What scares me shitless is the idea that Trump is what the US is and what the US has earned. Who’s ready for that conversation?
100% this. Im German and I feel so strange that americans are choosing this guy for president. Not to be offensive, but damn.
As an American I feel that a majority of Americans loathe him. The issue lies in not all those people vote.
What scares me is that any Americans vote for him. How can you be so blinded and not see what a lying, cheating grifter that he is. The man is not intelligent, doesn’t read, is petty to a fault, vindictive, spiteful, narcissistic, nepotistic and just generally not a good person. Why would you choose that for a leader? It’s because you share those traits. That’s what scares me.
The issue lies in not all those people vote.
Partly. There’s also the issue with the electoral college, because that makes some votes worth more than others (depending on where you live).
I don’t know that they all share those traits per se, but just as damning not only to them but to our culture as well is our tolerance and even expectations that people in charge have those traits. I saw it everywhere when I lived in a deeply conservative small city, anyone with power (including company management) was beyond reproach. The status quo was defended harshly by the overwhelming majority. We have lost our values to greed by using the american dream as a trojan horse full of awful ideals.
We can’t underestimate the hate for others that is behind these votes. It started as “owning the libs” and now is pretty much evolved to “eliminate the woke trans democrats”. That’s the part that’s scaring me these days. There is no platform for running the country, it’s all just piss off or erase the other side, figuratively and literally.
No no you don’t understand, I mean, sure the media makes him seem like he has those traits, but he’s really a great guy! I mean I guess it’s been proven he has those traits but who doesn’t right? Isn’t everyone deep down homophobic and racist and misogynist themselves?
And really if you think about it, God can use anything he wants right? So why would he pick the Catholic guy out there trying to invest in America? He definitely wants the guy who most looks like my own deep down beliefs. So no matter what you say, your argument is invalid because God is on my side.
…/s in case that was needed.
deleted by creator
The crazy part is they think Biden makes the US look bad. When you present evidence to the contrary they say, "who cares what other countries think. "
My aunt thinks Jill Biden is controlling the country from the shadows and wants to run in place of Joe in 2024. We are fucked
I’d vote for Doc Biden, ngl
Yeah, I’d much rather vote for Jill than Joe.
Different strokes for different folks but I do dig her
I think it’s time to have your aunt committed
Fellow German and… yeah. People joke about the Hitler comparisons, but you won’t see us laughing. (I mean, in general, but that’s a different topic.)
You should be offensive, we deserve it.
We picked an absolute trash human as our leader, a sizeable portion of which chose him specifically because they wanted him to hurt people (see: “he’s not hurting the right people” woman.) That same group will often cite their desired outcome for any given thing is “to see liberals cry/get mad.”
Hillary Clinton made a mistake by saying it out loud, but she was 100% correct when she said a large portion of Trump supporters are “a basket of deplorables.” They absolutely are and are deserving of scorn.
I just hate how well propaganda works and how much money a random grifting asshole can make by parroting bullshit on YouTube, they boost each other and perpetuate this garbage era we’re going through…
Same here. I think this is what happens when education is underfundet. I’m happy we’re back to G9 but we should definitely pay teachers more to counteract the lack of teachers and ensure every teacher has sufficient time to do their job well.
Otherwise people cannot be taught to think critical, question “why is he saying X?” instead of just weather it is true or not. Often understanding why somebody is saying sometimg at the time they do is much more important after all.
This idea that we are under funded is not true. Per Capita we spend more than every other country on education than any other OECD country besides Luxembourg.
We are number two world wide for funds to education per capita.
Our funding is just wasted and ineffective. We have a cultural problem with education. Not a funding problem.
Yes School boards and superintendents are extremely well funded. The fact that teachers have to struggle to scrape by while at the same time funding classroom supplies out of their own money just reeks of mis-allocated misspent funds. There’s always money for another Sports program. While science technology engineering and math extracurriculars in many districts don’t exist.
It’s a perfect mirror of our diseased American culture. Where wealth and wealth alone is Merit. And those who give the least (work) get the most.
