I couldnt care less for the why. If you voted Trump, a third party candidate or not at all you are responsible for the coming fascism you waste of cells
Understanding why something is broken is a crucial prerequisite for fixing it. If you don’t care why it didn’t work, then you don’t care about making it work - you only care about being angry.
Just because you refuse to learn anything from this doesn’t mean there is nothing to be learned. I, for one, have got one important actionable insight from these replies: they prioritize having a strong president more than having a president that aligns with their values.
Trump radiates strength. You may say it’s fake strength, that it’s just the aggressiveness of his narcissism, but it doesn’t matter - he is perceived as strong, and that’s his main weapon, his number one selling point. Look at his his announcements and listen to what his supporters say - the main focus is on depicting him as strong and his opponents as weak. Policies are an afterthought.
Republican voters wanting a strong Republican president is a no-brainer, but the thing that really surprised me is Democrat leaning voters (Democrat enough to vote for AOC, at least) preferring a strong Republican president because he’s strong. I find it counterintuitive - if you’re going to have to live under the opponent party’s rule, shouldn’t you prefer a weak president that would be less forceful when implementing these policies that you disagree with?
This insight does shine a new light on some well known points. For example - Biden and Harris received lots of fire for supporting Israel. This always seemed weird to me - wouldn’t Trump, if elected, support Israel so much harder? But this new insight make it all make (twisted) sense. If - or, actually, now we can say “when” - Trump as a president will support Israel it will be an act of strength because it aligns with the Republican values he represents. When Biden did it, it was against Democratic values and therefore perceived as weakness - as surrendering to pressure.
Or, more importantly - I keep seeing (mainly here on Lemmy) claims that the Democratic party lost these elections because they did not go left enough. With this new insight, I think the problem is not that they didn’t go left enough, but that they didn’t go hard enough. It doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum you are aiming to be - you should be as forceful and as assertive as possible when going there. This is something Obama had in spades. This is what the Democrats need if they want to win the next elections.
That’s the thing though. Most Americans feel they don’t really live in a democracy, and they’re right. Statistically, the interests of the bottom 90% of the population have zero impact on Congress. Congress’s actions only correlate with the opinions of the top 10%, and moreso the higher on the income ladder you go.
Trump is nothing new. People voted for Trump for the same reason people voted for Napoleon. A system, even a democratic one, is only useful if it produces useful results. We don’t have a democracy, we have an oligarchy.
In a system as corrupt and intransigent as ours, the only way you can actually get anything done, for good or ill, is to be someone like Trump who runs roughshod over political norms.
This kind of thing is common in history. Democracies can get so corrupt, worn down, and intractable, that eventually the people just vote in someone who will rule by fiat. The wealthy cut off every avenue of democratic change, and eventually a demogogue comes to power promising to just produce change by force.
Anyone who has studied history could have predicted Trump. Authoritarianism is the inevitable consequence of corrupt nominal ‘democracies’ that only serve the wealthy.
I agree with everything said here and have largely said it myself. The people didn’t fail America - America failed the people. Whether or not Harris won, I would have sought to leave the country. She just would have been a stop gap measure to help prolong the offramp. This country’s leaders forgot long ago that they lead a citizenry, not an owner/slave population, and it absolutely is an oligarchy.
I just would never have voted for the guy who’s going to lead the genocide and make everything harder for absolutely everybody but the rich as well as tank the planet. My “wanting to watch the world burn” would not have taken that direction for anything.
Getting out of bed, going down the street, standing in line, spending 3 minutes casting a ballot; is that a lot to ask of people to safeguard democracy?
Let’s be more specific. That’s what you need to do in order to protect the oligarchy. The United States is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy. The bottom 90% of the population has zero impact on how they are governed. It has been this way for decades.
This always happens to oligarchies. It happened in Rome, and now it’s happened here. The Roman Senate was intransigent, fighting for generations against the most minor of reforms to help the common man. In the end, demagogues came to power promising to help the people by fiat. Of course, most of the time these emperors served only themselves, but even the few crumbs they threw to the people were more than the old oligarchy gave them.
They most certainly did give people something worth turning to. And then stopped talking about it way too soon. Most people simply didil’t know much if anything about Harri’s campaign promises. The Dems shifted from talking about worker friendly policies to go after the handful of sane GOPers. And lost.
Like it or not, MAGA can currently take that attitude. They control the SC, both chambers of Congress, and the White House. If they decide to say, “Fsck it. We’ll ignore the Demorcrats,” they’ll still have all the process in place to enact their agenda.
MAGA doesn’t need to analyze what went wrong during the election. They got everything they wanted.
For at least the next 2 years, Democrats will be able to do nothing that Republicans don’t approve of. The law says that they get to set the standards.
If Democrats want any chance of checking that power or reversing it at the next election, we are the ones who need to adapt.
There’s an “ancient Chinese saying”, “卧 薪 尝 胆”. You don’t do it because it’s fun or because you obliged to, you do it so you can win next time.
Oh! I see where you misunderstood. No, Trump -the Putin worshipping, endorsed by Duterte, wannabe dictator- is the fascism that will be more unchecked than the first time he was elected. They were referring to the immediate next two years, not any hope of a come back where fascist policies like policing women’s bodies or banning lgbta+ rights will be attempted to be repealed.
They’re talking about the ones who openly worship dictators, not the liberals that currently have no control.
I couldnt care less for the why. If you voted Trump, a third party candidate or not at all you are responsible for the coming fascism you waste of cells
Understanding why something is broken is a crucial prerequisite for fixing it. If you don’t care why it didn’t work, then you don’t care about making it work - you only care about being angry.
But we kind already knew people being stupid was the reason. This doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table.
