I escaped from the south to the coasts, but I always tried to warn people how vile the worst of us were.
Nobody coukd believe it, but remember, Hitler wrote about the south as the model for Germany in mein kampf, and the nazis copied the Nuremberg Laws from Jim crow almost verbatim.
That's not Islamophobic, the Taliban literally are misogynist, homophobic monsters.
To PHR's knowledge, no other régime in the world has methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on pain of physical punishment.[238]
— Physicians for Human Rights, 1998
The Taliban have committed a cultural genocide against the Afghan people by destroying their historical and cultural texts, artifacts and sculptures.[89]
The Taliban are about as Islamic as the Nazis are Christian.
Without a doubt this is the worst part. It was an immediate and irreversible swing from being an optimist who believes in the good of people to the complete opposite. I now believe humanity is fundamentally flawed and will destroy itself.
I really do appreciate the words and the sentiment. I would normally agree but right now my faith is still shattered. I think there are good and amazing people, who have done magical and wonderful things. I just think that small and petty tyrants are more common and more indicative of humanity as a whole. That the righteous have to look up from underneath the bootheel of those who deserve to be crushed under one themselves. Instead, those type get to run the show, and obviously always have.
This weekend has been bad mentally. I hope I can find some optimism again. I’m just so tired of expecting the worst and being proven right.
"John Lewis and MLK Jr. still had faith in humanity"
Those guys were under the boot heel, and had no direction but up. I'd be more optimistic for the future of humanity if they were white dudes with everything to lose, agitating for an oppressed minority.
You completely missed my point. I wasn't minimizing your heroes, and I'm not American. We don't all think like Americans. Please expand your world view....
I once proudly said "when the internet is cheap and easy, everyone will have full access to all information and it will be effortlessly easy for people to stop believing falsehoods and it'll start a swing towards reason!"
To tie star trek into an admittedly foolish level of hope:
I believe there was a catastrophic war and social failing that, eventually, led to their pseudo-utopic future... right?
I remember how our country treated Muslims after 9/11. I remember how we treated people with AIDS and HIV when I was little. Right now I'm watching Nazi salutes on national TV and no one's getting punched even though the room is packed with the supposed opposition, and the people who consider themselves progressive are unironically enjoying people's families inability to afford food staples.
Progressives are becoming more radical as a response to right wing extremism.
I was raised republican and was completely caught up in their propaganda. During that time I would've let you starve to death while holding food if I was told you were part of the 'bad' group. You need to treat Republicans as the dangerous entity they are, don't bother being empathetic, they won't ever reciprocate.
don’t bother being empathetic, they won’t ever reciprocate.
If your statement is true, then you are evidence that we need to at least leave the door open to allow people who come to their senses a path to redemption.
You're not wrong but they have to be the ones to take the first step. If they don't want to we can't force them and we don't have time for that nonsense anymore. There should be Redemption paths but if someone's just awful that's their problem and we have to defeat them
The 'progressives' who voted Democrat remind me of abusers who punched their SO in the face and then got angry that they broke their hand.
For four years the vast majority of voters got poorer. Then, they ran Biden knowing his brain wasn't working and when he embarrassed them, they crowned a weak candidate who looked at all of these poorer people and said she'd change absolutely nothing. Even worse, she told them to be joyful about it. Just absolute political stupidity.
Trump did not broaden his coalition on extremism. He broadened it on Democrats' political priority to give more money to the rich at the expense of the poor. It's just stupid politically to be seen rooting for people's misery, because those votes are ripe for the picking thanks to Trump's unilateral wrecking of the economy.
The message shouldn't be: "Your vote was stupid and we hate you." It should be: "Hey, there's an election next year, and if you vote for us we'll fucking stop this shit." (Granted, that's hard to believe watching Schumer and co do nothing, but that's still the message they need to run with.
Yes, and I'm disgusted by people who threw their vote away or refused to vote blue over genocide despite the fact that things were clearly going to get worse under Trump. We've had this argument before and I'm not going to waste my time on it again.
In 2024, 155mn people voted, while 88mn didn't out of the entire 243 mn eligible voting population.
Of that, 77 mn voted R, 75 mn voted D, and 3 mn voted 3rd party.
In 2020, 158 mn people voted, while 79 mn didn't out of the entire 238 mn eligible voting population.
Of that, 81 mn voted D, 74 mn voted R, and 3 mn voted 3rd party.
Your claim is that the Uncommitted Movement had an impact in 2024 on the outcome of the election.
Wikipedia says that the movement got 700k votes. If we look to Ballotpedia, the Green Party received ~860k while the PSL received ~165k, meaning we can pretty much say those two parties captured the Uncommitted Movement's voting block. That's a total ~1 mn voters.
But JFK received ~760k votes in 2024 because he didn't file to leave the election before endorsing Trump. And the Libertarians which I doubt have any affiliation with the Uncommitted Movement received ~650k. That's a total ~1.4 mn voters.
The 3rd party vote didn't make or break this election. You can see that in how many people voted 3rd party in 2024 compared to 2020 despite the voting population increasing.
No, I reject your claim. The Democrats lost 6 mn voters in 2024, and failed to capture the eligible voting population. This wasn't the fault of people who give a shit about genocide.
Keep telling yourself that though while the Do Nothing Democrats roll over at every chance they get to aid and abet our fascist regime.
Your original post which I commented on said this:
Yes, and I'm disgusted by people who threw their vote away or refused to vote blue over genocide
Which is it?
The Uncommitted Movement was ~700k strong. Even if we assume the entire voting block didn't cast ballots in 2024, meaning I don't count them in the Green Party/PSL group, the impact of that would still only be less than 1 mn, which RFK and Libertarians similarly drew for their causes. It's a rounding error whether or not they contributed to the outcome or not.
The real problem is why more people either 1) changed parties or 2) didn't vote in 2024 when they did in 2020. Perhaps COVID had an effect in 2020, perhaps tightened voting laws had an effect in 2024, perhaps Democrats have now become Republican-lite, perhaps shit just sucks and there's no time when people need to work.
It is a politician's job to think about these things and determine a strategy best suited to acquiring power. If politicians don't do that, they lose races.
things were clearly going to get worse under Trump
It's not reasonable to blame people for voting for change when the Democrats did nothing meaningful about poverty for four years and then blamed poor people for being angry about it. The 2024 election was simple cause-and-effect.
That's what partisan Democrats don't get. We were already at 'things got worse', and it happened under Biden.
It is incredibly stupid to value "change" on its own as a key metric. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are mixed.
It's like saying "I want to go fast" without specifying a direction. You want to get from NYC to Boston and on foot is too slow? Get on this jet, it's a change of speed. Except the jet is going to LA. But it was a change!
In an insanely propagandistic Media environment (both sides: notice the New Tork Times coverage of the Gaza Genocide) you're going to get lots of people who aren't above average educated types with high political awareness trying to gut feel their way into "who are the ones who lie the least" by going for the kind of discourse that sounds the least like the style of propaganda of the last couple of decades, and right now the "not the usual liar politician sounding" was the "populist strongman" because the trafitional media's propaganda has been slick highly-educated technocrat style for years.
