What scares me shitless is the idea that Trump is what the US is and what the US has earned. Who's ready for that conversation?
100% this. Im German and I feel so strange that americans are choosing this guy for president. Not to be offensive, but damn.
As an American I feel that a majority of Americans loathe him. The issue lies in not all those people vote.
What scares me is that any Americans vote for him. How can you be so blinded and not see what a lying, cheating grifter that he is. The man is not intelligent, doesn’t read, is petty to a fault, vindictive, spiteful, narcissistic, nepotistic and just generally not a good person. Why would you choose that for a leader? It’s because you share those traits. That’s what scares me.
The issue lies in not all those people vote.
Partly. There's also the issue with the electoral college, because that makes some votes worth more than others (depending on where you live).
Well the fact someone in Wyoming voting is worth 3.5 times someone voting in California is a huge problem I agree.
I don't know that they all share those traits per se, but just as damning not only to them but to our culture as well is our tolerance and even expectations that people in charge have those traits. I saw it everywhere when I lived in a deeply conservative small city, anyone with power (including company management) was beyond reproach. The status quo was defended harshly by the overwhelming majority. We have lost our values to greed by using the american dream as a trojan horse full of awful ideals.
We can’t underestimate the hate for others that is behind these votes. It started as “owning the libs” and now is pretty much evolved to “eliminate the woke trans democrats”. That’s the part that’s scaring me these days. There is no platform for running the country, it’s all just piss off or erase the other side, figuratively and literally.
No no you don't understand, I mean, sure the media makes him seem like he has those traits, but he's really a great guy! I mean I guess it's been proven he has those traits but who doesn't right? Isn't everyone deep down homophobic and racist and misogynist themselves?
And really if you think about it, God can use anything he wants right? So why would he pick the Catholic guy out there trying to invest in America? He definitely wants the guy who most looks like my own deep down beliefs. So no matter what you say, your argument is invalid because God is on my side.
The crazy part is they think Biden makes the US look bad. When you present evidence to the contrary they say, "who cares what other countries think. "
My aunt thinks Jill Biden is controlling the country from the shadows and wants to run in place of Joe in 2024. We are fucked
I'd vote for Doc Biden, ngl
Yeah, I'd much rather vote for Jill than Joe.
Different strokes for different folks but I do dig her
I remember people saying most similar things of Hillary Clinton during Bill's administration.
I think it's time to have your aunt committed
What does she think about Nancy running things for Ronnie once the Alzheimers got too bad?
That’s what I told my mother when she told me, but I doubt it’s gotten back to the source
We are fucked
more so because our only choice is between racist ultra-authoritarian con man and an opportunistic career politician that had always sided with racists and homophobes until it was politically popular.
In fairness to your aunt, I have voted for Joe 3 times (2008, 2020, 2020), and even I think Joe is pretty close to weekend at Bernie's. He really needs to step aside for Newsom.
I wanna know if we're going to weekend at Bernie's someone, why not Bernie? Why has he not been on the ballot yet?
Well that’s just a stupid conspiracy theory. Well I guess they all are but this one seems particularly daft.
That was my first reaction, I didn’t even know how to respond to it because it’s patently absurd on its face. Really hoping it’s not some sort of viral right wing bullshit code that hasn’t cycled out into the mainstream yet
Fellow German and... yeah. People joke about the Hitler comparisons, but you won't see us laughing. (I mean, in general, but that's a different topic.)
Insert the Robin Williams joke here.
You should be offensive, we deserve it.
We picked an absolute trash human as our leader, a sizeable portion of which chose him specifically because they wanted him to hurt people (see: "he's not hurting the right people" woman.) That same group will often cite their desired outcome for any given thing is "to see liberals cry/get mad."
Hillary Clinton made a mistake by saying it out loud, but she was 100% correct when she said a large portion of Trump supporters are "a basket of deplorables." They absolutely are and are deserving of scorn.
I just hate how well propaganda works and how much money a random grifting asshole can make by parroting bullshit on YouTube, they boost each other and perpetuate this garbage era we're going through...
Please remember he never won the popular vote.
That too is scary. The guy didn't win and still ran the country. WTF
The American political system is literally incomprehensible.
Everyone votes and then you find out who the winner is. And then, at some later point you find out who the president will be, and it's not necessarily the same person for some reason.
And yet apparently democracy has happened so that's all.
the american federal government is easy to understand: everything is weighed in favor of rural conservative racists because when we were first designing the thing they realized that they were in the minority but that we'd lose the revolution without them. President? Racists get more of a say due to the electoral college. Senate? Half a million conservatives in Wyoming get just as many votes as 40 million liberals in California. House? House reps are capped at 435 permanently so as areas become more populous they end up with less representation per person. SCotUS? Even when it's running normally it's biased because the biased president and biased Senate pick them, but since Obama now Democrats need the presidency and a majority coalition in the Senate in order to pick justices. That's every branch of federal government, and recently they tried to make it even worse by making state legislatures (which always lean conservative because they gerrymander to hell and back) the sole authority on what constitutes a "fair" election. Given all the out and out treason that came from state legislatures after Trump got wrecked by Biden, I think we know what conservative state legislatures will do if they get to decide what constitutes "fair".
Throw in a dash of first past the post, a pinch of gerrymandering, and baby we've got a minority government.
Same here. I think this is what happens when education is underfundet. I'm happy we're back to G9 but we should definitely pay teachers more to counteract the lack of teachers and ensure every teacher has sufficient time to do their job well.
Otherwise people cannot be taught to think critical, question "why is he saying X?" instead of just weather it is true or not. Often understanding why somebody is saying sometimg at the time they do is much more important after all.
This idea that we are under funded is not true. Per Capita we spend more than every other country on education than any other OECD country besides Luxembourg.
We are number two world wide for funds to education per capita.
Our funding is just wasted and ineffective. We have a cultural problem with education. Not a funding problem.
Yes School boards and superintendents are extremely well funded. The fact that teachers have to struggle to scrape by while at the same time funding classroom supplies out of their own money just reeks of mis-allocated misspent funds. There's always money for another Sports program. While science technology engineering and math extracurriculars in many districts don't exist.
It's a perfect mirror of our diseased American culture. Where wealth and wealth alone is Merit. And those who give the least (work) get the most.
That money goes to administrators instead of teachers.
Americans aren't. A corrupt system is.
There are a lot of germans voting for idiots which just repeat a few Trump topics a few months later. :(
I was visiting Germany in 2016 during the spring, before the election. Several Europeans, after hearing we were from the US, asked, "What the hell is going on in your country?"
Yep. He is who the U.S. has become. We are an embarrassment.
No, Trump is the hail mary of the US ruling class. They are scared that the people just start ignoring the government and take power, so they give them demagogues
They're called representatives for a reason.
well yeah we have an attempted fascist overthrow of our government about once every 100 years or so because we like to stay just this side of fascism on a normal day
We all should be. But that won't happen if people go out there and vote, godamnit.
And don't just vote to keep Trump out.
Vote to keep him and his party out of office.
We don't get a vote of no confidence. There's no box to check that says "No Trump".
Also, Hillary got more votes than Trump did, so simply having more voters on your side doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will lose.
So .. don't vote? There absolutely is a No Trump voting option - only one - and it's voting for Biden. There are several Yes Trump voting options: vote for Trump specifically, vote for a third party candidate, or vote for no one. It's not that complicated.
Do the electoral map and electoral college make this difficult to achieve? Of course. But we can only win if we vote, and are guaranteed to lose if we don't.
The fascists love voter apathy. Don't do their job for them.
True, but remember "did not vote" was higher then either Hillary or Trump first time around.
I was apathetic in 2016, I didn't care enough to vote for her, or know enough to vote against Trump.
I voted against Trump on 2020, and now I've seen enough I will vote for Biden in 2024, assuming he is the nominee. Otherwise, it's another vote against Trump.
My point is, there was a real disconnect back in 2016, and a lot of people just couldn't be bothered.
Trumps base has only gotten smaller, but the people who know and want to keep him out has grown. I suspect we will see both significant turn out, and significant voter suppression in 2024.
God, I hope so hard that turnout will be good. I just worry that the more time that passes, the more "most" people will become complacent and forget. I'd certainly like to imagine that between Jan 6 and how extremely climate change has affected people the last couple of years, people are finally figuring out that they can't just twiddle their thumbs and wait for things to blow over. Unfortunately, though, that's something that will be shown with election results.
...didn't Trump get more votes in 2020 than in 2016? Has his base really gotten smaller?
Smaller as a percentage of the active electorate. Biden also got more votes than any other candidate before him... but that's not unexpected with a positive population growth.
""In a normal society, a former president—let’s call him Donald Trump—who’s been indicted three times in under four months, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to conspiracy to defraud the United States, would have absolutely no chance of ever being president again. It straight up would not be a scenario anyone would have to even contemplate; even if this individual were not in prison, the idea that they would be able to run for and win higher office once more would not compute.
But unfortunately, we don’t live in a normal society; instead, we live in a place in which millions of people not only still support Donald Trump, but grow fonder of him with every new criminal charge. Which means that, despite the aforementioned indictments*, the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted ex-president is dominating every other candidate for the Republican nomination, and currently looks to be the most likely GOP nominee in the 2024 general election. That, of course, scares the shit out of a lot of people—including, apparently, one Barack Obama. Whose fear, it has to be said, is extremely unsettling!
