I don’t fully agree. Of course it’s problematic that people voted for trump, that’s out of the question. But the question should rather be: What circumstances led to someone voting for trump?
People are actually struggling a lot and voting for the person advertising a solution can seem very attractive if you desperately need an improvement.
In the end, voting doesn’t fix the underlying system and can only achieve marginal improvements. All Parties are only managing the same capitalistic state and not changing the whole system.
Ostracizing people based on their vote is not a proper solution and will not lead to people voting for someone different. People are more likely to reinforce their existing beliefs if met with heavy resistance.
Also the party war is distracting from the actual class war.
Maybe I took the meme too seriously but I think it’s important to consider.
No War But Class War!
Edit: Maybe don’t hang out with them, but analyze the reasons that made them vote in the way they did. People who voted for trump probably have the same problems with capitalism that you do but their anger is misguided by populism and capitalist propaganda.
“Voting for the person advertising a solution” ah yes, the dude who said “Concepts of a plan” And word-salad’s his way through everything because his brain is as smooth and squishy as half-melted butter. What an excellent solution man he is.
I’m not “ostracizing people based on their votes” I’m ostracizing people who actively want to strip me of my rights, and quite possibly want to physically harm me fuck off with this “We should all be friends, it’s the only way to convince them” shit. I’d have better luck convincing a hungry polar bear I’m not food.
We all knew who trump was going into 2024. I can forgive 2016, in truth, I didn’t expect him to be as bad as he was. I can barely forgive people who voted in 2020, because by then we all knew he was a fucking idiot and people should have known better. But 2024? Nah. Fuck them. We all saw how dumb he was, we all saw january 6th, we all knew about project 2025, anything less is willful ignorance.
It’s not just a “party war,” it’s a morality war. If you voted for trump in 2024, you have zero morals, empathy, and I genuinely believe you lack the capability to participate in society in any meaningful way.
We all knew who trump was going into 2024. I can forgive 2016, in truth, I didn’t expect him to be as bad as he was.
I, for one, expected 2024 Trump in 2016. At this point, I’m still paralyzed by shock that we managed to get a second chance to save the country in 2020 and completely squandered it.
I guess my perspective is slightly different as I was fresh out of high-school, looking at my first presidential election, almost no interest in politics, and my only real opinion of trump in 2016 was “dude is disgusting and a moron.”
I ended up voting third party that election, something about if third party votes were above 5% they would earn more funding or something? I was in a very blue state at the time, so I knew trump wasnt going to win my state, and I figured maybe that 5% was doable that election.
I’m not “ostracizing people based on their votes” I’m ostracizing people who actively want to strip me of my rights, and quite possibly want to physically harm me
The democratic party supports the war on drugs alongside the republican party. I have lost people close to me because of tainted black market drugs of a unknown potency.
Reminder that no 3rd party will control our federal goverment anytime in the remote future and probably not within your lifetime and that the Democrat party, while not perfect, is UNFATHOMABLY better at governing our nation and respecting our rights than the Republican party.
I don’t think you are aware of how desperate a lot of people were. I know it’s easy to villainize people who want to take away the rights of people you love and yourself. My friends and me would be affected by his policy too if we lived in the US. But the people who voted for trump are still human and not evil in person. They have their own reasoning and problems, they were just convinced of the wrong target. They probably have a lot of the same problems with capitalism that a lot of people have. They just aren’t targeting capitalism but some minority or foreigners in general.
I actually live in the US. I have family that voted for him. They’re not desperate in the way you think they are. They’re all some combination of dumb, ignorant, or the worst of the bunch, the actually evil.
I tried to befriend them, to convince them that the enemy is not what they thought it was. I spent ten fucking years doing that shit. But in the end:
My cousin is dumb, he votes for trump because he thinks trump is an uneducated everyman like himself “He speaks the way I speak.”
My aunt is evil, she votes for trump because he makes her stock portfolio look good, damn the consequences “I voted for trump because we all need to vote for our own best interests.”
My grandma is ignorant, she doesn’t understand the way the world works today, things have changed too much from her generation to really grasp it “I voted for trump because the world is a scary place, and we need his security.”
All three are evil in their own way. My grandma never took the time to consider the viewpoint of others, no matter how many times she was given opportunity. My cousin never learned, or trusted in those that knew more than him on a subject. My aunt, the most vile of them all decided that she didn’t care enough about her kids and grandchildren, and that the bottom line was all that mattered.
There is no convincing these people. As another commenter said? Fuck em.
One day they will wake up, and realize that actions had consequences, and it’s far too late to take it back.
Raised in an evil culture. Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, prosperity gospel, the Anerican myth of rugged individualism, there are many avenues but the main pressure is the same: they value only themselves or people closely aligned with them and believe personal gain is the most important goal. Or they’re the delusional cultists, the true believers that genuinely think they’re fighting a war for God in some way.
Raised in an evil culture is how most Republican voters end up being Republican voters. But I’d like to add that being raised in an evil culture is not an excuse for remaining evil as an adult.
