Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[gondrin]

In addition, if women's rights, trans rights, Project 2025/Agenda 47 or the fact that he'll immediately hand Ukraine to Russia and help Israel pound Palestine to dust aren't enough to get people to vote for Harris, those people are already beyond saving and more of Trump's crimes coming to light isn't going to change that. "But Harris' messaging!" Nah, if anyone is hung up on that they can *redacted* with a *redacted* until the handle falls off. Those protest votes/abstentions worked wonders (/s) in 2016 and they'll work equally as well now.

I am going to say this knowing full well what it portrays. The average US voter doesn't actually care what happens to Ukraine nor Gaza. To the average US citizen, they are foreign countries and what happens there has no effect on their daily lives. Most will say they are sad to see what is happening there but, in the end, they are more worried about their daily lives instead of the lives of people that are thousands of miles away.

However, the right to abortion, trans rights, restriction of voting and the like does actively affect them or someone they directly know. And they will vote based on that.

[Breccia]

They just come up, they want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings

Video shown here.

You know the deal. @tehdang you have proven you view things Trump says and does positively and this is a fast-moving thread. Also, by virtue of refusing to answer an earlier challenge, you have admitted you find Donald Trump sexually attractive, at least by comparison, so this should increase the draw of commenting. Do you believe, as Trump says he believes, that Democrats want "no more cows"? And "no windows in buildings" which actually sounds a lot less likely, but Trump said it, it's your job to defend or refute it not mine.

This is a holiday weekend, so, I'll give you 72 hours. After which, the only safe assumption -- since you are a known Trump supporter -- if you refuse to dissent, is that you agree.

[Paranoid Android]

Inconsolable progressives aren't keeping Democrats out of office. They're largely in blue states anyway, which is partly why the DNC doesn't give a fuck about them. It's the fact that most Democrats are white and middle to middle-upper class. They're not significantly impacted by Republican social bullshittery. Until the Republicans start really fucking around and America is left to find out, they're unmotivated to vote.
.

Very much agree here with this statement. Progressive, Left; whatever we call them are such a small part of the Democrats. Bernie has some movement in 2016, largely through Progressive Populism, the opposite of Trump's populism. Dems for most part are don't care or believe they need a progressive movement, except in social issues, but I can even start to criticize this with Harris.

MLK had a critique on the "white Liberal" and you get somewhat to that point. Basically if the white Liberal doesn't want big or progressive changes not much will happen. Yes, this doesn't affect them in most part, which is why I would say the larger population don't care if we have a sort of "soft fascism". No white person is going to be asked for identification for a US citizen.

Notably, this is the same socio-economic slice of the Republicans who tend to switch sides, who while actively supporting Republicans on social issues, get pissed when Republican bullshittery starts impacting their wallets.

It's why every goddamn election cycle after a Democrat has been in office, Democrat turnout plummets. Then after 4 years (if the Republicans are really putting their backs into fucking over America) or 8 years (when the sheer incompetence of their inability to govern can't be mitigated anymore) you see HUGE spiked in Democrat turnout.

In short for me Democrats run just as an opposition party. Meaning they wait until the Republicans eff up so much people look to them as the alternative. While Republicans push outwardly crazy ass shit, they engage their base and are start getting the reactionaries, who almost always go right to their party.

Democrats could probably stay in office forever if they started, by-and-large, giving a shit. Progressives could help by dragging the party left in left-leaning areas, which will ripple out to the rest of the country over time. But ultimately they're not voting in large enough numbers in decisive-enough areas to really make or break Democrat elections

Yes. The critique of mine is Democrats sticking to Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism is not giving the voters a choice much from Republicans. Worse I believe is eventually the "business as usual" the past 40 years of least is killing the working class. As noted it is easier to accept the Right of blaming people and stoking fear where these workers become reactionary. Simply; It's easier to blame someone, than trying to explain why the system is to blame.

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The ballot box is blind.

If they're voting Republican, they're actively making the system worse, and if they know it, that's worse than the being legitimately deluded.

Voting isn't about you. Putting your personal interests ahead of society's is just sociopathic evil. You're willing to burn down an orphanage if you get $20 for doing so.

