Are you serious? Trump’s entire campaign is calling America a shithole and saying only he could fix it. Every fucking rally was just a list of what made this country so terrible.
In addition, it really only makes sense in one direction. Saying America is a shithole because they elected middle of the road generic moderate conservative politician Joe Biden really makes zero sense. Whereas saying America is a shithole because they elected an openly hateful racist, misogynistic, traitorous, incompetent, rapist, criminal, narcissistic, pathologically lying Donald Trump makes a whole lot more sense.
The president-elect has no philosophy or policy, and his incoherence about global relations is not feigned. - Bloomberg
ETA: I should add that while Trump has no coherent policy his handlers do and this time they mean to make the most of this opportunity. That’s the really scary part. Trump will be their useful idiot. Like Bush (the younger) but even better.
Ayup. Trump turned the “My country: love it or leave it” demographic into the “Make America Great Again” cohort.
Neat trick in a way, but – really, really – it does nothing better than it shows the naivete and painful credulity of that cohort.
As it historically was …
“We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.”
― Al Franken
ETA:
White Privilege means that your slogan – Make America Great Again – directly implies that America isn’t great. And your fans don’t blink an eye.
White Privilege means that you can foment and support an actual coup and your cult members … er … supporters … will defend you with their lives, their liberty, and their life’s savings.
Imagine if Obama (ie, “The Black Guy”) had done ANY of this. Remember how they excoriated him when:
*His wife said that a certain event made her – for the first time – proud of her country;
*His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, made a disparaging remark about the country
*He [gasp] wore a tan suit
what does this even mean? A winning argument for what? I’m not trying to own anyone. I’m trying to inject some much needed nuance to a thread in which 95% of the posts are sounding the death knell for America. America is objectively not a shithole. I know you are upset this morning but you need to take a deep breath. America will survive this, I promise.
Republicans have the whole government. They have told us, explicitly, what they intend to do and they have the means to do it. Why would you doubt them?
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” - Maya Angelou
If so, so what? That won’t do all the suffering and dead people any good. The majority of the population is on the right wing’s hit list, what does it matter what borders their corpses are surrounded by?
Sorry to hear it. I thank God my wife and I are on the same political wavelength, at least in regard to trump and trumpism.
My sons, on the other hand…the older (21 year old) son used to be a trumper, but now calls him a clown (actually, he said they’re both clowns, and didn’t bother to vote). My younger (19 year old) son, now away at college studying computer science, is seemingly part of that ‘tech bro’ thing with younger males who like musk and trump. I’m 99% sure he voted for trump.
The US will most likely not survive this as a democratic republic, no. Trump has been campaigning on fascism and destroying the nature of our country and people voted for him anyway. It’s clear that they will support anything could do to make them feel like they’re back on top of the hierarchy. Trump said if we elect him now we’d never have to vote again, and he’s probably right. Oh, sure, there will probably be elections in some form, just as there are in Russia and a lot of other autocracies. But while Trump’s first term was mired purely in incompetence by a man who didn’t expect to win and a team that had no plan, they’re ready this time to hit the ground running with an explicit, publical plan to implement autocracy.
I get it. People have overreacted in the past, acting as though the election of Bush would end the country. And people have been making nazi comparisons for so long that you tune out. But that doesn’t mean that things can’t change and that those could never happen. And we’ve also shown that our institutions are weak and pathetic when we faced an actual violent insurrection and a few people got a slap on the wrist. There is nothing to stop them now and no lack of malice on their part to get this done.
This is it. The chance to fight is past. If you’re downplaying this it’s either because you are painfully naive or you’re one of the people rooting it on.
Part of me wants to flee for my safety. All of these coal-rolling tRump Bros with their hossed-out trucks, tRump flags flying from the back, are itching to start shooting. If tRump doesn’t outright give them permission, he’ll certainly pardon them. And that’s if the sheriff around here feels like making an arrest (he won’t), the prosecutor feels like filing charges (he won’t), a jury finds them guilty (they won’t).
But where do I go? Maybe I can use my background and experience to get a job in the UK, I’ve always wanted to live there. Maybe I can get my TESOL certificate and teach English in Mexico, I’ve also always wanted to live there. Maybe I’ll move back to blue Illinois and hope my odds of safety are better there. Maybe this, maybe that. I feel like every “maybe” has too many downsides and complications to make it happen, and some of them end with me dead or in an internment camp.
Or maybe the danger is all overblown and this country /won’t/ devolve into a post-democratic dictatorship.
Come back to Chicago. It has its problems but overall it is a great city. We also have all the water, moderate temperatures and pretty much no natural disasters (a rare blizzard is about it).
So what do I do? What should I do for the kids in my life? What will you do? If it’s “lie down and die” or “family annihilation,” I’d be interested in hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
(Got an entire thread on this if you’re interested.)
Well, I’m in Canada so the issues, though obviously related, are different and potentially severe in their own right, and also highly dependent on what your government does over the next few decades as well as the various spinoff effects.
If he gets serious about USMCA and his tariffs, that could have very serious effects on the Canadian economy. I’ve now been retired since July and we are very comfortable financially. But will that survive whatever damage Trump does to our economy?
What if, in an even more extreme case, your country eventually finds itself in a civil war like event that your government is sufficiently distracted that Russia or China decides that a variety of “research stations” are distributed around the Canadian Arctic? Or if they decide to provide “humanitarian aid” to our various remote Arctic communities?
Notwithstanding whatever you think of Canada, our government, when it comes to defence, has been lazy and cheap for the last several decades.
So, to answer your question, I have absolutely no idea what to do.
My wife and I have an emigration plan that we agreed on before the election. We are traveling to our target country in the new year and plan on talking to an immigration lawyer and a contractor we know to build a home.
But: I’m not sure my wife will agree to actually leave her aging parents and bringing the pets is looking to be problematic. Another option is moving far the into the blue states and my wife would come stay with her parents a chunk of the year until they die and then we get the fuck out of here. We plan to have solidified things by end of Decembrish.