Part of adulthood is accepting responsibility for your character and not continuing to blame your faults on your upbringing.
There are many people raised in religious households that grow up to not be religious. And religions are an EXTREMELY entrenched form of cult culture. So it’s totally possible to break free of programming.
I just don’t want to give conservatives an easy out to blame others. They don’t deserve it.
And that’s why I think people are able to convinced by discussion. It might take some time and it might be difficult but they are still human at the core. I don’t think people like this should get a platform but it is necessary to push against the spread of hatred and the deeply ingrained propaganda. It is difficult but not impossible.
It’s been over a decade and they’ve had mountains of facts dumped on them and it hasn’t moved the needle. The only thing that’s changing them is if they end up being personally affected by their own actions. And even then, they tend to just default to blaming liberals/democrats for their self-induced problems.
they are still human at the core
And? Plenty of irredeemably evil humans have existing throughout human history.
Not worth the effort. Fix their children by supporting public education and fighting the sources of propaganda. Push for laws about what is allowed to be said in the news, punish lying or fraud.
Changing the mind of an adult who is not trying to change is close to impossible. One of the first steps in breaking indoctrination is cutting off from the source and any connected social ties or they’ll just get dragged back in. And those social ties make them feel good, they feel validated and important when their community agrees. You can’t fight that.
Push for laws about what is allowed to be said in the news, punish lying or fraud.
Yeah, there’s really no getting better until we clean up our media. You can’t have a functional democracy while having unrestrained propaganda networks. The two simply can’t co-exist.
Yep, it’s frustrating, having had plenty of theological and ethical debate in my life was enough to convince myself to not bother talking to these people, it’s an act of futility, a waste of your own good time
Democracy requires education / free press, modest prosperity and peace. We don’t have those any more. A socialist slogan: fascism is capitalism in decay. Also let the system and institutions rot. We know our election systems are garbage.
If you divide the population into a smarter and a stupider half (however you want to define that) the stupid half will always be easier to manipulate, distract, less able to foresee and understand the consequences of policy and decisions. Is it their fault that we let them be brainwashed with evil ideology and religion?
Advertising / public relations / brainwashing is a technology that significantly advanced. We didn’t. Those with money or power can hire the smartest people to make fool of us all.
Hierarchical systems require people to advance and each step filters who advances and who doesn’t. Instead of a meritocracy, it leads to selfish people who are solely focused on advancement at the expense of anything else like empathy, loyalty, education, truth etc. If you can’t play this game you loose. The larger the hierarchy, the worst scum you end up with at the top. And those at the top set the rules of society.
Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. But the vast majority of people still believe in (neo)liberalism and the free market to somehow “as if by invisible hand” guide humanity towards a brighter future. Trump voters are stupid, agreed, but there is a lot of stupidity left for the rest of them.
Exactly, we got trump because he’s the president we deserve. I can’t count on one the amout of people i see throwing trahs out their window while driving, they dont give a fuck about this country at all, they just pretend to because it helps them make more money. If trump actually brings this country down, they’ll just fucking move to another country they own property in and cry about how the democrats ruined america.
You don’t even live in the US, whereas most of us here know or are closely related to people who voted for him.
But sure, you probably know better.
I’ve lived through the conditions that produced MAGA, and I honestly could not care less if they felt “desperate.” A lot of us have felt desperate, it doesn’t excuse literal fascism.
I’m sure slave owners felt desperate when Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s about how much I care about MAGA voters’ claims of “desperation”.
By the way, try actually finding out specifically what those people mean and you’ll eventually realize that it comes down to ignorance, racism and xenophobia.
They became “desperate” after a black man was elected president twice.
But why do you think they are xenophobic or racist?
Doesn’t that stem from nationalist and capitalist propaganda.
The notion that one state is better that the others exists everywhere and reinforces the nationalism very heavily. This is just the basic competitiveness of capitalism, that has its roots everywhere.
All these issues can be attributed to the capitalist nature of the state
It’s because Europe and pacific Asia were humbled by the war. They know (culturally through their grandparents) that tyranny is not to be fooled around with. In the US we never got that lesson, in fact the war pulled us out of the Great Depression. So for our grandparents the lesson was war saved the economy and led to the US becoming the richest country in the world.
That’s why we’re so war hungry culturally as a people, we don’t know a war that was actually devastating for us, even WW2 was fought overseas not a single bomb was dropped on the mainland.
So now we have a population of morons who think war is good.
I thinks it’s also due to a lot of US exceptionalism propaganda. The US was always depicted as the savior or protector of the world. This has been ongoing for a long time, whicg is why the propaganda is soo deeply engrained in people’s minds and it is a lot work to actually get through to people affected by it.
It’s similar in Germany and a lot of the western world. Foreign countries are seen as uncivilized and people are only seen as humans if they can provide value to the nation. Propaganda is difficult to work against. Some people are easier to reach though and that shows that it is not impossible to reach people.
