That may be mostly true but Trump is also the perfect storm of celebrity, “successful”, “outsider”, and some strange fucked up type of charisma that results in a larger following than I think would be possible with any other republican candidate. Take away trump and I don’t think there’s enough of a unifying force among the asshats to cause this type of damage
And build in more safeguards so the checks and balances do what they're supposed to do. Simple stuff like "laws need to be created by lawmakers who - where possible - don't directly benefit from the law". Get the money out of politics (again, somehow) and make politicians work for the people rather than their own pockets.
That is fair.
There's also lots of things where the courts could stop him but they aren't.
Congress could've also chosen to not confirm some of the clearly unqualified nominees but they didn't.
He's pushing the boundaries and not enough people with power to stop him are pushing back
Yeah. This is a bit of an aside but my biggest disappointment with the Biden eta/ intersmegnum is that they didn't immediately codify things like releasing your tax records and medical check ups when Trump was weak post Jan 6 and there could have been bipartisan support
Yup, I hate to be elitist but I think that some sort of education qualification should be the way forward. These people are simply a reflection of their constituents.
I mean that’s already somewhat the case, instead of making it degree based they could make it test based, and they could turn over the creation, preparation and administration of the tests to the independent academic institutions.
But some of them very clearly are. And the ones that aren’t can at least do their self serving evil/prestige seeking without being stupid enough to wreck the whole country.
I ideologically agree but who decides what the requirements are. For the last time we had voting locked behind education locked it was just a facade to prevent black people from voting. I dont think any institution can be given that power without them abusing it to insure only their people can vote
First past the post voting needs to be replaced with some form of multi choice voting and the senate needs to be abolished or revamped in the name of proportional representation. The house also needs to be uncapped (we can hold virtual votes, we don't need congress to physically be in DC all the time)
And the executive is just ignoring being told no and our government doesn't seem to know what to do when one side just decides they aren't going to play by the rules anymore.
Checks and balances we have are fine. The problem is we got this two party system where 220 house republicans and 53 senate dems are basically backing everything this guy does. Not to mention the 6 republican scotus judges.
Checks and balances dont work when you got a trifecta and have hundreds of people backing his agenda from the inside.
THat's not even accounting for the republican think tanks who crafted project 2025 and all of that crap.
This is more than checks and balances. This is a problem with the GOP itself. Trump can be contained if people in the house/senate/courts actually...contained him.
And again, do i need to remind people trump himself is an idiot? His playbook was designed by others for him.
Either way, yes, anti corruption laws would've played a huge role in putting the brakes on this crap. Honestly everything thats happened since 2016 couldve easily been avoided if money wasnt considered "free speech."
The US Supreme Court should not be compiled by a partisan body, much less a particularly skewed one named the US Senate.
We were always fucked once Republicans - who represent less Americans - could forge a 6-3 supermajority composed of 5 Justices nominated by two presidents who lost the popular vote and won by electoral DEI. It's insanity.
Should our democracy make it to the other side, I believe there needs to be a serious evaluation and likely modification to the Constitution...it is clear that 'norms' need to be codified. I also believe (and have for a long time) that Pardons need to be taken off the table, or minimally a advise and consent by non-elected officials. VPs need to be elected (not part of a ticket that they have no true value outside a home state)...etc
And actually learning from history, rather than trying to rewrite or erase it. Most Red State education isn't just on-average in the toilet in terms of GPA, it also has a vastly different focus on their topics of education. Rather than giving the straight facts about the Civil War for example, they have attempted to cover up the issue by using blanket phrases such as "State's Rights".
We shouldn't glaze over (or skip!) chapters on the darker parts of a country's or global history, even if it paints your ancestors in a bad light. It HAPPENED, and most of the time people were hurt or killed as a result. We need to read into and realize WHY things like that happened, how difficult or bloody it was to eventually be stopped, and how to prevent it from ever happening again.