Though I will agree with you the "left wing" voters who won't vote for a Harris or Biden because they're "not progressive enough" are basically just closet Republicans themselves. Actively working against their supposed interests and helping Trump win. They're literally where the expression "cutting off your own nose to spite your face" comes from. That or they're accelerationists, who're actively hoping to bring about the end of modern American (or global) society with the hope they'll be the ones that get to rebuild a better one out of the ashes. You know, people who want to set fire to every orphanage and toast marshmallows on the corpses of those children because a world with fewer orphans is "better". Again, just straight evil. As much as I'll argue that the USA may be a failed experiment and balkanizing it into two or more new countries along red/blue state lines could work, I'm not arguing for burning the country down to get there, just negotiation and Congressional debate, along with essentially an Amendment process.

I understand your pragmatism here, but most people are going to vote for self interest.

I'm sorry I don't get these forums wishing(?) people vote for the interest over the country but not their everyday interests. So going off my tangent here; I rage against the general voter all the time on their logic. I have enough posts in here, about even voting against their self interest. In short if people have not had one of the parties help them then they are not going to turn out.

Back to what I already posted but it's easier for the Right to turn and get the reactionary people then trying to explain how we need to fix the system. I mean we have seen this throughout Europe now, Argentina and other countries.

The Left burning the house down to prove a point is madness. Idk how much again we can believe the Left, Progressive have that much influence on the Dems or what I feel the Dems just don't give a bleep about progressive ideas.

So is not voting the only power these groups have? I mean a big critique is the Democrats still have to much money interest of helping the rich, corporation than the middle class. The policies pitched by Harris have been the bare minimum and I'm not yelling some Communist Manifesto here, just taxing rich, workers rights, housing w/o neo-lib policies, etc.

[Gorsameth]

The far right saw a black President and got off their butts and voted, this resulted in the tea party and Trump effectively staging a hostile takeover of the Republican party.
The progressive left sees the country slide towards fascism and complain on the internet about how life is unfair.

The Tea Party showed how a minority group can force themselves upon a party. They handed progressives a clear blueprint of how to operate, problem is progressives can't be arsed to go out and vote.
So why should Democrats care?

[Endus]

I understand your pragmatism here, but most people are going to vote for self interest.

I'm sorry I don't get these forums wishing(?) people vote for the interest over the country but not their everyday interests. So going off my tangent here; I rage against the general voter all the time on their logic. I have enough posts in here, about even voting against their self interest. In short if people have not had one of the parties help them then they are not going to turn out.

Oh, I'm aware they're going to vote their self-interest.

I was simply laying out that doing so means they are morally and ethically bad people by pretty much any reasonable moral philosophy. They deserve open and public condemnation for their lack of basic empathy and compassion, even if it's indirect due to the privacy of the ballot box. They should feel shame for their decisions. They may be incapable of feeling shame, but that's just underscoring my point.

Same for accelerationists, who seek to inflict intentional harm on the masses out of their personal sense of anger. They're bad people. Because they want to inflict harm upon innocents; this isn't complicated or some deep philosophical weirdness or something.

Calling bad people out for being shitty human beings is a necessary component to effecting meaningful change over time in the electorate. You might not change them, but you can probably change their kids.

[Malkiah]

The Tea Party showed how a minority group can force themselves upon a party. They handed progressives a clear blueprint of how to operate, problem is progressives can't be arsed to go out and vote.

not sure i follow this, because the Democrats are a conservative party... so why do they care about progressives in the first place?
(i don't mean "conservative" in a pejorative sense, but in a classic definition of conservative government - staid, status-quo, responds to current events but cautiously, deals with social issues but slowly, etc)

"progressives" in the strictest sense have no voice in US politics, no representation, and also little to no relevance as either a cultural force or as a voting bloc.
what the last 50 years has taught us is that if you identify a group of people that are almost entirely apolitical (as the religious right was prior to the late 70s) and make a political party based solely on catering to that subgroup of people, that subgroup of people will end up shaping the policy and political actions of that party.

why would the democrats be interested in learning that lesson or caring?
sure, they could pivot to actively courting progressive interests, but there's waaaaaaaaaaaay less people who are aggressively liberal to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you than there are people who are aggressively religious to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you.
the US is a fundamentally regressive country, it's baked into the core of the cultural zeitgeist so deep it'll probably never come out without a drastic redefinition of the country via something like a huge ground war or complete economic and social collapse.
there is currently no research that i'm aware of to suggest that there is an untapped voting bloc of progressive idealists large enough to enable a political shift.