Yes but I think the lesson of WW2 shook the German people, like it did the Brits and French. Imagine a colonizer like Germany but didn’t really suffer much during WW2. That’s the US.
I don’t think you are aware of how desperate a lot of people were.
Not an excuse. Never will be.
I know it’s easy to villainize people who want to take away the rights of people you love and yourself.
Umm…yeah.
But the people who voted for trump are still human
Sure are. They are evil humans. And they’ve proven that through their actions for a decade now. Well, more if you’ve been paying attention, but the last 10 years are a pretty good example.
They have their own reasoning
Their reasoning is not based in reality. They have been shown this repeatedly and have chosen to disregard.
My parents are comfortably retired and voted for Trump purely because Fox News (and possibly right-wing local TV news) brainrot told them to. Not even social media, which they are too computer-illiterate to use! Just TV!
(Well, maybe my dad’s church, too. I’ve never gone so I have no idea what they’re telling him. All I know is that him being more religious than my mom correlates with him being more brainwashed…)
Anyway, the point is that they definitely don’t have “desperation” as an excuse. Every single “problem” they have is either imaginary or actively being worsened by Trump and the Republican Party.
Hell, if you ask my mom why she didn’t vote for the Democrat (any of 'em, take your pick from Kamala Harris to Al Gore) it’s always some bullshit about how she didn’t like their tone, or something. She probably couldn’t name an actual policy position of theirs at gunpoint! She just sits around watching TV news and hates who the TV tells her to hate.
My Southern family are not desperate, they’re just the kind of Christian that cares more about abortion than anything else on Earth and are constantly plugged into the right-wing media propaganda.
My Eastern Washington family are not desperate, they’re just the special kind of entitled that refuses to accept that their wealth (banking and farming) came off the backs of others.
Tons of people voted for Trump because they’re bigots and have let themselves be convinced that their fantasy version of the country is being attacked by whatever group or groups they hate.
Religion is a similar but different issue which is very difficult to discuss about as it is often deeply engrained in people’s minds.
Rich people is kinda the opposite of what I was talking about. They often actively profit from trump or are not affected in the slightest. It is not the group we should be focused on convincing as they aren’t really workers.
People aren’t bigots out of nowhere. They have real worries but their anger is misguided by the ultrawealthy so they don’t lose their power.
The voters shouldn’t be the enemy. They are mostly victims of propaganda. The system needs this propaganda so few people can continue to profit. This applies to all of the categories above except if your relatives are part of the ultrawealthy.
That is not how we will get past capitalism. We need to pick up people where they are. You don’t need to agree but you need to take problems and worries seriously to actually convince someone. Antagonizing only reinforces current opinions.
Maybe not hanging out but at least trying to understand the reasons that led to the vote. I myself don’t have friends that voted AFD but I think they have a lot of the same problems that I do. Their anger is just very misguided.
It’s possible to both understand the reasons why the US election went the way it did, and hold individuals accountable for their behaviour, including the way they voted.
I have a lot of compassion for people who get so caught up in the right wing propaganda machine that they’re willing to vote against their own best interest out of fear. I can’t even begin to imagine living in so much terror of some nebulous other that I end up thinking it’s okay to round up immigrants, bomb children, and criminalize people’s gender identities. It sounds like a horrible way to exist in the world. I am so very angry at the systems that have allowed things to get this bad. That doesn’t change the fact that those individuals are still responsible for the harm their actions - and votes - have caused, and people who are willing to throw away basic human decency like that rather than put the work in to examine their own biases are not welcome anywhere near my life.
In other words, causing harm out of misguided anger does not diminish the harm done. So, fuck 'em. It’s not my job to play nice in the hopes that they’ll have some come-to-Jesus moment.
It’s possible to both understand the reasons why the US election went the way it did, and hold individuals accountable for their behaviour, including the way they voted.
Right? Why are people trying to make excuses for grown ass adults who have been ignoring a tsunami of facts for over a decade in favor of voting against the best interests of others AND themselves?
I’m old enough to have been around watching conservatives/regressives vote against their own best interests for quite some time, but it’s gotten a whole lot more gross over the last decade.
I will never view conservatives as good people and I’m glad more people are starting to reach that same conclusion. The masks are off now. We’re seeing what they’re really about.
What circumstances led to someone voting for trump?
Propaganda and bigotry.
And there’s no excuse for either. Obviously there’s no excuse for bigotry, but even propaganda has no excuse. You gonna believe everything the commercials on TV tell you your entire life? You gonna send that Nigerian prince your entire life savings? Sounds like a you problem if so.
Any adult making an effort to behave responsibly isn’t going to fall for propaganda, especially the dogshit stupid propaganda the right cooks up. Especially over the course of a decade as the rest of the world dumps mountains of facts on you to let you know you’re falling for propaganda.
voting doesn’t fix the underlying system and can only achieve marginal improvements
Voting can fix the underlying system, marginally, over time. The catch is that the populace can’t be stupid and has to vote intelligently over time to allow that to happen. Democracy can’t be a well oiled machine if stupid people are gumming up the works.