Further you can't really start from your own "predisposed to believe that Democrats are truthful in what they say" point of view when trying to understand people who are not aligned with either "tribe" and for whom neither side is assumed honest so they're trying to figure out which one is less dishonest (or just think "they're all liars" and won't vote).
(I see the exact same issue with the members of the small leftwing party I'm a member of in my own country - they simply don't get it that most people don't just presume like them that the words of the party leaders are honest and those of other party leaders are dishonest)
I think the point the OP was making was that the Democrat leadership didn't even try to sound more believable to sway such people - they just kept on saying the usual things in the very same style as the propaganda of the last 2 decades thus sounding the same, whilst the Republican changed their discourse style so even though they lied even more than before, they sounded "not the usual lies" for some of the people trying to "gut feel" their way around politics coming from a non-aligned standpoint.
The nicest possible interpretation is that the Democrat leadership are guilty of massive incompetence.
Yeah, the aftermath of 9/11 was shocking to me as well and, in many cases, deplorable. The use of the terms "sand n-word" and things like "rag-head" were flying around all over (at least in my part of Ohio), Sikhs and others were getting targeted by racists, and the whole thing was such a surreal time.
The small town I grew up in did have a fair amount of anti-semitism (uncool things were referred to by some as "that's Jewish") and I'm sure I heard slurs around that as well. I didn't expect the big, farther-left cities to descend into that.
I grew up in these toxic conservative cultures. It became very clear to me at a young age that there was something deeply wrong with them. I've heard exactly what they talk about when they only think that the people in their fucked up tribes are listening.
These aren't potential allies to reach out to. They are enemies to overcome.
She was. She was John the Baptist but wanted to be Jesus. Opinion on her was fully established so even if she was 45% positive you could never move the dial on the 6% you needed to push her over the top.
She would have been an outstanding attack dog for a fresh candidate if she could have put her ego aside and accept that it wouldn't be her.
She was trying to follow eight years of Obama that had primed an electorate for a radical change candidate. She was not going to be that and in fact personified that her Party would unfortunately not be the one to change.
She was also a terrible candidate in the same way Kamala was, which is something people still don’t accept. They both had terrible PR and were establishment pro-corporate candidates. Those two features guaranteed they wouldn’t extend past their base. At the time Bernie was offering a populist agenda, which is what Trump used to win both times. The DNC still to this day cannot shed corporate influence enough to do what’s necessary to win.
The word populous is hardly unspecific, but a lot of what Bernie Sanders wants his popular and if you run a candidate with roughly his platform they would win no problem. Neoliberal Centerists have no appeal anymore, it's completely dead as an ideology
This is it. I never got it until I read this. Obama was a work horse president.
He actually overcame the conservative ratchet system and turned the dial towards liberal. He made the ACA and it was overall decent, even Conservatives liked it. They hate Obamacare if you mention it and want it destroyed, but will not want anything to happen to the ACA.
Hillary just didn't bring this vibe. I believe she was just a republican in democrat skin that was being put forward. Kamala gave me that same vibe.
We need to hear some batshit crazy stuff. The next democratic president needs break rules using executive orders just like Trump did. Abolish Citizens United and then arrest any judge that dares rule against the order, all the way up to the SCOTUS ... it seems the president has this authority now.
That's a good idea. Abuse the rules and offer the compromise that you will stop as long as all the changes they made are kept permanent and a constitutional amendment is passed that limits the power of the presidency and important ways, like saying that the president can be charged with a crime and that anyone who is or has ever been the president can never receive a pardon
And if they deny one. Time for mass protests. Block the streets. Shut down the economy. Storm government buildings. Keep escalating until democracy is restored.
arrest any judge that dares rule against the order, all the way up to the SCOTUS ... it seems the president has this authority now.
Just because the other side is doing this, this is not where we want to be as a country. The country would devolve into non-existence if both sides were acting as lawlessly as Republicans are now. What needs to happen is they need to face real consequences for breaking our democracy as much as they have been.
It's what has to happen. They MUST realize that it works both ways.
The time for being "nice" and compromising is past. Republicans are ALL thieves and criminals.
She said she'd have a map room to fight climate change. She declared fucking war on climate change. You know that big existential issue that all the leftists say they care about and would surely turn out for, right?
Just before her campaign started she got paid a million dollars (or maybe it was only half a million, not sure anymore) for going to give a speech to a handful of Goldman Sachs' Traders.
Nothing quite says "bought and paid for by fatcats" like getting paid that much money for a few hours of work by the Vampire Squid of Finance.
Nobody else seems to remember the Hillary is 44 movement. It was an early version of foreign mischief and tried to do to the left what the Tea Party did to the right.
When I said she was John the Baptist I was actually thinking of her first run at president when she and John McCain were doing vodka shots in Moscow laughing about how one of them was going to be president.
She could have been a herald for a rejuvenation of the Democrats with a younger face. Instead she fought it all the way down.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Almost all superdelegates already lined up for her at the start of the campaign and she already had an agreement with the DNC to control the party's finances and strategy in exchange for fundraising.
Or in 2020 when they rigged the primary for Joe Biden. Or in 2024 when they rigged the "primary" for Joe Biden (yes, a primary did happen, and I voted for Williamson).
Living in a southern state that is solid red - it’s just difficult to exist. Much more than half of the people I interact with would not view me as a human being if I weren’t stealth about my transness - if I didn’t pass. These people voted against my rights and safety. I’m surrounded by people who think people like me are subhuman.
I already knew that there were plenty of awful people in the US since I studied the civil rights movement in school. Watching white people use fire hoses against Black people and white people being ok with that was a clue. For me the worst part has been watching my friends and family be brainwashed by the MAGA movement. People who I know to be otherwise wonderful people.
For me it's the answer to the zombie question. Do zombies have some part of their former personality still inside? The answer is definitely yes, and not some part, but 100% of their former selves.
I'll be talking to my Mom and she'll be her old self again for a whole conversation. Like the last decade never happened. Then something political will come up and she'll be gone again. And I'm stuck arguing with this zombie.
Fox News has taken multiple family members and I'm sure many more friends. Unlike zombies there was no attack or infection. The brainwashing happened through radio, television, and social media. And unlike zombies there is hope, because people do get out of cults.
My neighbour is a totally pleasant lady, but she believes the craziest shit. Like that Joe Biden was replaced by an actor, or that the autodoc (like from the movie Elysium) is real. Also just goes on about how beautiful the weather in Russia must be.
We're not even American ffs. She's getting got by second hand, like, collateral propaganda.
Honestly there could be really simple autodocs like the ones from the OG The Fallouts but if they do exist they are extremely simple prototypes that can probably stitch up a wound real good at best. Something I've noticed about conspiracy types be them creationists, Alien nuts, or maybe big foot enthusiasts is that they will take the plausible and make it implausible.
Though some of them do accidentally break the programing because they either gain the requisite knowledge that starts to disprove the conspiracy element or because they are shown enough evidence to the contrary. A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it's just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.
I'll never recover, personally. The way my world-view was shattered by how many not just nameless strangers, but people I actually know and interact with, are the worst sort of hateful monsters.
My world is a different place now, and I don't think I'll ever feel the same.
It's stupidity and immaturity more than maliciousness, at least in the case of the US lumpen. The results might be more or less the same but the reframing helps with living in this world and believing in people's 'well-meaning nature'.