[Elegiac]

not sure i follow this, because the Democrats are a conservative party... so why do they care about progressives in the first place?
(i don't mean "conservative" in a pejorative sense, but in a classic definition of conservative government - staid, status-quo, responds to current events but cautiously, deals with social issues but slowly, etc)

"progressives" in the strictest sense have no voice in US politics, no representation, and also little to no relevance as either a cultural force or as a voting bloc.
what the last 50 years has taught us is that if you identify a group of people that are almost entirely apolitical (as the religious right was prior to the late 70s) and make a political party based solely on catering to that subgroup of people, that subgroup of people will end up shaping the policy and political actions of that party.

why would the democrats be interested in learning that lesson or caring?
sure, they could pivot to actively courting progressive interests, but there's waaaaaaaaaaaay less people who are aggressively liberal to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you than there are people who are aggressively religious to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you.
the US is a fundamentally regressive country, it's baked into the core of the cultural zeitgeist so deep it'll probably never come out without a drastic redefinition of the country via something like a huge ground war or complete economic and social collapse.
there is currently no research that i'm aware of to suggest that there is an untapped voting bloc of progressive idealists large enough to enable a political shift.

Say you don’t know what a big tent party is without saying it, lmao.

[Malkiah]

So is not voting the only power these groups have? I mean a big critique is the Democrats still have to much money interest of helping the rich, corporation than the middle class. The policies pitched by Harris have been the bare minimum and I'm not yelling some Communist Manifesto here, just taxing rich, workers rights, housing w/o neo-lib policies, etc.

It's an interesting conundrum from a political/philosophical sense, and how it all ties into voting and what is 'owed' or expected.

Like, suppose you're someone who has very strong beliefs and morals that housing should be a basic human right of existence, that the concept of "earning a living" is inherently disgusting, and that the human addiction to food and shelter should not be weaponized against them for profit.
Say for example that is the highest level moral imperative to your mind, and that sure you care about other things in the abstract (gay rights, abortion, minorities, equality, etc etc) but none of that actually impacts you personally or anyone you know, and on the whole you consider these things to be secondary social problems compared to the greater fundamental issue of the core basics of the human condition.

On that scenario, which US political party do you turn to?
(hint: neither)

All you're left with are self-satisfied dickheads bloviating on how you are a "moral evil" is you don't vote for democrats, and despite what some idiots think that isn't a terribly compelling antic.

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Say you don’t know what a big tent party is without saying it, lmao.

... what?
i'm not entirely certain you understand either of the posts that you're responding to, since my entire point is literally that "big tent" is why the whole tea party tactic won't work on democrats.

[Shadowferal]

not sure i follow this, because the Democrats are a conservative party... so why do they care about progressives in the first place?

That depends on the country you live in.
The conservative party is represented by Republicans under Donald Trump. Refer to "Project 2025."

[Malkiah]

That depends on the country you live in.
The conservative party is represented by Republicans under Donald Trump. Refer to "Project 2025."

i disagree, but that's a matter of semantics.
republicans are a regressive party, and the term "conservative" is as misused in describing republicans as the term "woke" is misused in describing anything other than black folks being aware of themselves within the broader context of US society... i mean, if one is inclined to get technical about definitions, but again this is semantics here.
i guess you could say republicans are Conservatives (US-specific term) while democrats are conservatives (political-general term).

by the classical definition of conservatism, a political party is one that opts for a conservative approach to governance, and that is precisely what democrats are.
it's not a bad thing, like i said i'm not using that in a pejorative sense. democrats are IMO a legit awesome conservative party, they are precisely what any country should hope for in a conservative party: they address real issues in a timely manner, but are slow to propose radical change and try to implement fixes for social problems in the most minimal way possible. that's a good thing for society to have, so long as the other half of the political structure is an attempt to make radical changes to the way things work in order to make large scale improvements to civilization.

the problem in the US is that you have a good and proper conservative party, and a radical activist regressive party.

[Gorsameth]

not sure i follow this, because the Democrats are a conservative party... so why do they care about progressives in the first place?
(i don't mean "conservative" in a pejorative sense, but in a classic definition of conservative government - staid, status-quo, responds to current events but cautiously, deals with social issues but slowly, etc)

"progressives" in the strictest sense have no voice in US politics, no representation, and also little to no relevance as either a cultural force or as a voting bloc.
what the last 50 years has taught us is that if you identify a group of people that are almost entirely apolitical (as the religious right was prior to the late 70s) and make a political party based solely on catering to that subgroup of people, that subgroup of people will end up shaping the policy and political actions of that party.

why would the democrats be interested in learning that lesson or caring?
sure, they could pivot to actively courting progressive interests, but there's waaaaaaaaaaaay less people who are aggressively liberal to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you than there are people who are aggressively religious to the point of becoming apolitical that you can sway to vote for you.
the US is a fundamentally regressive country, it's baked into the core of the cultural zeitgeist so deep it'll probably never come out without a drastic redefinition of the country via something like a huge ground war or complete economic and social collapse.
there is currently no research that i'm aware of to suggest that there is an untapped voting bloc of progressive idealists large enough to enable a political shift.