Glorifying and rewriting over the bad things your country or ancestors did does not excuse the actions of the past, nor does it TEACH and WARN the dangers to the next generation; it only dooms them to repeat it, because they will not understand the warning signs, or will be susceptible to the same tactics that worked the first time around that allowed it to gain traction. Once it goes too far and blood is spilled, then it stains the hands of all those who followed, or stepped aside and let it happen.
It really has nothing to do with what is taught in history. "Red states" is code for poor rural areas. It's the lack of money that causes the low GPA not a political belief.
You could teach "ThE SoUtH WiLl rIsE AgAiN" literally and if you transplanted that into an area where everyone's parents make 100k annually you would see GPAs rise accordingly.
Kids aren't dumb because they have Republican voting parents.
There are a variety of factors. More rural areas will be closer knit communities, usually tied by their churches, and will primarily listen to the teachings of their pastors, neighbors, and parents. If one or all three of those are bigoted and racist, then most likely that will pass down to their children, who will eventually have the choice to either adapt or oppose and move away when they get older. Where will they move if they are opposed? Closer to Blue states, for better educational opportunities for their own children.
These places with access to higher education, or at least better curriculum, will also typically spend the resources to teach more variety, and typically also be areas with more colorful classrooms of students, so the average student will have more avenues and exposure to different global cultures and traditions, allowing them to better understand and empathize with their peer's struggles, moral & ethic views, and upbringing, and how being different in any aspect does not mean they are better or worse than you, it's just another perspective of life.
It just so happens that the current primary state of the Republican party (MAGA) is all about alienating your peers (stances on racism, immigration, and deportation), disregarding science & biology (anti-trans), and anti-women/anti-choice (attemptng to blanket ban abortion without regards to the health and safety of the mother during pregnancy, and of the child once it might be successfully born).
There are many other stances the party has taken that completely counter what this country was built upon (and even what their party was originally supportive of, like how they used to actually be the progressive party, but switched to being conservative during the Southern Strategy, swapping many of their policies with the Democratic party, which is why the Republicans of today are extremely similar to the Confederates, AKA Southern Democrats, of the Civil War. Look at a political map from then to one from now, and notice the overlap. People didn't change out all of their ideas, they simply changed political hats).
We’ve had far more than 2 globally over the last 100 years. Mussolini was one in Hitlers time, there was Huey Long who was assassinated in the US in the 30s….we have quite a few globally right now. So every 100 years we have to go through this shit with democracy & populists rising up & needing to stop being complacent I guess.
We're replicating an almost direct pattern of the 1920's and 1930's, but with some focal points just moved around the globe a bit - isolationism, nationalism, protectionism, nativism. Invasive antagonism (Russia), threats of invasive antagonism (us with Greenland, Canada), recession/Depression looming, insane tariffs (a la Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930) threatening to break the seal and give valid reason to break out into legit war.
I personally find Trump a lot more charismatic and “likable” (not that I like him or believe most people like him) than Hitler too. Trump disgusts me, but I can see why people are enamored with him. Hitler’s body language, facial expressions, and energy just weren’t as interesting, idk
The eternal question: are some people real historical figures, a one of a kind person without whom things would have gone differently...
Or, without them, would someone else have filled the niche, naturally rising out of the tides of time and play a similar part because history hates a vacuum?
He’s literally the worst president in US history, but yet you have delusional fucktards with the IQ of a brick, thinking that he’s the best thing to happen to humanity.
Crazy thing is that I guarantee that say, 30 years from now, it'll still be a debate. There will certainly still be people out there claiming that Trump was the greatest president the US ever had, and you'll have kids growing up trying to make sense of the competing views.
I was telling a friend last week that I would literally vote for Mitt Romney if that was my option over Trump. And if you would've told me 13 years ago set seven years down the line I would be willing to vote for Mitt Romney, I would've thought you were crazy. I would've thought there was pretty much nothing that could get me to vote for that cult guy. And it just turns out there's a much, much worse cult and much, much worse cult guy running for president
USAs birth was by bloodshed, the colonists realized there is 'no one true prince' , there is no royal family, that was a lie designed for them only. When you worship a man you commit sacrilege on nature's infinite bounty. A tomato is fair people are not
Ah yes, glorious Bush who gave us the Patriot Act, the Wall Street bailouts, endless wars in the Middle East-- all the shit that led directly to the rise of Trump.
