US-Americans, I Pit you!

The BBQ Pit
21

No, I do not hate my fellow citizens and countrymen. That doesn’t seem as though it is very productive. I don’t hate my parents, or my sister or brother, who all voted for Trump. I’m disappointed, I’m disgusted, and I’m glad for Covid as an excuse to avoid the holidays, but I don’t hate them.

I may, depending on how you define hate, have hatred for some of the leaders, some of those who led them astray, but that is really a disgust with the actions that they have taken, and the harms they have inflicted, not a hatred of who they are.

They hate immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ individuals, not for what they have done, but simply for who they are. And they hate us for not hating the same people as they do.

All hating them would accomplish is making two sides that are irrational, tribal, and demagogueristic. That would only hurry the decline of democracy in our country, not save it.

22

This was not a victory for the idiots among us. It was a victory for the criminals among us. The idiots aren’t in charge; they just being used by the criminals. And I include Trump among the idiots. Trump isn’t running the country. He’s just a figurehead for the people who are.

I predicted Biden would win. I didn’t think the criminals were ready to go all the way. I was wrong. The criminals have decided to take control. They will break the law and decide the outcome of pseudo-elections. And then they will use their control of the government to cover up their crimes. Then they’ll tell the idiots that nothing happened and the idiots will believe them.

Education isn’t the solution. We’re not fighting the idiots; we’re fighting the criminals who are their masters. And we’ve found out we can’t beat the criminals using the law. To fight the criminals, we’d need to become criminals. And if we do that, it will no longer be a question of whether this country is ruled by law or crime. It will just be a question of which group of criminals rules us.

23

“They do it, too!”. is only an excuse if, when they “did it”, we thought there was nothing wrong with it. If we criticize them for their political mistakes then make the same mistakes ourselves, we are nothing more than hypocrites .

24

I don’t see it as an either/or situation.

The world … our country … runs on a fairly simple and powerful dynamic: the greedy and the ignorant.

While we work to reduce the unbridled and pathological avarice of the greedy (see Note), making the ignorant a tad less ignorant could only help.

Not only would it likely help with the primary goal, but .also with the economy, national character, and just about every metric by which nations are measured and in which we continue our precipitous downward slide.

NOTE: eg., continue efforts to regulate capitalism, create laws with teeth and substantial penalties for violating those laws.

25

You can’t fix stupid. - Ron White

26

What the hell? So, when you fail, at least you tried. When Americans fail, they didn’t even try? That’s total bullshit reasoning.

Maybe you also need the education you seek for Americans. Certainly your logical reasoning circuit is out of whack.

27

I’ve reached that point. An educated population only matters if the population has control of the government. We’ve apparently lost that. What does the ruling class care about what the rest of us think? They don’t care if the opposition is ten percent of the country, or forty-nine percent, or fifty-one percent, or ninety percent - they won’t allow the opposition to have power.

28

Well, which is it, Young Feller? Mean to say, if you pit us all, that’s more than half, and if you pit only half, well, that ain’t all!

I reckon you haven’t thought this all the way through.

29

well, half way, at least

30

The problem with Republicans isn’t what they think, it’s what they think we think. Democrats are functionally running against two opponents, the Republicans and the fun-house mirror image of themselves created largely by Republicans and their amplifying chorus. (With some help from some Democratic constituency groups.)

31

I’ll tell you who I want to pit:

In the main Election Follow Along Thread Urbanredneck2 related the following:

On my Facebook I’m friends with a woman from Texas who is also part latino and she voted Trump. Why? Biden said he will sign laws that will require any womens athletics programs to accept any man who identifies as a woman. She hates this idea as do most female athletes and she happens to do womens roller derby.

Seriously. Is this woman so stupid that she can’t see that Trump and his ilk would gladly throw her ass over his wall in a heartbeat? And she votes from him because she doesn’t want a transgender to play roller derby with her??