Americans aren’t. A corrupt system is.
Whatever it is, something is very wrong.
I was visiting Germany in 2016 during the spring, before the election. Several Europeans, after hearing we were from the US, asked, “What the hell is going on in your country?”
Man, we had absolutely no idea what to expect…
There are a lot of germans voting for idiots which just repeat a few Trump topics a few months later. :(
They’re called representatives for a reason.
well yeah we have an attempted fascist overthrow of our government about once every 100 years or so because we like to stay just this side of fascism on a normal day
""In a normal society, a former president—let’s call him Donald Trump—who’s been indicted three times in under four months, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to conspiracy to defraud the United States, would have absolutely no chance of ever being president again. It straight up would not be a scenario anyone would have to even contemplate; even if this individual were not in prison, the idea that they would be able to run for and win higher office once more would not compute.
But unfortunately, we don’t live in a normal society; instead, we live in a place in which millions of people not only still support Donald Trump, but grow fonder of him with every new criminal charge. Which means that, despite the aforementioned indictments*, the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted ex-president is dominating every other candidate for the Republican nomination, and currently looks to be the most likely GOP nominee in the 2024 general election. That, of course, scares the shit out of a lot of people—including, apparently, one Barack Obama. Whose fear, it has to be said, is extremely unsettling!
The Washington Post reports that during a private lunch with Joe Biden in late June, the 44th president “voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths—including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized country—underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.” According to people familiar with the conversation, “Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.”
Obama’s concerns are certainly warranted: In a New York Times/Siena poll released on Monday, Trump led his closest competition, Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 37 points. An even wilder data point that seems to validate Obama’s fears was that Trump beat DeSantis even among Republicans who believe he committed “serious federal crimes.” To be clear, that means these people believe Trump is a criminal, and want him to be president anyway.
As FiveThirtyEight optimistically notes, should Trump be convicted before November 5, 2024, voters might be less inclined to cast a ballot for him, and presumably they’d be even less so if he’s sentenced to time in prison. (In the case of the most recent indictment, two of the charges carry up to 20 years behind bars, and compared to her colleagues, the judge assigned to the case has imposed the toughest sentences for January 6 defendants.) Though, who knows!
As for a potential Trump-Biden rematch, another Times/Siena Poll poll published this week put the two in a tie, with each receiving 43% of the vote—which, for people who think democracy is worth preserving, is pretty pants-shittingly scary.
In somewhat happier news, Obama reportedly promised at the same June lunch “to do all he could to help the president get reelected.” And in a statement, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign told the Post: “President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.”
*And everything else!
Mike Pence giveth and Mike Pence taketh away
Yes, he tweeted yesterday that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President,” but then he basically suggested today that Trump was just listening to his lawyers’ advice when he tried to overturn the election—which, coincidentally, is a defense Trump is reportedly planning to use."
Honest question, how can we ever get out of this? Is it just human nature for most of the population to not have critical thinking skills? Is it possible to reach a world where the majority of people have even just a little empathy?
It’s just so sad. It’s so clear to anyone even kinda paying attention that we possess the technical capacity as a society to meet everyone’s needs and eliminate so much human-caused suffering at the detriment to absolutely nobody. We could be working toward a society where everyone has community, safety, security, opportunity. We could do so much if all we did was kind of give a shit about each other.
But no. Let’s elect the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, encourages white supremacy, committed treason, etc.
Donald Trump is just a guy. A shitty guy, but just a guy. He’s not what is ruining the world, but the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person, and fuck if that doesn’t just burn up all my hope for this world.
Education is the only way to overcome this tsunami of stupidity and misinformation. But it’s slow and costly.
Conservatives with a capital “c” are not brainwashed; they’re not tricked; they’re not progressives who’ve been misinformed. Trump is who they are and what they want.
The Dominion discovery documents demonstrate that Fox News opinion hacks changed their coverage to appease the deplorables. In the case of the big lie, it was the viewers who radicalized right media, not the other way round. Maybe it’s been that way the whole time?