Ostracizing people based on their vote is not a proper solution
That’s entirely dependent on the situation. You gonna go back in time and choose not to ostracize German citizens that supported the Nazi regime? Enough time has passed since Trumpism became a thing and enough events have unfolded and enough facts have come to light NOT to ostracize the people that keep supporting it. This isn’t funny meme shit anymore. Our economy is tanking, our rights have been infringed, our international reputation has been tarnished, American citizens have been illegally detained and EXECUTED, etc etc etc.
People are more likely to reinforce their existing beliefs if met with heavy resistance.
Not sure how many conservatives (regressives) you’ve interacted with. I’m here to assure you that no interaction with them, however nice or mean, is going to change their allegiance. If that was going to happen, it already would have. I’ve been watching conservatives for decades now and they will not change. I guarantee it. The only situation in which they’ll change is if their decisions start SERIOUSLY backfiring and significantly affecting them personally. And even then, they’ll resort to blaming liberals/democrats before they acknowledge their own mistakes and change themselves.
Also the party war is distracting from the actual class war.
There’s absolutely a class war. But when one party is REPEATEDLY AND OPENLY VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION in favor of a felon rapist traitor, then the party war is very much a real thing and a real threat.
Look, the Confederacy was a real threat to the United States of America. Now conservatives/regressives are. They must be dealt with and the nice way isn’t going to work. Clearly.
That’s not what the motto means though. Women’s rights and Minority rights are restricted because of capitalism. They have a purpose in the capitalistic world. The class war fights these issues as well. At least in the proper marxist theory.
I know what you are talking about, I hate that too. Actual marxist theory attributes gender and equality to the class issue as well, which is why gender and equality are part of the class war. They should be viewed as one issue and not seperately. There won’t be gender equality before there is class equality.
Edit: looked up Chavez. I do agree with his tactics. The owning class has nothing without workers.
I think supporting Platner is a positive sign as it shows that the root cause is still visible.
Edit 2: I was not aware of these two people and their crimes. I only support their movements but not their personal actions. I should’ve researched them more.
You believe that it’s good to look the other way on individual crimes if it benefits the working class?
This is exactly what I mean when I’m sick of hearing that motto being shoved everywhere there’s concerns that aren’t focused strictly on working class issues.
I agree with you. Trump and his White House cronies are corrupt, vile and self-serving criminals, rapists and bigots, but the fact they are in powerful office positions is a mere symptom of a wider problem with the American political, educational, media, and economic system.
Vowing to disassociate with anyone who voted for Trump and other rapists might make a good social media post or meme, but it does virtually nothing to resolve underlying issues, in order to prevent rapists from gaining power in the USA to begin with. In my eyes, solidarity is a more powerful tool than trying to find the true Scotsmen.
but it does virtually nothing to resolve underlying issues
The reaching out period is over. For a decade we’ve tried to get them to see reason. I’m not doing another decade. When someone won’t listen to reason, the only tool you have left in your toolbox is to cut them off to see if that’s enough of a punishment to get through to them. Being lonely and ostracized can be a catalyst for change.
solidarity is a more powerful tool than trying to find the true Scotsmen
There is no solidarity with those who support felons and rapists in order to harm others and refuse to listen to even their own family and friends. That’s just a simple fact.
It’s important to take things case by case. There are always going to be unconvincable supporters, you don’t have to waste time, mental energy and breath on them, I get that. But I think the fraction of people who voted for a rapist criminal liar because they like rape, crime and lying is small. Bigotry is more popular, yes, but I think that’s because blaming minorities is a clear and simple ‘solution’ to complex issues, and it makes it super easy for the wealth class to pit the bottom 98% against each other. Loneliness and ostracism are what primed many people in the latter half of the 2010s to be exploited by the right-wing online radicalization pipeline.
And beyond just Trump, if you take guilt by association too far and without injecting nuance, you risk letting the biggest bigots win because our prospective allies don’t have perfectly squeaky clean records.
sidenote
I’ve long noticed N. American right-wing groups will bring people on when they agree on one thing regardless of anything else, and kick them out only once they’ve outlived their usefulness in accomplishing that. N. American left-wing groups I’ve found kinda the opposite where one point of disagreement will be the first thing that gets talked about, slowing down overall action. Not all bad though, those groups end up more aligned, but smaller and less capable of mass action. I think the situation is improving overall.
I don’t fully agree. Of course it’s problematic that people voted for trump, that’s out of the question. But the question should rather be: What circumstances led to someone voting for trump?
People are actually struggling a lot and voting for the person advertising a solution can seem very attractive if you desperately need an improvement.
In the end, voting doesn’t fix the underlying system and can only achieve marginal improvements. All Parties are only managing the same capitalistic state and not changing the whole system.
Ostracizing people based on their vote is not a proper solution and will not lead to people voting for someone different. People are more likely to reinforce their existing beliefs if met with heavy resistance.
