She put my recent thoughts into words: they simply can NOT admit that they were wrong about Trump, especially since they’ve curated their new identity around him.
After all, many sacrificed their family life on the altar of Trump. If you make a stand for bigotry that’s so rancid it drives your kids to sever contact, you have to believe it’s in service of something higher or else come to grips with your own moral failings. I know which one I believe is more likely.
It’s the rotten core of the anti-intellectual ideology that the right has been pushing for decades.
This. I can’t solve this, and neither can any other individual person.
It will take a wide spread implosion, but they’ve got a resilient ecosystem that will just switch messianic figures out once Trump is no longer able to hold public sway.
The further out from Trump you go the more these people will treat him like Reagan and pretend he solved all their problems if only for a fleeting moment in history.
And if they don’t switch, it may straight-up become religious
Anti-intellectual theology as well. “God and Country” evangelical churches from the smallest to the largest find it absolutely crucial to brainwash their congregations against higher ed and critical thinking.
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Anti-intellectualism is an American trait
But tbf, it’s not uniquely American *rubs temples while staring at own country*
True. I think we’re fortunate in that anti intellectualism (and just plain old stupidity) is less common on the left, and tends to be more harmless when it is there.
I’m left but the tankies are idiots and their ideology requires sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending history didn’t happen. Though lemmy is the first time I encountered large numbers of such folk.
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“…the first rule of MAGA is to never, ever, under any circumstances, admit that liberals might be right about something.”
People in cults stay in them for the same reasons. So many times, they were told they were wrong, that they couldn’t take the embarrassment of making such a mistake.
Maybe MAGA people need to be coddled a bit. Tell them that Trump changed towards the end. They were right, but he betrayed them in the end. Something else should be tried. Many of these people are dangerous in the mental state their in.
Mollycoddling them is what caused the problem in the first place. They need to be forced to accept responsibility for the choices they made even if it hurts them. Them entrenching themselves out of embarrassment is a moral failing on their part, not ours.
They need to be forced to accept responsibility
I won’t hold my breath.
The only solution is the California model: vote them into powerlessness. They’ll never change. Just leave them to their impotent rage while the rest of us move on.
You forget that California actually allows for a fair amount of direct democracy - the South will cling to Republican government and will fight any movement toward direct democracy and ballot initiatives because every effort to appeal to their base would be defeated.
True but if we get enough dems in office, we naturally progress towards stronger ballot measures. We can’t do anything while Republicans are in office.
And it will take some bizarre set of circumstances to ever get the GOP out of state office because they have gerrymandered everything to fuck, and the rural base is seemingly forever captured by the GOP, and the states’ supreme courts are GOP, and …
I frequently fantasize about Canada, where the assholes are fewer in number. Though I was recently in upstate New York and I realized how much I fucking miss the Northeast.
There’s a lot of Black people in the South. That’s where we need to focus our efforts. Stacey Abrams style.
I hear you, but the black community has been saying the system is rigged (regardless of who wins) for far longer than nearly anyone else. I don’t know how you go from massive disengagement to engagement given the levels of distrust that exist. Or how you get black politicians elected to office outside of statewide office or city government. The youth vote decided to suddenly show up, but it’s not enough by itself.
Exactly, some people deserve to get exactly what they want, fuck em.
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more rational concerns (e.g. economic precarity)
It was never, ever, about “economic anxiety”. It was about hurting the right people, and they didn’t care if they had to suffer too as long as the right people suffered
Maybe. But this just kicks the can down the road. They’ll do the same shit with a new messiah figure as soon as they find one that can string two words together and make them feel like they’re virtuous for their hatred.
It’s inevitable. There is no solution to the problem.
Ultimately, it’s because we let them get away with a literal civil war. Here in 2023, almost every protection put in place after the civil war has eroded to nothingness, and they/their ancestors weren’t held accountable, and have been allowed to lie a false narrative into being for almost two centuries.
They’ve told us they still view this as a civil war. I wonder when enough normal people will believe them.
He pretended to want to help them during his campaign. They fell for it and just ignored all facts and evidence since. Doubt they’re going to see the light.
Yeah, this is along the lines of what I was thinking.
Clinton was right about everything. In 20 years its going to be really hard to explain why she wasn’t the obvious choice who should have won by a landslide
No it isn’t. She wasn’t relatable or likeable at all. People wanted an outsider and HRC is about as much of an insider as you could be.
Where are the Bernie bros that dude would have won.
She wasn’t relatable or likeable at all
Neither is Trump. Hillary was obviously the better choice.
Hillary was obviously the better choice given the 2, but DNC shafted Bernie on record, which caused a lot of people to go 3rd party, against both RNC and DNC.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Trump was relatable and likable to his supporters. Clinton couldn’t say the same except for a small number of them. It’s become tradition in the Democratic Party to hold your nose when you vote for president.
As an example of her lack of relatability and likeability, here she is chilling in Cedar Rapids and telling kids to Pokemon Go to the polls.
As an example of Trump’s relatability, here’s where he lives
Considering his supporters think they’re all temporarily embarrassed millionaires, that is relatable to them.
