Trump's stunning response when he was asked if he had a sexual "age limit" has taken on a new dimension amid the fallout from the "Epstein Files" controversy.
I love how people ask questions like this, like we’re gods who can snap our fingers and magically stop the fascists who outnumber us. The number of people who wanted it to happen outnumbered the number of us who didn’t want it to happen. Simple as that. Can’t even blame the electoral college.
And those people still absolutely love him and will do anything for him and to keep him in power. The only option left after losing the election would be civil war, but even if enough people were ready to go all out and start one, we would lose that war because they have the government and its resources, including the military. That’s the problem with democracy, you see–majority rules and if the majority decides they don’t want a democracy any more, then it’s over.
Most of the people who are aware of how bad it is are not willing to break the law or upset the status quo to fight it
Reform and revolution take organization but that takes time and effort that most can’t afford.
People who were aware of how bad things were and are getting have become exhausted and constantly feel powerless to the point they can’t find the strength to keep trying
Those with the time/wealth/power to do anything are too blind or unsympathetic to do anything real. Those without time and resources lack the resources to do anything influential without organization which they also lack the time and resources to create as well.
We’re already in a dictatorship. But you likely have time to stop your country from following suit. Make sure there are good guys left to beat the shit out of us in the end
Edit: to clarify, by “we didn’t have a democratic choice” I was referring to gerrymandering, vote suppression, and other things like winner take all states. I voted and I know there were a surprising number of people who voted blue despite being lifelong republicans. It didn’t do anything because we don’t have democracy.
You had “NOT TRUMP”, a former prosecutor with a firm grasp of the law and the progressive half of Biden/Harris. … who was also Not Trump. If you wanted to ensure Trump didn’t get in , the box was right there.
They just needed to vote “not Trump”. How fucking hard is that?
Hey love, calm down. I was referring to gerrymandering and vote suppression not the inability to vote for the lesser evil.
I did vote and in fact a surprising number of my peers voted blue despite the fact they typically hard line republican. It made no difference because our state is an all or nothing state, so as long as you can gerrymander well enough around cities and convince rural areas to vote red out of fear, ta da the red party gets all the marbles as if the entire state voted unanimously.
For the 273645234th time, gerrymandering does not play a part in a presidential election. Voter suppression, sure. Gerrymandering affects congressional elections.
Agreeing with the main statement here, but there are knock on effects to gerrymandering. Higher races get fewer votes from places where the elections aren’t competitive. With few competitive races there’s less benefit to voting, so marginal voters stay home. That’s why a motivating ballot question is considered a political benefit.
And gerrymandered states can also give the impression that state level results are a foregone conclusion as well. With the electoral college, where the number of votes on the losing side don’t matter, living under a red trifecta creates an impression that the state itself will never flip.
It seems like we didn’t vote for this guy and he cheated his way to winning the election. He made suspicious comments about Elon Musk and how he helped with the election, mentioning something about how he’s really good with that technology. Which Musk also mentioned, claiming that Trump would never have been elected without him.
Then there’s an active lawsuit going on where several counties in New York state found that absolutely no one voted for Kamala Harris in their location during the election, despite having large groups of Democrat residents. Their electronic voting machines received patches right before voting started, which is highly suspicious. That’s being investigated right now.
It appears that the election was likely stolen and we have a president who was never elected. This is how fascist takeovers start, and unless people organize against the government, they’re just going to keep enabling this downfall of our country.
I’m not USian, but from what analysts worth their salt would say, it is combination of-- but not limited to-- intentional dumbification of Americans, the opposition not really being opposition, the US Supreme Court legalising bribery, the atomisation and polarisation of American communities, de-industrialisation, growing wealth inequality and general corruption. These contributed to the growth of frustration and populism among the voters to vote for anyone who is “not establishment”. Someone who “tells it like it is” unlike most politicians who always do politician speak. In the minds of many Americans, Trump may be a grifter and a pervert, but they see him as genuine. If the democracy is a sham after all, might as well pull down the mask and show tje country for what it truly is. That’s why people say Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The same symptom is happening across the world which is why we’re getting the same far right populism.
Hate is a hell of a drug. The religious people (primarily Christians) in our country are particularly susceptible to it. Trump pretends to be religious, and his cruelty is embraced by these types.
It’s just layers of indoctrination, basically. It’s not the majority of Americans, it’s around a third, but they vote in very high percentages, and the actual majority of Americans don’t vote.
So, we have this loud, delusional group with the most power right now purely because the majority of Americans don’t care to vote.
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there won’t be a next election if you don’t fight back.
Why do you think ICE needs a budget of 100 billion? Are you seriously so naive as to believe that it’s about illegal immigrants?
Edit: This is not a call to violence, but merely a warning to finally wake up. I don’t think you can still rely on your legal system as it is obvious broken beyond repair, but I do think it is possible to remove this despot by civil means. My suggestion: a general strike across all industries – if there’s one thing that scares your rulers, it’s loss of profit.
What would you have a normal person who likely can’t afford to miss much in the way of work do? I am asking sincerely.