The deplorables number in the millions. We need a plan to defeat and marginalize them in our democracy, not fantasies about changing what they are.
i’m not so sure it’s just evil people being evil
i think it’s just us vs them, which basically has roots in greed, power over others, etc
i think you could probably overturn those things with better instilled skills of long term planning, understanding of things like game theory (sometimes giving something to someone helps both of you! it’s not rewarding laziness: it can be selfish and humane)
i just think the reasoning here doesn’t go further than the initial emotion… there’s been no reinforcement that maybe your first reaction isn’t the right one
I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re not from middle America. It’s a lot more than just shitty people being shitty. This Cracked article from 2016 explains it quite well and I can assure you, as someone who was born and raised and now lives in Trump country, it still holds up. Add seven years of aggressive propaganda and intense radicalization and here we are now. The populist to fascist pipeline is almost complete.
Thanks for reminding me of how good David Wong used to be at capturing popular thought and placing you into a certain perspective. I might not agree with some of the generalizations of that article, but it does help understand their perspective.
the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just “shitty people voting for a shitty person” they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won’t realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
That ignorance makes them pretty shitty.
I’m not saying they’re fundamentally and permanently shitty, but they are being shitty. Refusing to become a more aware person is shitty.
They are stupid and scared and propaganda is extra powerful on people who are stupid and scared.
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just “shitty people voting for a shitty person” they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won’t realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
And that is exactly my problem with that kind of thinking (or rather: believing). How did they arrive at such conclusions? Did Trump actually do ANYTHING to make their personal lives better even for a second? How many examples are there of Mr. Ivory Tower to make even an ounce of positive difference in the lives of rural folks?
So all I can see is a gullible people following the loudest talking head on a whim. It’s really hard for me to feel pity, much less sympathy in this circumstance. Although pity is certainly appropriate.
I’m left of centre, and here’s my take - the “left” is fucking up so badly that the right is going to win.
Ever play a sport and you just trounce your opponent, but the coach says “you weren’t that good! They were just that bad tonight.”
This is the same thing. Trump and the GOP aren’t doing some amazing job of campaigning and manipulating, they’re just up against the weakest opponent who can’t stop scoring on their own fucking net.
One thing the political center lacks in America - and I say center because we don’t have a truly leftist political party - is a vision for the future. They don’t want a fundamental change in how the economy and government work, they just want to keep things steady and work around the edges.
The problem is the economy and government aren’t working for most people and most people want them replaced.
Republicans have a vision. Yeah, it’s a racist, sexist vision that will drag us back to the 1950s, but it’s a vision they can communicate.
What’s the Democrats’ vision? I don’t think it’s mine, of worker cooperatives and high speed rail and free education and universal health care, paid for by shaking Bezos and Musk upside down until no more money comes out. As far as I can tell they just want to keep things going like they have since the 90s.
And then they wonder why they can’t seem to get people to get excited to vote for them.
This is certainly a part of it. In a time when Democrats should be uniting and putting forward their strongest faces to protect democracy from the GOP, they keep engaging in political gamesmanship because ‘c’mon look at this clown, there’s no way anyone will vote for him!’
Only problem is that people have, and people could once more, put this guy in the White House. And if it happens…well, everything’s fucked.
Nationalism and nativism pops up every few generations. Always has. We beat it every time and it shuts up and the world dramatically improves for a while. As it improves, some people become nativists and nationalists, and the cycle repeats.
Google the “Know-Nothing Party.” Trump isn’t anything new at all.
Only problem is, just like a super hero, we have to win every time, and they only have to win once.
David Brooks wrote a good article in the New York Times today that tries to help shift perspectives a bit to understand this. I’d highly recommend reading it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html
That is the farthest thing from a good article that I’ve read in some time. I suppose that it does give some insights to why trumpers act the way they do, however trying to align their actions with some sort of ‘we the elitists need to do a better job at not being elitist’ mentality is rather dumb at first glance, and a bit insidious upon closer examination.
Got any free sources?