I know. I have flat Werther's in my family. Real life people who think the earth is flat in 2025. Like did anyone think this is where we would be growing up.
I think it's about time that the progressives start pandering to the dumbass class. Promising to do all sorts of dumbass and unconstitutional things and then supporting actual progressive policy when they get into office.
If this worked for the current Manchurian dumbass candidate - progressives can surely get their deception game in order.
That is unless they go all in and start carrying crosses around and talking about Jesus nonstop and somehow convince those folks that their opposition are all secret Satanists.
It's also amazing just how incredibly tacky the MAGA movement is.
The Nazis were evil, but at least they wore clothing designed by Hugo Boss. At least they borrowed from impressive looking Roman-style banners and eagles. They understood how to use colour, light and so-on to project strength. Even if you acknowledge that the Nazis were evil, at least you can sort of understand why the German people were drawn in.
But the MAGA movement is so weak, so tacky. Even if I were somehow 100% aligned with their beliefs, I wouldn't want to associate with them in public because their whole aesthetic is so embarrassing. I can't understand how anybody can look at Trump and see competence, intelligence and strength. I also can't understand how anybody can look at a typical MAGA rally and see anything other than a design scheme that would make even Wal*Mart cringe.
I wouldn't know how to look it up, but I really wonder what the average German or Italian who didn't support the fascist governments thought about them. Did they see the governments as strong, organized and competent, but didn't support them because they trampled on people's rights, etc? Or were Mussolini and Hitler seen as clowns and their supporters as tacky idiots?
As someone who wasn't alive back then, and who doesn't know anybody who was (at least not in those countries), it seems like they were probably seen as competent, powerful and organized. But, I really hope everyone knows that outside of the MAGA movement, they're seen as tacky, incompetent, weak, stupid and embarrassing. I would hate for a historian in 2100 (assuming humanity survives long enough for that) to be writing about MAGA saying that their aesthetic was powerful and intimidating, when it's much more reminiscent of a circus.
In the UK a fascist movement took off at the same time as Nazism. It failed because their bullying tactics didn't wash with Brits, especially with what was going on in Germany. They were seen as the thugs they were, basically. Antifascists halted an attempted parade through the largely Jewish east end of London, "the Battle of Cable Street". After that the govt banned paramilitary uniforms etc. Once the war started of course that was it - the party was proscribed and most fascists were interned for the duration.
In modern day America, it seems like 99% of artists are anti-Trump. That isn't really surprising because fascism is about conformity and falling in line, whereas art tends to be about self-expression and challenging norms. So, it seems like in the modern world, very few artists or other creative people are willing to work with the Trump admin. I wonder if back in Hitler and Mussolini's time that wasn't the case.
Yeah, the Nazi socialist party had some gereally well received ideas and were able to grow an identity around it without shoving it in people's faces until they were well established all ng the path. Maga started at the end and thinks they can just push people around and throw baseless accusations around and people would believe them. Some do, but only the fringe folk and truly rabid followers. This is not full of quality people, usually the opposite actually.
I am born and raised in a small rural town in northern Nevada, and from my personal experience people have always been this level of unhinged in someway or another. With the rise of the Internet and Trump. It just became more easily accessible to talk to and listen to other unhinged individuals.
I like to look at it this way: There are not many bad people but weak people who fall for propaganda. The real bad people are just a few but those are the ones manipulating the weak.
I know a lot of people who are pissed off and struggling yet don’t blame minorities for their troubles while actively voting against their best interests at every possible turn. I also know people who, even if it took some time, realized that conservatism is actually fucking awful. I even know some conservatives who are just really stupid or bad at economic policy but who are genuinely good people(so long as he can see you or even just hear that you’re a friend of someone he knows my dad will give you his shirt, and he doesn’t have ill-intentions towards minorities, for example).
Trump people are just fucking terrible. Their entire “ideology” is so rooted in being terrible that even if they were just weak morons sweat away by the propaganda I still cannot fathom how they weren’t tipped off by any of the thousands of moments which gave them the opportunity to reflect.
All this is not new. It started with Reagan and I'm confident you will soon have it worst than Trump, given that your country managed to fall lower 3 times already.
Glad you started this conversation. Allow me to just add: if we are to repair our republic and restore our constitution, we are going to have to find a common ground where these feeble minded followers can see that the world they reject is one that benefits them more than the dystopia they embrace.
This is going to require restraint and tolerance on our part.
You don't have to be stupid to follow an authoritarian. In fact, your characterization is a huge driving force in their radicalization. People with legitimate grievances watched globalization leave them in the dust in pursuit of a multicultural, pluralistic society. This left them vulnerable to narratives that espoused their "historical" superiority amongst other groups and their subsequent entitlement to world primacy. It's more a function of a lack of diverse perspectives as a result of continued divestment from public services and goods, as well as geographical concentration of wealth and resources and other confounding variables.
I agree that the world before Trump was marginally better for these voters than the alternative they've elected, but your heirarchical paradigm is condescending, reductive, simplistif, obnoxious, short-sighted, and exemplifies why so many people swung that way to begin with.
Also, I can't underestimate how incredibly dumb and dense you have to be to consider that the previous paradigm was good for anyone outside of the West who was not already someone of considerable financial means.
I thought about running a far-right merch store selling shirts and stickers with all of their shitty little half-brained slogans on them and donating all the profits to left-leaning organizations. Make them indirectly fund the people they're trying to harm.
My baby insanity wolf self already does a variation of this.
When my conservative family and acquaintances give me gifts, I donate the gifts to charities or political groups that I know those folks would hate to support. Uncle Ben gives me a debit gift card? That's going to Bernie Sanders and the ACLU. Cousin Jen gave me a digital photo frame? That's getting sold and the money's going to Planned Parenthood.
The fact that I repeatedly tell these people not to give me any gifts and yet they still do is the icing on the cake.
When I examine my German family tree, this is the kind of shit they fell for too. The only difference, the USA had a healthy economy before Jan 2025, while Germany was a wreck.
The voter turnout was very low, Trump's active supporters are more like a third of the country, which is still too much, but not insurmountable. And many of those were just one issue voting dummies. I think Trump's hardcore base is closer to 20%.
It's sad there are so many, but it's better that we know. They are the reason behind freedom of speech. If they aren't allowed to speak, then we don't know the extent of the problem. Only education can solve this problem in the long run--that is why they attack public education.
One of the good things about living in the bay area is seeing these people on TV, it's like seeing an NPC in a video game. It's hard to believe they are real. The 1st time I saw an IRL maga hat was 2020, and I'm pretty sure it was a tourist at the beach I had to point and laugh. The 2nd time was last month, and I gave that bitch the bird. She was wearing the cringe ass Elon Dark Gothic Maga hat.
I don't understand how the US is so prop-full of hateful, ignorant, angry people. Is it because of all the lead they ingested towards the end of the 20th century?
Its because conservatives have actively meddled in the educational system, and kept kids from learning and practicing Critical Thinking Skills. At the same time, they used the vast Conservative Propaganda Machine to teach people to rely on Faith-Based Thinking, where they believe whatever they are told, no matter how absurd or outlandish, as long as it comes from someone in authority, such as a radio/tv talk show host, a politician, a preacher, a cop, a boss, etc.
