This is my hope; everyone who does not agree with Trump moves elsewhere. Trump builds his wall, this time around the whole of the United States. The rest of the world sits back and ignores the idiots within the wall as they burn themselves to the ground. Then, once the dust has settled and they are all dead, everyone moves back in, takes down the wall, and fixes everything up.
I guess I think I have a privilege that I can even consider moving elsewhere and it wasn’t a privilege I had during his last term. I’m honestly scared for my poor friends. Trump and his ilk would love for the return of a slave class and he’s going to have the power to put shit like that in place.
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I’m trying not to spiral but the future feels so dark and hopeless.
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I fear for every sain minded person in the US that doesn’t have a way out. I’m privileged enough that I’ve never actually had to fear my own country, I can’t imagine the terror Americans are feeling right now.
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Maybe it’s because I don’t have children, but I don’t feel fear as much as I feel blind rage at every single person that supported or allowed this fascist to get into power. And also at the Democratic Party for screwing up the most important election of our lifetimes by desperately holding on to neoliberalism.
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I don’t have kids either, and I’m not even in the US and I’m fekking scared.
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I’m not even sure it’s productive to blame the dems at this point. I think it’s just that America is so uneducated, prejudiced, hateful, etc., that they honestly think there’s no other option. Kamala could give everyone a free house, car, and candy for life, and they still wouldn’t vote for her.
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I have the opposite opinion. You’re completely right that bigotry and misogyny are core to the fabric of America’s public, but I think this election was still totally winnable if the party had been more strategic in appealing to the working class. She did vocalize some policies, like credits for first-time homebuyers, raising the minimum wage and anti-price gouging policies. But first and foremost, they ran as a status quo party at a time when the status quo is historically unpopular and not working for most people. That materialized itself most disastrously in Joe Biden running for a second term against everyone’s desires and trying to gaslight people by saying that “Bidenomics” is working and everything is fine actually. Yes, our economy is doing well in comparison to other economies in the world, but that does NOT mean that the working class is doing well.
I don’t particularly blame Kamala that much, I think she was forced into being the candidate and did the best that she could given the unprecedented situation. But she faced not only racism and misogyny, she also could not distance herself enough from the Biden campaign and its failures. The party HAS to change and stop being concerned by playing by the old rules if they want to have any chance of fighting back the fascists moving forward.
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Not related to the presidential election but a current event that is games related. For anyone who plays Wordle, the the Times Tech Guild members who power the technology behind mobile push alerts and app and website maintenance at the New York Times walked off the job earlier this week. They’re asking people not to play Wordle in solidarity with their strike and have provided a list of strike friendly alternatives here: https://nytimesguild.org/tech/guild-builds/index.html?link_id=25&can_id=7866086630369[…]9&email_subject=cwa-members-win-elections-across-the-country
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Good to know. I have a group chat where we all post our results. Good excuse to take a break from that!
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But first and foremost, they ran as a status quo party at a time when the status quo is historically unpopular and not working for most people.
The status quo, even if it were broken, feels much preferable to “world alfame because orange man baby had his ego dented.”
I think the main problem is 51% of the voters were fucking morons.
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You’re correct, Trump is not a good alternative to the current status quo. But I think it’s unhelpful to throw our arms up in the air and blame it on voters’ intelligence. The US has an education problem and a media problem, for sure, but it’s the Democrats’ job to reach out to voters and earn their vote. Over past few days I’ve seen there’s many different problems that have coalesced into this situation. AOC asked people who voted for both her and Trump this year to explain their reasoning, and from that it’s clear to me that
a) People see Trump as someone who understands the pain of the working class
b) People see Trump as anti-war
c) People hate career politicians
I think clearly these views are coming from misinformation. But it speaks to how badly the Democrats lost the information war that someone like Trump, backed by billionaire oligarch cronies like Elon Musk, could EVER be seen as pro-worker or anti-war. And when I see people asked about Trump’s evil mass deportation plans, they either say it’s a campaign bluff that won’t actually happen, or they think the whole thing is the “liberal media” lying about Trump’s positions.
Obviously I believe Trump when he says he wants to round up and deport millions of migrants. So I think popular opinion will quickly swing against him once people see the humanitarian disaster this will cause. But either way I think the left needs to reorganize and learn from the situation if they want to form a proper resistance.