The Washington Post reports that during a private lunch with Joe Biden in late June, the 44th president “voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths—including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized country—underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.” According to people familiar with the conversation, “Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.”
Obama’s concerns are certainly warranted: In a New York Times/Siena poll released on Monday, Trump led his closest competition, Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 37 points. An even wilder data point that seems to validate Obama’s fears was that Trump beat DeSantis even among Republicans who believe he committed “serious federal crimes.” To be clear, that means these people believe Trump is a criminal, and want him to be president anyway.
As FiveThirtyEight optimistically notes, should Trump be convicted before November 5, 2024, voters might be less inclined to cast a ballot for him, and presumably they’d be even less so if he’s sentenced to time in prison. (In the case of the most recent indictment, two of the charges carry up to 20 years behind bars, and compared to her colleagues, the judge assigned to the case has imposed the toughest sentences for January 6 defendants.) Though, who knows!
As for a potential Trump-Biden rematch, another Times/Siena Poll poll published this week put the two in a tie, with each receiving 43% of the vote—which, for people who think democracy is worth preserving, is pretty pants-shittingly scary.
In somewhat happier news, Obama reportedly promised at the same June lunch “to do all he could to help the president get reelected.” And in a statement, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign told the Post: “President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.”
*And everything else!
Mike Pence giveth and Mike Pence taketh away
Yes, he tweeted yesterday that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President,” but then he basically suggested today that Trump was just listening to his lawyers’ advice when he tried to overturn the election—which, coincidentally, is a defense Trump is reportedly planning to use."
Honest question, how can we ever get out of this? Is it just human nature for most of the population to not have critical thinking skills? Is it possible to reach a world where the majority of people have even just a little empathy?
It's just so sad. It's so clear to anyone even kinda paying attention that we possess the technical capacity as a society to meet everyone's needs and eliminate so much human-caused suffering at the detriment to absolutely nobody. We could be working toward a society where everyone has community, safety, security, opportunity. We could do so much if all we did was kind of give a shit about each other.
But no. Let's elect the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, encourages white supremacy, committed treason, etc.
Donald Trump is just a guy. A shitty guy, but just a guy. He's not what is ruining the world, but the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person, and fuck if that doesn't just burn up all my hope for this world.
Education is the only way to overcome this tsunami of stupidity and misinformation. But it’s slow and costly.
Conservatives with a capital "c" are not brainwashed; they're not tricked; they're not progressives who've been misinformed. Trump is who they are and what they want.
The Dominion discovery documents demonstrate that Fox News opinion hacks changed their coverage to appease the deplorables. In the case of the big lie, it was the viewers who radicalized right media, not the other way round. Maybe it's been that way the whole time?
The deplorables number in the millions. We need a plan to defeat and marginalize them in our democracy, not fantasies about changing what they are.
i’m not so sure it’s just evil people being evil
i think it’s just us vs them, which basically has roots in greed, power over others, etc
i think you could probably overturn those things with better instilled skills of long term planning, understanding of things like game theory (sometimes giving something to someone helps both of you! it’s not rewarding laziness: it can be selfish and humane)
i just think the reasoning here doesn’t go further than the initial emotion… there’s been no reinforcement that maybe your first reaction isn’t the right one
I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not from middle America. It's a lot more than just shitty people being shitty. This Cracked article from 2016 explains it quite well and I can assure you, as someone who was born and raised and now lives in Trump country, it still holds up. Add seven years of aggressive propaganda and intense radicalization and here we are now. The populist to fascist pipeline is almost complete.
Thanks for reminding me of how good David Wong used to be at capturing popular thought and placing you into a certain perspective. I might not agree with some of the generalizations of that article, but it does help understand their perspective.
the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just "shitty people voting for a shitty person" they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won't realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
That ignorance makes them pretty shitty.
I'm not saying they're fundamentally and permanently shitty, but they are being shitty. Refusing to become a more aware person is shitty.
They are stupid and scared and propaganda is extra powerful on people who are stupid and scared.
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just “shitty people voting for a shitty person” they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won’t realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
And that is exactly my problem with that kind of thinking (or rather: believing). How did they arrive at such conclusions? Did Trump actually do ANYTHING to make their personal lives better even for a second? How many examples are there of Mr. Ivory Tower to make even an ounce of positive difference in the lives of rural folks?
So all I can see is a gullible people following the loudest talking head on a whim. It's really hard for me to feel pity, much less sympathy in this circumstance. Although pity is certainly appropriate.
Nationalism and nativism pops up every few generations. Always has. We beat it every time and it shuts up and the world dramatically improves for a while. As it improves, some people become nativists and nationalists, and the cycle repeats.
Google the "Know-Nothing Party." Trump isn't anything new at all.
Only problem is, just like a super hero, we have to win every time, and they only have to win once.
We shame them for being shitty. Don't engage them in debate, they are used to that. Don't try to use facts, because they don't care about facts. Don't try to convince them of shit.
Make them feel like outcasts and bad people. Brush off what they say when they say horrible shit. Make them have emotional responses to their shitty views. Conservative news targets these people by exploiting their emotions.
And vote. Vote for people who will fix our education system so that our next generation knows how to think for themselves.
That approach could work in the past, but it won't now. Now we have the internet when even people shamed by their family or neighbors will find support and like-minded individuals. We are only going to be more divided in the future.
Unfortunately, you are correct. We're doomed.
I once saw a comment where a guy said that before the internet, if someone wanted to fuck toasters and told anyone, he would be shamed and made fun of to the point where he'd never bring it up again.
With the internet, if someone wants to fuck a toaster, they can go online and find a while community of people who also enjoy fucking toasters, complete with guides and recommendations on the best toasters to fuck.
Its absurd, but it illustrates a great point. So yeah, we are fucked. Pandoras box is open.
I'm left of centre, and here's my take - the "left" is fucking up so badly that the right is going to win.
Ever play a sport and you just trounce your opponent, but the coach says "you weren't that good! They were just that bad tonight."
This is the same thing. Trump and the GOP aren't doing some amazing job of campaigning and manipulating, they're just up against the weakest opponent who can't stop scoring on their own fucking net.
First let me preface this by saying that I vote against Republicans as often as I get the chance to. Which on the rare occasion someone runs against them where I live. It is usually a democrat. So I am a staunch Ally of the Democrats. That being said.
I am left of center of what is generally considered left in the united states. The left isn't fucking anything up. The Left has been cut off from having a voice for nearly the last 100 years in the united States. Since at least McCarthy. What we've seen is a populous that has been beholden to an incestuous right wing relationship. Between two solidly right wing pro oligarch parties. Though to Liberal Democrats credit. They give lots of lip service to the concept of social democracy. And do eventually, once it no longer takes courage or bravery, do the right thing. Once they get tired of everyone shouting at them enough.
We need the economic tools we've spent the last hundred years vilifying. And we need a Resurgence of Education especially economic and political. People in the United States who think they are the left, and the way we are miseducated to define left are a joke. One that is crippling us and turning us against ourselves.
We need to rip and tear the largest corporations apart. We need to nationalize basic necessities. We need to abolish private or unaccountable funding of all elections that every level. And most of all we need to empower workers. It's only a start. But those are the things we have to do. And unfortunately my generation the Xers. All approaching 50 and 60 years old have largely abdicated and lost their chance to really impact or make a change. We need younger representatives in touch with what's going on now to write the laws that will lead us into the future. Instead of the regulations that will hold us in some nostalgically idealized past that never existed.
Yeah the idea Dems are left is hilarious to me, social democrats in the streets, neoliberal conservatives in the sheets. The last cry of the left as a concentrated political voice was contained in aspects of the civil rights movement, but those aspects, like MLK's socialist insistence on economic redistribution through class projects, and his identity as a labor organizer, is completely whitewashed. It's condensed to Rosa Parks sat on a bus, MLK had a dream, LBJ passed the law.
The Dems stop at disparity frameworks because that doesn't threaten the political economy in any meaningful way, as long as people are fucked over proportionately it's okay. Rising income inequality, lowered standards of living, eventually something has to give to keep this speculative real estate project of a country going.
One thing the political center lacks in America - and I say center because we don't have a truly leftist political party - is a vision for the future. They don't want a fundamental change in how the economy and government work, they just want to keep things steady and work around the edges.
The problem is the economy and government aren't working for most people and most people want them replaced.
Republicans have a vision. Yeah, it's a racist, sexist vision that will drag us back to the 1950s, but it's a vision they can communicate.
What's the Democrats' vision? I don't think it's mine, of worker cooperatives and high speed rail and free education and universal health care, paid for by shaking Bezos and Musk upside down until no more money comes out. As far as I can tell they just want to keep things going like they have since the 90s.
And then they wonder why they can't seem to get people to get excited to vote for them.
This is certainly a part of it. In a time when Democrats should be uniting and putting forward their strongest faces to protect democracy from the GOP, they keep engaging in political gamesmanship because ‘c’mon look at this clown, there’s no way anyone will vote for him!’
Only problem is that people have, and people could once more, put this guy in the White House. And if it happens…well, everything’s fucked.