The Democratic party doesn't have to care, you force them to deal with it by voting in your own candidates.

The GOP didn't care about the far right beyond lip service until they forced themselves into power via the tea party and now the freedom caucus. They actually got off their ass and voted and forced the party to shift to the right (so far right they are now openly fascist...). Progressive voters could, in theory, do the same tot he Democratic party. But it requires them to get off their ass and vote in progressive candidates. That the Democratic party doesn't care about progressives has no bearing on this, they have no control over who enters their primaries.

[Malkiah]

The Democratic party doesn't have to care, you force them to deal with it by voting in your own candidates.

The GOP didn't care about the far right beyond lip service until they forced themselves into power via the tea party and now the freedom caucus. They actually got off their ass and voted and forced the party to shift to the right (so far right they are now openly fascist...). Progressive voters could, in theory, do the same tot he Democratic party. But it requires them to get off their ass and vote in progressive candidates. That the Democratic party doesn't care about progressives has no bearing on this, they have no control over who enters their primaries.

well yes, that isn't in question - at issue is whether or not there are enough "progressive" people in that category in the US to have the numbers required to be able to enact such a thing, which is something i think is very much in doubt.
that's why i talked about the US cultural landscape, i legit don't know that there is a sufficient amount of otherwise apolitical progressive idealists who could in theory band together to shape the democratic party.

[Jastall]

The Democratic party doesn't have to care, you force them to deal with it by voting in your own candidates.

The GOP didn't care about the far right beyond lip service until they forced themselves into power via the tea party and now the freedom caucus. They actually got off their ass and voted and forced the party to shift to the right (so far right they are now openly fascist...). Progressive voters could, in theory, do the same tot he Democratic party. But it requires them to get off their ass and vote in progressive candidates. That the Democratic party doesn't care about progressives has no bearing on this, they have no control over who enters their primaries.

There are far more far right-people in the US than there are far-left ones, tho. That's a big reason why it won't happen.

[Captain N]

There are far more far right-people in the US than there are far-left ones, tho. That's a big reason why it won't happen.

I once had that very comparison laid out like this. The United States has more people willing to kill women for the sake of a fetus than it does in making sure everyone can go to the doctor. The modern Republican Party just keeps making that seem more and more truthful.

[PhaelixWW]

I once had that very comparison laid out like this. The United States has more people willing to kill women for the sake of a fetus than it does in making sure everyone can go to the doctor.

I mean... that's not true.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I understand your pragmatism here, but most people are going to vote for self interest.

Except they don't actually vote for self-interest. They will sometimes vote for what they think is their self-interest....but that isn't necessarily the same thing.

They will vote vote for someone that will cut taxes without considering what those taxes are paying for.

They will vote because they've been told to be afraid of something that isn't actually a real problem.

They will vote to deny or remove the rights of others even though it doesn't affect them at all.

[Woodtable]

This kind of edgelordy doomerism is endlessly and stupidly naive. Will it matter in the macro sense? No, it's hardly going to shift the needle.

But this is an election, where "barely shifting the needle" can still have a massive impact on a close race.

I shouldn't have to keep posting examples of where a shift of even 1%, and even just from voting to not voting, or from not voting to voting, would have changed the result of an election.

Every bit helps, and this bit is "free", no pandering to undecideds involved. If you think I'm not going to cheer an unforced error by the fascist shitstain who's threatening to be our next President, you should probably think again.

Buddy, its been over a decade of this nonsense with Trump. The fact its this close after everything he did leaves me a loss for words.

[Benggaul]

Buddy, its been over a decade of this nonsense with Trump. The fact its this close after everything he did leaves me a loss for words.

The dirty little secret is that it's almost always close if you want to dive into the numbers and cherry pick for as far back as you care to. The caveat to that that some people seem to enjoy ignoring is that the notion of "if only this candidate had catered more to these people, they would have swung that 1% and won!" is a fucking fiction. The needle is almost never "barely moving". It isn't moving at all. People aren't changing their minds on who to vote for in the months before the election; they've known for at least a year. They know every election long before Election Day comes around. There is, however, a subsection who are changing their minds on whether to vote at all--and quite frankly fuck them if they couldn't be bothered until this point.