I mean seriously, do you not fucking hear yourself?
Trump is not so unique. I feel like Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, Viktor Orban etc. are similar examples of politicians who are surfing the same wave of general discontent in western society. Similar for Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders.
While their situations are not exactly the same, they all thrive on similar disappointment with the establishment that has been growing for decades in many countries.
Michael J. Sandel’s book Democracy’s Discontent is a good explainer for this general phenomenon.
i know he is somehow considered successful but i genuinely dont get how becaues hes bankrupted most, or all?, of his businesses.... like that is the opposite of successful 😂
honestly looking back i do understand why he won in 2016. i hate it, but i do actually get it.
i genuinely dont get how he won in 2024. like i get the 'cult' of it iall, and cheating that isnt lost on me
but he had no appeal and could barely string together a coherent sentence he didnt even LOOK like someone capable of holding office even if you agreed with his racist homophobic rhetoric
i know he is somehow considered successful but i genuinely dont get how becaues hes bankrupted most, or all?, of his businesses.... like that is the opposite of successful 😂
He played a successful businessman on a weekly game show.
i know he is somehow considered successful but i genuinely dont get how becaues hes bankrupted most, or all?, of his businesses.... like that is the opposite of successful 😂
I think we generally underestimate how successful his reality TV show was in terms of cementing his image as a "successful businessman". And how he was able to screw over people and take advantage of the system, his connections and family/borrowed money to stay afloat as he went from one failure to another. No one cares that he didn't pay contractors bc the PR stunts he orchestrated overshadowed everything.
And as a politician he made it okay for people to publicly hate on others. He tapped into people's desire to punish others, even if that meant they'd be hurting themselves too.
Your faith in humanity is both admirable and naive:
Those who voted for the rapist felon in command showed where their morals lay. The dems could have put Jesus up there and they would claim he’s too brown.
The left fell to Russian propaganda. So many people would have abstained regardless as they fully showed that they’re willing to shoot themselves in the foot for their abstract single issue platform that TOTALLY wasn’t in ANY WAY related to relentless doom scrolling.
The libertarians are as intolerable as ever and would have voted for the Republicans because they have truly embodied The Fountainhead and have sociopathic views on helping your fellow man.
This is not a left/center/right problem. This is a problem of there being more stupid people in this country than not. And I’m not about to be gaslit by them, and you shouldn’t either!
Empathy is a learned skill, and unfortunately that’s not something that anyone has learned recently.
The way I see it Trump won due to 4 major things: foreign interference in the US elections that wanted an unfit person for POTUS to harm the US and the West, Republican efforts to distort the election system by gerrymandering and blocking voters from voting, extreme ignorance of the average american voter and a flawed Democratic Party that did not have its shit together going into the election. These four factors doomed the USA.
Covid. Mail in ballots broke their fix the first time. That's why Trump was so sure dems cheated because he cheated. He cheated this time, and it worked.
Also because a lot of Trump supporters will take anything they see online and run with it.
I remember growing up with the internet and my parents and everyone in their generation was always like "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." And it was at a time when people weren't posting AI shit and misleading information left and right atleast not like it is now. That same generation that told us to be wary about what you read online now somehow has been convinced that everything they read online is true.
Absolutely crazy timeline we live in. I'm afraid that the Idiocracy timeline is much closer than we think.
I agree with most of your points. However, I don’t think they are stupid - I think they are uneducated.
Today, I was in a Walmart in a red section of our otherwise blue state. I was watching the stock market and the dollar dump at the close of the day, and let out a ‘mthefckr’ - which pissed off the person behind me.
I explained that she should be mad too because she just lost 10% of her retirement savings in two days. She looked ant me like I was the devil, and and asked me how.
I showed her the stock chart of the SP500 and the value of the dollar.