Also the party war is distracting from the actual class war.
Maybe I took the meme too seriously but I think it’s important to consider.
No War But Class War!
Edit: Maybe don’t hang out with them, but analyze the reasons that made them vote in the way they did. People who voted for trump probably have the same problems with capitalism that you do but their anger is misguided by populism and capitalist propaganda.
“Voting for the person advertising a solution” ah yes, the dude who said “Concepts of a plan” And word-salad’s his way through everything because his brain is as smooth and squishy as half-melted butter. What an excellent solution man he is.
I’m not “ostracizing people based on their votes” I’m ostracizing people who actively want to strip me of my rights, and quite possibly want to physically harm me fuck off with this “We should all be friends, it’s the only way to convince them” shit. I’d have better luck convincing a hungry polar bear I’m not food.
We all knew who trump was going into 2024. I can forgive 2016, in truth, I didn’t expect him to be as bad as he was. I can barely forgive people who voted in 2020, because by then we all knew he was a fucking idiot and people should have known better. But 2024? Nah. Fuck them. We all saw how dumb he was, we all saw january 6th, we all knew about project 2025, anything less is willful ignorance.
It’s not just a “party war,” it’s a morality war. If you voted for trump in 2024, you have zero morals, empathy, and I genuinely believe you lack the capability to participate in society in any meaningful way.
I, for one, expected 2024 Trump in 2016. At this point, I’m still paralyzed by shock that we managed to get a second chance to save the country in 2020 and completely squandered it.
I guess my perspective is slightly different as I was fresh out of high-school, looking at my first presidential election, almost no interest in politics, and my only real opinion of trump in 2016 was “dude is disgusting and a moron.”
I ended up voting third party that election, something about if third party votes were above 5% they would earn more funding or something? I was in a very blue state at the time, so I knew trump wasnt going to win my state, and I figured maybe that 5% was doable that election.
The democratic party supports the war on drugs alongside the republican party. I have lost people close to me because of tainted black market drugs of a unknown potency.
Goodbye Felicia.
Reminder that no 3rd party will control our federal goverment anytime in the remote future and probably not within your lifetime and that the Democrat party, while not perfect, is UNFATHOMABLY better at governing our nation and respecting our rights than the Republican party.
Vote intelligently.
I don’t think you are aware of how desperate a lot of people were. I know it’s easy to villainize people who want to take away the rights of people you love and yourself. My friends and me would be affected by his policy too if we lived in the US. But the people who voted for trump are still human and not evil in person. They have their own reasoning and problems, they were just convinced of the wrong target. They probably have a lot of the same problems with capitalism that a lot of people have. They just aren’t targeting capitalism but some minority or foreigners in general.
I actually live in the US. I have family that voted for him. They’re not desperate in the way you think they are. They’re all some combination of dumb, ignorant, or the worst of the bunch, the actually evil.
I tried to befriend them, to convince them that the enemy is not what they thought it was. I spent ten fucking years doing that shit. But in the end:
My cousin is dumb, he votes for trump because he thinks trump is an uneducated everyman like himself “He speaks the way I speak.”
My aunt is evil, she votes for trump because he makes her stock portfolio look good, damn the consequences “I voted for trump because we all need to vote for our own best interests.”
My grandma is ignorant, she doesn’t understand the way the world works today, things have changed too much from her generation to really grasp it “I voted for trump because the world is a scary place, and we need his security.”
All three are evil in their own way. My grandma never took the time to consider the viewpoint of others, no matter how many times she was given opportunity. My cousin never learned, or trusted in those that knew more than him on a subject. My aunt, the most vile of them all decided that she didn’t care enough about her kids and grandchildren, and that the bottom line was all that mattered.
There is no convincing these people. As another commenter said? Fuck em.
One day they will wake up, and realize that actions had consequences, and it’s far too late to take it back.
I know exactly these issues myself. It’s the same in Germany with AFD voters.
Why do you think your family believes that way? Do you think they were born that way/ born evil?
Raised in an evil culture. Christian Nationalism, White Supremacy, prosperity gospel, the Anerican myth of rugged individualism, there are many avenues but the main pressure is the same: they value only themselves or people closely aligned with them and believe personal gain is the most important goal. Or they’re the delusional cultists, the true believers that genuinely think they’re fighting a war for God in some way.
Raised in an evil culture is how most Republican voters end up being Republican voters. But I’d like to add that being raised in an evil culture is not an excuse for remaining evil as an adult.
Part of adulthood is accepting responsibility for your character and not continuing to blame your faults on your upbringing.
There are many people raised in religious households that grow up to not be religious. And religions are an EXTREMELY entrenched form of cult culture. So it’s totally possible to break free of programming.
I just don’t want to give conservatives an easy out to blame others. They don’t deserve it.
And that’s why I think people are able to convinced by discussion. It might take some time and it might be difficult but they are still human at the core. I don’t think people like this should get a platform but it is necessary to push against the spread of hatred and the deeply ingrained propaganda. It is difficult but not impossible.
