1d ago

Only The Best People

150 comments

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.
- 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.
- 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
  
  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.
  
  Voting democrat was still the lesser evil. The fault is with those in charge of the Democratic party, not their voters.
  
  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.
  
  or refused to vote blue over genocide
  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.
  
  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!
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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.

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