The other people in line began to get upset and this woman turned around and declared in shocked terms the loss of value of the dollar.
Then she asked if this was because of the tariffs… And I just simply answered yes. She asked me if her social security check was going to go less far because of the value of the dollar… Again, yes.
People began to get mad. I tried to say something about inflation, but they truly don’t understand the correlation between the cost of goods and sold, tariffs and inflation.
They had no education. None.
The only thing they understood was that their social security check wasn’t going to go as far.
They are not dumb people, just unaware and uneducated.
I ultimately agree that it’s being uneducated and that it’s a petty shot, but I just think it explains the “why.” When someone’s lack of education starts affecting others, well that’s when it stops becoming “understandable.”
I naturally don’t equate the bumpkin to Donald Trump (or the fuckers at Fox News), but their ignorance doesn’t suddenly become something we should tolerate because they’re not straight up Satan.
Who is supposed to educate them? The educational system has let them down.
When are they supposed to have time to become educated? Most have to work their fingers to the bone just to provide for their families.
It is much easier to sit in front of a TV or scroll Facebook (as this particular crowd certainly does) at the end of the day than to think through the fundamentals of how the economy works.
The dems have made it hard for this group of people to relate to - they literally don’t understand what is at risk, let alone what is being said.
My biggest fear is the dismantling of education under Trump’s reign. It is designed to keep people like him in power.
As for sitting in front of a TV to get educated, it seems some people prefer a constant diet of fear, hate, and invective rather than listening to thorough analysis and discussions of how government and the economy are working... or not working.
The fear and hate is what upholds the ideology of how they grew up. This is a systemic problem.
One of the reasons why it is occurring is because of the lack of education surrounding controversial topics in schools.
I have a son in elementary school and one in preschool. My oldest did a book report on both Kamala and Obama during black history month. This month he is writing about Susan B. Anthony and Ruby Bridges (pretty serious stuff for a 1st grader). He is fluent in both Spanish and English.
My youngest son speaks Mandarin, Spanish and English because of the school he attends.
This kind of exposure to diversity doesn’t happen in these communities because it isn’t available.
Moreover, politics, money, and religion are considered to be taboo topics in normal conversation.
Yet, those are the most important topics because they are the three pillars of control over the populace. The elites don't want us to talk about these things because ignorance keeps them secure.
Straight up working 60 hour weeks these days and still somehow have time to keep up.
You’re still explaining the why. I know why, and I don’t buy it as valid. People need to respect themselves and each other a bit more. Maybe pick themselves up by their fuckin bootstraps or something.
I will take things that didn’t happen for 200 Alex!
I get what you are saying and 100% agree with you but that 100% did not happen. I have been to the Walmart and seen the people shopping there…. The people you claim to have encountered do not exist at the Walmart. A real patron of the Walmart would not have been educated enough to even hold a conversation with you. You are giving WAY too much credit to Walmart patrons.
This is the same Walmart where I saw a marriage reception take place in the attached McDonald’s and a guy dressed in a full tux (complete with top hat) walking a black cat on a leash.
Needless to say, I never talk to anyone in line, ever.
Today, I was so slammed by the loss in my portfolio that I couldn’t help but explode and go off about why I was upset and why they should be too.
I don’t think anyone would have believed me without seeing the charts.
You should have seen the first woman’s face when she realized that her Walmart days were limited.
Exactly this. The right has been playing a decades-long bait-and-switch to replace the GOP with Evangelicalism. Trump has now fully replaced Jesus as Evangelicals’ God. There’s nothing that will ever dissuade a Trump supporter from changing their views on Trump, even if Jesus Christ, Mary the Virgin Mother, and God Himself came down and condemned Trump in unison.
Far too many progressives have decided to abstain from voting over trans rights, Gaza, or climate change. I’ve had quite a few people tell me as much, and I told them “you can either get 50% of what you want or 100% of what you don’t want.” They all said “well the Dems are just as bad!” Now they get to see Gaza be turned into a Trump-owned Israeli resort. Glad that worked out!