It’s been over a decade and they’ve had mountains of facts dumped on them and it hasn’t moved the needle. The only thing that’s changing them is if they end up being personally affected by their own actions. And even then, they tend to just default to blaming liberals/democrats for their self-induced problems.
And? Plenty of irredeemably evil humans have existing throughout human history.
Not worth the effort. Fix their children by supporting public education and fighting the sources of propaganda. Push for laws about what is allowed to be said in the news, punish lying or fraud.
Changing the mind of an adult who is not trying to change is close to impossible. One of the first steps in breaking indoctrination is cutting off from the source and any connected social ties or they’ll just get dragged back in. And those social ties make them feel good, they feel validated and important when their community agrees. You can’t fight that.
Yeah, there’s really no getting better until we clean up our media. You can’t have a functional democracy while having unrestrained propaganda networks. The two simply can’t co-exist.
Yep, it’s frustrating, having had plenty of theological and ethical debate in my life was enough to convince myself to not bother talking to these people, it’s an act of futility, a waste of your own good time
Democracy requires education / free press, modest prosperity and peace. We don’t have those any more. A socialist slogan: fascism is capitalism in decay. Also let the system and institutions rot. We know our election systems are garbage.
If you divide the population into a smarter and a stupider half (however you want to define that) the stupid half will always be easier to manipulate, distract, less able to foresee and understand the consequences of policy and decisions. Is it their fault that we let them be brainwashed with evil ideology and religion?
Advertising / public relations / brainwashing is a technology that significantly advanced. We didn’t. Those with money or power can hire the smartest people to make fool of us all.
Hierarchical systems require people to advance and each step filters who advances and who doesn’t. Instead of a meritocracy, it leads to selfish people who are solely focused on advancement at the expense of anything else like empathy, loyalty, education, truth etc. If you can’t play this game you loose. The larger the hierarchy, the worst scum you end up with at the top. And those at the top set the rules of society.
Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. But the vast majority of people still believe in (neo)liberalism and the free market to somehow “as if by invisible hand” guide humanity towards a brighter future. Trump voters are stupid, agreed, but there is a lot of stupidity left for the rest of them.
Exactly, we got trump because he’s the president we deserve. I can’t count on one the amout of people i see throwing trahs out their window while driving, they dont give a fuck about this country at all, they just pretend to because it helps them make more money. If trump actually brings this country down, they’ll just fucking move to another country they own property in and cry about how the democrats ruined america.
You don’t even live in the US, whereas most of us here know or are closely related to people who voted for him.
But sure, you probably know better.
I’ve lived through the conditions that produced MAGA, and I honestly could not care less if they felt “desperate.” A lot of us have felt desperate, it doesn’t excuse literal fascism.
I’m sure slave owners felt desperate when Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s about how much I care about MAGA voters’ claims of “desperation”.
By the way, try actually finding out specifically what those people mean and you’ll eventually realize that it comes down to ignorance, racism and xenophobia.
They became “desperate” after a black man was elected president twice.
But why do you think they are xenophobic or racist?
Doesn’t that stem from nationalist and capitalist propaganda.
The notion that one state is better that the others exists everywhere and reinforces the nationalism very heavily. This is just the basic competitiveness of capitalism, that has its roots everywhere.
All these issues can be attributed to the capitalist nature of the state
Because they are too weak, stupid, and proud to end the cycle of abuse.
It’s like a man (or woman) beating the shit out of their child and then shrugging and saying “Well it was done to me”.
Not sure how I can say this more clearly. American conservatives are bad people.
I’m done caring why
It’s because Europe and pacific Asia were humbled by the war. They know (culturally through their grandparents) that tyranny is not to be fooled around with. In the US we never got that lesson, in fact the war pulled us out of the Great Depression. So for our grandparents the lesson was war saved the economy and led to the US becoming the richest country in the world.
That’s why we’re so war hungry culturally as a people, we don’t know a war that was actually devastating for us, even WW2 was fought overseas not a single bomb was dropped on the mainland.
So now we have a population of morons who think war is good.
I thinks it’s also due to a lot of US exceptionalism propaganda. The US was always depicted as the savior or protector of the world. This has been ongoing for a long time, whicg is why the propaganda is soo deeply engrained in people’s minds and it is a lot work to actually get through to people affected by it.
It’s similar in Germany and a lot of the western world. Foreign countries are seen as uncivilized and people are only seen as humans if they can provide value to the nation. Propaganda is difficult to work against. Some people are easier to reach though and that shows that it is not impossible to reach people.
Yes but I think the lesson of WW2 shook the German people, like it did the Brits and French. Imagine a colonizer like Germany but didn’t really suffer much during WW2. That’s the US.
Not an excuse. Never will be.
Umm…yeah.
Sure are. They are evil humans. And they’ve proven that through their actions for a decade now. Well, more if you’ve been paying attention, but the last 10 years are a pretty good example.