Just because you refuse to learn anything from this doesn’t mean there is nothing to be learned. I, for one, have got one important actionable insight from these replies: they prioritize having a strong president more than having a president that aligns with their values.
Trump radiates strength. You may say it’s fake strength, that it’s just the aggressiveness of his narcissism, but it doesn’t matter - he is perceived as strong, and that’s his main weapon, his number one selling point. Look at his his announcements and listen to what his supporters say - the main focus is on depicting him as strong and his opponents as weak. Policies are an afterthought.
Republican voters wanting a strong Republican president is a no-brainer, but the thing that really surprised me is Democrat leaning voters (Democrat enough to vote for AOC, at least) preferring a strong Republican president because he’s strong. I find it counterintuitive - if you’re going to have to live under the opponent party’s rule, shouldn’t you prefer a weak president that would be less forceful when implementing these policies that you disagree with?
This insight does shine a new light on some well known points. For example - Biden and Harris received lots of fire for supporting Israel. This always seemed weird to me - wouldn’t Trump, if elected, support Israel so much harder? But this new insight make it all make (twisted) sense. If - or, actually, now we can say “when” - Trump as a president will support Israel it will be an act of strength because it aligns with the Republican values he represents. When Biden did it, it was against Democratic values and therefore perceived as weakness - as surrendering to pressure.
Or, more importantly - I keep seeing (mainly here on Lemmy) claims that the Democratic party lost these elections because they did not go left enough. With this new insight, I think the problem is not that they didn’t go left enough, but that they didn’t go hard enough. It doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum you are aiming to be - you should be as forceful and as assertive as possible when going there. This is something Obama had in spades. This is what the Democrats need if they want to win the next elections.
Maybe we need someone with less vocabulary then trump on the Dem side
Maybe if the democrats had given 50% of the populace something they considered worth turning up to vote for they wouldn’t have stayed at home.
I mean, still having a country was something to vote for for me, but you do you dawg. You’ll reap what you sow.
That’s the thing though. Most Americans feel they don’t really live in a democracy, and they’re right. Statistically, the interests of the bottom 90% of the population have zero impact on Congress. Congress’s actions only correlate with the opinions of the top 10%, and moreso the higher on the income ladder you go.
Trump is nothing new. People voted for Trump for the same reason people voted for Napoleon. A system, even a democratic one, is only useful if it produces useful results. We don’t have a democracy, we have an oligarchy.
In a system as corrupt and intransigent as ours, the only way you can actually get anything done, for good or ill, is to be someone like Trump who runs roughshod over political norms.
This kind of thing is common in history. Democracies can get so corrupt, worn down, and intractable, that eventually the people just vote in someone who will rule by fiat. The wealthy cut off every avenue of democratic change, and eventually a demogogue comes to power promising to just produce change by force.
Anyone who has studied history could have predicted Trump. Authoritarianism is the inevitable consequence of corrupt nominal ‘democracies’ that only serve the wealthy.
I agree with everything said here and have largely said it myself. The people didn’t fail America - America failed the people. Whether or not Harris won, I would have sought to leave the country. She just would have been a stop gap measure to help prolong the offramp. This country’s leaders forgot long ago that they lead a citizenry, not an owner/slave population, and it absolutely is an oligarchy.
I just would never have voted for the guy who’s going to lead the genocide and make everything harder for absolutely everybody but the rich as well as tank the planet. My “wanting to watch the world burn” would not have taken that direction for anything.
Too much truth in this statement to downvote it.
Getting out of bed, going down the street, standing in line, spending 3 minutes casting a ballot; is that a lot to ask of people to safeguard democracy?
Let’s be more specific. That’s what you need to do in order to protect the oligarchy. The United States is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy. The bottom 90% of the population has zero impact on how they are governed. It has been this way for decades.
This always happens to oligarchies. It happened in Rome, and now it’s happened here. The Roman Senate was intransigent, fighting for generations against the most minor of reforms to help the common man. In the end, demagogues came to power promising to help the people by fiat. Of course, most of the time these emperors served only themselves, but even the few crumbs they threw to the people were more than the old oligarchy gave them.
They most certainly did give people something worth turning to. And then stopped talking about it way too soon. Most people simply didil’t know much if anything about Harri’s campaign promises. The Dems shifted from talking about worker friendly policies to go after the handful of sane GOPers. And lost.
Ah the Highly intellectual argument that liberals use to win over voters… or is it?
I sincerely hope that Democrats do care.
Like it or not, MAGA can currently take that attitude. They control the SC, both chambers of Congress, and the White House. If they decide to say, “Fsck it. We’ll ignore the Demorcrats,” they’ll still have all the process in place to enact their agenda.
MAGA doesn’t need to analyze what went wrong during the election. They got everything they wanted.
For at least the next 2 years, Democrats will be able to do nothing that Republicans don’t approve of. The law says that they get to set the standards.
If Democrats want any chance of checking that power or reversing it at the next election, we are the ones who need to adapt.
There’s an “ancient Chinese saying”, “卧 薪 尝 胆”. You don’t do it because it’s fun or because you obliged to, you do it so you can win next time.
There it is. Liberals are so comfortable moving straight to fascism the moment they don’t get what they want.
Gee I wonder why your fascist centrism didn’t resonate with anyone.
Oh! I see where you misunderstood. No, Trump -the Putin worshipping, endorsed by Duterte, wannabe dictator- is the fascism that will be more unchecked than the first time he was elected. They were referring to the immediate next two years, not any hope of a come back where fascist policies like policing women’s bodies or banning lgbta+ rights will be attempted to be repealed.
They’re talking about the ones who openly worship dictators, not the liberals that currently have no control.