Outside of throwing everything away to Luigi it up, I’m not sure what a single person could hope to accomplish.
Even considering the protests, which one would think have had enough people to accomplish something an individual could not… what exactly are they to do that would make things better? Seems like the nonviolent protests are just being ignored to me, but even if they were violent, what exactly are they to direct it towards?
It’s a thing I have been wondering in the face of the calls to “do something”, and I don’t know the answer to what this “something” is.
Organize a general strike - on the biggest scale possible, a scale that cannot be ignored by your news outlets (social media giants included, of course).
Your employer won’t be able to do anything about it if there are enough people participating.
Find allies even in the ranks of the conservatives as there must be people not ok with this wreched course.
I have nothing better to offer. Only the warning not to remain inactive like my great-grandparents, Germans who were not Nazis but who did not act when it was still possible.
But yes, this will take courage and might mean hardship. I’d say it’s still the best option - but yes, it’s easy to say for me as I’m not involved.
I interviewed old timers who were involved in the early unionization struggles of auto workers and other industries. Those folks really lived under the thumb of landlords and employers and segregation and so much more bullshit than people remember.
Resistance to employer shit and abuse develops by people being neighbourly and helpful, by building bonds, by sharing their common outrage, and by connecting the dots.
Talk about pay with coworkers, it’s illegal for an employer to restrict such talk. You don’t necessarily have to unionize, but you do have to organize. This means finding solidarity at work, even if the coworkers are boring or misogynistic or different.
You know, apes strong together and all that. Build community around resistance to authoritarianism.
Dude, you are getting angry at the wrong person, and also preaching to the choir. 99% of people on this site agree with your point. So why are you yelling at me over an innocuous comment?
OP called me naive and implied that I think this is actually about immigration. How is that a genuine question? Insulting someone’s intelligence right off the bat isn’t asking for genuine dialog.
I could also be he never won the election in the first place. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, there has been a lot of talk that the math ain’t mathing when it comes to the elections.
And if you’re wondering why Democrats like Tim Walz are not even interested in investigating it themselves, well, the existence of certain files and whether or not they are disclosed could have something to do with that.
How can this guy be your president, US folks? It was absolutely well known.
Even now, still no appropriate response. Instead, just more of what was also totally foreseeable: corruption and fascism.
How can you allow this to happen?
If you don’t act now, you will be the next dictatorship.
Because millions of people didn’t care
Worse than that, millions of people actively chose this. AGAIN.
Millions of people were convinced by their media and algorithms that they didn’t care.
I love how people ask questions like this, like we’re gods who can snap our fingers and magically stop the fascists who outnumber us. The number of people who wanted it to happen outnumbered the number of us who didn’t want it to happen. Simple as that. Can’t even blame the electoral college.
And those people still absolutely love him and will do anything for him and to keep him in power. The only option left after losing the election would be civil war, but even if enough people were ready to go all out and start one, we would lose that war because they have the government and its resources, including the military. That’s the problem with democracy, you see–majority rules and if the majority decides they don’t want a democracy any more, then it’s over.
Those with the time/wealth/power to do anything are too blind or unsympathetic to do anything real. Those without time and resources lack the resources to do anything influential without organization which they also lack the time and resources to create as well.
We’re already in a dictatorship. But you likely have time to stop your country from following suit. Make sure there are good guys left to beat the shit out of us in the end
Edit: to clarify, by “we didn’t have a democratic choice” I was referring to gerrymandering, vote suppression, and other things like winner take all states. I voted and I know there were a surprising number of people who voted blue despite being lifelong republicans. It didn’t do anything because we don’t have democracy.
You had “NOT TRUMP”, a former prosecutor with a firm grasp of the law and the progressive half of Biden/Harris. … who was also Not Trump. If you wanted to ensure Trump didn’t get in , the box was right there.
They just needed to vote “not Trump”. How fucking hard is that?
Man, this gets hard to repeat so many times.
“B-but she’s a woman!”
Hey love, calm down. I was referring to gerrymandering and vote suppression not the inability to vote for the lesser evil.
I did vote and in fact a surprising number of my peers voted blue despite the fact they typically hard line republican. It made no difference because our state is an all or nothing state, so as long as you can gerrymander well enough around cities and convince rural areas to vote red out of fear, ta da the red party gets all the marbles as if the entire state voted unanimously.
That’s what I meant by not having democracy.
For the 273645234th time, gerrymandering does not play a part in a presidential election. Voter suppression, sure. Gerrymandering affects congressional elections.
Agreeing with the main statement here, but there are knock on effects to gerrymandering. Higher races get fewer votes from places where the elections aren’t competitive. With few competitive races there’s less benefit to voting, so marginal voters stay home. That’s why a motivating ballot question is considered a political benefit.
And gerrymandered states can also give the impression that state level results are a foregone conclusion as well. With the electoral college, where the number of votes on the losing side don’t matter, living under a red trifecta creates an impression that the state itself will never flip.