Thats why they went so hard after evangelicals. They have already proven that they will build their entire lives around the most bizarre mythology and fairy tales written by neolithic goatherders, so all they had to do was get them to accept their political fairy tales, too.
Critical Thinking Skills are the most important part of any person's education, and Conservatives have actively suppressed it. That's why the Department of Education has always been one of their worst enemies. The 'liberal indoctrination" they are always screaming about are Critical Thinking Skills.
It's because those in power will always make sure the masses are blaming the "others" and that there will always be "others"to blame. They don't want people looking too closely and seeing that it is them who make life hard.
Honestly it’s not a bad thing to be able to see all these humans who are about as useful as smegma. See them, single them out, and when the time comes, well, you know lol…..
One day Trump wont be president but his supporters will continue to be around after him. They'll continue to make up 31% of the voter eligible population.
I get the sentiment, but posts like this only foment the hate from either side even more. Just adding fuel to the outrage, and as long as we keep doing it like this, there will never be an offramp. The freeway will simply end in fire. This strategy is not tenable.
It's funny how the capitalist media interviews this lady to explain her side. White privilege in action. Imagine capitalist media doing that for any refugee, anti-genocide activist, leftist, etc. Liberalism supports fascism.
Have an upvote to bring you back up. Looking closely I think you may be right (but I'm not an expert in these things, just do pattern recognition a lot).
If that's what you think, you completely missed the message. If anyone wants to live peacefully I'll let them, that's what we all want. If anyone starts to take away people's rights, disappears people, call my neighbors subhuman, ext, I'll punch them square in the face in the face.
Cry louder!
Nazis deserve everything they get. Because unlike any of the groups the attack so aggressively, they placed themselves in the line of fire. They get attacked because they CHOSE to be inhhumane monsters.
I have not an ounce of mercy left for these creatures!
Is that maybe exactly how everyone that is pulling the strings on all this want you to feel? Just food for thought. You be you, just don't close the door on these people, we've all spent some time lost.
Choosing a photo with unattractive faces is not an argument.
I don't think I've ever seen political activism which wouldn't show the same.
But - it's a bit like that joke, bow your head down and say, looking at your boots, - "life is wonderful", then raise your head up and say looking at the sky, - "life is shit", which one do you like more? I think the latter is less shit.
So - Trump supporters are people who are used to seeing shit first around them, but that doesn't mean they are all bad people because of this. Yes, they are mostly conscious in aggressive skepticism, one can say trolling, of politics, but maybe that's good. Yes, it's a bit like a kid having tantrum messing with other kid's toys. But - those things they are not treating seriously, are those things really serious? Those institutions they are harming, how much of those was real and how much just a respectable appearance?
Crash tests are useful, and disagreement is useful, and messing things up is useful. It's a crisis, not a catastrophe.
Oh, and like the genocidal liberals, are any better. It takes two to tango and we live in an imperialist fascist empire that is now coming to the tail end of neoliberal policies. This whole, them against us, is just not gonna work, and it's not helpful. Libturds wafting in their own byproduct. It's all about me me me me me me me that's the problem with America. All the other countries around the world are biting their nails, but also enjoying the show. Yankees Get What Yankees Deserve.
They didn't say that. It's pretty obvious that liberalism is also a right-wing ideology. Genocide Joe spent a year+ supporting genocide. He spent his whole term attacking migrants. He did nothing to help people. Etc. Liberalism is a major foundation for fascism. They're both right-wing just with different branding.
They were always here.
I escaped from the south to the coasts, but I always tried to warn people how vile the worst of us were.
Nobody coukd believe it, but remember, Hitler wrote about the south as the model for Germany in mein kampf, and the nazis copied the Nuremberg Laws from Jim crow almost verbatim.
They also took inspiration from the Catholic Church and the inquisition. The Church did ethnic cleansing long before the Nazis.
Not just inspiration but also direct material support.
The pope at that time looked the other way.
Depends on which pope you are talking about. One of them got allied planes in his sights to get shot down.
James Q. Whitman, in his book "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law",
I believe they got some of their ideas from American eugenicists.
Wherever there is a state, there is fascism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
It's not just the south.
I've lived in much of the country, and I'm not white.
There is racism everywhere.
But the South is like going from Lebanon to the deepest reaches of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
They're monsters, and proud of it.
Cool islamophobic analogy,
That's not Islamophobic, the Taliban literally are misogynist, homophobic monsters.
The Taliban are about as Islamic as the Nazis are Christian.
Monsters are just monsters.
Imagine equivocating the Taliban and Muslims in general.
Disgusting
She's damn sure old enough to know better. 😡
She was probably doing it the first time too.
loves Nazis and Hitler
also among the first to be killed had she been living in Nazi Germany
The hell of living as such a shitty person is far worse than anything anybody could do to her.
I doubt that.
Without a doubt this is the worst part. It was an immediate and irreversible swing from being an optimist who believes in the good of people to the complete opposite. I now believe humanity is fundamentally flawed and will destroy itself.
Watched too much Star Trek as a kid I guess.
I really do appreciate the words and the sentiment. I would normally agree but right now my faith is still shattered. I think there are good and amazing people, who have done magical and wonderful things. I just think that small and petty tyrants are more common and more indicative of humanity as a whole. That the righteous have to look up from underneath the bootheel of those who deserve to be crushed under one themselves. Instead, those type get to run the show, and obviously always have.
This weekend has been bad mentally. I hope I can find some optimism again. I’m just so tired of expecting the worst and being proven right.
Those guys were under the boot heel, and had no direction but up. I'd be more optimistic for the future of humanity if they were white dudes with everything to lose, agitating for an oppressed minority.
You completely missed my point. I wasn't minimizing your heroes, and I'm not American. We don't all think like Americans. Please expand your world view....
I once proudly said "when the internet is cheap and easy, everyone will have full access to all information and it will be effortlessly easy for people to stop believing falsehoods and it'll start a swing towards reason!"
I just want to hug teenage me.
30-yo me was just as naive. Jesus, what have we done.
To tie star trek into an admittedly foolish level of hope: I believe there was a catastrophic war and social failing that, eventually, led to their pseudo-utopic future... right?
Well it was WW3. Which started there in 2026. Sooo.. good news?
Wow, that's kinda on the nose, isnt it?
It didn't take Trump to make this real for me.
I remember how our country treated Muslims after 9/11. I remember how we treated people with AIDS and HIV when I was little. Right now I'm watching Nazi salutes on national TV and no one's getting punched even though the room is packed with the supposed opposition, and the people who consider themselves progressive are unironically enjoying people's families inability to afford food staples.
Progressives are becoming more radical as a response to right wing extremism.
I was raised republican and was completely caught up in their propaganda. During that time I would've let you starve to death while holding food if I was told you were part of the 'bad' group. You need to treat Republicans as the dangerous entity they are, don't bother being empathetic, they won't ever reciprocate.
If your statement is true, then you are evidence that we need to at least leave the door open to allow people who come to their senses a path to redemption.
You're not wrong but they have to be the ones to take the first step. If they don't want to we can't force them and we don't have time for that nonsense anymore. There should be Redemption paths but if someone's just awful that's their problem and we have to defeat them
Could not agree more.
