rsuri
Trump doesn’t have the competence to implement a genocide. He doesn’t even have the competence to book a room at the 4 seasons.
There’s a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I’m old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it’s trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn’t think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.
While it’s depressing that we’re reminded of the power of dumb at hateful people yet again, we should remember that nothing actually changed in that regard this election. We’re just discovering what’s always been there beneath the surface. I don’t think the malaise we’re feeling now is so much about what Trump will do - sure scores of people will die from bad policy, but that’s nothing new. Rather, we’re upset about what this reveals about ourselves. But we shouldn’t be upset about the act of revelation, because it tells us what we need to fix.
Simple reality is there’s twice as many Jewish voters than muslim voters, and Jewish voters are more likely to vote Democrat. So ironically the best thing Biden could’ve done for Palestine was to not piss off the Israel crowd and cause Trump’s election.
But maybe he’ll stand up now that the election is over. Time to cut off the weapons. Long time coming. Make Trump reinstate weapons for Israel and see how that goes for him. You Palestine people need to push 10x as hard now as you did before the election. Something tells me you won’t.
I mean it’s quite different. Hitler wasn’t elected (at least not prior to seizing power and effectively banning all opposition). Instead the Nazis got a plurality of just 33% in the Reichstag election, which led to failure to form a government. Then Hitler somehow convinced the center right President to grant him powers which he promptly started abusing and the rest is history.
In other words, 1930s Germany can kind of defend itself in ways the US can’t.
What did the mobilization accomplish? I watched as police reform in my area, which seemed on the path to success pre-George Floyd, was killed off in a backlash to the protests and riots. Chauvin was convicted not on the protests, but because of the people who stood there and got the video. Beyond that, I can’t see a single point of lasting success for BLM. By embracing inflammatory but attention grabbing messaging like ACAB and defund the police, they got attention alright, but that attention ended up painting the whole police reform movement as a bunch of rabid psychos.
See this article for a more well researched take on what I’m saying. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-views-on-black-lives-matter-have-changed-and-why-that-makes-police-reform-so-hard/
What we often call “the government” is actually many separate systems each with several moving parts. One man doesn’t control it, no matter what sentences are written on what pieces of paper. Trump has all the corruption he needs, but he’s not smart enough to know what he’s doing.
So to act like there’s no hope is just way too defeatist. Trump is gonna fail, and we can exploit those failures. But the last time we didn’t react to his failures correctly, because of course he just won again after what most historians consider the worst presidency in American history. So the first smart thing we can do is ask where the anti Trump messaging and media failed. And actually try to answer that question.
Ok everyone chill. Yeah, it sucks. But we kinda foresaw this ever since Biden decided to run again. Take a deep breath, think about it more later. The worst thing is to be angry instead of smart. Remember George Floyd. Remember specifically how everyone got angry and did dumb things about it, and today efforts at police reform are actually in a worse place than they were before he was murdered on video.
Think about ways to counter Trump that will be more effective and less just expressions of rage. I think the biggest problem is the media that really plays to Trump’s reality TV-style politics. It’s not enough to wine that the voters are too stupid, but what do we do about it?
Chris Young, the director and treasurer of America PAC, testified that the recipients are vetted ahead of time, to “feel out their personality, (and) make sure they were someone whose values aligned” with the group.
So it’s a scam designed to get ordinary people to align with the policies of the richest man on earth for the promise of monetary reward that never will actually materialize. Or, as it’s known in the US, Republican politics.