There's no representation of the left in American politics, there's leftist but no political power of a left movement. The closest thing is the recent wave of workers unionization efforts which is at least encouraging.
Lol. If you say so.
I do. Where is the good Dem candidate with the platform attacking high cost of living, corporate takeover of housing, backing unions, and looking at funding education, ubi, etc?
It's be pretty easy to break this wide open and runaway with the election. If they wanted to.
The Dems aren't going to run someone who attacks the economic base of the party is what it comes down to.
Downballot Democratic candidates? That's where.
David Brooks wrote a good article in the New York Times today that tries to help shift perspectives a bit to understand this. I'd highly recommend reading it.
That is the farthest thing from a good article that I've read in some time. I suppose that it does give some insights to why trumpers act the way they do, however trying to align their actions with some sort of 'we the elitists need to do a better job at not being elitist' mentality is rather dumb at first glance, and a bit insidious upon closer examination.
To me it was helpful in trying to understand the perspective from which a group derive their actions. Much like you said. Usually a good first step in dealing with interpersonal conflict is to make an attempt to understand the other perspective.
The end does seem to wander a bit, but I think there's some truth in the general premise that a large group of people feel left behind (in various ways for various reasons).
The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.
I love how Brooks can talk about class without bringing labor into it. Just a great example of liberals missing the damn point.
Then he goes on to talk about "open immigration" like that's even close to what we have.
Yeah Brooks is one of those special kind of conservatives who seems to always miss the point in the most aspirational moralized way. Like he taught a class on "humility" that included readings of... himself. I also love his ever-Freudian book title "The Second Mountain" which is about how commitment to marriage is part of a fulfilling life... after he divorced his wife and married his younger assistant.
Got any free sources?
Seems 12ft.io doesn't work for NYT, but archive.is does:
We also like to parrot shit like "no one is above the law" while requiring perfect situations before ever questioning elected leaders like the president when they blatantly break the law. The US has inverse responsibility, where we blame the poor for being poor and give the wealthy every possible chance to buy their way out of crimes.
Except the president and police are literally above the law with the presidential pardon and qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity isn't abused nearly as often as people think it is.
Civil asset forfeiture is the one they really abuse
They were coming to kill him, and the spinless fuck Pence can't even stand up for himself.
Mother must be getting tired of looking at his lack of balls when they get ready to shag.
@eurekaphoenix
Wonder how these self-same Republicans would react if Obama had operated like Trump and was being indicted for the same alleged crimes? 🤔
Can confirm
Hi.
Big fan.
Hope you are well.
Look, anyone with a working brain should be worried about the prospect, because if he wins, then that means we're in for the worst four years (and probably much longer than four years) of our lives here in the United States. I don't think we come back from that.
If Trump wins re-election, I think it's entirely non-hyperbolic to say that democracy in this country is over. Think of the things he tried to do with some, obviously-too-small, guard rails. He attempted a literal coup. Literally throw away votes. Literally has one of his chief advisors saying that if people protested said coup, they would use the insurrection act, or more directly, use the military to put down to put down those protesting the coup. There is a very small number of things that prevented this from happening, not the least of which is just a tiny handful of people being like "uh, we can't actually do this, right?"
I don't entirely disagree, but it's also true that Trump exposed some serious flaws in our political system, and that serious people have been working very hard since Jan 6th to make it much harder to do what he and his cohorts did. One example would be the supreme court victory that struck down a proposed law that would have allowed state congresses to ignore election results. Not saying everything's okay now, but maybe it's not quite so dire. Of course, most democratic coups happen when an individual or group just decides they won't follow the rules anymore, so there is that little problem with trying to litigate ourselves out of this mess.
Most distressingly, he learned that he has a literal mob/cult willing to stand behind him and do anything he tells them to, no matter how abhorrent.
We haven't come back from his actual four years yet, and probably won't for a very long time. The prospect of him returning to finish the country off is a nightmare.
Not just for you guys but the world. The world as we know it is at stake as USA is currently the world's superpower.
Who in their right mind isn’t? The only people that aren’t, aren’t eh brainless minions that worship the ground that coward walks on.
I'm not scared of him being in office because I have confidence that he won't be elected. I know the whole mindset on Reddit and Lemmy is fear of him being back in office but with more young voters who are overwhelmingly left leaning being able to vote, the Republicans shooting themselves in the foot overturning Roe V Wade, and all of the ass backwards policies they're putting in place, more people aren't gonna let this happen in 2024. But I understand the fear completely and it is justified
"I have confidence that he won’t be elected" I had that confidence the first go around... and that didn't work out so well. The last election gave me a little bit of hope back, but that we're even having this discussion in the first place, that Trump is even in the running, isn't a good sign.
Well experts say that Biden has a good chance of winning if he runs against Trump. In fact, Allen Lichtman has predicted every election correct since 84 except Bush vs Gore. But that was due to Florida fucking with the votes. He himself says Biden has a strong chance of winning if Trump is picked as the Republican forerunner. Which they obviously will pick him.
The problem with 2016 was that Republicans clearly couldn't take having a black president for 8 years to then go and have a woman be the next president right after that. Then Trump who just said any and everything to appease to then crazies of this country and they came out in droves. As well, Hillary just wasn't that charismatic in her debates
Hillary had a whole lot of baggage going into that election, then the Dem primaries didn’t really do anything to strengthen her, if anything it fractured the party even more. She was an establishment candidate in a ‘change’ election, just the wrong fit for the mood.
Another big thing is that a lot of people didn't like how the DNC snubbed Bernie. He was clearly in the lead until I think it was South Carolina? And then Hillary all of a sudden was the pick. Most people I know (and it could be cause I'm Gen Z and what I see due to my community), wanted Bernie and Bernie alone and we're very pissed
Yea, that was a big slap in the face and I think made a lot of people realize that the fix was in, Hillary was "the anointed one" that election and wasn't going to let another Obama come along and take the nomination away from her. I was still even holding out hope that Sanders would at least get the VP slot, just some sort of seat at the table.
Still though, anyone who just skipped voting out of spite helped hand the election over to Trump, gave Republicans all those Supreme Court Justices, which got Roe v Wade truck down, probably contributed to Russia invading Ukraine, and a host of other problems that came down from the 2016 election. I thought Bernie was the best choice by far (though maybe he still would've lost to Trump, who knows), but held my nose and voted for Hillary regardless because the election was more important than just getting my preferred candidate.
The issue is that the overwhelming majority of voters, including the youth vote, only pay attention to federal elections and ignore state and local elections. In the present day and age, States' Supreme Courts are even more important for individual rights than the SCOTUS. If you've got a red state high court and legislature and progressive federal senators/representatives/POTUS, life will still suck bigtime in your state. And more than ever, SCOTUS is reverting to "STATES RIGHTS" like we're back in the Jim Crow era.
It could just be me, but from what I've seen of those around me as I'm Gen Z myself, a lot of us ARE aware of local elections and how important they are. We actively do vote in them. It may have a much bigger impact the next go around but we'll all have to just wait and see
Fingers crossed. I'm a x-enial and I continue to be disappointed. :)
I'm more surprised that he's allowed to try for another term.
I'm not, USA politics is pure corruption wrapped up nice with a bow. It's a joke and that's been extremely apparent since 2016
Bush pretty much set the stage for all this shit with his stolen election, fear mongering, illegal wars....
We thought Obama could fix us, but we underestimated the amount of racism in this country.
So the rednecks lashed out at seeing a black, kind, educated, honest, funny man in power, so they decided to elect the exact opposite of him.
That bastard made Obamacare....it's bullshit. Now I'm going to saddle on over here and get me some nice democratic AMA care.
A lot of those people would never get Obamacare, they graciously support the Affordable Care Act 🙄
The USA was as inch away from becoming a dictatorship. You're lucky to just have pure corruption.
We're still just an inch away. The fascists haven't stopped at all.
#blessed
2016? Let me tell you about a little supreme court decision from 2000 called Bush v. Gore.
Not surprised either, corruption is inherent ni politics. I am living in a country were the power of an ex-dictator's clan were put back to power as his son back as president of our republic after successful non-violent revolution not more than 40 years ago.
Phillipines?
Very likely. He has a Tagalog username.
The amount of stuff we learned through Trump is just a formality is rather stunning.
It used to be that there was an unspoken risk that ignoring all these norms would result in your being summarily tossed on your ass in the next election. But thanks to Murdoch, Limbaugh, Stone, Gingrich, and all the right wing media pushing hyper-partisan, no-compromise, the-other-guy-eats-babies politics, combined with a court system that refused to rein in the lies that were poisoning our discourse for decades, eroded that critical check on political society.
All of civilization is just formality.
True, but I mean, at a certain point pretending that laws matter is what separates a society at peace from a society at civil war.
Innocent until proven guilty, and ongoing criminal trials, or even convictions can't bar someone from the presidency.
imagine a world where Donald could just eliminate political opponents by having them arrested and put on trial just before an election. Personally, I'm a fan of democracy
That's what's gonna end up happening anyway whether it's Trump or DeSantis, or anyone sufficiently power hungry. The idea that any system we build can protect us from people like that is a fucking joke and needs to be abandoned.
