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Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Yes, I think I'm better off than I was four years ago.
Don’t forget how Trump expertly healed a nation struggling with racial injustice. Under his watch we had weeks of riots and fires in every major metro area in America.
Elementary school aged children in cages was also a real gem.
Trump 2024: Cages, corpses, and chaos.
Oh, and in respect to that: don't forget that it was Trump's administration that signed off on unmarked federal vans black-bagging protestors in Portland, and Trump himself who had DC Police disperse a protest just so he could take a photo in front of a church, AND that Trump actually wanted to deploy military force against the protests - he explicitly wanted the military to "machine-gun them in the streets" like he's Tsar Alexander.
The collective memory of this country could maybe fill a thimble. Jesus Jumping Christ
Huh.. I'm not well off but I wasn't 4 years ago either. Still coasting off the savings I stockpiled from when times were easier and Obama was president though.
Nobody has made a serious attempt to overthrow the government this year
Oh come on. You know that statement isn't going to last through Thanksgiving
I laughed at this comment, but also a half second later think, "unfortunately there's a chance they're right."
Nobody has made a serious attempt to overthrow the government this year
...Yet
Soothsayer: "Beware the Ides of March"
... many moments later
Caesar: "Well, the Ides of March are come..."
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone"
Incidentally, the 15th of March, today, is the Ides of March.
Has the weird goulash of overwhelming profit-driven chaos that is the modern news media produced in you a vague emotional sense that things are getting better, or worse, since you're too exhausted with simply having to survive in our ever-more-hellish reality to have a second to take stock of where we're at and think back, even if our educational system had equipped you with enough critical-thinking tools to take the question seriously and produce a reasoned response?
Things can always be better, but we are better off now than before, imo at least.
I'd recommend you exit the right-wing media loop - it's well established that it is designed to provoke fear and disgust responses that'll burn you out pretty quickly. It'll also fill your head with the kind of transparent nonsense that would motivate you to vote Trump, but that's a different issue.
I am much less likely to become a corpse myself. That was a genuinely scary period, people going crazy buying TP, minimal food on the shelves, getting stared at (and clerks surreptitiously wiping the grocery conveyor after I used it, but fortunately nothing violent) because I am Asian. And just the not knowing enough about transmission and prevention.
Republicans: but gas was so cheap!
I'm voting for Biden, as I did last time and Clinton before, but I can't help some dark part of me knowing he does represent the US and is practically our mascot.
The embodiment of greed and gluttony, reveling in schadenfreude, cartoonishly shameless, crowing about who he beat and who he's enjoying the suffering of, and drunk on wholly undeserved vanity. A sociopath who stands against the very concept of empathy for others. If someone is suffering, he'll tell you what they did to deserve their suffering and suggest ways to really turn the screws. 🇺🇸
I'm ashamed of being an American precisely for all the American traits, that are also destroying us from the inside btw, that Trump unironically personifies. He's more American as America actually is, not all the pretty lies we say about ourselves, than Apple pies or school shootings.
I wish more Americans would look in the mirror that is Donald Trump and be ashamed of who we are, because we can't begin to do anything without recognizing what monstrous values we have.
I wish more Americans would look in the mirror that is Donald Trump and be ashamed of who we are, because we can’t begin to do anything without recognizing what monstrous values we have.
You are saying something I haven't heard in a lot of discourse. Kudos and my upvote.
I appreciate that, sincerely.
I'll never forget what elevated him into mainstream discourse, a game show literally about "I'm rich, so kiss my ass for half an hour" that somehow made him popular. You aren't supposed to like Gordon Gecko/Mr. Potter. They are to be hissed for their antisocial greed. Our people celebrate it. Many who hate him for his violent rhetoric today still loved him for his proud celebration of greed then.
I'll also never forget what singular event took him from paying extras to attend his rallies to basically owning the Republican party:
“We’re not allowed to punch back any more,” Trump lamented. The billionaire said he missed the “good old days,” “You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this?” Trump said. “They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-punch-protester-219655
He's a fucking monster, yes. But what does that say about US that the above elevated him, through public popularity, to basically being worshipped as a God(GodEmperor as some called him) by 40% of the electorate, while making still more consider his message?
