Sure, but that’s like going into a morbidity and mortality conference (where a medical team goes over a case to determine the factors / causes of someone’s illness / death) and blaming the bacteria, cancer cells, aneurysm, whatever. Obviously the MAGA public is the root cause, but saying it’s their fault and calling it a day isn’t very helpful.
Gotta love the moronic “logic” on display here - if you refuse to choose between either of a pair of fascists, you’re a fascist.
What was the blame on in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, then, when you already had fascist regimes?
? Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes did many things wrong, but they weren’t fascists.
Reagan wasn’t a fascist? Don’t make me laugh. Saint Ronnie never met a RW South American dicatorship he didn’t throw his full weight behind.
If the War on Drugs wasn’t the USA trying fascism on for size and liking the shine of those jackboots, it wasn’t anything.
I mean, its just a sad testament to American culture that a monster like Trump can run for president 3 times and win twice, and almost win in the third race.
American culture is the root problem. The culture is deeply dysfunctional due to religion, racism, etc. I don’t know what the solution is. The only real solution is a cultural reformation, and I don’t know how to do that.
It feels like there is a dying patient on the table and we’re fighting over which antibiotic the doctors should’ve used as a last resort. But nobody mentions the fact that the water supply is full of bacteria and there is no sanitation outside.
In a civilized nation, Trump never would’ve gotten more than 30-40% of the vote.
FWIW, southern whites have always been (collectively speaking) a force of evil. Anytime there is bigotry and authoritarianism, it usually has its core base in southern whites. Southern white culture is the root cause of America’s moral vileness. And yes I know there are exceptions, I’m talking about the ~75% of southern whites who vote for whatever party allows them to mistreat black people. Not the other 25%.
If you do election autopsies and you exclude the 11-13 southern states, the rest of the US is far more left leaning and civilized. Southern white culture is a major drag on America, and ending reconstruction was a massive mistake. They needed massive de-nazification for decades.
There’s little reason to think the Democrats will win, even assuming they aren’t just exterminated as the US moves further into fascism. And nothing will ever “heal the divide”; the Right has always hated everyone else. It’s core to what they are. Our nation can never be healed, it was permanently inflicted with a festering wound when it let the slave states in, and the corruption is built into the foundations of our culture.
So long as the Right exists it will always be trying to kill, torment and enslave everyone it can.
Top quality rant. Perfectomundo. I give this a four internet rating.
Let’s do the numbers. Figuring out the number who stayed at home requires more work, but we can easily measure the subset who voted 3rd party.
In 2016 Green Party supporters took 1.18% of the popular vote on ballot. In 2000 Green Party supporters took 2.86% of the popular vote on ballot, enough to flip New Hampshire and IIRC Florida and hand the victory to Al Gore who would have invaded Afghanistan but not Iraq. Cite. Left-side-of-Liz-Cheney purists stayed pure in both elections which was a total victory for leftist purity and a loss for everything else.
In 2020 the Green Party secured ballot access in 29 states plus the DC and write-in access in 16 more states, displaying strong solidarity with Vladimir Putin. Greens won 0.26% of the popular vote.
In 2024 Greens won 0.56% of the popular vote, while the Socialism and Liberation Party won 0.11% of the popular vote. So that’s a powerful 0.67% showing for Republicans. The purists stayed pure.
So
2000 2.86%
2016 1.18%
2020 0.26%
2024 0.67%
I say leftist purists have secured forceful, authoritative, and compelling support for their purity. These are the numbers. They easily clear the rant threshhold - good thread.
Or trolling. I am still voting for troll. The dead giveaway is: “all of you to the left of, say Liz Cheney, who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024”.
What a jackass.
The green party cost the democrats the election in 2000, but also the election in 2016. That is if you assume everyone who voted Green would’ve showed up to vote and voted democrat, which isn’t a guarantee.
2016 election:
Michigan - Trump wins by 11k votes. Stein gets 51k votes.
Wisconsin - Trump wins by 23k votes. Stein gets 31k votes
Pennsylvania - Trump wins by 44k votes. Stein gets 50k votes
Democrats would’ve won with those 3 states. The greens need to back to the strategy of 2004 where they run, but they only run in safe states and not swing states.
The Greens cost the democrats both the 2000 and 2016 elections. But not the 2024 elections from what I know.