Obama has the resources to flee the country. The rest of us do not. What are we as individuals do when half of the country decides to abandon democracy and the rule of law? Asking for a friend…
America is the world’s only superpower. No matter where you run, global consequence will follow if Trump is re-elected.
Part of me, I guess the defeatist part, just kinda wants to get it over with.
I have no problem with allowing him to run (as of today) because (as of today) there's nothing prohibiting him. I do have a problem with more than a third of this country willing to vote for him. How stupid and/or bigoted can we possibly get?
The founding fathers of this country established rules that (as of today) both ensured and prevented what's currently transpiring. If it were the case that a subset of the government were trying to oust a political leader, The People should still have a say as to who represents them and bring "balance"(?) to the government. But also, if The People are being a bunch of idiots, the Electoral College can overrule their stupidity. It might be worth noting that the founding fathers also owned other humans as if they were livestock and didn't believe a woman had the same rights as a man. So, to say "some mistakes were made" would be understating it. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
We gotta stop giving a fuck what the founding fathers did or wanted. They've been dead for centuries, they owned slaves and thought women couldn't vote. They couldn't even imagine drinking a baja blast or eating a pizza with fried chicken for a crust. The future is now, fuck em.
I don’t believe the constitution has worked for this country for the past 50 years (if ever) but without amending it we’re left with anarchy. I think the US is a failed experiment but I still respect its founding as a rejection of oppression. They took a big first step, every year we take more little steps, we may need to see a much bigger step in our lifetimes. They did know that things would take place that the could never imagine. This is why the federal government’s abilities are so restricted and more power is given to the states to legislate more freely. In such a connected world as we have now though, maybe states aren’t a viable solution. Or maybe they are and we just don’t know how to live in them anymore.
It's lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium, that's not exactly what I'd call a failure.
You say "quarter of a millennium" as if 250 years is more than 3 lifespans. The US is still a toddler compared to long-standing civilizations.
As it stands today, I don't think our current form of government is sustainable for a vibrant and peaceful, progressive society. Although, lot of people would argue that that's not a relevant metric. I believe a government's job is to ensure the equity, health, safety, and prosperity of its people above all else. A lot of that is found in the constitution but modern ideas have been able to twist and manipulate those words for their own gain. Two examples; I don't think SCOTUS has any business taking a case about abortion and I see it as a problem when five people appointed by republicans discard a portion of a constitutional amendment while four people appointed by democrats supported the full statement of the amendment. However, I still support this country's intentional design for its people to have free and public discourse to learn from one another without stifling challenging ideas (as detrimental as that's been recently). Our issue today is that we're a lot of assholes who care more about personal freedoms than the good of the community. We care more about challenging ideas than considering them.
So, TL;DR, I think it's a failure at the moment, I think it's possible to be saved, but we have travelled well down the path where I don't see that happening. I'm anxious to see what it takes to bring us back. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
250 years is nothing for a civilization, and within that relatively tiny frame of time, we had an all encompassing civil war. And that's without even touching all the BS going on today.
Its not a failure in the sense that it collapsed immediately, but I'd hardly call it a rousing success
This needs to be on billboards across the country.
Seriously, I'll never fathom why we still even talk about the outside of history classes. They were humans, and not even particularly good ones. We're the ones who have to live with the US of today, we get to decide how it's run
It's good to be concerned. If that treasonous rapist trump got in again, it's game over for freedom and democracy globally.
We tossed all that out the window in a 5-4 SCOTUS case back on December 12, 2000. Zoomers aren't old enough to remember what living in a liberal democracy is like. And even then, I'm here to say it wasn't exactly sunshine and roses.
I think we should all be alarmed.
I hear the alarmism, but then I look at the rest of the field and... Idk, man. Am I supposed to be rooting for Ron "I'll Slit All Your Throats!" DeSantis? Should I be holding out for Mike "God Will Make Me King President Sooner or Later" Pence? Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc? Nikki "When Can We Bomb Iran" Haley?
If I'm alarmed, its only because our best bet for 2024 appears to be the incumbent Democrat, a guy who is slightly to the left and marginally more cognizant than Ronald Reagan was in 1984.
I need to hold my nose and vote for a guy who should be a republican. Who started as a republican. Who wrote the crime bill and gave us Clarence Thomas.
yeah, that guy gets my vote again. Democracy fucking rocks.
I need to hold my nose and vote for a guy who should be a republican.
You really don't. Hold your nose and vote for some downballot primary shmucks. Presidential politics basically doesn't matter.
I was surprised that this was the actual headline and not some interpretation of OP.
"Vanity Fair" sounds like such a pretty and sophisticated magazine, doesn't it? And then it hits you with this headline.
Yeah. Maybe it's like with Forbes where they have "contributors", which is more like blog posts and not editorial content?
Perhaps. I don't think there's enough awareness about this with Forbes "contributers". It's basically all their tech news, and it's kind of sad, really. People trust it because it says "Forbes", but it's just a glorified blogger.
Edit: a letter.
Edit2: another letter.
Yep, that’s the headline. Never change Vanity Fair.
If I could go back in time and either kill Hilter or convince Obama to lay off Trump at that White House Correspondents' Dinner, the Jews would have lived 3 out of 4 times, but that 4th time, it would have been Rubio vs. Clinton (the butch one).
I've always wondered what the world would be like if Hitler died or didn't come into power. A lot good things happened because of the horrible things that Hitler caused.
Yeah I'm one of those who wouldn't go back in time and kill Hitler as I'm not entirely sure it would have led to a better outcome. For starters Hitler didn't build the concept of fascism, he was just the first to take it to its end state. Kill Hitler and you could just end up with a situation where WW2 was a fight against Himmler.
I thought the young was gonna get out and vote for real this time
skimmed, pence is one braindead dude. 2016 all the media was saying Hillary would win. nobody bothered to vote. I did. remember talking to election volunteers about low turnout. rain or shine, vote
Downvote due to mysterious sensationalism
People should decide to vote for a party they agree with rather than the faux two-sided coin we deal with today. We are multi-party system yet everyone treats it as bipartisan.
The two parties WANT you to think you are "wasting your vote" by voting for something other than them. The fact that you CAN vote for another party disproves this. Vote for a party you actually believe in, and keep voting, spread the message and you will see change.
All it takes is one vote, and maybe you won't be that vote, but you can tell someone else to do the same. Maybe they won't be that vote, but the next person can be, or the next person. You see where I'm getting at?
That's called a movement, and it starts with you.
Why are people downvoting this?
Because voting for third parties never works and it often leads to some asshole like Trump being elected. Idealism does not win elections.
Also its what got Wilson elected, y'know the guy who showed birth of a nation at the whitehouse.
I have the first hand experience that not voting for smaller parties is much worse. What ends up happening is people just don't vote instead, or vote for who's set to win (which would be Trump in this case).
In Türkiye, main opposition bullied everyone else like this (to a point where a candidate withdrew). I know a lot of people who got bullied in real life for not supporting the major candidate. What ended up happening is they didn't vote or vote for Erdoğan out of spite.
Who do you think benefitted from this entire ordeal? Erdoğan. Trump will do the same and possibly gonna sweep the elections. Also he's probably gonna call for more people to vote because the position he's in can be capitalized upon as "Biden is trying to eliminate the main opposition" which actually will drive more people to vote. Erdoğan did the same exact thing as well.
As a non-American it's crazy to me that there's so little movement to get away from the broken FPPTP voting system. It locks you into a two-party system where you vote against a candidate you fear/despise rather than voting for one you actually agree with. Any vote for someone else is a wasted vote. There are plenty of better voting systems widely used around the world.
Obviously the two parties empowered by this system aren't going to change it voluntarily. I don't understand how there aren't tons of petitions, protests, rioting, etc to try to force this to change.
It sounds tinfoilish but it's true - the news media that most Americans get their news from don't want to talk about (mainly because the broken system we have is to the benefit of the companies who own them).
Also, a depressingly lot of voters only have an issue with the two party system because it's one party too many, not too few. Each party (though one in particular imo) has spent the last few decades convincing their base that they're the only thing standing between them and chaos. I'd wager a lot of voters would be terrified at the notion of third parties actually gaining power
The American political system is extremely broken. Part of me wonders if making voting mandatory would help. I believe our biggest problem is not having enough younger people in public office, and that may be a result of not enough young adults voting. Not just for presidential elections, but for local/midterm elections as well. Obviously it's not something we can change right away, but I think we need to set ourselves on that path.
We have too many people in office who only care about the short-term goals because they're going to die soon anyway.
We need term limits and quite possibly age limits in every aspect of public office. Sadly, the people who have the ability to make those changes are the ones benefitting from the current broken system. So they won't make it happen.
What scares me shitless is the idea that Trump is what the US is and what the US has earned. Who's ready for that conversation?
100% this. Im German and I feel so strange that americans are choosing this guy for president. Not to be offensive, but damn.
As an American I feel that a majority of Americans loathe him. The issue lies in not all those people vote.
What scares me is that any Americans vote for him. How can you be so blinded and not see what a lying, cheating grifter that he is. The man is not intelligent, doesn’t read, is petty to a fault, vindictive, spiteful, narcissistic, nepotistic and just generally not a good person. Why would you choose that for a leader? It’s because you share those traits. That’s what scares me.