Who the fuck are “voters” and why are they so goddamned stupid
You've got to remember that these are just simple voters. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Because the news misleads them, all the time and constantly
A lot of people also really don't understand how our government/elections work. The war on having an educated populace has been pretty successful in my opinion. Especially in Conservative areas of the country.
People picked Biden because they were angry at the incumbent and now their picking Trump because they're angry at the incumbent.
In America you only get two options. Historically, those two options were different flavors of empty suit. But every now and again, you get a real piece of shit a la Nixon or Trump who figured out how to weasel their way through a primary.
And then it's just a 50/50 as to whether they win
People picked Biden because they were angry at the incumbent and now their picking Trump because they're angry at the incumbent.
People picked Biden because around a million people died during Trump's botched Covid response, and because he was clearly an incompetent naked criminal fascist who kept talking about undoing democracy in the United States and actively trying to do it. People are now picking Trump because their news media has told them outlandish lies about Biden that make him sound like Kim Jong Un came to the United States, and they're trying to do the right thing by getting rid of him. Sometimes, simple innate "anger" at the incumbent leads people to vote against him, but I think in this specific election that's a very small part of it.
Most of them are anti-Biden propaganda spreading trolls and most of them aren’t of voting age anyway.
The article uses a single black college student who says he might vote for trump, and a single "liberal climate group" poll from a recent New York Times article. So a single student and poll mean that America is not realizing how bad things would be? If that was true there would be far more republicans winning special elections and the house would have swung to a much larger majority for the republicans. The problem lies in the polling and assuming polls are at all accurate. Polls haven't been super accurate for a while. Polls said Biden would be in a dead heat in 2020 but he won a decent victory, far more than the polls expected. The polls said 2018 was gonna be a good year for democrats, which was right, but the polls far underestimated the turn out. In 2016 the polls had Clinton winning over trump but that didn't happen in the states it needed to happen in, despite most of the polls saying it would. In 2022, the polls expected republicans to get over 20 or 30 seats. That didn't happen. Using barely any evidence to show how America isn't understanding whats going on just ignores that the majority definitely understand. Its just that 43-46 percent of voters, who are the most likely ones to respond to polls, will always support trump. We can't base our view on the election just because of polls. Look at the actual elections that democrats usually have been winning where they need to be winning.
Also, it's not that I don't think there are people who don't understand how bad a second Trump term would be, it's just that those are a minority and will get smaller as the election gets closer.
Of course at the end of the day, we just have to vote. Ignore the polls, they're all bullshit, you just gotta vote.
Not while they’re so plugged into the gEnOcIDe jOe trolls that suggest people not vote.
I've only seen a couple encouraging people not to vote. Most of the folks pissed off at Biden for supporting genocide are still planning on voting for him - the genocide situation would be WAY worse under Trump. One of the reasons we're so pissed off (y'know, just in case genocide isn't reason enough by itself) is that Biden doing this WILL discourage his potential voters, and could very well be the thing that hands Trump the presidency. Those potential voters are going to be influenced by Biden's actions, not internet trolls.
The criticism Biden's getting about his support for genocide is constructive and necessary, cuz he needs to fucking stop!
And just in case it needs to be said: VOTE BIDEN. Regardless of how he handles Isreal. If Trump takes power again, Palestine is fucked, Ukraine is fucked, Taiwan is fucked, your rights and neighbors are fucked, the climate is fucked (well, faster than it already is, at least), our democracy is fucked... this is not hyperbole: seriously, vote for the guy the has the best shot against Trump, and that guy is Biden.
There’s a LOT of them here I’ve debated with them and tried reasoning with them like everyone else has. They’re either total lost causes, or right-wing trolls.
Either way, their message is the same.
I've seen these people pop up a lot here, too.
I just assumed that this is the flavor of far-right influencing campaigns we get to see on Lemmy. Since the normal "far-right and Russia good, liberals and EU/Democrats bad because {manliness/financial elite/globalism/cabal}" angle is pretty much a lost cause here, the next best thing they can do is reduce turnout via resignation and bitterness.
Even if it gets to the point of putting people on trains, I'm not sure some bothsiderists, tankies, enlightened centrists, etc., will realize their mistake.
Even if it was the same, it's certainly not something anyone should aspire to.
"Vote for Biden or you're a fucking moron"
Interesting tactic.
I mean, at this point that's what it boils down to. On one side you have a milquetoast shit sandwich, on the other side full fledged christo fascism. The choice is pretty clear.