• warm@kbin.earth
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    20 hours ago

    Yeah, because apparently Americans don’t look at the actual candidate, or listen to what they say. Trump told nothing but lies the whole campaign, just attacking democrats at rallies. He is a narcissistic bigot, a convicted felon. He’s racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic. He’s a fraudster, a misogynist, he hates democracy, literally said he would be a dictator, among many other extremely undesirable traits you would want in a leader. That’s the entire point people are making while the media are ignoring all that and blaming the democrats for not being as radical.

    It’s absolutely insane that he got elected. Anyone with any sort of critical thinking would not even dream of voting for him.

    • SonicDeathTaco@lemm.ee
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      19 hours ago

      I don’t necessarily disagree with you

      but

      I read a lot and follow the news. You probably read a lot and follow the news. A huge swath of the population in this country doesn’t. Self actualization is a luxury. You have to keep that in mind.

      I’m sure you saw the article in the LA Times that suggested that apparently a significant amount of the population did not even know that Biden had dropped out of the race. Take a second to really wrap your head around that. If so many managed to miss that fact, how likely do you think it is that they would have heard about Trump’s dictator day one statement.

      It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to concern yourself what’s going on in Washington, what’s going on in Gaza or the Ukraine. Those things don’t matter when you can’t figure out how you are going to afford food AND rent this month.

      I’ve been there.

      Dreams are a luxury.

      People aren’t born, racists, sexist, homophobes, transphobes: we build those through culture.

      For many Americans thinking about this stuff is a luxury. They’re tired. They work themselves to the bone and still barely get by. They’ve been resegregated by race and income and all they know is that when they look around, all they see are people who look like them and who are also struggling.

      They’re fertile soil for the seeds of bigotry to germinate in. I’m not trying to excuse them, just trying to help you understand them.

      Trump saw gains in and across groups that have historically been part of the Democrats coalition. It’s not just white folk.

      Both parties have spent decades largely failing to address the everyday struggles of working Americans.

      So, if neither party is likely to actually make improvements in your everyday life, but one party is threatening to blow up the whole fucking system: One is significantly more appealing than the other.

      The hate is a symptom of the problem. It’s built by policy and, for some, maintained by design for political exploitation.

      There is a reason that all of the economic platform of the civil rights movement have been scrubbed from our education system and collective memory.

      Race and class have been the main tools capital has used to divide and exploit working people from this countries birth and that’s as true today as ever.

      We all need to not forget that, and more importantly, not play into it.

      • warm@kbin.earth
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        14 hours ago

        It’s an election though, for the person to run your country. You have to put some research into the candidates, not just copy what sign someone else put out in their lawn. This unfortunately wasnt an election where you can just look at policies (one party just had ideas of a policy, and thats a major red flag), there’s a bigger picture of who you are putting in power.

        I agree with your points, they all make sense, but even if the democrats had a more aggressive anti-trump campaign, thet still wouldnt have seen it (maybe a tiny bit more likely to tho) or they would have already been indoctrinated into the cult and just ignore it.

        Education systems should be teaching simple things like this to kids, everyone should know the importance of an election.

        Another issue is people collectively thinking their 1 vote doesnt matter.

        I hope you guys can take back your country in 2028.

        • SonicDeathTaco@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          Unfortunately, the reality is that people do not have to put thought into anything before they vote. We would want that to be true, and ideally they would, but that’s just not reality.

          A more aggressive anti-trump campaign isn’t at all what was needed and honestly wouldn’t have made a difference. Substantive policy designed to make a immediate tangible improvement in the lives of working people is what has been needed. Regardless an accelerated 3 month timeline probably wasn’t enough time to make a difference message wise, given how siloed and disjointed our media landscape is in the United States.

          Like it or not, the Neoliberalism embraced by the Democratic parties leadership is just as cult like in it’s thinking as Maga-Christianity.

          The education system in the United States has been intentionally been attacked and made unaffordable for this very reason. Reagan wrote about the dangers of an educated proletariat. He followed through on a policy level.

          At a federal level, studies have shown that the wants of voters have close to zero impact on policy implementation. Unless you have money for lobbyist, your vote largely doesn’t matter. Money trumps your vote. Change in the US won’t come at the ballot box, it is going to require good minded people to organize an flex our economic muscle. The US economy runs on consumption, and that’s where our leverage is. We need to organize a general consumption strike. Starve them of the money they use against us.

          It will be painful, but that ship has sailed. The future is going to hurt regardless.