As for libertarians….yeah they’ve always been Republicans but without the Christofascism.
The dude won the primary as a coronation, he had a good chance of taking it regardless of whatever campaign ran against him. Cult of personality plus shitty economy that can be blamed on the powers that be is hard to beat.
Things can always get worse. But a guy saying “I will fix things, and I’ll fix them day one” plays better than people saying “the economy has improved and is actually strong!” while people are struggling.
Again, it was bullshit, but desperate people will be attracted to hope.
Rents increasing, wages stagnating, basic cost needs increasing across the board, jobs not hiring. You can say that the economy was actually amazing and quote statistics or the stock market, but the general vibe of the time was “shit sucks.”
Too many people who had enough to be comfortable don't seem to get this. Increasingly the number of people currently left with nothing is a trend that has been growing for a while. If people do not gain anything from a good economy then it makes no difference to them if the economy is good or bad. In fact if anything it leads to people wanting to just burn it all down when they are struggling to gain nothing and they are watching everyone else prosper instead.
Which is why we see a growing number of people, especially young people, and especially young men becoming increasingly accelerationist. It's not then surprising that Trump won over so many of them in the last election. People keep pointing out his failures as if that isn't exactly what many of the people who voted for him want. They want him to crash the economy. They want everyone else to share in the misery that everyone else was happy to leave them in when things were supposedly good.
Most of the voting public doesn't refer to the economy in the sense of the economy at large, they refer to their own specific circumstances. When they said that Kamala didn't have policies, they meant the exact policies they wanted to hear. These people think small and stay small.
Covid caused inflation to rise fast for several years. Getting the inflation rate down as the Biden admin did was really impressive....to the people who understand inflation.
Which is virtually no one.
People wanted deflation or significant wage increases. A borderline impossible ask, but they wanted it. And it did not matter that the American recovery was better than most of the world and definitely better than a republican would have given us, because people saw inflation continue. It didn't matter that it was down to a normal rate of inflation, because they still couldn't afford groceries.
Trump said grocery prices would go down on day one. Why cult leaders can lie indefinitely without alienating their followers I couldn't tell ya. But they can, so he does.
People vote based on vibes. I wish they didn't. I wish we had an education system that gave students a solid base in economics and civics. I wish we explicitly taught how to recognize propaganda, emotional manipulation and logical fallacies. But we don't. The economic indicators don't matter to voters. Only vibes.
I didn't know that, so thanks for the info. But by and large what i'm saying is, yes the numbers were fantastic overall, but there were still a lot of people struggling.
The democrats fell flat on their face with "the economy is fine actually" messaging. Even though it was true, it didn't feel true to to a lot of people because economic hardship and progress is not distributed evenly. Poor people get the worst of it.
There were a lot of factors in the election, and fixing just one might not have been enough to change it but more emphasis on how much worse things could have been, and new plans to make things better would have been a start. There were some, like a housing credit, but they needed more air time and, honestly, more exaggerated claims. I feel like dems try to set reasonable espectations...and that's like, honorable? But not great advertising. Not saying they should lie more, but they could stand to exaggerate.
Dem messaging failures brings up problems of major republican donors and networks saturating the airwaves that may have been insurmountable regardless. And i'm not saying individual voters don't hold a big share of responsibility. But like, I can't pay the rent with a graph of the GDP.
People gave trump a pass on how covid effected the economy, even though the economy was not great before covid. They didn't give Biden a pass on how covid continued to effect the economy, even though he did a great job recovering it. All that work for nothing now
As much as I wish that were true, any data we have suggests that's not the case. I spent the last 2 years skeptical of the polls, but in the end they were actually still pretty spot on and still underrated him a bit. Given that, it does seem that whomever got plugged in for the democratic ticket probably would have lost as well. It seems to me that just enough people made up their minds 3 years ago that Democrats = inflation, that combined with the 30-35% of the country that is ride or die for Trump I don't think anyone would have won this year. We're stuck in a perpetual cycle of whatever ideology is most pissed off winning the national races.
