no but these comments are microcosms of the national discussion harris' campaign just fucking ignored. she made it absolutely impossible for me to say good things about her campaign. the best thing, as demonstrated this last month, people could say about her is 'not trump.' fuck me.
In all honesty, what if there was a refundable tax credit for voting or something similar. Wouldn't even have to be a lot. If you voted, claim $20 or something.
We'd still have a lot of non voters but I bet some would be swayed by being rewarded for voting
And when those non-voters leave the presidential ticket blank what then? you're focusing on the wrong part; getting people to show up isnt the issue. they'll show up if your candidates are not ass and you have a good ground game.
Once you take into account registered voters versus eligible citizens, and the turnout of registered voters... It actually comes out to more like 25% of eligible citizens actually voting, and that's on the high side.
I mean they may or may not be stupid, but you can guarantee that issues like rape, solvency, bigotry, tyranny, autonomy, and religious freedom, are all not a concern to them. At least until it suddenly is.
Nope, 1/3 of the population never votes. That's around 100 million people. And neither party has close to 50% of the US population, so it doesn't come down to a little more than half no matter who wins.
You could be smart enough to say "fuck you" to the mainstream Dem candidates early in the campaign.
The dumbass other half fears "the establishment" to the degree of going to dotards, coachfuckers and antivaxxers. Removing "the establishment" from your side could make them fear those more.
So the part about dumb, dumb motherfuckers can be arguably addressed to almost all of you, my cowboy friends.
Especially those saying that "the perfect is the enemy of the good" and people should vote for Harris instead of someone like Bernie or someone like Larry Lessig or who not.
You know who doesn’t have problems getting behind a candidate? The right wing. In a first past the post system, this is the best we can do until reforms occur. People have been calling for reforms, but the people who can make the changes are the ones who benefit from the system. So what would you have us do? The founding fathers made a really undemocratic system and the right wing exploits it to the fullest extent possible. Short of balkanization (which is probably coming soon), I’m really not sure what we could have done differently. Civil wars aren’t fun for anyone involved.
So no my non-cowboy friend, it’s not all of us. Lots of people have fought and died and struggled and protested for a better system just for the powers that be to ignore them. 1/3rd of the country doesn’t vote. The other 1/3rd actively wants to put my family in a death camp, and 1/3rd of us do what we can with what we have.
The founding fathers made a system reliant on most of the voters being literate landowners.
It kinda worked in such a situation, because it was (among those voters) relatively egalitarian.
It was also supported by functional free press.
Now things have changed to the point where mass media are not very good, censorship is a real problem, even if it's not by the government, and, ahem, political mechanisms have gotten a bit rusty even compared to 50s.
Isn't Canada closer?..
Or French Guiana. It's EU, and at the same time you get tropical beaches and wonderful nature.
Parts with jungle are better than parts without though.
OK, you are right. I just don't like something about Germany.
Being part Jewish and meeting arrogant Germans thinking that the whole Holocaust thing is something they are authoritative in because of being German.
Being part Armenian and meeting arrogant Germans thinking that the whole Armenian genocide thing is not as important because all people in the ME are apes anyway.
And somehow thinking their country is normal now, being friendly with Turkey and helping Israel to resolve their complex of inferiority in the worst way possible.
Yes, but my wife will not have citizenship of the EU until she stays in Germany for three years. Also, the salaries of other EU countries are not great.
Yeah exactly. This system was made for a completely different scenario, and is very easily exploitable by disinformation campaigns and fascisms with its populist campaigns in general.
Na you did it by not supporting the easiest policy shift possible and actively acting like a hostile assholes to people losing their friends and family.
Lets be very clear you had a choice between telling harris: no, its not okay for the US to give weapons to mass murder a people and shitting on a group of people who are actively losing friends and family in that genocide.
Your choice: shit on the victims. Nice.
Now apply this reasoning to each issue in this election. Lgbt+, abortion, Ukraine, inflation.
Which single issue if it was swapped with gaza would you make the alternate choice? I suspect none of them. And that is why harris lost. Because the Democrats are assholes and unwilling to compromise. Even on basic human decency when it conflicts with their corporate masters.
My bullshit before the election usually involved saying that you still have to vote for Harris.