Their reasoning is not based in reality. They have been shown this repeatedly and have chosen to disregard.
The time for making excuses for them is over.
My parents are comfortably retired and voted for Trump purely because Fox News (and possibly right-wing local TV news) brainrot told them to. Not even social media, which they are too computer-illiterate to use! Just TV!
(Well, maybe my dad’s church, too. I’ve never gone so I have no idea what they’re telling him. All I know is that him being more religious than my mom correlates with him being more brainwashed…)
Anyway, the point is that they definitely don’t have “desperation” as an excuse. Every single “problem” they have is either imaginary or actively being worsened by Trump and the Republican Party.
Hell, if you ask my mom why she didn’t vote for the Democrat (any of 'em, take your pick from Kamala Harris to Al Gore) it’s always some bullshit about how she didn’t like their tone, or something. She probably couldn’t name an actual policy position of theirs at gunpoint! She just sits around watching TV news and hates who the TV tells her to hate.
My Southern family are not desperate, they’re just the kind of Christian that cares more about abortion than anything else on Earth and are constantly plugged into the right-wing media propaganda.
My Eastern Washington family are not desperate, they’re just the special kind of entitled that refuses to accept that their wealth (banking and farming) came off the backs of others.
Tons of people voted for Trump because they’re bigots and have let themselves be convinced that their fantasy version of the country is being attacked by whatever group or groups they hate.
Religion is a similar but different issue which is very difficult to discuss about as it is often deeply engrained in people’s minds.
Rich people is kinda the opposite of what I was talking about. They often actively profit from trump or are not affected in the slightest. It is not the group we should be focused on convincing as they aren’t really workers.
People aren’t bigots out of nowhere. They have real worries but their anger is misguided by the ultrawealthy so they don’t lose their power.
The voters shouldn’t be the enemy. They are mostly victims of propaganda. The system needs this propaganda so few people can continue to profit. This applies to all of the categories above except if your relatives are part of the ultrawealthy.
I love blaming shit on the ultrawealthy, but I think I’ll draw the line at bigotry. If someone is an adult and a bigot, that’s all on them.
Counterpoint: fuck 'em.
That is not how we will get past capitalism. We need to pick up people where they are. You don’t need to agree but you need to take problems and worries seriously to actually convince someone. Antagonizing only reinforces current opinions.
No, fuck them.
That’s a lot of words for “I will be hanging out with Nazis”.
Maybe not hanging out but at least trying to understand the reasons that led to the vote. I myself don’t have friends that voted AFD but I think they have a lot of the same problems that I do. Their anger is just very misguided.
I’m telling you, we are past that.
That period is over.
They’ve lost the benefit of the doubt.
It’s possible to both understand the reasons why the US election went the way it did, and hold individuals accountable for their behaviour, including the way they voted.
I have a lot of compassion for people who get so caught up in the right wing propaganda machine that they’re willing to vote against their own best interest out of fear. I can’t even begin to imagine living in so much terror of some nebulous other that I end up thinking it’s okay to round up immigrants, bomb children, and criminalize people’s gender identities. It sounds like a horrible way to exist in the world. I am so very angry at the systems that have allowed things to get this bad. That doesn’t change the fact that those individuals are still responsible for the harm their actions - and votes - have caused, and people who are willing to throw away basic human decency like that rather than put the work in to examine their own biases are not welcome anywhere near my life.
In other words, causing harm out of misguided anger does not diminish the harm done. So, fuck 'em. It’s not my job to play nice in the hopes that they’ll have some come-to-Jesus moment.
Right? Why are people trying to make excuses for grown ass adults who have been ignoring a tsunami of facts for over a decade in favor of voting against the best interests of others AND themselves?
I’m old enough to have been around watching conservatives/regressives vote against their own best interests for quite some time, but it’s gotten a whole lot more gross over the last decade.
I will never view conservatives as good people and I’m glad more people are starting to reach that same conclusion. The masks are off now. We’re seeing what they’re really about.
voting for a rapist tells you one or two things, you are one yourself, or you support rape. theres no in between of maybes.
how about the people who worry about all those who voted for a rapist. Thrice?
Propaganda and bigotry.
And there’s no excuse for either. Obviously there’s no excuse for bigotry, but even propaganda has no excuse. You gonna believe everything the commercials on TV tell you your entire life? You gonna send that Nigerian prince your entire life savings? Sounds like a you problem if so.
Any adult making an effort to behave responsibly isn’t going to fall for propaganda, especially the dogshit stupid propaganda the right cooks up. Especially over the course of a decade as the rest of the world dumps mountains of facts on you to let you know you’re falling for propaganda.
Voting can fix the underlying system, marginally, over time. The catch is that the populace can’t be stupid and has to vote intelligently over time to allow that to happen. Democracy can’t be a well oiled machine if stupid people are gumming up the works.