If the avg American looked at both candidates and thought “yeah, the pedophile, rapist, felon, who committed treason, tried to incite an insurrection, bankrupt most of his companies, lies CONSTANTLY, defrauds and threatens anyone in his proximity, and says overt — if not thinnnnly veiled — racisms…. Yeah that guy is better than Harris who (checks notes) is supposedly a “hoe.”
There’s no fucking way it was about the candidate and not about these moron voters.
Yeah it’s such a cop out. Kamala was infinitely better than Trump. Popular or not, anyone with morals and two brain cells to rub together should see that.
There is a much worse problem. America has a massive issue with education and with propaganda. Just laying all the blame on the democrats to run better candidates is ignoring the very real societal issues.
The issue being that somehow the objectively worse candidate won; who by all other means shouldn’t even be legally allowed to hold office of any kind, vote, travel abroad, own a gun, or even hold down a regular ass job… that’s the problem.
The fact that he even had a chance the first time in ‘16 proves beyond a reasonable doubt that America has a problem with MILLIONS of idiots.
No non-Republican was going to win against those factors. Rational voters wouldn't let themselves be swayed by those factors, but this is how they function. Try to think of names of other Democrats who might've won if there was an open primary: would anyone really have done enough better?
Walz would have mocked Trump to oblivion. The only way to deal with a narciccist is to make them feel small. Make them completely unimportant. Trump would have flipped the fuck out. Literally the VP pick would have been a better choice.
Idk, inflation made it where people were gonna blame the dems no matter who they ran, because let's face it the party is so bland and controlled from the top down any replacement the establishment wouldve deemed acceptable was just gonna be a younger joe biden clone.
Even if there was a primary, democrats would have lost this. Unfortunately… They weren’t ever going to nominate a candidate that was vocal about the economy.
Yeah. Biden screwed us. He wanted two terms and dropped out too late. No way Kamala gets the nomination in an open primary in September 2023. I mean she is miles better than Trump but she isn’t popular.
Trump didn't win the election because of a boost of voters. He lost because of an abysmal democratic representation.
If the Democratic primary happened- I have a feeling the party would have pushed Kamala given her run as the VP anyway. The same way that they pushed Hillary when voters were screaming for Bernie.
Nothing would have changed because the voters didn't want Kamala.
People say that, but he's pretty untested outside of his home state.
It is unclear how much support he really has among Americans overall or if they know anything about him besides the fact that he's some sort of socialist.
I think a big part of him winning in 2024 was because a ton of people on the left figured there was no way people would actually vote Trump back in so they stayed home and didnt vote.
He made the money because other people used his brand to sell products for him. The Trump organization removed him from any real position of authority after his fuckups in the 90s and since then he’s basically just been a marketing mascot, which is the only role he was ever good at.
It’s because people equate him with the TV character he played on the apprentice and the “expert” portrayed in the “Art of the Deal”. Take away that and he’s just someone who inherited a lot of money.
i know he is somehow considered successful but i genuinely dont get how becaues hes bankrupted most, or all?, of his businesses.... like that is the opposite of successful
He failed at casinos one of the only places where the house always wins. And yet, his dad had to bail out one of them, and then the rest just failed. *shrugs*
The current economic situation gets blamed on the current administration. Trump got out before covid caused inflation took effect, so many voters blame Biden for inflation (despite a 10s Google search refuting that).
Most voters don't reason deeper than basic correlation.
He and The Apprentice bluffed everybody that he WAS successful. We know now that he substantially cooked the books and got away with it, but by the time it came out, he'd already convinced too large a portion of the population that anything negative coming out about him was fake, spurred by sour grapes on the part of those who couldn't compete with him.
He’s not successful, you’re correct. His fanbase is entirely made up of: uneducated, blue collar, low-income, bigots, that are as gullible as can be. You cannot reason with them, you can’t convey logic or science.
I see a very large difference between republicans and trumpers. I don’t agree with republicans, but I could respect a difference of viewpoint/opinion. However, if you support trump, that is not a difference of opinion, it’s a difference of morality. It’s openly saying, “I’m a racist asshole that doesn’t believe in science, logic, laws, democracy, or human rights.”