Those results are certainly strong enough for rant purposes. We’re not discussing Democratic electoral strategy here; we’re yelling at leftist purist supporters of Trump and the Iraq War. Of whom there are electorally relevant numbers.
For most of the last 80 years that’s been the case. For my entire life before 2015ish we were fortunate to live in a world “fascist” was a dumb hyperbolic label assigned by unimaginative people to anyone they disagreed with it. That’s not the case anymore, we are in a hellscape of a political landscape where full permanent fascism dictatorship is impending, and may be inevitable. No I’m not going to avoid the term fascist to refer to the people who voluntarily choose this fucking fascist shitshow because it might hurt their fee-fees, fuck that.
Of course not. This about thread is about venting. Of course the fascist enabling idiots will do their enabling, maybe that has already doomed us to permanent fascism maybe it hasn’t. The choice is obvious: Fascism or not fascism. Fascists, and people who are ok with fascism will choose fascism, the rest of us will fight it
I never thought Bernie would win. I’ve seen enough campaigns to know what would have happened. While there were polls suggesting that Bernie would have done better against trump than Hillary those polls are, by necessity, conducted in the absence of the Republican campaign against Bernie which, by the time of its’ conclusion, would have had Mr. and Mrs. Average American thinking he was Joe Stalin.
Yes that’s how fascism works. When it’s clear anyone with a working brain that one of the pair is not in fact a fascist, just a regular shitty politician, and one is a blatant fascist. Calling them both fascist is absolutely 100% pro facist
In fact its more pro fascist than going on a racist or antisemitic rant or whatever. No one, who’s not a fascist is going to be convinced by that rant. But someone might be convinced not to vote against the fascist by your bs. In fact people were convinced by that kind of BS in the US in 2016 and 2025 it’s not hypothetical, it actually did help murderous fascists to get power and kill people.
I doubt I will ever vote republican. Certainly not for what they are putting forward today. And I ALWAYS vote. I may have to hold my nose doing it but I will vote dem.
But that is what pisses me off because I think the Dem party relies on people like me. They need not curry my favor. They just have to be a little less bad than the alternative.
And THAT is why so many stayed home in 2024. As I noted above, Trump didn’t really do better, the dems stayed home. Trump won because of that. So, why did the dems stay home? Because the democratic party has not come close to delivering on their promises. Again, this goes back to the “all parties are the same” mantra. They aren’t but it feels like it too often.
Too fucking bad. Trump voters have committed a brutal assault on my country, and they each and all, including aunt Betsy can go fuck themselves, and pretending that they committed no wrong is not something I will ever do.
I voted for Clinton, and I voted for Harris. But you’re dead wrong. The people who didn’t due to viewing those two candidates as insufficiently radical left are most definitely not the reason we’re in the current situation.
The people who listened to Trump and decided it was okay with them that he continues to breathe our air: their fault.
Tom Crooks and Ryan Routh may have been utterly incompetent but at least they tried.
Yes, anyone who voted Green was a fucking idiot. AFAIK, though, we don’t have any of them on this board, so the OP’s indignation seems misplaced.
Also, since they are fucking idiots, there’s no reason to assume that they would in fact have voted Democrat had a dumber option not been available.
I think poor public education, extreme social inequality, “America number 1” rhetoric and evangelical Christianity have created the perfect storm.
So something like MAGA was likely inevitable, although most people would have predicted it to happen after America’s decline, rather than being the start of it.
Anytime out-groups grow in number and power, there is pushback from in-groups trying to cement their power and status. Thats basically what is happening now from what I can tell.
America is becoming more secular, multi-racial, feminist, immigrant heavy, multi-cultural and this makes cishet white christian patriarchs feel like they aren’t the default americans anymore. The sense of status, privilege and identity they have is under threat, so they are moving towards reactionary authoritarianism to push back against social progress and return to the ‘good old days’ of the 1950s when women and POC accepted being second class citizens, almost everyone was christian and there was no mass immigration from non-white nations.
If anything, IMO, the decline in evangelical christianity is more of a motivator than evangelical christianity itself.
Back in the 1970s, about 80% of Americans identified as white christians. Now its like 30-40%. The other 60-70% are either POC or white non-christians. Among gen Z, its something like ~25% identify as white christians.
I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t know if education will fix it.
OK, again, I’m sure that there is some set of people for which that’s true. But again, how many of them are there?