Partly. There's also the issue with the electoral college, because that makes some votes worth more than others (depending on where you live).
Well the fact someone in Wyoming voting is worth 3.5 times someone voting in California is a huge problem I agree.
That's a huuuuuuuge issue.
I don't know that they all share those traits per se, but just as damning not only to them but to our culture as well is our tolerance and even expectations that people in charge have those traits. I saw it everywhere when I lived in a deeply conservative small city, anyone with power (including company management) was beyond reproach. The status quo was defended harshly by the overwhelming majority. We have lost our values to greed by using the american dream as a trojan horse full of awful ideals.
We can’t underestimate the hate for others that is behind these votes. It started as “owning the libs” and now is pretty much evolved to “eliminate the woke trans democrats”. That’s the part that’s scaring me these days. There is no platform for running the country, it’s all just piss off or erase the other side, figuratively and literally.
No no you don't understand, I mean, sure the media makes him seem like he has those traits, but he's really a great guy! I mean I guess it's been proven he has those traits but who doesn't right? Isn't everyone deep down homophobic and racist and misogynist themselves?
And really if you think about it, God can use anything he wants right? So why would he pick the Catholic guy out there trying to invest in America? He definitely wants the guy who most looks like my own deep down beliefs. So no matter what you say, your argument is invalid because God is on my side.
..../s in case that was needed.
Ok this made me chuckle.
The crazy part is they think Biden makes the US look bad. When you present evidence to the contrary they say, "who cares what other countries think. "
My aunt thinks Jill Biden is controlling the country from the shadows and wants to run in place of Joe in 2024. We are fucked
I'd vote for Doc Biden, ngl
Yeah, I'd much rather vote for Jill than Joe.
Different strokes for different folks but I do dig her
I remember people saying most similar things of Hillary Clinton during Bill's administration.
I think it's time to have your aunt committed
What does she think about Nancy running things for Ronnie once the Alzheimers got too bad?
That’s what I told my mother when she told me, but I doubt it’s gotten back to the source
more so because our only choice is between racist ultra-authoritarian con man and an opportunistic career politician that had always sided with racists and homophobes until it was politically popular.
In fairness to your aunt, I have voted for Joe 3 times (2008, 2020, 2020), and even I think Joe is pretty close to weekend at Bernie's. He really needs to step aside for Newsom.
I wanna know if we're going to weekend at Bernie's someone, why not Bernie? Why has he not been on the ballot yet?
Well that’s just a stupid conspiracy theory. Well I guess they all are but this one seems particularly daft.
That was my first reaction, I didn’t even know how to respond to it because it’s patently absurd on its face. Really hoping it’s not some sort of viral right wing bullshit code that hasn’t cycled out into the mainstream yet
Fellow German and... yeah. People joke about the Hitler comparisons, but you won't see us laughing. (I mean, in general, but that's a different topic.)
Insert the Robin Williams joke here.
You should be offensive, we deserve it.
We picked an absolute trash human as our leader, a sizeable portion of which chose him specifically because they wanted him to hurt people (see: "he's not hurting the right people" woman.) That same group will often cite their desired outcome for any given thing is "to see liberals cry/get mad."
Hillary Clinton made a mistake by saying it out loud, but she was 100% correct when she said a large portion of Trump supporters are "a basket of deplorables." They absolutely are and are deserving of scorn.
I just hate how well propaganda works and how much money a random grifting asshole can make by parroting bullshit on YouTube, they boost each other and perpetuate this garbage era we're going through...
Please remember he never won the popular vote.
That too is scary. The guy didn't win and still ran the country. WTF
The American political system is literally incomprehensible.
Everyone votes and then you find out who the winner is. And then, at some later point you find out who the president will be, and it's not necessarily the same person for some reason.
And yet apparently democracy has happened so that's all.
the american federal government is easy to understand: everything is weighed in favor of rural conservative racists because when we were first designing the thing they realized that they were in the minority but that we'd lose the revolution without them. President? Racists get more of a say due to the electoral college. Senate? Half a million conservatives in Wyoming get just as many votes as 40 million liberals in California. House? House reps are capped at 435 permanently so as areas become more populous they end up with less representation per person. SCotUS? Even when it's running normally it's biased because the biased president and biased Senate pick them, but since Obama now Democrats need the presidency and a majority coalition in the Senate in order to pick justices. That's every branch of federal government, and recently they tried to make it even worse by making state legislatures (which always lean conservative because they gerrymander to hell and back) the sole authority on what constitutes a "fair" election. Given all the out and out treason that came from state legislatures after Trump got wrecked by Biden, I think we know what conservative state legislatures will do if they get to decide what constitutes "fair".
Throw in a dash of first past the post, a pinch of gerrymandering, and baby we've got a minority government.
That means sweet fuck all when he still gets the job.
Same here. I think this is what happens when education is underfundet. I'm happy we're back to G9 but we should definitely pay teachers more to counteract the lack of teachers and ensure every teacher has sufficient time to do their job well.
Otherwise people cannot be taught to think critical, question "why is he saying X?" instead of just weather it is true or not. Often understanding why somebody is saying sometimg at the time they do is much more important after all.
This idea that we are under funded is not true. Per Capita we spend more than every other country on education than any other OECD country besides Luxembourg.
We are number two world wide for funds to education per capita.
Our funding is just wasted and ineffective. We have a cultural problem with education. Not a funding problem.
Yes School boards and superintendents are extremely well funded. The fact that teachers have to struggle to scrape by while at the same time funding classroom supplies out of their own money just reeks of mis-allocated misspent funds. There's always money for another Sports program. While science technology engineering and math extracurriculars in many districts don't exist.
It's a perfect mirror of our diseased American culture. Where wealth and wealth alone is Merit. And those who give the least (work) get the most.
That money goes to administrators instead of teachers.
Americans aren't. A corrupt system is.
There are a lot of germans voting for idiots which just repeat a few Trump topics a few months later. :(
I was visiting Germany in 2016 during the spring, before the election. Several Europeans, after hearing we were from the US, asked, "What the hell is going on in your country?"
Man, we had absolutely no idea what to expect...
Yep. He is who the U.S. has become. We are an embarrassment.
No, Trump is the hail mary of the US ruling class. They are scared that the people just start ignoring the government and take power, so they give them demagogues
They're called representatives for a reason.
well yeah we have an attempted fascist overthrow of our government about once every 100 years or so because we like to stay just this side of fascism on a normal day
We all should be. But that won't happen if people go out there and vote, godamnit.
And don't just vote to keep Trump out.
Vote to keep him and his party out of office.
We don't get a vote of no confidence. There's no box to check that says "No Trump".
Also, Hillary got more votes than Trump did, so simply having more voters on your side doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will lose.
So .. don't vote? There absolutely is a No Trump voting option - only one - and it's voting for Biden. There are several Yes Trump voting options: vote for Trump specifically, vote for a third party candidate, or vote for no one. It's not that complicated.
Do the electoral map and electoral college make this difficult to achieve? Of course. But we can only win if we vote, and are guaranteed to lose if we don't.
The fascists love voter apathy. Don't do their job for them.
True, but remember "did not vote" was higher then either Hillary or Trump first time around.
I was apathetic in 2016, I didn't care enough to vote for her, or know enough to vote against Trump.
I voted against Trump on 2020, and now I've seen enough I will vote for Biden in 2024, assuming he is the nominee. Otherwise, it's another vote against Trump.
My point is, there was a real disconnect back in 2016, and a lot of people just couldn't be bothered.
Trumps base has only gotten smaller, but the people who know and want to keep him out has grown. I suspect we will see both significant turn out, and significant voter suppression in 2024.
God, I hope so hard that turnout will be good. I just worry that the more time that passes, the more "most" people will become complacent and forget. I'd certainly like to imagine that between Jan 6 and how extremely climate change has affected people the last couple of years, people are finally figuring out that they can't just twiddle their thumbs and wait for things to blow over. Unfortunately, though, that's something that will be shown with election results.
...didn't Trump get more votes in 2020 than in 2016? Has his base really gotten smaller?
Smaller as a percentage of the active electorate. Biden also got more votes than any other candidate before him... but that's not unexpected with a positive population growth.
""In a normal society, a former president—let’s call him Donald Trump—who’s been indicted three times in under four months, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to conspiracy to defraud the United States, would have absolutely no chance of ever being president again. It straight up would not be a scenario anyone would have to even contemplate; even if this individual were not in prison, the idea that they would be able to run for and win higher office once more would not compute.
But unfortunately, we don’t live in a normal society; instead, we live in a place in which millions of people not only still support Donald Trump, but grow fonder of him with every new criminal charge. Which means that, despite the aforementioned indictments*, the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted ex-president is dominating every other candidate for the Republican nomination, and currently looks to be the most likely GOP nominee in the 2024 general election. That, of course, scares the shit out of a lot of people—including, apparently, one Barack Obama. Whose fear, it has to be said, is extremely unsettling!
The Washington Post reports that during a private lunch with Joe Biden in late June, the 44th president “voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths—including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized country—underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.” According to people familiar with the conversation, “Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party.”