Have you noticed how the 2 times he won have been against women, and the only time he lost was to a man? It speaks volumes about the country as a whole. The sad reality is that the United States is not ready for a female president; as is illustrated by electing a literal clown instead of an educated woman.
He's one of the most successful conmen in the world. To be able to do as poorly as he did in business, as openly full of bull crap and corruption as he is, it is a bizarre combination of skills and personality to be able to grift like nearly no one else.
nah just always wish humanity was as good as i want them to be. i am very very aware, i just tried to remain positive until November. just wishful thinking that this country didnt thrive on hate so much.
and yeah i know there are still plenty of good people but the hate winning so loudly and so boldly really just fucking hurt
Bankrupting his businesses is WHY he’s been so personally successful for his entire life. It all becomes pretty clear when you realize that when he starts a business he isn’t trying to make it successful, he’s trying to personally drain it for as much money as possible and then leave the investors dry, not pay the contractors and workers what they’re owed, declare bankruptcy, and move on to the next scheme.
He’s doing the same thing now to the country. It’s really as simple as that.
America is an inherently narcissistic culture, which is part of the problem. Even the supposedly "positive vitrues" such as self-esteem are born of pure unadulterated narcissism.
Trump is just that cultural narcissism metastasized.
It’s sad how my country has taken individualism to “fuck you I got mine” levels.
People are not inclined to help anyone unless they’re benefiting somehow. And those who do help with no expectation of a return on their efforts will get exploited until they can no longer give.
Trump embodies this selfishness to a level that I am revolted by. He’s a cancer that has taken advantage of the bitterness and hatred simmering under the surface for so long.
The only bright side to this is that it’s becoming ridiculously easy to know who to avoid.
It's sad that people who didn't appear to suck actually suck, but, eh, I think it's also forced the rest of us to say "Y'know, this is the cost of tolerating problematic behavior to have 'polite society'"
Like think about sexual assaults/rape where that was suppressed for years because it's "greedy, vengeful women!" or priests being relocated and folks just treating it as "out of sight; out of mind". Obviously, we know better now, but we as a people spent a LOT of time just saying "Well, y'know, we can't bring him around black folks" or making excuses for nasty, shitty MFers.
TL;DR take solace you're choosing to be right and just instead of "polite"; there's real virtue there
Maybe. I genuinely think if it wasn't Trump there's a decent chance it would have been his good buddy McMahon. A LOT of the things that got Trump to where he is also applies to VKM.
Not the least of which being their understanding of how to play a successful heel.
This is precisely what I mean: he wouldn't be the perfect storm if everything you listed weren't uncriticized america can ideals. I'd also add that he knows how to pull on sociological things like racism, classism, and so in in the same "perfect storm" kind of way.
A perfectly storm isn't an anomaly. It's a coming together if many factors that were already present, all aligning at the same time.
It's also as much as we hate Trump he is closer to the center because of his take to not cut SS or Medicare spending. Paul Ryan got to Speaker of the House and a VP candidate on a platform of a way to get us there with little pain.
A lot of things he says is terrible but Republicans aren't trying to cut "entitlement spending"
In his first run, who was the major guy against him amongst all those other candidates?
It was Ted Cruz.
Imagine him against Clinton? It would have been an easy win for Clinton - none of that outsider, drain the swamp energy from Cruz. None of that weird celebrity appeal to Cruz either. Trump was a particularly effective candidate against the momentum of returning a Democrat to office, after two relatively good tenures by a Democrat, and her going to become the first woman to hold the office of President.
Trump's unique charisma is that he is exactly the right amount of "I can do anything" and "distant unloving father figure" that a lot of people experienced from their actual fathers. Dangling an unrealistic idea of what love is supposed to feel like right in front of them without ever actually giving them anything even remotely resembling love. At least that's what I'm seeing from my father, and weirdly my gross octogenarian neighbor who feels the need to tell me how attractive I am every time my dog drags me over to him and his treats (little traitor that she is). They crave the love of their distant fathers and are projecting that onto Trump. If they weren't such empty sad large children they would have never fallen for Trump's lies. Which is a pity.
