration.

Like I said, it's insane.

i dont think the average republican realizes they have been sold out. most i know embrace the party

Assuming this is true, Burt, they've woken up to it and feel inspired to double-down?

[BurtReynolds]

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[Orpheus]

I need some of the acid you're taking, Burt.

[BurtReynolds]

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[dad]

Turn on, tune in, double down