I'm going to keep saying this over and over, because it keeps getting glossed over: Trump got the same number of votes in 2024 as he did in 2020. 74 million. He's *not* more popular now. There's a narrative push to say he "won" groups, when what happened was fewer members of those groups voted: young people, Latino men, etc.
The people excited about a Trump Presidency are pretty much the same people who have been excited about a Trump Presidency for 12+ years, with just enough new blood to replace those who died in the last 4 years. I am concerned to see Discourse parroting this narrative that he's suddenly more popular/a new hope, which is being used in media to manufacture consent and discourage dissent.
This piece ties in a theme I have been hearing and reading for 3 weeks now: neoliberalism is dead. The Democrats aren't much different from the UK Labour party after all. Yes, the nation is going to shit. Yes, it is being run by clowns. But there's a good way to run a shitty nation. The Democrats and Labour just want to soft-land the apocalypse. They want to end their nations responsibly and reasonably. Trump and the GOP just want to set the nation of fire. Voters went with the more drastic, entertaining and violent option. Ten years from now, we will have the world's first trillionaire in the US, which by then will be a failed state.
Dems also need to actually do stuff, not just make a pitch during a campaign. Initiatives to keep abortion legal outperformed Harris by a wide margin even though future action to preserve abortion access was a big part of Harris's campaign. That really suggests that there's a not insignificant number of people that don't trust Dems to follow through on campaign promises/rhetoric anymore.
I wish the Corporate Dems and their affiliated Corporate Media had spent the first 4 years of Trump on things other than the CIA/FBI manufactured specious Russiagate affair and the not-so-unrelated first impeachment over what honestly did amount to Obama/Biden corruption and warmongering in Ukraine. Seems like they had everything going for them in terms of a broad "resistance" movement. But they failed, or neglected, to use their power across the political spectrum from the state houses to the governorships to Congress. Not saying there was a majority in all or most of those bodies, but still. The pandemic and George Floyd protests certainly took center stage and ate up a lot of bandwidth. But on the subject of power, your entry today rings true and aligns with a Matt Stoller bit I read earlier this morning. The Dems seem to have perfected this act of "helplessness" or inability to take, or if they do take it, wield power. I could see it in all my interactions with Democrats/liberals too. You feel a sense of powerlessness. In fact, several of them, and many people with whom I've interacted online and through the media, have said they switched from having voted for Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 and back to Trump. The Dems wasted all their time, squandered it, with all the meaningless, contrived nothingburger scandals - primarily Russia related - and I think it engendered a sense of "aww fuck it, these aren't serious people and they make me feel powerless" - especially in light of an ongoing genocide that the Biden Regime gladly aids but refuses to call it as such, and a major land war in Eastern Europe, also kept rolling by this lame duck administration. At the very least they could have been more vocal about the good things they were trying to do here at home, or loudly went about reversing Trump's policies (which Trump did with Obama's). Instead it was just more faux powerlessness and fundraising. /end rant
“For a lot of people — not just stupid people lost in all the flim flam of Trumpism, normal people who maybe just don’t read a lot of like Slate dot com or whatever — that was it”.
“He felt like there was a guy who liked the things he liked and would fight for him, and that being in that arena and supporting that guy gave him power. I know that this is simplistic. People are smarter and more nuanced”
No they’re not. People are dumb and simple cattle. Have you seen the spike in Google results for “why isn’t Biden on the ticket”. What kind of life do you live that it doesn’t even permeate your existence even a little that Harris is the one running for president? I’m tired of having to carry the weight for normal people. Read a fucking book, take a fucking class to learn the economics you should have learned in the 11th grade. Google “will tariffs actually drive down costs”. Fucking sheeple (Harris won the “people who are politically engaged” by double digits, you don’t need to have alternate between New York magazine and the New Yorker to turn off whatever reality dreck you consume to numb the monotony of your existence to go “which person might give me a better out on my life sucking”
"The “normal” that they’re pitching isn’t really that good for a lot of people. For many others, it outright sucks."