Seems 12ft.io doesn’t work for NYT, but archive.is does:
The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.
I love how Brooks can talk about class without bringing labor into it. Just a great example of liberals missing the damn point.
Then he goes on to talk about “open immigration” like that’s even close to what we have.
Too much of our democracy relies on good faith
100% true.
We also like to parrot shit like “no one is above the law” while requiring perfect situations before ever questioning elected leaders like the president when they blatantly break the law. The US has inverse responsibility, where we blame the poor for being poor and give the wealthy every possible chance to buy their way out of crimes.
Except the president and police are literally above the law with the presidential pardon and qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity isn’t abused nearly as often as people think it is.
Civil asset forfeiture is the one they really abuse
They were coming to kill him, and the spinless fuck Pence can’t even stand up for himself.
Mother must be getting tired of looking at his lack of balls when they get ready to shag.
@eurekaphoenix
Wonder how these self-same Republicans would react if Obama had operated like Trump and was being indicted for the same alleged crimes? 🤔
We all should be. But that won’t happen if people go out there and vote, godamnit.
And don’t just vote to keep Trump out.
Vote to keep him and his party out of office.
We don’t get a vote of no confidence. There’s no box to check that says “No Trump”.
Also, Hillary got more votes than Trump did, so simply having more voters on your side doesn’t necessarily mean that Trump will lose.
So … don’t vote? There absolutely is a No Trump voting option - only one - and it’s voting for Biden. There are several Yes Trump voting options: vote for Trump specifically, vote for a third party candidate, or vote for no one. It’s not that complicated.
Do the electoral map and electoral college make this difficult to achieve? Of course. But we can only win if we vote, and are guaranteed to lose if we don’t.
The fascists love voter apathy. Don’t do their job for them.
Can confirm
Hi. Big fan. Hope you are well.
Part of me, I guess the defeatist part, just kinda wants to get it over with.
I have no problem with allowing him to run (as of today) because (as of today) there’s nothing prohibiting him. I do have a problem with more than a third of this country willing to vote for him. How stupid and/or bigoted can we possibly get?
The founding fathers of this country established rules that (as of today) both ensured and prevented what’s currently transpiring. If it were the case that a subset of the government were trying to oust a political leader, The People should still have a say as to who represents them and bring “balance”(?) to the government. But also, if The People are being a bunch of idiots, the Electoral College can overrule their stupidity. It might be worth noting that the founding fathers also owned other humans as if they were livestock and didn’t believe a woman had the same rights as a man. So, to say “some mistakes were made” would be understating it. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
We gotta stop giving a fuck what the founding fathers did or wanted. They’ve been dead for centuries, they owned slaves and thought women couldn’t vote. They couldn’t even imagine drinking a baja blast or eating a pizza with fried chicken for a crust. The future is now, fuck em.
I don’t believe the constitution has worked for this country for the past 50 years (if ever) but without amending it we’re left with anarchy. I think the US is a failed experiment but I still respect its founding as a rejection of oppression. They took a big first step, every year we take more little steps, we may need to see a much bigger step in our lifetimes. They did know that things would take place that the could never imagine. This is why the federal government’s abilities are so restricted and more power is given to the states to legislate more freely. In such a connected world as we have now though, maybe states aren’t a viable solution. Or maybe they are and we just don’t know how to live in them anymore.
It’s lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium, that’s not exactly what I’d call a failure.
You say “quarter of a millennium” as if 250 years is more than 3 lifespans. The US is still a toddler compared to long-standing civilizations.
As it stands today, I don’t think our current form of government is sustainable for a vibrant and peaceful, progressive society. Although, lot of people would argue that that’s not a relevant metric. I believe a government’s job is to ensure the equity, health, safety, and prosperity of its people above all else. A lot of that is found in the constitution but modern ideas have been able to twist and manipulate those words for their own gain. Two examples; I don’t think SCOTUS has any business taking a case about abortion and I see it as a problem when five people appointed by republicans discard a portion of a constitutional amendment while four people appointed by democrats supported the full statement of the amendment. However, I still support this country’s intentional design for its people to have free and public discourse to learn from one another without stifling challenging ideas (as detrimental as that’s been recently). Our issue today is that we’re a lot of assholes who care more about personal freedoms than the good of the community. We care more about challenging ideas than considering them.