Obama’s concerns are certainly warranted: In a New York Times/Siena poll released on Monday, Trump led his closest competition, Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 37 points. An even wilder data point that seems to validate Obama’s fears was that Trump beat DeSantis even among Republicans who believe he committed “serious federal crimes.” To be clear, that means these people believe Trump is a criminal, and want him to be president anyway.
As FiveThirtyEight optimistically notes, should Trump be convicted before November 5, 2024, voters might be less inclined to cast a ballot for him, and presumably they’d be even less so if he’s sentenced to time in prison. (In the case of the most recent indictment, two of the charges carry up to 20 years behind bars, and compared to her colleagues, the judge assigned to the case has imposed the toughest sentences for January 6 defendants.) Though, who knows!
As for a potential Trump-Biden rematch, another Times/Siena Poll poll published this week put the two in a tie, with each receiving 43% of the vote—which, for people who think democracy is worth preserving, is pretty pants-shittingly scary.
In somewhat happier news, Obama reportedly promised at the same June lunch “to do all he could to help the president get reelected.” And in a statement, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign told the Post: “President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.”
*And everything else!
Mike Pence giveth and Mike Pence taketh away
Yes, he tweeted yesterday that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President,” but then he basically suggested today that Trump was just listening to his lawyers’ advice when he tried to overturn the election—which, coincidentally, is a defense Trump is reportedly planning to use."
Honest question, how can we ever get out of this? Is it just human nature for most of the population to not have critical thinking skills? Is it possible to reach a world where the majority of people have even just a little empathy?
It's just so sad. It's so clear to anyone even kinda paying attention that we possess the technical capacity as a society to meet everyone's needs and eliminate so much human-caused suffering at the detriment to absolutely nobody. We could be working toward a society where everyone has community, safety, security, opportunity. We could do so much if all we did was kind of give a shit about each other.
But no. Let's elect the guy who mocked a disabled reporter, encourages white supremacy, committed treason, etc.
Donald Trump is just a guy. A shitty guy, but just a guy. He's not what is ruining the world, but the fact that so many Americans want to vote for that shitty guy as president shows that a massive portion of the population is also just some shitty person, and fuck if that doesn't just burn up all my hope for this world.
Education is the only way to overcome this tsunami of stupidity and misinformation. But it’s slow and costly.
Conservatives with a capital "c" are not brainwashed; they're not tricked; they're not progressives who've been misinformed. Trump is who they are and what they want.
The Dominion discovery documents demonstrate that Fox News opinion hacks changed their coverage to appease the deplorables. In the case of the big lie, it was the viewers who radicalized right media, not the other way round. Maybe it's been that way the whole time?
The deplorables number in the millions. We need a plan to defeat and marginalize them in our democracy, not fantasies about changing what they are.
i’m not so sure it’s just evil people being evil
i think it’s just us vs them, which basically has roots in greed, power over others, etc
i think you could probably overturn those things with better instilled skills of long term planning, understanding of things like game theory (sometimes giving something to someone helps both of you! it’s not rewarding laziness: it can be selfish and humane)
i just think the reasoning here doesn’t go further than the initial emotion… there’s been no reinforcement that maybe your first reaction isn’t the right one
I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not from middle America. It's a lot more than just shitty people being shitty. This Cracked article from 2016 explains it quite well and I can assure you, as someone who was born and raised and now lives in Trump country, it still holds up. Add seven years of aggressive propaganda and intense radicalization and here we are now. The populist to fascist pipeline is almost complete.
Thanks for reminding me of how good David Wong used to be at capturing popular thought and placing you into a certain perspective. I might not agree with some of the generalizations of that article, but it does help understand their perspective.
They are scared and have been convinced that he is the only one that can help them. They are not just "shitty people voting for a shitty person" they really believe that the deep state is out to get Donald and these charges are overblown and that Donald will really save America. They won't realize that Trump only cares about Trump; even if Trump gets another term and burns down the government and fucks everyone they still will think Donald is just one week away from unveiling his plan to fix it all.
That ignorance makes them pretty shitty.
I'm not saying they're fundamentally and permanently shitty, but they are being shitty. Refusing to become a more aware person is shitty.
They are stupid and scared and propaganda is extra powerful on people who are stupid and scared.
And that is exactly my problem with that kind of thinking (or rather: believing). How did they arrive at such conclusions? Did Trump actually do ANYTHING to make their personal lives better even for a second? How many examples are there of Mr. Ivory Tower to make even an ounce of positive difference in the lives of rural folks?
So all I can see is a gullible people following the loudest talking head on a whim. It's really hard for me to feel pity, much less sympathy in this circumstance. Although pity is certainly appropriate.
Nationalism and nativism pops up every few generations. Always has. We beat it every time and it shuts up and the world dramatically improves for a while. As it improves, some people become nativists and nationalists, and the cycle repeats.
Google the "Know-Nothing Party." Trump isn't anything new at all.
Only problem is, just like a super hero, we have to win every time, and they only have to win once.
We shame them for being shitty. Don't engage them in debate, they are used to that. Don't try to use facts, because they don't care about facts. Don't try to convince them of shit.
Make them feel like outcasts and bad people. Brush off what they say when they say horrible shit. Make them have emotional responses to their shitty views. Conservative news targets these people by exploiting their emotions.
And vote. Vote for people who will fix our education system so that our next generation knows how to think for themselves.
That approach could work in the past, but it won't now. Now we have the internet when even people shamed by their family or neighbors will find support and like-minded individuals. We are only going to be more divided in the future.
Unfortunately, you are correct. We're doomed.
I once saw a comment where a guy said that before the internet, if someone wanted to fuck toasters and told anyone, he would be shamed and made fun of to the point where he'd never bring it up again.
With the internet, if someone wants to fuck a toaster, they can go online and find a while community of people who also enjoy fucking toasters, complete with guides and recommendations on the best toasters to fuck.
Its absurd, but it illustrates a great point. So yeah, we are fucked. Pandoras box is open.
I'm left of centre, and here's my take - the "left" is fucking up so badly that the right is going to win.
Ever play a sport and you just trounce your opponent, but the coach says "you weren't that good! They were just that bad tonight."
This is the same thing. Trump and the GOP aren't doing some amazing job of campaigning and manipulating, they're just up against the weakest opponent who can't stop scoring on their own fucking net.
First let me preface this by saying that I vote against Republicans as often as I get the chance to. Which on the rare occasion someone runs against them where I live. It is usually a democrat. So I am a staunch Ally of the Democrats. That being said.
I am left of center of what is generally considered left in the united states. The left isn't fucking anything up. The Left has been cut off from having a voice for nearly the last 100 years in the united States. Since at least McCarthy. What we've seen is a populous that has been beholden to an incestuous right wing relationship. Between two solidly right wing pro oligarch parties. Though to Liberal Democrats credit. They give lots of lip service to the concept of social democracy. And do eventually, once it no longer takes courage or bravery, do the right thing. Once they get tired of everyone shouting at them enough.
We need the economic tools we've spent the last hundred years vilifying. And we need a Resurgence of Education especially economic and political. People in the United States who think they are the left, and the way we are miseducated to define left are a joke. One that is crippling us and turning us against ourselves.
We need to rip and tear the largest corporations apart. We need to nationalize basic necessities. We need to abolish private or unaccountable funding of all elections that every level. And most of all we need to empower workers. It's only a start. But those are the things we have to do. And unfortunately my generation the Xers. All approaching 50 and 60 years old have largely abdicated and lost their chance to really impact or make a change. We need younger representatives in touch with what's going on now to write the laws that will lead us into the future. Instead of the regulations that will hold us in some nostalgically idealized past that never existed.
Yeah the idea Dems are left is hilarious to me, social democrats in the streets, neoliberal conservatives in the sheets. The last cry of the left as a concentrated political voice was contained in aspects of the civil rights movement, but those aspects, like MLK's socialist insistence on economic redistribution through class projects, and his identity as a labor organizer, is completely whitewashed. It's condensed to Rosa Parks sat on a bus, MLK had a dream, LBJ passed the law.
The Dems stop at disparity frameworks because that doesn't threaten the political economy in any meaningful way, as long as people are fucked over proportionately it's okay. Rising income inequality, lowered standards of living, eventually something has to give to keep this speculative real estate project of a country going.
One thing the political center lacks in America - and I say center because we don't have a truly leftist political party - is a vision for the future. They don't want a fundamental change in how the economy and government work, they just want to keep things steady and work around the edges.
The problem is the economy and government aren't working for most people and most people want them replaced.
Republicans have a vision. Yeah, it's a racist, sexist vision that will drag us back to the 1950s, but it's a vision they can communicate.
What's the Democrats' vision? I don't think it's mine, of worker cooperatives and high speed rail and free education and universal health care, paid for by shaking Bezos and Musk upside down until no more money comes out. As far as I can tell they just want to keep things going like they have since the 90s.
And then they wonder why they can't seem to get people to get excited to vote for them.
This is certainly a part of it. In a time when Democrats should be uniting and putting forward their strongest faces to protect democracy from the GOP, they keep engaging in political gamesmanship because ‘c’mon look at this clown, there’s no way anyone will vote for him!’
Only problem is that people have, and people could once more, put this guy in the White House. And if it happens…well, everything’s fucked.