Bro people marched on the capitol for trump wtf are you talking about.
He’s not likeable to anyone with a real brain
Sure but thats not what we’re talking about
Trump is about as likeable as a rabid dingo. Clinton was better in absolutely every way to people with two neurons to rub together.
It doesn’t take much to be better than Trump. Still, Clinton campaigned as if winning was a foregone conclusion and then she found out that it wasn’t.
Some of us remember the 90’s, and the ubiquitous bumper stickers implying that while Bill was President, Hillary was in charge. Playing on sexist tropes, calling her a bitch of the canine variety, “I didn’t vote for Hillary,” “She’s not my president,” etc… Hillary was well hated before she ever ran for President.
I remember all this, and I fell for it. Due to years of propaganda against her, I just had this mild feeling of revulsion to Hillary. I primaried for Bernie in a district that’s very close in demographics to the national average, and was stunned that Hillary had about a 4x as many supporters. But once she became the official Dem candidate, I started watching her campaign events, debates and researched her political history. Hillary was a fantastic candidate and after watching her in action I fully understood WHY there had been decades of propaganda from the right against her - she was incredibly dangerous to them - not only because of her likelihood to win, but even moreso due to how effective she would be as president.
My impression of her in 2016 was that she’d be a neoliberal centrist that would make similar missteps to Bill Clinton, and I wanted nothing of it. Bill was lauded for bargaining with the GOP controlled Congress, but people like me had to help fight against the effects of his deals with the devil. There were a LOT of POC grandmas in public housing getting booted out because the housing project’s super alleged that their grandkids were dealing drugs - the changes to HUD regulations allowed grandma to be at fault for failing to control their grandkids. And there was a not-insubstantial number of project supers that would just make shit up because they ruled over the projects like it was their private fiefdom. I worked in Legal Aid at the time.
Also, Hillary’s charisma was lacking. Not that charisma is all-important, but she just seemed fake as fuck. I wanted Warren because of her focus on consumer protection and debtor friendly bankruptcy reform.
It’s actually an easy explanation.
People were more concerned with a Democrat being likeable, after decades of character assassination, while they didn’t care that the republican was a criminal, and also foreign interference and an FBI that was paralyzed by biased agents and management fear of appearing biased, actual outcomes be damned.
It was a perfect storm of regressive misinformation and every individual with the ability to stop the train wreck trying to cover their own asses and pass the buck instead.
wasn’t this also the election that was heavily influenced by Cambridge Analytica? while Facebook being the biggest social media site in thebworld/us?
I just want to also call out the Internet Research Agency, Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear: All Russian information groups, a disrupted our elections in one way or another through different types of social engineering, hacking, trolling and misinformation creation. They went after individualls, businesses, and government organizations, not limited to the DNC.
Everything is a bit of a stretch. She was certainly wrong about how she ran her campaign. Poisoning the well in the primary worked out so fucking well for her. It was her turn, she earned it. No reason to convince the voters to show up by campaigning, or creating a platform people were excited about. Just say how bad Bernie is, then how bad trump is a few times and hide.
Yeah, the DNC clearing the field for her looks really bad in hindsight. A lot would be different if Biden had run in 2016 when the whole Bidenbro phenomenon was really popular.
Agreed. Biden running would of in itself made me feel 100x better about the primary process. She was clearly anointed by the DNC before the primary even started. They couldn’t even at least pretend we had a choice…
Right, but in the end she was going to get the votes anyway. Bernie couldn’t perform as well in the South which is a major voting block. Bernie did a great job of attracting young and white male voters. He didn’t pull the number of black voters and white women to overcome Clinton’s lead.
I say this as a Warren voter.
Bernie couldn’t perform as well in the South which is a major voting block.
Major voting bloc in what, the primaries? Why is that even relevant? Democrats don’t win in the South. That sucks if you’re a Dem voter in the South but basing who the candidate is going to be in a national election on winning some primaries in states that won’t go blue in that election is pointless. The South is a lost cause. There’s no reason to care what they think about the Democratic nominee.
She didn’t even campaign in Michigan thinking it was a sure thing. She ran a terrible campaign.
This conclusion has been obvious for fucking decades.
Yes but this gets us nowhere
💀
No, I’m happy to take every opportunity to shame the people who refused to vote for Clinton out of sheer fucking stupidity in 2016.
Your vote fucking matters. Never forget it. This is a lesson. Never forget it.
I don’t know, have we just tried flinging mud at each other?
The mainstream media has treated Republicans with contempt and derision for years. Why wouldn’t they be bitter?
It’s embarrassing how much the mainstream media coddles Republicans. Working the refs the only play you guys know these days.
Those pieces of human shit deserve more contempt and derision for their appalling crimes against humanity.
Persecution complex says what?
And how many years are we talking here? It’s been 7 years since the party chose the known sexual predator to be the face of the party, and most of them still love him now that he used that choice to commit a bunch of crimes and betray our country.
Republicans who stay with the party after the last 7 years either don’t give a shit about the future or are complete idiots or both.