So, TL;DR, I think it’s a failure at the moment, I think it’s possible to be saved, but we have travelled well down the path where I don’t see that happening. I’m anxious to see what it takes to bring us back. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
250 years is nothing for a civilization, and within that relatively tiny frame of time, we had an all encompassing civil war. And that’s without even touching all the BS going on today.
Its not a failure in the sense that it collapsed immediately, but I’d hardly call it a rousing success
This needs to be on billboards across the country.
Seriously, I’ll never fathom why we still even talk about the outside of history classes. They were humans, and not even particularly good ones. We’re the ones who have to live with the US of today, we get to decide how it’s run
Who in their right mind isn’t? The only people that aren’t, aren’t eh brainless minions that worship the ground that coward walks on.
Vile people want a vile leader that they believe will help them remain vile without consequence. Especially vile people see the power in that, and run for government office. Or just decree they’ve got the job in this case.
I’m not scared of him being in office because I have confidence that he won’t be elected. I know the whole mindset on Reddit and Lemmy is fear of him being back in office but with more young voters who are overwhelmingly left leaning being able to vote, the Republicans shooting themselves in the foot overturning Roe V Wade, and all of the ass backwards policies they’re putting in place, more people aren’t gonna let this happen in 2024. But I understand the fear completely and it is justified
It’s good to be concerned. If that treasonous rapist trump got in again, it’s game over for freedom and democracy globally.
We tossed all that out the window in a 5-4 SCOTUS case back on December 12, 2000. Zoomers aren’t old enough to remember what living in a liberal democracy is like. And even then, I’m here to say it wasn’t exactly sunshine and roses.
Obama has the resources to flee the country. The rest of us do not. What are we as individuals do when half of the country decides to abandon democracy and the rule of law? Asking for a friend…
America is the world’s only superpower. No matter where you run, global consequence will follow if Trump is re-elected.
I think we should all be alarmed.
I hear the alarmism, but then I look at the rest of the field and… Idk, man. Am I supposed to be rooting for Ron “I’ll Slit All Your Throats!” DeSantis? Should I be holding out for Mike “God Will Make Me
KingPresident Sooner or Later” Pence? Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc? Nikki “When Can We Bomb Iran” Haley?If I’m alarmed, its only because our best bet for 2024 appears to be the incumbent Democrat, a guy who is slightly to the left and marginally more cognizant than Ronald Reagan was in 1984.
I need to hold my nose and vote for a guy who should be a republican. Who started as a republican. Who wrote the crime bill and gave us Clarence Thomas.
yeah, that guy gets my vote again. Democracy fucking rocks.
I need to hold my nose and vote for a guy who should be a republican.
You really don’t. Hold your nose and vote for some downballot primary shmucks. Presidential politics basically doesn’t matter.
Who isn’t, except the dumb nutcases.
Let’s get real for a second, Biden and Trump are both terrible choices.
Pretty much the only ray of hope I have is that Biden dies before the election so a new Obama-type can slip in there.
Like why haven’t the Democrats been looking for someone else? They’ve had like 8 years to find someone that can beat Trump.
These “nut-cases” are not going to vote for Biden. And Biden hasn’t exactly been a great President. His weakness in Afghanistan and Ukraine looks really bad. He’s going to have a near-impossivle re-election.
I mean that’s what the 2020 primary was. They found someone who could beat Trump 3 years ago.
deleted by creator
What weakness exactly are you referring to in Ukraine? What do you want him to do, declare war on Russia?
I couldn’t care more about what Obama thinks when he squandered all that hopeful energy in 2008.
Yes
we canyou could have!
I bet GWBush is scarred of it too. Even if he is a republican.
As should we all.
Yep, that’s the headline. Never change Vanity Fair.
I hope he can shit again