That’s entirely dependent on the situation. You gonna go back in time and choose not to ostracize German citizens that supported the Nazi regime? Enough time has passed since Trumpism became a thing and enough events have unfolded and enough facts have come to light NOT to ostracize the people that keep supporting it. This isn’t funny meme shit anymore. Our economy is tanking, our rights have been infringed, our international reputation has been tarnished, American citizens have been illegally detained and EXECUTED, etc etc etc.
Not sure how many conservatives (regressives) you’ve interacted with. I’m here to assure you that no interaction with them, however nice or mean, is going to change their allegiance. If that was going to happen, it already would have. I’ve been watching conservatives for decades now and they will not change. I guarantee it. The only situation in which they’ll change is if their decisions start SERIOUSLY backfiring and significantly affecting them personally. And even then, they’ll resort to blaming liberals/democrats before they acknowledge their own mistakes and change themselves.
There’s absolutely a class war. But when one party is REPEATEDLY AND OPENLY VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION in favor of a felon rapist traitor, then the party war is very much a real thing and a real threat.
Look, the Confederacy was a real threat to the United States of America. Now conservatives/regressives are. They must be dealt with and the nice way isn’t going to work. Clearly.
I’m so fucking sick of this motto. Intersectionality exists and should be more recognized by those on the left.
That’s not what the motto means though. Women’s rights and Minority rights are restricted because of capitalism. They have a purpose in the capitalistic world. The class war fights these issues as well. At least in the proper marxist theory.
Yeah Cesar Chavez is a shining example, isn’t he?
The left’s outright support of Platner certainly isn’t an indicator of issues on the left with this, is it?
I’ve heard that motto used to dismiss and downplay concerns about gender and equality so many times now.
I don’t know Chavez or Platner right now, sorry.
I know what you are talking about, I hate that too. Actual marxist theory attributes gender and equality to the class issue as well, which is why gender and equality are part of the class war. They should be viewed as one issue and not seperately. There won’t be gender equality before there is class equality.
Edit: looked up Chavez. I do agree with his tactics. The owning class has nothing without workers.
I think supporting Platner is a positive sign as it shows that the root cause is still visible.
Edit 2: I was not aware of these two people and their crimes. I only support their movements but not their personal actions. I should’ve researched them more.
Cesar Chavez is a rapist and pedophile.
Platner is also a rapist.
Good to see you upholding Class War over Gender War though and pretending like they’re the same.
I think the union work actually helped with gender issue as equal pay and better pay helps a lot with emancipation.
It is still just as problematic, if he personally is an abuser
You believe that it’s good to look the other way on individual crimes if it benefits the working class?
This is exactly what I mean when I’m sick of hearing that motto being shoved everywhere there’s concerns that aren’t focused strictly on working class issues.
No, I think that the people commiting these crimes should lose their position of power.
The unionization should continue though even though it was started by a criminal.
The crimes should be spoken about and addressed properly.
No war but class war! So I’m going to protect the class traitor that gave all the power to the Epstein class!
Not protect but analyze and understand. Then you can actually fight the issues
I agree with you. Trump and his White House cronies are corrupt, vile and self-serving criminals, rapists and bigots, but the fact they are in powerful office positions is a mere symptom of a wider problem with the American political, educational, media, and economic system.
Vowing to disassociate with anyone who voted for Trump and other rapists might make a good social media post or meme, but it does virtually nothing to resolve underlying issues, in order to prevent rapists from gaining power in the USA to begin with. In my eyes, solidarity is a more powerful tool than trying to find the true Scotsmen.
The reaching out period is over. For a decade we’ve tried to get them to see reason. I’m not doing another decade. When someone won’t listen to reason, the only tool you have left in your toolbox is to cut them off to see if that’s enough of a punishment to get through to them. Being lonely and ostracized can be a catalyst for change.
There is no solidarity with those who support felons and rapists in order to harm others and refuse to listen to even their own family and friends. That’s just a simple fact.
It’s important to take things case by case. There are always going to be unconvincable supporters, you don’t have to waste time, mental energy and breath on them, I get that. But I think the fraction of people who voted for a rapist criminal liar because they like rape, crime and lying is small. Bigotry is more popular, yes, but I think that’s because blaming minorities is a clear and simple ‘solution’ to complex issues, and it makes it super easy for the wealth class to pit the bottom 98% against each other. Loneliness and ostracism are what primed many people in the latter half of the 2010s to be exploited by the right-wing online radicalization pipeline.
And beyond just Trump, if you take guilt by association too far and without injecting nuance, you risk letting the biggest bigots win because our prospective allies don’t have perfectly squeaky clean records.
sidenote
I’ve long noticed N. American right-wing groups will bring people on when they agree on one thing regardless of anything else, and kick them out only once they’ve outlived their usefulness in accomplishing that. N. American left-wing groups I’ve found kinda the opposite where one point of disagreement will be the first thing that gets talked about, slowing down overall action. Not all bad though, those groups end up more aligned, but smaller and less capable of mass action. I think the situation is improving overall.
Exactly, their decisions might be bad/invalid but their problems are real
When I have problems I don’t default to being a bigot and hurting others.