The 'progressives' who voted Democrat remind me of abusers who punched their SO in the face and then got angry that they broke their hand.
For four years the vast majority of voters got poorer. Then, they ran Biden knowing his brain wasn't working and when he embarrassed them, they crowned a weak candidate who looked at all of these poorer people and said she'd change absolutely nothing. Even worse, she told them to be joyful about it. Just absolute political stupidity.
Trump did not broaden his coalition on extremism. He broadened it on Democrats' political priority to give more money to the rich at the expense of the poor. It's just stupid politically to be seen rooting for people's misery, because those votes are ripe for the picking thanks to Trump's unilateral wrecking of the economy.
The message shouldn't be: "Your vote was stupid and we hate you." It should be: "Hey, there's an election next year, and if you vote for us we'll fucking stop this shit." (Granted, that's hard to believe watching Schumer and co do nothing, but that's still the message they need to run with.
Yes, and I'm disgusted by people who threw their vote away or refused to vote blue over genocide despite the fact that things were clearly going to get worse under Trump. We've had this argument before and I'm not going to waste my time on it again.
In 2024, 155mn people voted, while 88mn didn't out of the entire 243 mn eligible voting population.
Of that, 77 mn voted R, 75 mn voted D, and 3 mn voted 3rd party.
In 2020, 158 mn people voted, while 79 mn didn't out of the entire 238 mn eligible voting population.
Of that, 81 mn voted D, 74 mn voted R, and 3 mn voted 3rd party.
Your claim is that the Uncommitted Movement had an impact in 2024 on the outcome of the election.
Wikipedia says that the movement got 700k votes. If we look to Ballotpedia, the Green Party received ~860k while the PSL received ~165k, meaning we can pretty much say those two parties captured the Uncommitted Movement's voting block. That's a total ~1 mn voters.
But JFK received ~760k votes in 2024 because he didn't file to leave the election before endorsing Trump. And the Libertarians which I doubt have any affiliation with the Uncommitted Movement received ~650k. That's a total ~1.4 mn voters.
The 3rd party vote didn't make or break this election. You can see that in how many people voted 3rd party in 2024 compared to 2020 despite the voting population increasing.
No, I reject your claim. The Democrats lost 6 mn voters in 2024, and failed to capture the eligible voting population. This wasn't the fault of people who give a shit about genocide.
Keep telling yourself that though while the Do Nothing Democrats roll over at every chance they get to aid and abet our fascist regime.
No, I didn't say that. I said that I'm disgusted by people who sat out.
You just said:
Your original post which I commented on said this:
Which is it?
The Uncommitted Movement was ~700k strong. Even if we assume the entire voting block didn't cast ballots in 2024, meaning I don't count them in the Green Party/PSL group, the impact of that would still only be less than 1 mn, which RFK and Libertarians similarly drew for their causes. It's a rounding error whether or not they contributed to the outcome or not.
The real problem is why more people either 1) changed parties or 2) didn't vote in 2024 when they did in 2020. Perhaps COVID had an effect in 2020, perhaps tightened voting laws had an effect in 2024, perhaps Democrats have now become Republican-lite, perhaps shit just sucks and there's no time when people need to work.
It is a politician's job to think about these things and determine a strategy best suited to acquiring power. If politicians don't do that, they lose races.
It's not reasonable to blame people for voting for change when the Democrats did nothing meaningful about poverty for four years and then blamed poor people for being angry about it. The 2024 election was simple cause-and-effect.
That's what partisan Democrats don't get. We were already at 'things got worse', and it happened under Biden.
It is incredibly stupid to value "change" on its own as a key metric. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are mixed.
It's like saying "I want to go fast" without specifying a direction. You want to get from NYC to Boston and on foot is too slow? Get on this jet, it's a change of speed. Except the jet is going to LA. But it was a change!
In an insanely propagandistic Media environment (both sides: notice the New Tork Times coverage of the Gaza Genocide) you're going to get lots of people who aren't above average educated types with high political awareness trying to gut feel their way into "who are the ones who lie the least" by going for the kind of discourse that sounds the least like the style of propaganda of the last couple of decades, and right now the "not the usual liar politician sounding" was the "populist strongman" because the trafitional media's propaganda has been slick highly-educated technocrat style for years.
Further you can't really start from your own "predisposed to believe that Democrats are truthful in what they say" point of view when trying to understand people who are not aligned with either "tribe" and for whom neither side is assumed honest so they're trying to figure out which one is less dishonest (or just think "they're all liars" and won't vote).
(I see the exact same issue with the members of the small leftwing party I'm a member of in my own country - they simply don't get it that most people don't just presume like them that the words of the party leaders are honest and those of other party leaders are dishonest)
I think the point the OP was making was that the Democrat leadership didn't even try to sound more believable to sway such people - they just kept on saying the usual things in the very same style as the propaganda of the last 2 decades thus sounding the same, whilst the Republican changed their discourse style so even though they lied even more than before, they sounded "not the usual lies" for some of the people trying to "gut feel" their way around politics coming from a non-aligned standpoint.
The nicest possible interpretation is that the Democrat leadership are guilty of massive incompetence.
Hitler junior was change so just let Hitler junior rule the country? That's pretty stupid, my friend.
That's how it works when your guy lets the majority of the country become significantly poorer. They care less about where the change comes from.
It's not stupid. It's cause-and-effect, specifically, what you get when you vote blue no matter who.
It is reasonable, because of what change meant in this scenario.
Voting democrat was still the lesser evil. The fault is with those in charge of the Democratic party, not their voters.
Don't forget hundreds of years of ongoing slavery and genocide.
Or as Southerners call it "The Good Old Days".
When they say "Make America Great Again", they have a very specific time in mind.
Yeah, the aftermath of 9/11 was shocking to me as well and, in many cases, deplorable. The use of the terms "sand n-word" and things like "rag-head" were flying around all over (at least in my part of Ohio), Sikhs and others were getting targeted by racists, and the whole thing was such a surreal time.
The small town I grew up in did have a fair amount of anti-semitism (uncool things were referred to by some as "that's Jewish") and I'm sure I heard slurs around that as well. I didn't expect the big, farther-left cities to descend into that.
I grew up in these toxic conservative cultures. It became very clear to me at a young age that there was something deeply wrong with them. I've heard exactly what they talk about when they only think that the people in their fucked up tribes are listening.
These aren't potential allies to reach out to. They are enemies to overcome.
"Basket of Deplorables" -- as I'm tired of repeating, Hilary was right.
She was. She was John the Baptist but wanted to be Jesus. Opinion on her was fully established so even if she was 45% positive you could never move the dial on the 6% you needed to push her over the top.
She would have been an outstanding attack dog for a fresh candidate if she could have put her ego aside and accept that it wouldn't be her.
She was trying to follow eight years of Obama that had primed an electorate for a radical change candidate. She was not going to be that and in fact personified that her Party would unfortunately not be the one to change.
She was also a terrible candidate in the same way Kamala was, which is something people still don’t accept. They both had terrible PR and were establishment pro-corporate candidates. Those two features guaranteed they wouldn’t extend past their base. At the time Bernie was offering a populist agenda, which is what Trump used to win both times. The DNC still to this day cannot shed corporate influence enough to do what’s necessary to win.