There's no representation of the left in American politics, there's leftist but no political power of a left movement. The closest thing is the recent wave of workers unionization efforts which is at least encouraging.
Lol. If you say so.
I do. Where is the good Dem candidate with the platform attacking high cost of living, corporate takeover of housing, backing unions, and looking at funding education, ubi, etc?
It's be pretty easy to break this wide open and runaway with the election. If they wanted to.
The Dems aren't going to run someone who attacks the economic base of the party is what it comes down to.
Downballot Democratic candidates? That's where.
David Brooks wrote a good article in the New York Times today that tries to help shift perspectives a bit to understand this. I'd highly recommend reading it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html
That is the farthest thing from a good article that I've read in some time. I suppose that it does give some insights to why trumpers act the way they do, however trying to align their actions with some sort of 'we the elitists need to do a better job at not being elitist' mentality is rather dumb at first glance, and a bit insidious upon closer examination.
To me it was helpful in trying to understand the perspective from which a group derive their actions. Much like you said. Usually a good first step in dealing with interpersonal conflict is to make an attempt to understand the other perspective. The end does seem to wander a bit, but I think there's some truth in the general premise that a large group of people feel left behind (in various ways for various reasons).
I love how Brooks can talk about class without bringing labor into it. Just a great example of liberals missing the damn point.
Then he goes on to talk about "open immigration" like that's even close to what we have.
Yeah Brooks is one of those special kind of conservatives who seems to always miss the point in the most aspirational moralized way. Like he taught a class on "humility" that included readings of... himself. I also love his ever-Freudian book title "The Second Mountain" which is about how commitment to marriage is part of a fulfilling life... after he divorced his wife and married his younger assistant.
Got any free sources?
Seems 12ft.io doesn't work for NYT, but archive.is does:
https://archive.is/r8L9I
Too much of our democracy relies on good faith
100% true.
We also like to parrot shit like "no one is above the law" while requiring perfect situations before ever questioning elected leaders like the president when they blatantly break the law. The US has inverse responsibility, where we blame the poor for being poor and give the wealthy every possible chance to buy their way out of crimes.
Except the president and police are literally above the law with the presidential pardon and qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity isn't abused nearly as often as people think it is.
Civil asset forfeiture is the one they really abuse
They were coming to kill him, and the spinless fuck Pence can't even stand up for himself.
Mother must be getting tired of looking at his lack of balls when they get ready to shag.
@eurekaphoenix
Wonder how these self-same Republicans would react if Obama had operated like Trump and was being indicted for the same alleged crimes? 🤔
Can confirm
Hi. Big fan. Hope you are well.
Look, anyone with a working brain should be worried about the prospect, because if he wins, then that means we're in for the worst four years (and probably much longer than four years) of our lives here in the United States. I don't think we come back from that.
If Trump wins re-election, I think it's entirely non-hyperbolic to say that democracy in this country is over. Think of the things he tried to do with some, obviously-too-small, guard rails. He attempted a literal coup. Literally throw away votes. Literally has one of his chief advisors saying that if people protested said coup, they would use the insurrection act, or more directly, use the military to put down to put down those protesting the coup. There is a very small number of things that prevented this from happening, not the least of which is just a tiny handful of people being like "uh, we can't actually do this, right?"
I don't entirely disagree, but it's also true that Trump exposed some serious flaws in our political system, and that serious people have been working very hard since Jan 6th to make it much harder to do what he and his cohorts did. One example would be the supreme court victory that struck down a proposed law that would have allowed state congresses to ignore election results. Not saying everything's okay now, but maybe it's not quite so dire. Of course, most democratic coups happen when an individual or group just decides they won't follow the rules anymore, so there is that little problem with trying to litigate ourselves out of this mess.
Most distressingly, he learned that he has a literal mob/cult willing to stand behind him and do anything he tells them to, no matter how abhorrent.
Correct. Can't let it happen.
We haven't come back from his actual four years yet, and probably won't for a very long time. The prospect of him returning to finish the country off is a nightmare.
Not just for you guys but the world. The world as we know it is at stake as USA is currently the world's superpower.
So, so sorry about that.
And outside the US. With Trump, russia might even try to take a bite out of NATO
Who in their right mind isn’t? The only people that aren’t, aren’t eh brainless minions that worship the ground that coward walks on.
I'm not scared of him being in office because I have confidence that he won't be elected. I know the whole mindset on Reddit and Lemmy is fear of him being back in office but with more young voters who are overwhelmingly left leaning being able to vote, the Republicans shooting themselves in the foot overturning Roe V Wade, and all of the ass backwards policies they're putting in place, more people aren't gonna let this happen in 2024. But I understand the fear completely and it is justified
"I have confidence that he won’t be elected" I had that confidence the first go around... and that didn't work out so well. The last election gave me a little bit of hope back, but that we're even having this discussion in the first place, that Trump is even in the running, isn't a good sign.
Well experts say that Biden has a good chance of winning if he runs against Trump. In fact, Allen Lichtman has predicted every election correct since 84 except Bush vs Gore. But that was due to Florida fucking with the votes. He himself says Biden has a strong chance of winning if Trump is picked as the Republican forerunner. Which they obviously will pick him.
The problem with 2016 was that Republicans clearly couldn't take having a black president for 8 years to then go and have a woman be the next president right after that. Then Trump who just said any and everything to appease to then crazies of this country and they came out in droves. As well, Hillary just wasn't that charismatic in her debates
Hillary had a whole lot of baggage going into that election, then the Dem primaries didn’t really do anything to strengthen her, if anything it fractured the party even more. She was an establishment candidate in a ‘change’ election, just the wrong fit for the mood.
Another big thing is that a lot of people didn't like how the DNC snubbed Bernie. He was clearly in the lead until I think it was South Carolina? And then Hillary all of a sudden was the pick. Most people I know (and it could be cause I'm Gen Z and what I see due to my community), wanted Bernie and Bernie alone and we're very pissed
Yea, that was a big slap in the face and I think made a lot of people realize that the fix was in, Hillary was "the anointed one" that election and wasn't going to let another Obama come along and take the nomination away from her. I was still even holding out hope that Sanders would at least get the VP slot, just some sort of seat at the table.
Still though, anyone who just skipped voting out of spite helped hand the election over to Trump, gave Republicans all those Supreme Court Justices, which got Roe v Wade truck down, probably contributed to Russia invading Ukraine, and a host of other problems that came down from the 2016 election. I thought Bernie was the best choice by far (though maybe he still would've lost to Trump, who knows), but held my nose and voted for Hillary regardless because the election was more important than just getting my preferred candidate.
The issue is that the overwhelming majority of voters, including the youth vote, only pay attention to federal elections and ignore state and local elections. In the present day and age, States' Supreme Courts are even more important for individual rights than the SCOTUS. If you've got a red state high court and legislature and progressive federal senators/representatives/POTUS, life will still suck bigtime in your state. And more than ever, SCOTUS is reverting to "STATES RIGHTS" like we're back in the Jim Crow era.
It could just be me, but from what I've seen of those around me as I'm Gen Z myself, a lot of us ARE aware of local elections and how important they are. We actively do vote in them. It may have a much bigger impact the next go around but we'll all have to just wait and see
Fingers crossed. I'm a x-enial and I continue to be disappointed. :)
As should we all.
I'm more surprised that he's allowed to try for another term.
I'm not, USA politics is pure corruption wrapped up nice with a bow. It's a joke and that's been extremely apparent since 2016
Bush pretty much set the stage for all this shit with his stolen election, fear mongering, illegal wars....
We thought Obama could fix us, but we underestimated the amount of racism in this country.
So the rednecks lashed out at seeing a black, kind, educated, honest, funny man in power, so they decided to elect the exact opposite of him.
That bastard made Obamacare....it's bullshit. Now I'm going to saddle on over here and get me some nice democratic AMA care.
A lot of those people would never get Obamacare, they graciously support the Affordable Care Act 🙄
The USA was as inch away from becoming a dictatorship. You're lucky to just have pure corruption.
We're still just an inch away. The fascists haven't stopped at all.
#blessed
2016? Let me tell you about a little supreme court decision from 2000 called Bush v. Gore.
Not surprised either, corruption is inherent ni politics. I am living in a country were the power of an ex-dictator's clan were put back to power as his son back as president of our republic after successful non-violent revolution not more than 40 years ago.
Phillipines?
Very likely. He has a Tagalog username.
The amount of stuff we learned through Trump is just a formality is rather stunning.
It used to be that there was an unspoken risk that ignoring all these norms would result in your being summarily tossed on your ass in the next election. But thanks to Murdoch, Limbaugh, Stone, Gingrich, and all the right wing media pushing hyper-partisan, no-compromise, the-other-guy-eats-babies politics, combined with a court system that refused to rein in the lies that were poisoning our discourse for decades, eroded that critical check on political society.
All of civilization is just formality.
True, but I mean, at a certain point pretending that laws matter is what separates a society at peace from a society at civil war.
Innocent until proven guilty, and ongoing criminal trials, or even convictions can't bar someone from the presidency.
imagine a world where Donald could just eliminate political opponents by having them arrested and put on trial just before an election. Personally, I'm a fan of democracy
That's what's gonna end up happening anyway whether it's Trump or DeSantis, or anyone sufficiently power hungry. The idea that any system we build can protect us from people like that is a fucking joke and needs to be abandoned.
