I’ve been so many times in the “conscious vote” side and so many other times in the “lesser evil vote” side, so I can’t just mindlessly bash any of them. I have to say, too, that growing older has made me side more and more often with the lesser evil: when my people, my class, the ones I see every day are the ones that will face the consequences of any political shift, any step back is a step back full of pain in everyday lives. However, we can’t ignore at all that, regardless of the reason behind any vote, winning a political contest will be seen as support for everything you proposed no matter what. No one will do the “yeah, we won only because the other guy lost” analysis. It is always a power contest and now that you won, you can wield that power. There is no way of not seeing that voting for the lesser evil strengthens the lesser evil position and, obviously, diminishes the lesser-lesser evils positions. There’s also no way of not seeing that voting for the dems is basically voting for gender-neutral bombings: that’s how it has been forever. There might be some (many) people who has seen the horrible things the us has done in the world for the first time, let me tell you as someone who has family tortured by a military regime that got supported by the us, that’s not the case. Obama bombed the fuck out of the middle east too. For the rest of the world, that caricature of “yeah we’ll be bombed anyway” is not far from truth. There are nuances: evangelical organisations will get stronger, which will impact heavily on our local politics, but it could also strengthens the position of other supranational blocs like BRICS or the like, which I’m not sure I see as a bad thing.
At least the only thing that I take from these last few months is that now everyone see israel as a colonising society who used the hostage situation for ethnic cleansing not only of gaza but from the whole middle east. And that was with the dem’s support, please don’t forget that either.
I’ve also been on both sides of this (I did not vote for anyone in ‘12 because of Obama’s warmongering) so I can sympathize with the sentiment in theory. But this election is different because one party is literally advocating for a fascist takeover of the country’s institutions, and for Nazi-like roundups of millions of people. One of the two evils is much more evil than the other. That makes me much less sympathetic to people who sat this one out if they were fully aware of the parties’ positions and just hyper-focused on a single issue.
Of course, everything looks different when internal affairs are at stake. External affairs, though? Nothing will change that much. This, for instance, happened just today:
The main source of discontent I’ve seen on that election by non-us voters come from countries that are on the driving wheel of the world. They might see some effects of whatever happens over there. For the rest of us? Eh, same will be same.
The Democrats were very status-quo with their stances (Which is not great when the status quo has so much suffering), but at least under Biden there has been a notable slow shift away from Middle East interventionism with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the withdrawal of support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen (At least publicly). The Israeli government is already using the right’s win in the US as a sign that they should move ahead with annexing the West Bank. I don’t believe that this is something that would have happened under Harris.
And that is just on the topic of the Middle East. Trump will set back climate action, and damage the economies of other countries with his tariff plans. And let’s not forget how cozy he is with the biggest aggressor in Europe. Apologies for the ramble, but I just heavily disagree that things would have been the same in any way with both of the options in this election.
I’m not that into counterfactuals tbh. We don’t know how things would have been under Harris other than her decision of not taking a stance on the actual genocide that’s happening today because it could have been compromising to her campaing (and might have but not in the way she wanted). What we do know is that the democrat’s administration has benen funding and arming a person that today was given an arrest warrant by the ICC. This include the settlements, which aren’t new at all and the settler’s violence hasn’t dramatically escalated in this just few weeks.
Will the election have an impact on climate change? Maybe. Still, most worldwide manufacturing is done in China and this new shift in geopolitical power might also present opportunities that way, considering that China is the world leader in renewable energy.
Same with tariffs: us sanctions will harm us markets, not necessarily world markets. There are already other world powers trying to exert influences, such as the megaport in Perú. However, when a society sees a country that’s 6000 kms further south as their “backyard”, well, there’s not that much to say on that matter.
Who else reckons that once Musk learns the cybertruck helped send the explosion up rather than out, thus minimising damage, he’ll start using it as some kind of advertising campaign?
Zelenskyy’s mafia-style shakedown by these thugs in the oval office seems like an enormous deal with huge consequences. We are living in the worst days.
I can’t imagine the mental state Zelensky must be in after 3 years of war trying to keep everything going and as much people alive as possible to have an experience like that. I hope he had the backup he needed after this, be it people giving him a hug or access to a punching ball or whatever might have helped him, because I can’t imagine the feelings he must have - the whole time he was looking into the camera like “do you hear this shit?”. Unfortunately Trump fans think this was their president “being strong”.
Just the way dump face talks enrages me. Angry with Zelenskyy crying about how he hates Putin. PUTIN IS A CRIMINAL GARBAGE DESPOT AND EVERYONE SHOULD HATE HIM.
I wish I had something worthwhile to say. As much as I knew it would suck, I didn’t think it would this atrociously messy. My brother-in-law lost his VA job and my sister had just quit hers to go back to school. I’ve got neighbors who have been fired. It looks like Putin is about to destroy the Ukraine. A billionaire who literally wants to replace human workers with AI is making decisions about the government.
I know I’ve said it before, but even more so after this disgusting display I really hope the rest of the world pulls together, fucks America off, and goes to help out Ukraine and then the rest of the planet.
If Trump and his government are going to be this infantile, the rest of the world should abandon them completely.
I’m sorry about all that crap. Remind me, are you a public or school or what kind of librarian? Archivist? For better or worse, I work at a private school, but with all the crazy nonsense going on this far, I wouldn’t be surprised if they declared librarians enemies of the state.
I really wish this could be the case, but it’s hard to overestimate just how much money is pumped into the American military and abroad. I heard a couple interviews say the situation is untenable without US support.
And so vomit bag putin will destroy Ukraine and become an even great world threat, just so trump can feel like a big guy. Absolutely fucking pathetic. And no one in his circle will stand up to him and tell him this is bad. I fucking hate this place.
Thank you. I’m an archivist at George Washington University. We’re a private university but, of course, there’s lots of federal grant money coming our way. For me personally, my position is entirely funded by an already matured endowment. The money is there and can’t be spent on anything but my salary so I’m not too worried. They can fire me but they can’t eliminate my position.
The funny thing is, I’m a labor history archivist. The Teamsters union is the donor who paid my salary and whose historical records I oversee. So I’m in a funny position because Teamsters have played a role in the Trump transition team. The new labor secretary is the person the Teamsters wanted him to appoint.
But, as a librarian, I’ve been heartened to see some libraries standing up to preserve government data. One of things that made me want to become a librarian was watching how they responded to the Patriot Act.
I really, really hope that isn’t the case. Trump obviously couldn’t give a toss about Ukraine, he just saw this as an opportunity to get what he wanted easily, but it backfired. He didn’t expect to deal with someone with a backbone.
From the academic community, one that I’m close, I’ve heard that tons of research has been halted (not just the “uh my genders” babble that they thought they wanted to quit) and that there are many people wanting to leave to other places. Which was kinda expected when you get morons deciding what’s to be kept and what’s to be cut.
I hope that the us alienating all of their allies ends up being a net positive in the world long term, at least for my part of the world which has historically been on the short end of that relationship. It’s definitely been an abrupt change thus far.
Seen so many people on social media wanting to leave the us to go do research in other countries. It’s so funny they managed to cut the biomedical, molecular cell and cancer research, one they said they wanted to foster, by having limiting words so vague or with a widespread use. Who would have thought that words such as trauma might have had other meanings?
