Sure, but it’s well-known that adrenachrome is injected directly into the eyeball. /jk
No complacency, largely from white boomers got us here. The mantra of it’s not that bad and someone will stop him got us here.
Yes, it is by some divine providence that no one under the age of 50 voted for Trump or is a conservative.
It’s not about the vote, it’s about decades of much of the population insisting that “it can’t happen here” while the fascists got stronger and stronger.
There’s plenty of blame to go round. Definitely some lies in the idea that both sides suck, the whole system sucks and is about to collapse anyway whoever gets in, so it doesn’t matter if Trump gets in or not (or even it’s better that he gets in and collapses the system sooner)
Cat and dog eating foreigners warned that they BETTER speak English or else.
And like Trump says, we are speaking unknown languages. Trump sure would not recognize mine. "“Foreign language is an unacceptable mark of foreignness. So Trump plans to take the step of formally rejecting foreign languages in the United States — for whatever good that will do, which is none.”
Bump (link below) wonders why it is necessary to designate English as the official language at this point. He goes back to the census of 1910 and finds that the percent of foreign born was higher then than in the 2020 census.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/28/english-official-language-trump-history/
Always worth mentioning that Trump’s mother was a native Gaelic speaker and an immigrant. Perhaps some issue there?
For the moment. Nothing’s immutable.
The suckage would be a long-term problem for those in the United States and allies highly dependent on and involved with the US (Canada and Mexico, for example). Everyone else would eventually figure out how to adapt, and they would realign and move on. Some nation-states like China and Russia would see it as an opportunity to feast off our carcass. I think we over-estimate our actual importance.
You need to see that nihilism for what it really represents, which is the perception that they no longer have control over their political system, that grossly wealthy and powerful interests have neutered the three branches and hollowed out our institutions (and the way we get our information from media) to the point where they are gridlocked or impotent. I certainly didn’t agree with the idea of sticking it to Biden/Harris to make a political statement, but I understood it on some level and don’t disagree that the system has produced an oligarchy.
That is. It’s simply the nature of large professional organizations to be better equipped and organized than individuals.
It is also the nature of large professional organizations to be vulnerable to attacks upon their infrastructure…especially from within.
I’m fully aware of all that. But it makes no less god-damned stupid.
As I said there is lots of blame to go round, but this is what makes me the most mad TBH. It’s not “The Reason” we are beginning fascist rule in America, but it’s definitely A reason. The next few years will be a teensy tiny bit more fascist because Trump received a “mandate” from the popular vote. And if you were on the left of the political spectrum but decided not to vote for Kamala Harris, for those (or any other reasons) then that Facism is yours. You ordered it. You decided last November that you would like some fascism and that is what we got. Congratulations.
I’m fully aware of all that. But it makes no less god-damned stupid.
It’s stupid, but people make stupid decisions when they feel they have no power or representation. It’s as stupid to stay home over Gaza as it was to vote for Trump because…eggs.
I think we’d eventually be in this mess even if Harris somehow won the race. We’re in the midst of systemic degradation, one caused by a 50-year divergence between worker productivity and wages.
As I said there is lots of blame to go round, but this is what makes me the most mad TBH. It’s not “The Reason” we are beginning fascist rule in America, but it’s definitely A reason. The next few years will be a teensy tiny bit more fascist because Trump received a “mandate” from the popular vote. And if you were on the left of the political spectrum but decided not to vote for Kamala Harris, for those (or any other reasons) then that Facism is yours. You ordered it. You decided last November that you would like some fascism and that is what we got. Congratulations.
I can’t really disagree.
I’m more inclined to suspect daddy issues, but he sure does have a face no mother could love.
Right. This has been litigated in a few threads, so I don’t want to go into detail over it, but nobody is owed a vote. If people didn’t vote for Kamala over Gaza, then my annoyance remains with the Harris campaign, that they didn’t do the bare minimum to hear those people out.
Eggs are slightly different as it’s based on a couple of misconceptions, so it’s mainly a failing of the media and deliberate deception.
Yes but also american anti-intellectualism and the new self-selecting media environment.
Right now there is a “pandemic of ignorance”, as billions of people around the world are getting their news and opinions only from sources that tell them what they want to hear (and human nature being as it is, many people want to be outraged).
In the Western world, the US is the primary sufferer of this illness, due to still having a quite religious population and lack of understanding of skeptical reasoning.
(This is not to diss religion, but most western countries have gone beyond a literal reading of scripture, and the US in large part has not. This is completely incompatible with a population able to reason skeptically)
I don’t see it so much as Kamala Harris being owed a vote. I didn’t vote for Harris for her benefit; I felt it was for mine. I wish those who abstained would have embraced this view.
A friend was going to vote for RFK jr. I didn’t bother to learn anything about the candidate. Using examples from US history, I successfully convinced my friend that while third party candidates could succeed on a local level voting for anybody but the Decomacratic candidate or the Republican candidate in a Presidential election was just throwing your vote away. That was step , of my plan. Step two, convincing my friend that his choices were - help Trump get elected or do something to stop Trump was not successful. He said that while he accepted Trump was evil he could not, for reasons he never gave, vote for Harris. I tried various arguments to convince him that he could either vote as an act to stop Trump’s evil or do nothing and be complicit in letting that evil happen. He just didn’t see it. He basically said ‘If I do nothing, I bear no responsibility for what happens’.
This is a great moral failure on his part. As I said to him, ‘Harris is at worst a politician you disagree with on some issues. Trump is greedy, hate-filled and evil’. If people cannot see the difference, they have a serious problem.
It is really sad to see that there are people who do not understand how democracy works. Actions always bear consequences. Everybody are responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof. Not voting has the consequence that Trump was elected. These consequences are dire for many people in the US and beyond. Even if Harris was not an ideal candidate for President, she would not have changed the US system into fascism.
There are countries where voting is an obligation, abstainers are fined. I wish this was the case in US. We might have been spared this nightmare.
Perhaps. We might also have learned that the truth is even uglier than we thought.