That’s it. I’m done trying to help people and groups who are too stupid to grab a life preserver to keep from drowning. If African-Americans don’t want to vote for Biden because he supported a crime bill thirty years ago, then let the cops shoot them indiscriminately in the streets. Let Latinos get deported en masse if they think LGBT’s are too icky to live with in the USA.

I’m done.

32

My sentiments exactly.

33

The thing the Republicans are absolutely horrible at is having a coherent plan to improve peoples lives. The thing they’re great at is personalizing some political issue, no matter how minor. Once you can get someone to latch on to some random issue, it’s hard to beat the emotional appeal of that issue by trying to argue why something else that doesn’t feel as real is more important.

It’s extremely frustrating in this election because we just saw an abject failure of the Republicans during a pandemic that really should have been personal for most people. We also saw them just give up on a vision for what healthcare should look like and all fall behind Trump’s strategy of unspecified promises.

34

Other than the top fraction of the top 1%, whose lives do you think they give a shit about?

35

It shows that whataboutism (the tactic I was answering to) is unbeatable with logic. You can only say “Yes, Sir, you are right” and ignore it, which is what I tried. Do you think I have to justify myself? For what? Whataboutism never convinces anyone (has it ever convinced you?) and it is very annoying. So say yes and go further.
And then a third party comes along and feels offended… Herrgottsacrakruzifix Jessesmariaundjosef! (Mild South-German cursing, in case you wonder)

36

After Trump won in 2016, it was clear he’d be a terrible choice for president; but still, a lot of people where saying, then and in the coming months, well, maybe it’s gonna be OK—maybe nothing bad will happen. Maybe he won’t start World War 3; maybe he’ll just be an obnoxious, but ineffectual nuisance in office.

Well, aside from the fact that bad things did, in fact, happen, I think those people got it wrong then; and those that say, at least it’s a win for the Dems, are making the same mistake today. The question isn’t whether something bad happens due to Donald Trump’s presidency; his presidency is the bad thing happening. An ostensibly mature democracy has elected a dangerously unsuitable individual into office, who habitually lies, cheats, openly attacks political opponents, is a—you know what, I’ll spare you the litany. We all know it. We all know it, and yet, the people of the USA came damn close to electing him again—and indeed, might yet do so. That’s the bad thing. But it’s not the worst thing.

Donald Trump is essentially a hopeful monster—a mutation radically different from the usual phenotype that exploits a niche in a new way. Trump’s success wasn’t intelligently designed—it was merely his continuing failure to be selected against that’s led him to where he is. Answering lies with more lies, following scandal with scandal so fast that the news cycle simply can’t keep up, brazenly refusing to accept any sort of blame at all: that’s not a strategy anybody would’ve thought up, because it’s not a strategy anybody would’ve thought might work.

Until now. Trump arose as a proof of concept for a new kind of politician. His ineptness, stupidity, and general lack of awareness has prevented him from being more effective—prevented him, that is, from doing more damage to the democracy that failed to prevent him. But now, the option is on the table. Now, it’s a niche, ready to be exploited, and it’s a strategy that our current democracy hasn’t yet evolved to handle. The next one to exploit this niche won’t do so by chance and accident, but deliberately. They—well, he: let’s be real here—won’t blunder their way into this position, but lie and cheat and manipulate with skill and definite ends in mind.

And that’s what was so important about this election. Not getting rid of Trump; but signaling that the system works. As is, the signal was that yes—anybody marginally more capable than Trump would likely have gotten away with it. And so, somebody will, eventually. And that’s the worst thing.

37

I pit you all, one half of you for this and that … the other half for something different. Come on, Gatopescado, that is not such a long or difficult sentence, you are better than that.

Same goes for eschereal, man. You can read too, I am sure of that.

38

This.

39

Part of the problem is that anything that has happened in the past feels inevitable. So the “well bad things might not happen” logic will always feel convincing.

40

I am deeply saddened that so many people would vote for Trump. I see it as so many Americans grew up with pain and hurt and taught to hate. It is a sad country we have. Trump is just what has exposed this very bitter root. Yes Trump is evil, but the problem is much much deeper that could allow Trump to get this far.