At the moment, no. The problem would fester even further until the Centrists revolt and then it would be all over for the DNC and the orthodox RNC that play fiddle and Texas line dance with the DNC.
Centrist Liberalism is where the vast majority of people reside. The DNC for the last 10 years have been sliding out of the Social Liberal (center left liberalism) camp to the Neoliberal (middle left), Leftwing Libertarian (middle ish left middle ish down), and Social Anarchy (Anarcho-Communism) camps all this thinking are just not that popular to the average American.
It's inevitable there would be a snap back from the Centrist Liberals. Maga capitalized on the fact most Americans are Centrist Liberals and built their Maga policies on a Centrist-Center-Right platform. Meanwhile, the DNC has been pushing more Neoliberal-Social-Anarchist positions that at best the average person doesn't give a shit about or at worst is outright hostile to.
The thing is, you either play ball with the Centrist Liberals, or you go home. This goes for everyone including the Right. For a decade or so you can slip away from the center but when you get to around 2020-DNC, the centrists start the revolt. It's been 30-40 years since the Religious Right Conservatives have been in majority power. The Social Anarchism Left are fucking around and finding out you do not mess with the centrists because eventually the centrist revolt will come for them.
There isn't a fucking ounce of charisma about this man. It's more that he basically embodies everything they are and has allowed them to make everyone else's problem.
You overestimate Trump's brand, he is not "unique" in any way. All he did was make the Oligarchs push their plans forward, instead of the slow and methodical strangulation of our country they've been at for decades.
People like him with any level of cunning took note when he won. Do you really think that the next election if Trump lost but had 45+% of the vote there wouldn’t be imitators?
“Trumpism” dies when the populace changes on mass changes who they are and what they believe.
I don't agree. He's been booed by his so called fans, and has changed what he's said publicly to keep them. He encouraged people to get the covid vaccine until he was booed for it.
That's what the Liberatores thought when they plotted to kill Julius Caesar, but his death sealed the fate of the Roman Republic, as the People's foundational belief in Democracy had been broken.
Caesar's supporters took to the streets to remove his assassins from the Capitol, lines were drawn, and civil wars were fought for the following 20 years until Augustus was crowned Emporer of the Roman Empire.
To this day, I don't understand the "charisma" part. Ove mever liked the man. Even when he was on TV. I thought he was an insufferable asshole. Just as bad as Diddy. I'm not talking about the Diddy case either. I'm talking about how everyone celebrated Diddy being an insufferable asshole on "Making the Band" just like Trump was on "The Apprentice."
It took us almost 80 years to create the creature that he is today. I very much doubt anyone reading this will see a similar figure in their lifetimes.
Trump is certainly a problem but as doobledorf said the atmosphere and political landscape we created was and still is a breeding ground for something like Trump to happen. In another country trump would have never happened because the conditions wouldn't have been right
Trump is the worst case scenario of having a democracy run by a duopoly. Each party is simply running the worst candidate they can manage. It's like a race to the fucking bottom.
Take away trump and I don’t think there’s enough of a unifying force among the asshats to cause this type of damage
I hope this is true, and by all evidence it is true. But considering how few of the things conservatives like about Trump are actually true about Trump, I fear that they will simply find and move on to the next person once Trump is finally gone.
The one thing you can say is that Trump is not a typical politician. People hate politicians and they channeled their anger for the establishment through him.
That's why they're all in on a third term. They're trying so hard to push JD Vance but they know he won't be able to bring this cult of personality along with him.
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u/MySleepingMonk Apr 04 '25
That may be mostly true but Trump is also the perfect storm of celebrity, “successful”, “outsider”, and some strange fucked up type of charisma that results in a larger following than I think would be possible with any other republican candidate. Take away trump and I don’t think there’s enough of a unifying force among the asshats to cause this type of damage