It seems like we didn’t vote for this guy and he cheated his way to winning the election. He made suspicious comments about Elon Musk and how he helped with the election, mentioning something about how he’s really good with that technology. Which Musk also mentioned, claiming that Trump would never have been elected without him.
Then there’s an active lawsuit going on where several counties in New York state found that absolutely no one voted for Kamala Harris in their location during the election, despite having large groups of Democrat residents. Their electronic voting machines received patches right before voting started, which is highly suspicious. That’s being investigated right now.
It appears that the election was likely stolen and we have a president who was never elected. This is how fascist takeovers start, and unless people organize against the government, they’re just going to keep enabling this downfall of our country.
I’m not USian, but from what analysts worth their salt would say, it is combination of-- but not limited to-- intentional dumbification of Americans, the opposition not really being opposition, the US Supreme Court legalising bribery, the atomisation and polarisation of American communities, de-industrialisation, growing wealth inequality and general corruption. These contributed to the growth of frustration and populism among the voters to vote for anyone who is “not establishment”. Someone who “tells it like it is” unlike most politicians who always do politician speak. In the minds of many Americans, Trump may be a grifter and a pervert, but they see him as genuine. If the democracy is a sham after all, might as well pull down the mask and show tje country for what it truly is. That’s why people say Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The same symptom is happening across the world which is why we’re getting the same far right populism.
Hate is a hell of a drug. The religious people (primarily Christians) in our country are particularly susceptible to it. Trump pretends to be religious, and his cruelty is embraced by these types.
It’s just layers of indoctrination, basically. It’s not the majority of Americans, it’s around a third, but they vote in very high percentages, and the actual majority of Americans don’t vote.
So, we have this loud, delusional group with the most power right now purely because the majority of Americans don’t care to vote.
A lot of us didnt vote for this guy…
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there won’t be a next election if you don’t fight back.
Why do you think ICE needs a budget of 100 billion? Are you seriously so naive as to believe that it’s about illegal immigrants?
Edit: This is not a call to violence, but merely a warning to finally wake up. I don’t think you can still rely on your legal system as it is obvious broken beyond repair, but I do think it is possible to remove this despot by civil means. My suggestion: a general strike across all industries – if there’s one thing that scares your rulers, it’s loss of profit.
What would you have a normal person who likely can’t afford to miss much in the way of work do? I am asking sincerely.
Outside of throwing everything away to Luigi it up, I’m not sure what a single person could hope to accomplish.
Even considering the protests, which one would think have had enough people to accomplish something an individual could not… what exactly are they to do that would make things better? Seems like the nonviolent protests are just being ignored to me, but even if they were violent, what exactly are they to direct it towards?
It’s a thing I have been wondering in the face of the calls to “do something”, and I don’t know the answer to what this “something” is.
Organize a general strike - on the biggest scale possible, a scale that cannot be ignored by your news outlets (social media giants included, of course).
Your employer won’t be able to do anything about it if there are enough people participating.
Find allies even in the ranks of the conservatives as there must be people not ok with this wreched course.
I have nothing better to offer. Only the warning not to remain inactive like my great-grandparents, Germans who were not Nazis but who did not act when it was still possible.
But yes, this will take courage and might mean hardship. I’d say it’s still the best option - but yes, it’s easy to say for me as I’m not involved.
General strikes don’t work if you are living paycheck to paycheck. Most people in America are in a bad situation financially.
I interviewed old timers who were involved in the early unionization struggles of auto workers and other industries. Those folks really lived under the thumb of landlords and employers and segregation and so much more bullshit than people remember.
Resistance to employer shit and abuse develops by people being neighbourly and helpful, by building bonds, by sharing their common outrage, and by connecting the dots.
Talk about pay with coworkers, it’s illegal for an employer to restrict such talk. You don’t necessarily have to unionize, but you do have to organize. This means finding solidarity at work, even if the coworkers are boring or misogynistic or different.
You know, apes strong together and all that. Build community around resistance to authoritarianism.
Dude, you are getting angry at the wrong person, and also preaching to the choir. 99% of people on this site agree with your point. So why are you yelling at me over an innocuous comment?
I think that was an actual question and invitation to dialogue, and your first response is to disavow? You mistake genuine concern for anger?
Why?
OP called me naive and implied that I think this is actually about immigration. How is that a genuine question? Insulting someone’s intelligence right off the bat isn’t asking for genuine dialog.
Saving this one. Needs to be posted in nearly every discussion where trump comes up.
I could also be he never won the election in the first place. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, there has been a lot of talk that the math ain’t mathing when it comes to the elections.
No shit.
If you’ve wondered why everything looks like a coup since he got in, perhaps it is because it is one.
https://lemmy.world/post/31401705
https://youtu.be/AaKFx5rxdmA
https://smartelections.us/
https://electiontruthalliance.org/
And if you’re wondering why Democrats like Tim Walz are not even interested in investigating it themselves, well, the existence of certain files and whether or not they are disclosed could have something to do with that.
Media and propaganda. They are very powerfull. Greed as well.