This drove me *crazy* in 2020. Nobody wanted normal! That's why we got trump in the first place!
I'm going to keep saying this over and over, because it keeps getting glossed over: Trump got the same number of votes in 2024 as he did in 2020. 74 million. He's *not* more popular now. There's a narrative push to say he "won" groups, when what happened was fewer members of those groups voted: young people, Latino men, etc.
The people excited about a Trump Presidency are pretty much the same people who have been excited about a Trump Presidency for 12+ years, with just enough new blood to replace those who died in the last 4 years. I am concerned to see Discourse parroting this narrative that he's suddenly more popular/a new hope, which is being used in media to manufacture consent and discourage dissent.
This piece ties in a theme I have been hearing and reading for 3 weeks now: neoliberalism is dead. The Democrats aren't much different from the UK Labour party after all. Yes, the nation is going to shit. Yes, it is being run by clowns. But there's a good way to run a shitty nation. The Democrats and Labour just want to soft-land the apocalypse. They want to end their nations responsibly and reasonably. Trump and the GOP just want to set the nation of fire. Voters went with the more drastic, entertaining and violent option. Ten years from now, we will have the world's first trillionaire in the US, which by then will be a failed state.
Dems also need to actually do stuff, not just make a pitch during a campaign. Initiatives to keep abortion legal outperformed Harris by a wide margin even though future action to preserve abortion access was a big part of Harris's campaign. That really suggests that there's a not insignificant number of people that don't trust Dems to follow through on campaign promises/rhetoric anymore.
I wish the Corporate Dems and their affiliated Corporate Media had spent the first 4 years of Trump on things other than the CIA/FBI manufactured specious Russiagate affair and the not-so-unrelated first impeachment over what honestly did amount to Obama/Biden corruption and warmongering in Ukraine. Seems like they had everything going for them in terms of a broad "resistance" movement. But they failed, or neglected, to use their power across the political spectrum from the state houses to the governorships to Congress. Not saying there was a majority in all or most of those bodies, but still. The pandemic and George Floyd protests certainly took center stage and ate up a lot of bandwidth. But on the subject of power, your entry today rings true and aligns with a Matt Stoller bit I read earlier this morning. The Dems seem to have perfected this act of "helplessness" or inability to take, or if they do take it, wield power. I could see it in all my interactions with Democrats/liberals too. You feel a sense of powerlessness. In fact, several of them, and many people with whom I've interacted online and through the media, have said they switched from having voted for Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 and back to Trump. The Dems wasted all their time, squandered it, with all the meaningless, contrived nothingburger scandals - primarily Russia related - and I think it engendered a sense of "aww fuck it, these aren't serious people and they make me feel powerless" - especially in light of an ongoing genocide that the Biden Regime gladly aids but refuses to call it as such, and a major land war in Eastern Europe, also kept rolling by this lame duck administration. At the very least they could have been more vocal about the good things they were trying to do here at home, or loudly went about reversing Trump's policies (which Trump did with Obama's). Instead it was just more faux powerlessness and fundraising. /end rant
“For a lot of people — not just stupid people lost in all the flim flam of Trumpism, normal people who maybe just don’t read a lot of like Slate dot com or whatever — that was it”.
“He felt like there was a guy who liked the things he liked and would fight for him, and that being in that arena and supporting that guy gave him power. I know that this is simplistic. People are smarter and more nuanced”
No they’re not. People are dumb and simple cattle. Have you seen the spike in Google results for “why isn’t Biden on the ticket”. What kind of life do you live that it doesn’t even permeate your existence even a little that Harris is the one running for president? I’m tired of having to carry the weight for normal people. Read a fucking book, take a fucking class to learn the economics you should have learned in the 11th grade. Google “will tariffs actually drive down costs”. Fucking sheeple (Harris won the “people who are politically engaged” by double digits, you don’t need to have alternate between New York magazine and the New Yorker to turn off whatever reality dreck you consume to numb the monotony of your existence to go “which person might give me a better out on my life sucking”
I haven’t seen a sincere “sheeple” in the wild in a long time — neat!