Obama has the resources to flee the country. The rest of us do not. What are we as individuals do when half of the country decides to abandon democracy and the rule of law? Asking for a friend…
America is the world’s only superpower. No matter where you run, global consequence will follow if Trump is re-elected.
Part of me, I guess the defeatist part, just kinda wants to get it over with.
I have no problem with allowing him to run (as of today) because (as of today) there's nothing prohibiting him. I do have a problem with more than a third of this country willing to vote for him. How stupid and/or bigoted can we possibly get?
The founding fathers of this country established rules that (as of today) both ensured and prevented what's currently transpiring. If it were the case that a subset of the government were trying to oust a political leader, The People should still have a say as to who represents them and bring "balance"(?) to the government. But also, if The People are being a bunch of idiots, the Electoral College can overrule their stupidity. It might be worth noting that the founding fathers also owned other humans as if they were livestock and didn't believe a woman had the same rights as a man. So, to say "some mistakes were made" would be understating it. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
We gotta stop giving a fuck what the founding fathers did or wanted. They've been dead for centuries, they owned slaves and thought women couldn't vote. They couldn't even imagine drinking a baja blast or eating a pizza with fried chicken for a crust. The future is now, fuck em.
I don’t believe the constitution has worked for this country for the past 50 years (if ever) but without amending it we’re left with anarchy. I think the US is a failed experiment but I still respect its founding as a rejection of oppression. They took a big first step, every year we take more little steps, we may need to see a much bigger step in our lifetimes. They did know that things would take place that the could never imagine. This is why the federal government’s abilities are so restricted and more power is given to the states to legislate more freely. In such a connected world as we have now though, maybe states aren’t a viable solution. Or maybe they are and we just don’t know how to live in them anymore.
It's lasted for nearly a quarter of a millennium, that's not exactly what I'd call a failure.
You say "quarter of a millennium" as if 250 years is more than 3 lifespans. The US is still a toddler compared to long-standing civilizations.
As it stands today, I don't think our current form of government is sustainable for a vibrant and peaceful, progressive society. Although, lot of people would argue that that's not a relevant metric. I believe a government's job is to ensure the equity, health, safety, and prosperity of its people above all else. A lot of that is found in the constitution but modern ideas have been able to twist and manipulate those words for their own gain. Two examples; I don't think SCOTUS has any business taking a case about abortion and I see it as a problem when five people appointed by republicans discard a portion of a constitutional amendment while four people appointed by democrats supported the full statement of the amendment. However, I still support this country's intentional design for its people to have free and public discourse to learn from one another without stifling challenging ideas (as detrimental as that's been recently). Our issue today is that we're a lot of assholes who care more about personal freedoms than the good of the community. We care more about challenging ideas than considering them.
So, TL;DR, I think it's a failure at the moment, I think it's possible to be saved, but we have travelled well down the path where I don't see that happening. I'm anxious to see what it takes to bring us back. RANKED. CHOICE. VOTING.
250 years is nothing for a civilization, and within that relatively tiny frame of time, we had an all encompassing civil war. And that's without even touching all the BS going on today.
Its not a failure in the sense that it collapsed immediately, but I'd hardly call it a rousing success
This needs to be on billboards across the country.
Seriously, I'll never fathom why we still even talk about the outside of history classes. They were humans, and not even particularly good ones. We're the ones who have to live with the US of today, we get to decide how it's run
It's good to be concerned. If that treasonous rapist trump got in again, it's game over for freedom and democracy globally.
We tossed all that out the window in a 5-4 SCOTUS case back on December 12, 2000. Zoomers aren't old enough to remember what living in a liberal democracy is like. And even then, I'm here to say it wasn't exactly sunshine and roses.
I think we should all be alarmed.
I hear the alarmism, but then I look at the rest of the field and... Idk, man. Am I supposed to be rooting for Ron "I'll Slit All Your Throats!" DeSantis? Should I be holding out for Mike "God Will Make Me
KingPresident Sooner or Later" Pence? Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc? Nikki "When Can We Bomb Iran" Haley?If I'm alarmed, its only because our best bet for 2024 appears to be the incumbent Democrat, a guy who is slightly to the left and marginally more cognizant than Ronald Reagan was in 1984.
I need to hold my nose and vote for a guy who should be a republican. Who started as a republican. Who wrote the crime bill and gave us Clarence Thomas.
yeah, that guy gets my vote again. Democracy fucking rocks.
You really don't. Hold your nose and vote for some downballot primary shmucks. Presidential politics basically doesn't matter.
Who isn't, except the dumb nutcases.
I couldn't care less about what Obama thinks when he squandered all that hopeful energy in 2008.
Yes
we canyou could have!I bet GWBush is scarred of it too. Even if he is a republican.
He's probably not happy with Republicans in general right now.
Scared shitless? Ok then.
I was surprised that this was the actual headline and not some interpretation of OP.
"Vanity Fair" sounds like such a pretty and sophisticated magazine, doesn't it? And then it hits you with this headline.
Yeah. Maybe it's like with Forbes where they have "contributors", which is more like blog posts and not editorial content?
Perhaps. I don't think there's enough awareness about this with Forbes "contributers". It's basically all their tech news, and it's kind of sad, really. People trust it because it says "Forbes", but it's just a glorified blogger.
Edit: a letter.
Edit2: another letter.
Yep, that’s the headline. Never change Vanity Fair.
If I could go back in time and either kill Hilter or convince Obama to lay off Trump at that White House Correspondents' Dinner, the Jews would have lived 3 out of 4 times, but that 4th time, it would have been Rubio vs. Clinton (the butch one).
lmao what???
I've always wondered what the world would be like if Hitler died or didn't come into power. A lot good things happened because of the horrible things that Hitler caused.
Yeah I'm one of those who wouldn't go back in time and kill Hitler as I'm not entirely sure it would have led to a better outcome. For starters Hitler didn't build the concept of fascism, he was just the first to take it to its end state. Kill Hitler and you could just end up with a situation where WW2 was a fight against Himmler.
I thought the young was gonna get out and vote for real this time
skimmed, pence is one braindead dude. 2016 all the media was saying Hillary would win. nobody bothered to vote. I did. remember talking to election volunteers about low turnout. rain or shine, vote
Downvote due to mysterious sensationalism
People should decide to vote for a party they agree with rather than the faux two-sided coin we deal with today. We are multi-party system yet everyone treats it as bipartisan.
The two parties WANT you to think you are "wasting your vote" by voting for something other than them. The fact that you CAN vote for another party disproves this. Vote for a party you actually believe in, and keep voting, spread the message and you will see change.
All it takes is one vote, and maybe you won't be that vote, but you can tell someone else to do the same. Maybe they won't be that vote, but the next person can be, or the next person. You see where I'm getting at?
That's called a movement, and it starts with you.
Why are people downvoting this?
Because voting for third parties never works and it often leads to some asshole like Trump being elected. Idealism does not win elections.
Also its what got Wilson elected, y'know the guy who showed birth of a nation at the whitehouse.
I have the first hand experience that not voting for smaller parties is much worse. What ends up happening is people just don't vote instead, or vote for who's set to win (which would be Trump in this case).
In Türkiye, main opposition bullied everyone else like this (to a point where a candidate withdrew). I know a lot of people who got bullied in real life for not supporting the major candidate. What ended up happening is they didn't vote or vote for Erdoğan out of spite.
Who do you think benefitted from this entire ordeal? Erdoğan. Trump will do the same and possibly gonna sweep the elections. Also he's probably gonna call for more people to vote because the position he's in can be capitalized upon as "Biden is trying to eliminate the main opposition" which actually will drive more people to vote. Erdoğan did the same exact thing as well.
Good luck.
US is two-party system. If you want to change it you need to get rid of FPTP first.
As a non-American it's crazy to me that there's so little movement to get away from the broken FPPTP voting system. It locks you into a two-party system where you vote against a candidate you fear/despise rather than voting for one you actually agree with. Any vote for someone else is a wasted vote. There are plenty of better voting systems widely used around the world.
Obviously the two parties empowered by this system aren't going to change it voluntarily. I don't understand how there aren't tons of petitions, protests, rioting, etc to try to force this to change.
It sounds tinfoilish but it's true - the news media that most Americans get their news from don't want to talk about (mainly because the broken system we have is to the benefit of the companies who own them).
Also, a depressingly lot of voters only have an issue with the two party system because it's one party too many, not too few. Each party (though one in particular imo) has spent the last few decades convincing their base that they're the only thing standing between them and chaos. I'd wager a lot of voters would be terrified at the notion of third parties actually gaining power
The American political system is extremely broken. Part of me wonders if making voting mandatory would help. I believe our biggest problem is not having enough younger people in public office, and that may be a result of not enough young adults voting. Not just for presidential elections, but for local/midterm elections as well. Obviously it's not something we can change right away, but I think we need to set ourselves on that path.
We have too many people in office who only care about the short-term goals because they're going to die soon anyway.
We need term limits and quite possibly age limits in every aspect of public office. Sadly, the people who have the ability to make those changes are the ones benefitting from the current broken system. So they won't make it happen.
Europe feels