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All of that makes sense but… they’ve already SEEN what a Trump presidency looks like. It’s been shown he is bad for the people already. How did they just forget about that (not, of course, counting those under voting age at that time)
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so I have some Jewish neighbors that I’m friends with. I went out with them the other night, and found out, fairly unsurprisingly based on some other comments that they’ve made, that they’re zionists. I decided to just listen because so much of their pro-israel stance is tied up with the reality of anti-semitism in this country (america). I was thinking of getting together with one of them and discussing one-on-one why I hold a more critical position of the israeli government. I don’t really think I’m going to change either of their minds, but I do feel that I should be honest about where I stand on the subject as I want to be able to display myself honestly when I’m with them. however, I’m a little concerned that any criticism of Israel may be interpreted as anti-semitism by them based on some comments that were made. anyone had to have a conversation like this?
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I haven’t personally done it, but I’ve witnessed an attempt at having a discussion similar to this. I have several regular Jewish customers, one of them being an Orthodox caterer that is probably a zionist based on conversations I’ve had with her. I watched my dad talk to her about a Jewish journalist that wrote something critical about the Israeli government and all I heard her say was that “she’s one of the Jews that hate Jews” or something along those lines. It might be a different thing since you are friends, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if it doesn’t go well. I’m not seeing a whole lot of productive conversations about anything current going on right now.
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yea i guess that’s a bit where im second guessing myself. like these folks will be my neighbors regardless of what is going on in israel/palestine. so i can have plenty of conversations with them about things that don’t involve israel/palestine. The biggest issue is that they Have kind of been the driving factor behind me not being critical of the Israeli government. on social media. I don’t think your social media presence is that important, but I do think it’s bad to censor yourself on topics that are important to you. to tie video games into this, he is going to lend me elden ring. so maybe I’ll just have this conversation while I have his copy, and I’ll hold it ransom until he accepts my position.
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It’s a pretty good game. That might be enough to change his mind.
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So first of all, take everything I say with a grain of salt because as time goes on, I feel like I know less and less about anything.
I’d start by asking, are they older? I think one of the big issues in all of this, silly as it sounds, is semantics. It seems older folks - Biden et al - think of zionism as “Israel should be a state that has a right to exist.” Younger folks define it as “illegal settlement/occupation of Palestinian lands, to which they don’t have a claim.” So finding common ground on that is one hurdle, and just not using the term may be helpful? I heard a pretty engaging news story the other day about the conflict that discussed this.
As for having these discussions, I largely don’t feel comfortable with it - one former friend I cut off because they just took a wild swing into right wing nonsense, even before this happened, but especially after. Any criticism of Israel was anti-semitic, there was no other point of view… A while ago, he posted a picture of a Free Palestine sticker someone put on the back of a stop sign, saying how it was “disgusting Jew hate,” among some other things, and I just don’t even know how to approach that logically. You’d think it’d be universally accepted that starving and killing kids isn’t helpful in defending Israel, but here we are.
Another thought I struggle with, is we largely criticize the concept of manifest destiny, and history does not view it kindly. Yet the world kind of says, yeah, it’s cool and good that Israel does this! I don’t understand the difference, personally.
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i can definitely avoid the term. they’re in their forties (don’t know the exact age, but they’re older than my wife and i, but not an age i’d consider old). i think the biggest impediment is one of them was born in israel and served (as all residents do) in the idf. i kinda just feel like they may have ingested so much indoctrination that they might never get out of that way of thinking.
i guess my rhetorical strategy would be bringing up how we are both very critical of the US government but also want the best for the US, the place we live. like you can be critical of netanyahu and still not want israeli citizens to be hurt. and you can be for those israeli citizens and also not want palestinian citizens to die and condemn the actions of the israeli government that kill those citizens (including children).
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Zionists often consider anti-Zionism to be anti-semitic. The Anti-Defamation League agrees on that point: Anti-Zionism as Antisemitism: How Anti-Zionist Language from the Left and Right Vilifies Jews
Many Jewish academics, scholars, writers and other public figures disagree: A Dangerous Conflation
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