The word populous is hardly unspecific, but a lot of what Bernie Sanders wants his popular and if you run a candidate with roughly his platform they would win no problem. Neoliberal Centerists have no appeal anymore, it's completely dead as an ideology
This
This is it. I never got it until I read this. Obama was a work horse president. He actually overcame the conservative ratchet system and turned the dial towards liberal. He made the ACA and it was overall decent, even Conservatives liked it. They hate Obamacare if you mention it and want it destroyed, but will not want anything to happen to the ACA.
Hillary just didn't bring this vibe. I believe she was just a republican in democrat skin that was being put forward. Kamala gave me that same vibe.
We need to hear some batshit crazy stuff. The next democratic president needs break rules using executive orders just like Trump did. Abolish Citizens United and then arrest any judge that dares rule against the order, all the way up to the SCOTUS ... it seems the president has this authority now.
That's a good idea. Abuse the rules and offer the compromise that you will stop as long as all the changes they made are kept permanent and a constitutional amendment is passed that limits the power of the presidency and important ways, like saying that the president can be charged with a crime and that anyone who is or has ever been the president can never receive a pardon
Yes, this is what is needed .. but only if we actually get another actual election.
And if they deny one. Time for mass protests. Block the streets. Shut down the economy. Storm government buildings. Keep escalating until democracy is restored.
Just because the other side is doing this, this is not where we want to be as a country. The country would devolve into non-existence if both sides were acting as lawlessly as Republicans are now. What needs to happen is they need to face real consequences for breaking our democracy as much as they have been.
It's what has to happen. They MUST realize that it works both ways. The time for being "nice" and compromising is past. Republicans are ALL thieves and criminals.
She said she'd have a map room to fight climate change. She declared fucking war on climate change. You know that big existential issue that all the leftists say they care about and would surely turn out for, right?
I mean leftists also care about her being a "war hawk" and that didn't help her image.
Just before her campaign started she got paid a million dollars (or maybe it was only half a million, not sure anymore) for going to give a speech to a handful of Goldman Sachs' Traders.
Nothing quite says "bought and paid for by fatcats" like getting paid that much money for a few hours of work by the Vampire Squid of Finance.
Nobody else seems to remember the Hillary is 44 movement. It was an early version of foreign mischief and tried to do to the left what the Tea Party did to the right.
When I said she was John the Baptist I was actually thinking of her first run at president when she and John McCain were doing vodka shots in Moscow laughing about how one of them was going to be president.
She could have been a herald for a rejuvenation of the Democrats with a younger face. Instead she fought it all the way down.
No, she wasn't.
If they hadn't rigged the primary for her, we never would have had a Trump.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Almost all superdelegates already lined up for her at the start of the campaign and she already had an agreement with the DNC to control the party's finances and strategy in exchange for fundraising.
Or in 2020 when they rigged the primary for Joe Biden. Or in 2024 when they rigged the "primary" for Joe Biden (yes, a primary did happen, and I voted for Williamson).
I did too, haha.
Dang, looks like that one guy on the left got a “TRUMP” tat on his NECK. I’m sure he won’t have any ragrets down the road.
He's obviously not getting another turn with the communal brain cell so I don't think he'll be regretting anything.
Living in a southern state that is solid red - it’s just difficult to exist. Much more than half of the people I interact with would not view me as a human being if I weren’t stealth about my transness - if I didn’t pass. These people voted against my rights and safety. I’m surrounded by people who think people like me are subhuman.
And I'll bet that every one of them calls themself a Christian. Fucking joke religion that doesn't even follow its own tenets.
I already knew that there were plenty of awful people in the US since I studied the civil rights movement in school. Watching white people use fire hoses against Black people and white people being ok with that was a clue. For me the worst part has been watching my friends and family be brainwashed by the MAGA movement. People who I know to be otherwise wonderful people.
For me it's the answer to the zombie question. Do zombies have some part of their former personality still inside? The answer is definitely yes, and not some part, but 100% of their former selves.
I'll be talking to my Mom and she'll be her old self again for a whole conversation. Like the last decade never happened. Then something political will come up and she'll be gone again. And I'm stuck arguing with this zombie.
Fox News has taken multiple family members and I'm sure many more friends. Unlike zombies there was no attack or infection. The brainwashing happened through radio, television, and social media. And unlike zombies there is hope, because people do get out of cults.
My neighbour is a totally pleasant lady, but she believes the craziest shit. Like that Joe Biden was replaced by an actor, or that the autodoc (like from the movie Elysium) is real. Also just goes on about how beautiful the weather in Russia must be.
We're not even American ffs. She's getting got by second hand, like, collateral propaganda.
Honestly there could be really simple autodocs like the ones from the OG The Fallouts but if they do exist they are extremely simple prototypes that can probably stitch up a wound real good at best. Something I've noticed about conspiracy types be them creationists, Alien nuts, or maybe big foot enthusiasts is that they will take the plausible and make it implausible.
Though some of them do accidentally break the programing because they either gain the requisite knowledge that starts to disprove the conspiracy element or because they are shown enough evidence to the contrary. A good example is Lore Lodge who used to be all in on bigfoot years ago but now think that it's just wildmen, hermits, or crackheads.
I guess that's bound to happen if you're genuinely seeking knowledge.
I'll never recover, personally. The way my world-view was shattered by how many not just nameless strangers, but people I actually know and interact with, are the worst sort of hateful monsters.
My world is a different place now, and I don't think I'll ever feel the same.
It's stupidity and immaturity more than maliciousness, at least in the case of the US lumpen. The results might be more or less the same but the reframing helps with living in this world and believing in people's 'well-meaning nature'.
I appreciate this, and it does help turn the ire into pity a bit, but I do worry that unfortunately the effect sort of remains the same regardless
I know. I have flat Werther's in my family. Real life people who think the earth is flat in 2025. Like did anyone think this is where we would be growing up.
Tell me more about these flat Werther's, I've only had the Werther's Original so far.
So, like the ones you find in pockets of pants you haven’t worn since last year?
Not as malicious but covid opened my eyes up
And then they wonder why I try to escape from the reality.
I think it's about time that the progressives start pandering to the dumbass class. Promising to do all sorts of dumbass and unconstitutional things and then supporting actual progressive policy when they get into office.
If this worked for the current Manchurian dumbass candidate - progressives can surely get their deception game in order.
Wouldn’t work.
That is unless they go all in and start carrying crosses around and talking about Jesus nonstop and somehow convince those folks that their opposition are all secret Satanists.
Makes my stomach hurt.
It's also amazing just how incredibly tacky the MAGA movement is.
The Nazis were evil, but at least they wore clothing designed by Hugo Boss. At least they borrowed from impressive looking Roman-style banners and eagles. They understood how to use colour, light and so-on to project strength. Even if you acknowledge that the Nazis were evil, at least you can sort of understand why the German people were drawn in.
But the MAGA movement is so weak, so tacky. Even if I were somehow 100% aligned with their beliefs, I wouldn't want to associate with them in public because their whole aesthetic is so embarrassing. I can't understand how anybody can look at Trump and see competence, intelligence and strength. I also can't understand how anybody can look at a typical MAGA rally and see anything other than a design scheme that would make even Wal*Mart cringe.