Voter registration is picking up! Great! Where the fuck were they before Harris took the nom or Swift finally opened her mouth? They weren't all underage. The answer is simple and it's stupid and they don't deserve even a fucking "I voted!" sticker for finally doing the bare minimum. The answer is: they didn't think it affected them personally so they didn't care.

[PhaelixWW]

The needle is almost never "barely moving". It isn't moving at all.

Doubling down on the ignorance. Weird flex, but okay.

People aren't changing their minds on who to vote for in the months before the election; they've known for at least a year.

People in general. A majority of people. Most people. Almost all people, probably.

But not all people.

Again, I get that you want to parade your current edgelord flair by waxing hyperbolic, but your "absolute"... isn't.

But it sure sounds nice when stated with a strident voice in an online political forum, right?

There is, however, a subsection who are changing their minds on whether to vote at all--and quite frankly fuck them if they couldn't be bothered until this point.

Or maybe "fuck all of us" if we ignore them completely. I'm not suggesting that we should pander to the borderline voters, but refusing to acknowledge the potential impact and turning up your nose at basic outreach measures is just fucking stupidly myopic.

Voter registration is picking up! Great! Where the fuck were they before Harris took the nom or Swift finally opened her mouth? They weren't all underage. The answer is simple and it's stupid and they don't deserve even a fucking "I voted!" sticker for finally doing the bare minimum. The answer is: they didn't think it affected them personally so they didn't care.

As long as they educate themselves and face that realization before the election, who the fuck cares? Your attitude is the same elitism that makes people say "I was a fan of that band when nobody knew who they were!" like they deserve a fucking prize and everyone else should be ashamed.

If you're not willing to actually fight for a better future, then at least stop standing in the way of those who will.

Just grow up.

[Fugus]

I'm TRYING to be cautiously optimistic but damn if it's not rough trying to.

My niece SAYS she is going to vote but not holding my breath and she seems to be against Trump after I had to get her to understand that it wasn't Biden that had overturned her right to her own body but the Supreme Court that was completely dominated by Republicans with Trump appointing a full third of them and bragged about overturning it. I hope she does but she isn't the most motivated to do anything. But one of her best friends is gay and is very much paying attention and is going to vote and is trying to make sure she does for both their sake. Also because they both like to smoke and know one party is trying to legalize it and one party is trying to execute people for it.

Then on the other hand I got one of my nephews who is in the Trump cult and evidently both him and his dad gets mad when you talk crap on Trump. My dad found that out when he said something negative about Trump and he got mad and left.

Then I have friends my age (~40 years old) who are also deep in the cult and one of them even said he didn't mind if Trump became a dictator when talking about it and then quickly pivoted to how "Education is indoctrinating our children" when he realized he said that part out loud. Told him he was fucking up and selling out his own kids at that point. And if he didn't believe me I fully encouraged him to fact check anything I told him.

Then I have my dad who supports Harris and plans to vote, which is good. But then when it comes to Isreal and their conflicts, he keeps pretending they are the good guys on it and all. Have gone over the history of the region with him repeatedly and he acts like he never was told it and when I called him out for me telling him the history of it repeatedly he said he didn't believe my sources at which point I told him my sources were the BBC and the Council on Foreign Relations at which point he said they might have been hacked and I had to tell him that hadn't been or at the very least not had a consecutive hack lasting months without every being fixed. He doesn't know the history of the region and is going out of his way NOT to know the history of the region. Says he hasn't heard anything about what I told him but at the same time refuses to actually look for the information claiming if it were true, the Fayetteville Observer would cover it like they would just randomly give a history lesson.

Seriously...... Why are people so damn dense that they refuse to listen and actively avoid learning?..... They don't care if they are right, they just want to THINK they are right.


Honestly, at this point, I really just want to travel and get out of this country for a while and see what the world is like outside of here in the places I have read about that rank better than us on the metrics. And maybe move eventually just to not have to deal with this crap anymore. Main thing keeping me from trying is my disabled dad would end up in a home if I tried right now and he sure as shit isn't trying to travel too. Genuinely sucks feeling like you are the smartest man in the room on subjects you really shouldn't be with others at least in the same ballpark of knowledge. But instead I am surrounded by a bunch of people too stubborn to listen and too willfully stupid to learn and would rather sell out themselves and their family pretending their right then hurting their feelings admitting they are not.

They can be a genius when it comes to telling you about sports, NASCAR, automobiles, or getting high/drunk but when it comes to important stuff they don't know, don't want to know but still want to have some heartfelt belief based on what they pretend to be instead of what is.

Edit: Sorry, just needed to vent a little bit.