It’s what the American people wanted. Let them have it.
Most of them probably don’t know the meaning of the word anyway.
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I don’t think it’s what most people wanted. I think many millions have been misled. Lots of factors in that, including the lies that were allowed to flourish and a fawning media that enabled it. On the left side, they did not get an adequate message across to capture enough hearts to keep Trump out of office, and lessons must be learned.
I am concerned for what the next four years will bring. Some of the obvious things will be Trump and his enablers getting even more wealthy and more powerful. Allies will be treated as enemies and enemies will be treated as allies. Immigrants are going to suffer, and it will be racist. Hatred will rise. Gun crime will rise. Inequality will rise. The massive debt will rise. Etc. So many bad outcomes are easy to predict.
What we don’t know is the extent to which the framework of government will be tested. In other words, can another party start to put the pieces back together in four years? Or will it be so broken that it will be beyond repair? Or maybe something in between, like it will take a decade or more to repair?
As a Brit/dual citizen living here in America, I do see how easy it is to have a pop at Americans. And yes, many of them do deserve what they will get from this. Trump is no friend to working people or the millions in the lower segment of the economy. They should have seen it coming.
But the ingredients are more complex, and in a global sense in recent years we’ve seen Brexit in the UK (similar nativist shit to what Trump preaches, and people lapped it up… against their own best interests) and a global lurch to the extreme right in a number of countries.
My hope is a modest one, that after four years it will still be repairable.
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I really have to wonder why the Biden administration waited this long to reverse Trump’s measures on Cuba. It would have infuriated the Miami Cubans, but there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell they would vote for the Democrats anyway.
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The damage of four years is very different than the damage of eight years - even with a Democratic interregnum. People who kept their heads down and tried to run the government as usual from 2016-2020 have become more visible over the past four years, and have now become targets.
God help the US if there is another pandemic or similar national-level crisis.
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It makes no sense. Especially as the designation was added so late in Trump’s term that it was clearly nothing more than a turd being dropped in the punch bowl rather than a reflection of political reality that would require some thinking to turn around.
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I think there is a lot you might reasonably argue about Trump’s appeal from this direction. But not the influence of the Broligarchy. That was overt. They inserted themselves into our politics to stand front and center pushing messages for clearly self serving ends.
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That’s a good point about 4+4 years. There’s a very real sense that in his first term Trump was just learning what he could do, what he could get away with.
As it happens the whole political system depends on goodwill and honorable people trying to do the right thing on behalf of the people they represent.
I liken the Constitution and the political process to the boxing rules established by the Marquess of Queensbury. It all works well enough if that’s how you have agreed to fight. However…
Trump will drive a truck right through the rules and norms. As we’ve seen his whole life, and in particular since his emergence as a political figure, he is above the law. Ugh.
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Yeah, lump us all in together, we’re all dumb as a fence post.
Believe me, I know we have a large class of nationalist, racist idiots, but we also have many who are already actively fighting back against what we know is coming. I am trepidatious at what these next few years will be in the USA, but I will fight for what I believe in all the way, and there are many with me.
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I apologize; it wasn’t my intention to do so. I know that there are tens of millions of Americans, who can’t stand the sight of him.
The ire and bitterness were directed at those who worship the ground he walks on and dragged everybody else down with them. They are the majority, and it is their will that speaks for the American people.
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From where most of us sit, it is hard to observe much ‘actively fighting back’. Hand-wringing to be sure, but by and large the Mango Mussolini is getting a free pass.
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Him winning again despite everything, and doing so with no technicalities or anomalies of last time and genuinely becoming more popular than ever change the political reality. That requires different tactics. I think even the people who still have the energy for the 24/7 react to everything tactics of the first term realize it was ineffective then and would be counter productive this time. I think this is where the convo between me and @SBYM last week about Cenk comes in. Is his shift a tactical reaction to Trump getting back in and being seen as completely legitimate, meaning you have to find a way to work with them if you want to push them towards your goals? Or is it a “fuck it, I give up” response to take the easy road to where the money and attention is now?
There seems to be a perspective that we need to be more responsive to what he does so we dont burn out the public the way that seems to have happened with his prior shit. So it is a case of holding fire to attack what he does rather than reacting to everything he says, and that is going to look very different. Given we are talking about the Dems here I am not confident there is going to be an effective collective response, especially given the number of them getting on board with the awful Laken Riley act.
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Not really the case. He got a very similar vote total, on a percentage basis. What changed the dynamic was the millions of registered voters who did not do their civic duty.
As to “seeing” no fighting back, it is nigh on impossible to “see” me calling Senators and representatives asking that they not confirm a number of his cabinet choices. Collaborating with other like minded individuals through various means to nonviolently wage protests and disruptions is definitely fighting back. I agree that the Democratic narrative must change, and that fight is being fought in party. Our hands may be somewhat bound, but we are doing what we can.
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https://x.com/HarrisonBecker7/status/1879669912303767579
edit
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1879921452268376393
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1879727494569623635
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I guess Trump resented Turner saying that Haitians were not in fact eating pets in his constituency.
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When does Walmart start stocking road kill?
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Heard American Idiot by Green Day on the radio this morning and remembered it was written ~20 years ago about a certain other president whom many of us found incompetent. If only we knew…(and if only 43 knew how well his legacy would age by comparison).
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It is not repairable. It will never be the same US as prior to 2016. There is a limit to how many times you can jump off a cliff without dying.
Perhaps you think this arrogant, but there is a fundamental fact and that is that the US is seen with a different lens than prior to 2016. It doesn’t matter if Democrats win the next election, as long as the other party exists and is under the influence of Nationalist populism, it doesn’t matter. And there is no sign at all that GOP will go back to conservatism. No sign at all. And then, due to to how US democracy works with it’s Two Party system, everyone will have to calculate that no promise, no pact, no deal; is permanent and that the US is fundamentally untrustworthy. Because whatever a Democrat government will do, the other party has shown they will not honour it and they will win elections. They may lose one, but the next after that, they are likely to win and so on.
You cannot repair such damage without a fundamental sociopolitical change. Without a fundamental catharsis that shatters the old and provokes a period of deep social reflection. And US and Americans being as arrogant as it is and they are (USA, USA, USA!), you will have to likely lose a large war and perhaps even be occupied by a a victorious enemy for any sort of truly deep and strictly necessary reflection to happen (because what must happen is that everyone, or almost everyone, as in 90+ percent, must agree that certain things are good and others bad and so on). Not likely in the next few decades.
Perhaps change is possible without such a catharsis and long period of national self reflection, but if so I am blind to such a posibillity and do not see how that is to come to pass.
Much more likely, everything is going to be far worse soon. Both for Americans and everyone who are their allies.
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Agree with a lot of what you say @Magnus, but I’m not convinced that the two party system is long for the USA. We still harbor some antiquated systems such as that, and the electoral college, that many here have sought to change, and depending on how things go the next four years, that change could be rung in sooner rather than later. Of course, that assumes some semblance of a republic remains after four years of the Mango Mussolini.
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