I'd say the media bullshit about the support of candidates, that communicated the wrong picture to Americans deciding whether to vote, has contributed much more than anything I ever wrote.
No reason to panic. It's just 4 more years, and then another election. Usually when someone promises you massacres and other bad things, you believe them, but not in this case - you've elected people who've never followed up on their promises.
I live in Russia, so you had it coming for the older disingenuous bullshit about Russia being "just an imperfect democracy" and Putin being better than some imagined unholy alliance of communists and neo-Nazis.
We fought hard and carried the team as best we could. We probably won't be eating as much curb as some states, but fucking frustrating as hell that some Americans can't get their shit together for 12 goddamn minutes. It's like half the country forgot how bad 2020 was, not to mention the insane shit that went down day in and day out for years.
I hope, HOPE that we have the privilege of voting in four years, and that by some miracle, the president, Senate and house and SC (all projected to be Republican) somehow forget to fuck with our election system.
Hi, this sentiment from non-americans pisses me off and it's okay, but I feel it's important to explain why so I'm copying another comment I made today.
Goodness knows some of us are trying our best. I mean keep in mind our country is a democracy in name but systemically props up white supremacists in excess of the real popular opinion. And a media disinformation machine keeps the working class divided against itself, with open support from the wealthiest and owners of the most popular social media platforms. Social media platforms that, let's be honest, are super recent inventions we are not yet capable of engaging with safely. It makes it an uphill battle to try to reach out to people whose necks aren't on the line. And the responsibility to do so falls upon the disenfranchised themselves, who are increasingly saddled with economic and health burdens that might just kill us someday.
I get the potshots at Americans, but frankly I don't plan on taking the blame if this goes tits up - many of us did a hell of a lot more than vote to resist fascism. Nothing happened here that isn't happening elsewhere. And I'll fight the notion that citizens at large are the problem. It's a cynical outlook that serves to individualize the responsibility for a systematic disaster. Our country was built to make this possible after all. And I sure as hell know I don't plan on giving up. Kind of morbidly curious about how much of an incompetent clusterfuck Project 2025's implementation will be.
Victory or no, fascists are paper tigers and I plan on sticking around to remind them of that fact however I can.
Fascists are paper tigers... bold statement. Especially if those paper tigers have access to the biggest military budget on the planet and are backed by an out-of-control police force.
Victory or no, fascists are paper tigers and I plan on sticking around to remind them of that fact however I can.
See, this is the issue.
It used to be this way. That until they're actually in power (and I mean have removed the democractic process that could remove them from power again, too), fascists pose big but there's no bite behind the bark.
But Jan 6 and Trump's general antics being excused by his cronies in the SC have clearly shown that this is changing. People are emboldened by the fascist rise in all western countries, on top of the generally aggressive atmosphere worldwide as the older generations, unable to face their own misgivings and the shit they caused to pile up, would rather vote for fascism and "blaming Them™️" than accept that maybe it's high time we accept some really rough times to turn the ship around. Fully knowing that none of them will live long enough to actually suffer the outcome of their actions.
Even my dad started voting AfD. His reason being "It's time something changes!". He's just unhappy with the status quo, even if you fully tell him that he, personally, is among those suffering under the AfD and they're open about wanting to make things worse for him. It's impossible to reason with these people, as them wanting to be reasoned with would mean they'd have to accept that between climate change and the secondary monumental tasks of trying to handle that which are all inherently global super-issues, too, their generation only had it good in their days because they were living on credit.
But does he truly care? No of course not. He's old. He can be contrarian and vote "against the establishment", and that this fucks everything up more or less permanently isn't a problem for him since he'll be long dead by the time the issues that could have been prevented truly come into force. Much as we're already seeing some issues such as curtailed bodily autonomy for women, increase in violent climes, and of course climate disasters.
Things have changed. People fully do shit now simply because their age and general position in society shields them from the outcome, and they just want to be "against". And they can openly flaunt this, so crime etc is on the rise. Big time.
Keep calm and carry on, mate. We here in Britain finally managed to get rid of the blonde fella who was wrecking our country, you can also do it. The new ones may not be much of an improvement, but I know one thing for sure - a decent citizen of any nation should never accept as their leader such a corrupted and crooked in so many ways person.