Oh, I'm so glad you pointed it out. I thought I was going nuts thinking they were gaudy and in poor taste and I wasn't reading anyone saying it. 😂
The Mar-a-Lago face alone, and the gaudy golden shoes, statues, chandeliers and shit. Yuck lol
I wouldn't know how to look it up, but I really wonder what the average German or Italian who didn't support the fascist governments thought about them. Did they see the governments as strong, organized and competent, but didn't support them because they trampled on people's rights, etc? Or were Mussolini and Hitler seen as clowns and their supporters as tacky idiots?
As someone who wasn't alive back then, and who doesn't know anybody who was (at least not in those countries), it seems like they were probably seen as competent, powerful and organized. But, I really hope everyone knows that outside of the MAGA movement, they're seen as tacky, incompetent, weak, stupid and embarrassing. I would hate for a historian in 2100 (assuming humanity survives long enough for that) to be writing about MAGA saying that their aesthetic was powerful and intimidating, when it's much more reminiscent of a circus.
In the UK a fascist movement took off at the same time as Nazism. It failed because their bullying tactics didn't wash with Brits, especially with what was going on in Germany. They were seen as the thugs they were, basically. Antifascists halted an attempted parade through the largely Jewish east end of London, "the Battle of Cable Street". After that the govt banned paramilitary uniforms etc. Once the war started of course that was it - the party was proscribed and most fascists were interned for the duration.
Meanwhile... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund
I bet their paramilitary uniforms were better looking than the flag-pants and facepaint the MAGA groups prefer.
They had propagandists that used actual skilled artisans and people actually the "best" in their fields. Not drunk Uncle Jim and AI slop.
In modern day America, it seems like 99% of artists are anti-Trump. That isn't really surprising because fascism is about conformity and falling in line, whereas art tends to be about self-expression and challenging norms. So, it seems like in the modern world, very few artists or other creative people are willing to work with the Trump admin. I wonder if back in Hitler and Mussolini's time that wasn't the case.
Yeah, the Nazi socialist party had some gereally well received ideas and were able to grow an identity around it without shoving it in people's faces until they were well established all ng the path. Maga started at the end and thinks they can just push people around and throw baseless accusations around and people would believe them. Some do, but only the fringe folk and truly rabid followers. This is not full of quality people, usually the opposite actually.
Maybe Reagan shouldn't have closed down the mental institutes and facilitate the stifling of access to mental health
Looking back, I'm starting to believe it was a long-term political calculus, not just abandoning the most vulnerable in our society...
Libs blaming mental health? Fashy as usual. Anything to avoid blaming themselves/dems.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but this is a stone cold stupid take.
I am born and raised in a small rural town in northern Nevada, and from my personal experience people have always been this level of unhinged in someway or another. With the rise of the Internet and Trump. It just became more easily accessible to talk to and listen to other unhinged individuals.
The big realisation, for me, was during Covid. I haven't recovered since. My view of people, in general, has changed forever.
Hell truly is other people.
Dude looks like a Mike Meyers character.
Fat American bastard, but that's redundant.
Pretty recently, honestly. Last Thursday the girl I've fallen in love with asked me to be her girlfriend.
Congrats!
that guy isn't having fun, he's having a manic episode with violent fantasies.
nobody with that look in their eyes is in control of themselves.
See! Maybe he's just dumb! I bet he's a fun guy at the bar.
I like to look at it this way: There are not many bad people but weak people who fall for propaganda. The real bad people are just a few but those are the ones manipulating the weak.
I know a lot of people who are pissed off and struggling yet don’t blame minorities for their troubles while actively voting against their best interests at every possible turn. I also know people who, even if it took some time, realized that conservatism is actually fucking awful. I even know some conservatives who are just really stupid or bad at economic policy but who are genuinely good people(so long as he can see you or even just hear that you’re a friend of someone he knows my dad will give you his shirt, and he doesn’t have ill-intentions towards minorities, for example).
Trump people are just fucking terrible. Their entire “ideology” is so rooted in being terrible that even if they were just weak morons sweat away by the propaganda I still cannot fathom how they weren’t tipped off by any of the thousands of moments which gave them the opportunity to reflect.
You nailed it though. They lack the ability for introspection and self reflection
All this is not new. It started with Reagan and I'm confident you will soon have it worst than Trump, given that your country managed to fall lower 3 times already.
I want to respond to this but it sounds so disconnected from what I said I think the best way to do so is to ask: Did you reply to the wrong person?
Nah, a lot of people are cunts.
Tetraethyl Lead has a lot to answer for, but yes, a lot of people are just selfish arseholes.
Too weak to have any morals? I doubt it. They are just given permission to let their inner racism out.
That's too easy and excuses us from the work needed to rescue these people, content in our own moral superiority.
Glad you started this conversation. Allow me to just add: if we are to repair our republic and restore our constitution, we are going to have to find a common ground where these feeble minded followers can see that the world they reject is one that benefits them more than the dystopia they embrace.
This is going to require restraint and tolerance on our part.
You don't have to be stupid to follow an authoritarian. In fact, your characterization is a huge driving force in their radicalization. People with legitimate grievances watched globalization leave them in the dust in pursuit of a multicultural, pluralistic society. This left them vulnerable to narratives that espoused their "historical" superiority amongst other groups and their subsequent entitlement to world primacy. It's more a function of a lack of diverse perspectives as a result of continued divestment from public services and goods, as well as geographical concentration of wealth and resources and other confounding variables.
I agree that the world before Trump was marginally better for these voters than the alternative they've elected, but your heirarchical paradigm is condescending, reductive, simplistif, obnoxious, short-sighted, and exemplifies why so many people swung that way to begin with.
Also, I can't underestimate how incredibly dumb and dense you have to be to consider that the previous paradigm was good for anyone outside of the West who was not already someone of considerable financial means.
Looks like one of us already has that common ground I was talking about in abundance. Thanks for leading the way.
The best advice I can give to anyone regarding MAGAts is to take advantage of them.
They're letting us know how stupid they are. They're marking themselves.
So take advantage of them. Run some scams on them. They'll fall for it. Don't let Daddy Trump be the only one robbing them blind.
I thought about running a far-right merch store selling shirts and stickers with all of their shitty little half-brained slogans on them and donating all the profits to left-leaning organizations. Make them indirectly fund the people they're trying to harm.
My baby insanity wolf self already does a variation of this.
When my conservative family and acquaintances give me gifts, I donate the gifts to charities or political groups that I know those folks would hate to support. Uncle Ben gives me a debit gift card? That's going to Bernie Sanders and the ACLU. Cousin Jen gave me a digital photo frame? That's getting sold and the money's going to Planned Parenthood.
The fact that I repeatedly tell these people not to give me any gifts and yet they still do is the icing on the cake.
If you see pop-up shops selling Trump merch, they're often run by immigrants. Money is money.
If I didn't have scruples and lived in the States I'd be all over that.
I was thinking about writing something for one of those alt right self publishing companies.
You just know that guy on the left has a swastika tattoo somewhere on him.
Yeah, it's right there on his throat. It's just the v2.
It is escapable. It's propaganda. Show them different news and they are communists.
