Reality isn’t a matter of opinion. People don’t become Satanic pedophiles just because right wing idiots think they are, or gain weather control powers, or become mind controlled by vaccines. Jews don’t secretly control the world, nor will COVID or polio be deterred by right wing stubbornness. Blacks and women aren’t subhuman, not is their an horde of Mexican rapists crossing the border.
They are factually wrong about essentially everything they believe, and no amount of stubbornness or tyranny will warp reality to make them right.
Firstly, there’s no both-sidesing this, as @Der_Trihs explained well.
But secondly, MAGA ran on a platform, first and foremost, of hate and spite. Sure, inflation may have been the thing that played on voter’s minds but that wasn’t the main thing that MAGA talked about. So, as much as I don’t take pleasure in seeing suffering, I can’t muster any sympathy for those who voted against compassion and maturity.
Because also, finally, this fascist experiment must fail. A crooked administration that pardons cronies and then runs on a platform of outright lies and hate, aided by a compromised supreme court and bribes (and more lies) from billionaires. This time maybe things will be too broken for the grown ups to return and fix it? And honestly, the clearest L possible might be for the best, if it keeps something as stupid and dangerous as a Trump presidency happening again for a long time.
Like I say, I don’t like anyone suffering, but this could be four years of really awful, but really necessary, medicine.
You’re right. But I still haven’t figured out how to deal with someone who sees the sun shining brightly when we’re both looking into the sky at midnight. I’ve tried engaging with MAGA supporters and their beliefs are so completely divorced from reality there’s no common ground to engage them with.
Or the result could be exactly what the MAGAns and Project 2025 people want: a return to a profoundly illiberal, by progressive lights oppressive or even evil, but nonetheless viable social order. Mere suffering is not a reliable marker of how stable a system is*; look at North Korea.
*more or less what Orwell feared when conceiving of 1984.
Except they don’t want a “return” to an evil order, they want to deny reality. Climate change won’t go away because they pretend real hard, nor will diseases just go away. And eliminating over half the population and enslaving half of the remainder won’t produce a very “viable” society. Especially when they collapse the economy and destroy the social infrastructure at the same time.
Also, many of the people who support him will be among those disposed of, whatever lies they tell themselves. Voting for your own destruction is just stupid.
How bad can it actually get, then? Just repeating “It won’t get that bad” tells us next to nothing, and it implies that we have next to nothing to worry about.
I get where you are coming from. The old saw about how hate corrodes its own vessel and all that. But, what do you suggest? The old christian tactic of, when someone spits in your face, “thank you sir, may I have another”?
The agenda that Reagan ShitGibbon pursues absolutely must be defeated. These people seek to turn America into a new USSR, but stupider. What we have was already broken, but their idea of “fixing” it is analogous to “we are almost out of gas, drive faster so we get there”.
The thing to consider is that this will be a major fight. Probably the biggest and most important fight of our lives. The most effective way to lose a fight is to go into it angry. Hating and reviling our enemy is the path to our defeat. I mean, after all, they are just people trying to navigate a challenging world, grifted out of their proper tools for it.
I am not sure where to start in this contest. Name calling does offer us some emotional comfort. But, on the other hand, when facing a big fight, comfortable is not an ideal place to start from.
I don’t know about the outside world, but at least on this message board the mods have to be strict and not let the outside “normal” influence their decisions, at least in my personal opinion. Just because more right-wingers act in a certain manner does not have to mean that it be tolerated here.
We weren’t talking about what is or isn’t realistic, or what Trump wants. It’s not like he’s probably going to live all that long, anyway.
We were talking about the goals of the Right. Which are genocidal. Eliminating all non-whites, non-Christians and non-Rightists will easily depopulate the population by half or more, and women are half of the remainder and would be enslaved. And their economic plans will lead to economic collapse, and they want to destroy the social safety net on on top of that.
Which wouldn’t create the “viable system” you were talking about. A failed state is more like it.
It is a little more “nuanced and thoughtful” than you sarcastically suggest. The goal of current RW thought is to take half the population to the 19th Century way of life, where a woman is dependent on a man for her survival. Where anything significant she might want to do demands permission from her male sponsor. A number of RWers have said this right out loud. The fact that you fail to regard that as covered by the word Der Trihs used is a defect with your contemporary vocabulary.
It’s called observation. The Right consistently supports rapists, puts them in positions of power and tries to harm and subjugate women at every opportunity.
What he and so many others are saying is “We are so powerful we can get away with this, and maybe even more, so FUCK YOU!” It stopped being about right and wrong some time ago, which is they don’t even comprehend accusations of wrongdoing-Something is only wrong when it fails.
It’s strange that, when trump hangs out with a pack of grinning billionaires and makes tax cuts for them a priority, he’s just saying “fuck you” to the poor ignorant bastards that voted for him, and they love it.
‘Some day ,when Im not on the welfairs and the food stamps and the seckshun ate I two will be a milinair so I want taxes too be low to!’
~ The poor ignorant bastards that voted for him