Yeah, but still. How, how could anyone vote for this ekstra speshial man? And, more importantly, how can someone like me stay sane knowing that such morally corrupt candidates are winning votes, and not only in the US?
I legitimately do not understand why. The evidence is clear and there’s no attempt to hide the racism and xenophobia, I guess I just overestimated how my country feels about fascists. Thought we sorted this shit in the 40’s but I guess we’re doing the fourth Reich instead.
Well, good pills were an option for me once, for the second question. I can not over-state the importance of seeking help in case shit hits the fan for you personally. Especially if one, like me, was raised in a masculine environment where you being all manly can see a doctor twice in your life: when you are born and when you are dead.
Outside of medication - taking a step back from social media helps immensely.
As for the first q, i think a lot of people gave answers like "people are just bad", and they may be right, but I do not want to accept it.
You're right. The sentiment more comes from the power the USA weilds globally vs the massive responsibility the population don't seem to realise they have. If anything, the dumb motherfuckers will be the countries that keep allowing the USA to have this power while clearly the population - and by extension the new president - don't take this responsibility seriously.
I'm lucky. I don't live in Palestine or Ukraine, both of which are all but guaranteed to be fed to the wolves. It's heartbreaking to watch the complacency of a population who think the price of eggs is worth more than thousands of people's lives. But here we are.. and we're angry.
Yeah with such a horrendous outcome, blame starts flying (it's the republicans' fault one billion percent more than anybody else's, btw) and sometimes in moments of understandable fury people start saying shit. There are some people who this makes sense to say at, and some who it doesn't, and they're both Americans.
If the person saying it was born in a different country and did all the right things, they'd be saying this at themselves. For doing the right thing.
Whatever, precise wording and being super pissed off don't go together. The sentiment that this is all super fucked up is right on the money.
There are always fighters like you which can't be blamed. Nevertheless, most of the American voters are frankly deranged. As a Mexican who has been in the rural areas of the USA, it really fits.
Yeah but Americans not being ~56% the dumb fuckwits they seemingly are would have sent a good positive signal to the rest.
Now the opposite happens and the fascists everywhere will feel strongly encouraged, on top of strong US-support for autocratic Russia and big support for completely depopulating Gaza (after all, Trump is a big fan of Neta "finishing the job" in his own words).
True, but I love how the first we blame for this outcome are the American people.
I blame Kamala Harris and her botching her campaign. She had amazing momentum at the start, then slowly threw it all away, instead politicking to small businesses and Republicans instead of workers and their own base: Democrats.
I have to say when I watched the debate whilst Kamala herself impressed me, nothing she said felt very inspirational. I thought it was pretty clear what big picture items the base wanted and all she could come up with was a payment to new families and help for small business. This is good and all, but not the larger national and foreign policy announcements people wanted.
They voted for a con man, a fascist, a criminal, someone who tried to steal the last election. Kamala could be a bowl of day old warm potato salad and voting for him would still be one of the dumbest things imaginable.
Self-interest matters. What politicians will do for voters matters. That day old potato salad may be better than Trump, but it's not at all inspiring.
If Democrats really took fascism as a threat, they would have activated Tim Walz and his views and pushed as fast and as hard as they could with the time they had to make the most progressive campaign since Obama's.
But they went after the base who would have voted for a fascist anyways.
When fully capable adults do stupid things, like voting for an man with as many very serious faults as Trump, I blame them for doing it. That Democrats were ineffective at convincing people (or inspiring them) not to do something stupid doesn't make the thing any less stupid to do. Inspiration is not required to avoid being idiot.
When fully capable adults do stupid things, like campaigning to a voting base as grotesque as Trump's, I blame them for doing it.
Democrats, or at least those in their establishment bubble either on TV, on podcasts, at the DNC, or on the congressional floor, will believe anything they want to that'll pass on blame and hold to a superiority complex that they're never wrong. Power corrupts and all that.
Inspiration is absolutely required when you outside of the representative Democracy have lost hope in the economy, society, or planet. Apathy is much more destructive than idiocy, even when the latter is in favor of fascism. Apathy is what lets fascism and idiocracy prosper. There needs to be a counterforce should we keep the alternative at bay.
Democrats did not take Trump's potential to do the above seriously enough, either in his rhetoric to espouse fascism or cast mis- and disinformation. And now we have to deal with their failure.