Wannabe Dictator - 101: Get the police and military on your side and keep them there.
There is a reason conservative zealot union busters never, ever, ever touch the police unions.
Seriously…look at it. Conservatives go full-tilt union busting on any and all unions but one. Why is that?
As more votes are counted, I’m starting to see this election more like a massive blue wave plus a medium-sized red wave at the same time. Turnout was just astronomical – went way up for Democrats, and moderately up for Republicans.
A lot of it comes down to us as a country (and a world) not knowing how to adjust to the hyperconnection of social media - it’s especially pronounced in the U.S. due to our strong enshrinement of “free speech” which is translating into fact-free social media rumor spreading, and then turns into a dangerous brew for whipping up bad feelings. When people say this rancor is a return to “the 19th Century” in terms of divisive politics, it occurs to me that part of that is the technology of the 20th Century (mass newspapers, radio, television) made dissemination controlled by “professional” sources. Social media is a return to the rumor mills that outpace the truth.
Unfortunately (for blue) way up participation equals medium up participation by red when it is all counted.
Well, trump doesnt have the military, that’s for sure.
Yes we do have objective bases for our experiences. Take a look at the comments section of any major mainstream news site. Roughly about half the comments are barely literate and spectacularly uninformed. (On Fox News, it will be much more than half.) These are mostly the Trump voters.
But you cannot equate these things as equal. It legitimizes Trumpers thinking Biden will ban Christianity. That is insane. Even IF Biden (a religious guy himself) wanted to do that how would it even happen?
No, those fuckers don’t get to say their fear is the same as your fear because one is utterly irrational.
I lived in Louisiana then too. I was not quite old enough to vote, but it was amusing to see all the excuses people were advancing to vote one way or the other.
Update on remaining ballots in Arizona, from the Washington Post:
I think this was one big flaw in how Biden campaigned regarding the pandemic. We all assumed this was an absolute albatross on Trump, and it probably did turn many voters against him, but Dems could have done better.
Biden focused too much on how many people died due to Trump’s negligence. It’s true, but it doesn’t resonate with a huge chunk of the population. Everyone personally knows someone who got COVID and got over it, but relatively few personally know someone who died. It’s just numbers on a screen. Meanwhile, they are sick of he pandemic, sick of the economic hit, and just want it to be over. Trump promised that (narrator: “it was not actual promise.”) Biden promised mask mandates and keeping people safe, which people interpret as locked away.
I think Biden could have done better by emphasizing the economic recovery part: we need masks so we can open stores and business. We need contract tracing so you can get back to your lives. Biden criticized Trump for opening things too early. And he’s right, but it’s not the way to present it. Trump’s handling of the pandemic needed to be tied more directly to the economy.
Fear is fear. It gets ahold of your gut and makes you irrational. Even if the democratic fear of authoritarianism is more “fact-based” than the fears of socialism coming from the other side, running on fear is a dangerous brew. I think a charismatic leader running on “hope and change” would defuse things and bring more buy-in from the other side than Biden did running on (albeit totally, totally legit) fears of disease and authoritarianism.
Exactly. The liberals, even if their comments / beliefs turn out to be incorrect, appear to post their own thoughts. The MAGAs all parrot the same thing. 47 years and what did Biden accomplish, Hunter Biden’s laptop, whatever the conspiracy of the day is. Today it’s that “vote dumps” are occurring in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta, and Phoenix.
So if I think you are the antichrist and I am scared of you then it’s ok if I act to protect myself from you?
I mean, fear is fear right?
Maybe of interest only to me, but…
I grew up in Green Bay, and have been distressed to see how Trumpy it’s gotten in recent years, and Trump and his surrogates have regularly gone there for rallies. This afternoon, I see this information in an article from the Green Bay newspaper – Biden actually got 54% of the vote in Green Bay!
Many of our fellow Americans want 45 in charge even though he is a known quantity bringing harm and evil. Everything we were running against is just what they want to see.
How would you please those people? It’s not political anymore. It’s deep. Thanatos, racism, sexuality, gender, narcissism. It’s a death cult. Demography will help but we need to get to the children of these people. They want life to be like TV, but liberals are the ones who get to have fun on tv. They have beaches and coasts and diplomas. We grow their food. Farmers don’t get to have fun on tv.
Politics is not on the agenda, except as a fig leaf for journalists.
I mean, I see nothing in squidfood’s post even beginning to suggest that irrational actions based on fear are justifiable… only that fear makes you irrational.
I would think the remarkable motivating effect fear can have a person is indisputable.
Did Levy intentionally turn the Reagan perecentages backwards, or was that just a mistake because it was the first line he tweeted? Reagan had 58.8% of the popular vote. He won every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota. (Mondale won DC.) I’m extremely doubtful of a claim that 2020 Biden had a more successful campaign than 1984 Reagan. It’s great that Biden and Trump both got the vote out. But that’s because 1) voter turnout has been trending upwards since 1996, 2) this was an exceedingly partisan race which encouraged voters on both sides to enact their votes, and 3) it seems like many voters expected, or at least were worried, that it would be a competitive election. In 1984, lots of people didn’t bother to vote because it was obvious Reagan would win. Discounting his victory margin because of low voter turnout seems like a bad use of the data.
Nice to see. I have family there and have probably been to Green Bay at least once every year for my whole life (50+ years) except this year because of COVID. I love Green Bay. Glad to see it is still cool.
Feels like a just-so story. It would be just as easy to attribute high turnout to people having faith in the process and like they are a legitimate voice in the discussion, and low turnout to a lack of faith in institutions and a sense of hopeless despair.
No, but if you think I’m the antichrist, and I respond by saying “therefore I’m going to pick up a gun myself for when you try to kill me” it only confirms your fears, rather than defusing them. The point is that, when someone ends up in that state of fear, whether it came from logical risk assessment or right-wing propaganda, the fear (as a physiological response) is as “real” as the facts, and must be acknowledged.
This says nothing about attacking the source of the fear (i.e. right-wing propaganda) but attack it at the source (the quite-logical people who are manipulating it for gain), don’t attack the scared people who bought into it.