The worst part of the Trump era is the realization of just how few people don't fall for the divide and conquer manipulation.
One of the best parts. They outed themselves.
When I examine my German family tree, this is the kind of shit they fell for too. The only difference, the USA had a healthy economy before Jan 2025, while Germany was a wreck.
I think it's a different kind of unhealthy economy.
The US were exporting dollars. That's not healthy.
At least you can identify them easily. Bumper stickers, license plates and hats.
ᗩ⍝ඹයඩ
Concerning
the kind of people who dont give the least bit of fuck about pretty horrible things until it happens to them after which they love to play the victim
THAT has been the most demoralizing part
That half of my fellow Americans willingly embraced Nazi Fascism
The voter turnout was very low, Trump's active supporters are more like a third of the country, which is still too much, but not insurmountable. And many of those were just one issue voting dummies. I think Trump's hardcore base is closer to 20%.
It's sad there are so many, but it's better that we know. They are the reason behind freedom of speech. If they aren't allowed to speak, then we don't know the extent of the problem. Only education can solve this problem in the long run--that is why they attack public education.
I can't even imagine the type of person who could proudly brand themselves with the name of a rapist, after the fact.
It’s the greatest source of my depression…
Face flag looks like a fun bar guy though. Maybe he's just stupid?
Back in my day, we called these people assholes
The guy with the Trump tatoo looks like the typical guy who gets a 23&ME saying he's actually part Mexican.
One of the good things about living in the bay area is seeing these people on TV, it's like seeing an NPC in a video game. It's hard to believe they are real. The 1st time I saw an IRL maga hat was 2020, and I'm pretty sure it was a tourist at the beach I had to point and laugh. The 2nd time was last month, and I gave that bitch the bird. She was wearing the cringe ass Elon Dark Gothic Maga hat.
Thank you, someone had to do it o7
Imagine living in USA and only realizing it 2 months ago.
I don't understand how the US is so prop-full of hateful, ignorant, angry people. Is it because of all the lead they ingested towards the end of the 20th century?
Its because conservatives have actively meddled in the educational system, and kept kids from learning and practicing Critical Thinking Skills. At the same time, they used the vast Conservative Propaganda Machine to teach people to rely on Faith-Based Thinking, where they believe whatever they are told, no matter how absurd or outlandish, as long as it comes from someone in authority, such as a radio/tv talk show host, a politician, a preacher, a cop, a boss, etc.
Thats why they went so hard after evangelicals. They have already proven that they will build their entire lives around the most bizarre mythology and fairy tales written by neolithic goatherders, so all they had to do was get them to accept their political fairy tales, too.
Critical Thinking Skills are the most important part of any person's education, and Conservatives have actively suppressed it. That's why the Department of Education has always been one of their worst enemies. The 'liberal indoctrination" they are always screaming about are Critical Thinking Skills.
Look around the world... It's not just the US, the US are just a big example of it
It's because those in power will always make sure the masses are blaming the "others" and that there will always be "others"to blame. They don't want people looking too closely and seeing that it is them who make life hard.
Yup, and the pandemic showed us how stupid and ignorant they are, too.
Leftists were hesitant with good reason and could be educated. These folks had no chance out of their own volition.
Look at Stars ‘n Stripes Shrek there. Isn’t he just the happiest guy ever?
ඞ
How many inbred people, even trump hates
Yikes
I hope that guy gets ink poisoning.
Unfortunately, realization is amazingly escapable.
Growing up we just called it the south
These morons are everywhere
For now
Honestly it’s not a bad thing to be able to see all these humans who are about as useful as smegma. See them, single them out, and when the time comes, well, you know lol…..
Koolaid man went crazy...
They’re not sending their best.
Not just one of the worst but arguably the worst.
One day Trump wont be president but his supporters will continue to be around after him. They'll continue to make up 31% of the voter eligible population.
I get the sentiment, but posts like this only foment the hate from either side even more. Just adding fuel to the outrage, and as long as we keep doing it like this, there will never be an offramp. The freeway will simply end in fire. This strategy is not tenable.
Spoken like a true Democrate. Remain passive in the face of evil.
What the fuck is a Democrate, you dilettante?
I'm not 100% sure, but I think this picture was AI generated.
I think it's a collage but not necessarily ai
only that one guy in the top right. the rest is real.
Funny guess but, if you do an image search, it seems pretty real.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2016/03/12/trump-supporter-explains-what-led-to-heil-hitler-salute-at-canceled-uic-rally/
It's funny how the capitalist media interviews this lady to explain her side. White privilege in action. Imagine capitalist media doing that for any refugee, anti-genocide activist, leftist, etc. Liberalism supports fascism.
Have an upvote to bring you back up. Looking closely I think you may be right (but I'm not an expert in these things, just do pattern recognition a lot).
If that's what you think, you completely missed the message. If anyone wants to live peacefully I'll let them, that's what we all want. If anyone starts to take away people's rights, disappears people, call my neighbors subhuman, ext, I'll punch them square in the face in the face.
I understand how you've arrived at that conclusion, but you should investigate Popper's Paradox.
Cry louder! Nazis deserve everything they get. Because unlike any of the groups the attack so aggressively, they placed themselves in the line of fire. They get attacked because they CHOSE to be inhhumane monsters.
I have not an ounce of mercy left for these creatures!
Is that maybe exactly how everyone that is pulling the strings on all this want you to feel? Just food for thought. You be you, just don't close the door on these people, we've all spent some time lost.
You almost understand this issue 🤣
"bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe PeOpLe WhO kIlLeD nAzIs? ThEy WeRe JuSt As BaD!"
That's you. That's what you sound like.
It's retaliation and self defense on a sociological scale
Choosing a photo with unattractive faces is not an argument.
I don't think I've ever seen political activism which wouldn't show the same.
But - it's a bit like that joke, bow your head down and say, looking at your boots, - "life is wonderful", then raise your head up and say looking at the sky, - "life is shit", which one do you like more? I think the latter is less shit.
So - Trump supporters are people who are used to seeing shit first around them, but that doesn't mean they are all bad people because of this. Yes, they are mostly conscious in aggressive skepticism, one can say trolling, of politics, but maybe that's good. Yes, it's a bit like a kid having tantrum messing with other kid's toys. But - those things they are not treating seriously, are those things really serious? Those institutions they are harming, how much of those was real and how much just a respectable appearance?
Crash tests are useful, and disagreement is useful, and messing things up is useful. It's a crisis, not a catastrophe.
Oh, and like the genocidal liberals, are any better. It takes two to tango and we live in an imperialist fascist empire that is now coming to the tail end of neoliberal policies. This whole, them against us, is just not gonna work, and it's not helpful. Libturds wafting in their own byproduct. It's all about me me me me me me me that's the problem with America. All the other countries around the world are biting their nails, but also enjoying the show. Yankees Get What Yankees Deserve.
Are you off your meds again?
So the liberals are genocidal but... The far right isn't???
They didn't say that. It's pretty obvious that liberalism is also a right-wing ideology. Genocide Joe spent a year+ supporting genocide. He spent his whole term attacking migrants. He did nothing to help people. Etc. Liberalism is a major foundation for fascism. They're both right-wing just with different branding.
Bruh... what?