top 65 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 103 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

He’s too narcissistic to even realize the irony that it is his policies, his incompetent appointees, and his apoplectic abuse that is crashing the GOP. It is insane that the meltdown has been this glacially paced.

He’ll be back; we’re in the devaluation phase of the narcissistic abuse cycle. Next, he’ll try to discard the whole party to start his own. When his finds that unworkable, he’ll come slithering back.

Let’s just hope this time most republicans will be too exhausted to continue propagandizing themselves with Trump’s inane double-think.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 112 points 1 year ago* (26 children)

    Give it a minute. The American general public had at least ten years to get familiar with Trump and what he's about. His plans for this year were not hidden, even a little bit. They voted him in again anyway just a year ago. Now they're acting like this was all an unexpected shock.

    All we learned from this week is that Americans are capable of remembering not to put their hand on the hot stove a third time, provided their other hand is still on the same hot stove from the second time.

  • source
  • hideshow 26 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The American general public had at least ten years to get familiar with Trump and what he's about.

    Far longer than that.

    He's been known publicly as a sack of shit since at least the '90s.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    But then puffed up as a genius business man by The Apprentice. Remember that most people the world over are absolutely rock-stupid and will believe whatever's on TV. "He ripped off everyone he ever did business with and bankrupted every company he ever started" "Whatever, I like the way he says 'You're fired!' He must be great at businessing!"

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (23 children)

    It's not that the public forgot, but that leadership failed to offer an alternative other than "not Trump". When the Democrats do offer an alternative like Mamdani, people show up. And 80% of those that showed up voted for him, not against the other candidate. Not even Obama accomplished that.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 23 child comments
  • [+] 40 points 1 year ago (12 children)
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    What will the Democratic leadership learn from Mamdani's win?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (9 children)
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

    As long as we're paying attention to those who can imagine a different future, then we're at the same table.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

    My point is that we haven't had good candidates as evidence by their losing. When we actually do have a good candidate that wins we are suddenly the idealists that aren't practical, as if winning power (in spite of both political establishments) is something other than an act of pragmatism.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [+] -3 points 1 year ago* (5 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    It is silly to think we can't learn lessons on how Mamdani won because he hasn't exercised the office yet. This isn't about how you did that right thing and voted against fascism that one time. This is about winning power, and if that is too idealist for you then I don't know what else to say other than I'll see you on the campaign trail.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    Don't be mistaken, Mandani's win is not America's win, it's NY win. America as a whole is way more stupid and way more evil than that. Hell, even broad democratic voters are worse than that, Bernie lost popular vote on primaries twice afterall.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    It was not just "not Trump", it was "not insane", and not threatening to tear down democracy and destroy healthcare and the economy. It was business as usual over sociopathy.
    The choice should have been clear. But too many Americans are sociopaths, and chose to really stick it to the minorities until they die. Americans voted for Trump not despite he is a sociopath, but because of it. Americans want revenge for their lousy lives more than they want to improve things for everybody.
    The Dems won other places than New York.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    When the Democrats do offer an alternative like Mamdani, people show up.

    I'd like to rephrase that to make a point: When progressive voters show up and vote in the primaries for the more progressive candidate, there's more likely to be a more progressive Democratic candidate on the ballot in the general and people will show up for them.

    Point is the Democratic Party powers that be did not willingly "offer an alternative like Mamdani". They hated that he was the candidate and tried to get Cuomo elected instead. Mamdani was only "offered" thanks to the voters who showed up and voted for him in the primary.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I think that downplays how good of a candidate Mamdani was and how differently he ran his campaign. It also blinds us to new lessons.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I don't see how it downplays at all how good a candidate he was, if anything it shows how good he must have been to overcome his own party's elite trying to stop him. My point is that they might have stopped him, if it weren't for the people who turned out in the primary. Just think what quality candidates we could get if people would support them in the primaries, instead of waiting until the general and seeing who other people chose in the primary and then being disappointed. My point is we need to turn out for the primaries. When potential candidates see voters supporting progressive candidates more will decide to run because they'll know they have a chance.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And that is the real problem progressive voters are not reliable as a block. So nobody caters to them.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Just shows how dumb Americans really are. And comparing a presidential election to a material one. And the most votes cast is also BS they're going by numbers and I assume in 2025 the population is higher then in 1989. But 34% voter turnout is good for a municipal election but not the barn burner your describing. And still a lot of people not voting. And the progressives seem to only care to vote when Trump is in power. The second election after Trump they won't show up again as they don't care.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    I don't understand how the working class folks "shifted" to Democratic party.

    Haven't the democrats been the working class party all along?

  • source
  • hideshow 24 child comments
  • [–] 93 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Citizens United made bribery legal, and the working class has been broken down for decades and forced into poverty.

    There is no American "working class" party, because they can't afford to bribe any of the parties. Democrats sorta kinda pretend to care, occasionally, so they are currently wearing the mantle.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago

    Citizens United made it worse, but we were fucked before then. Lobbying is just legalized bribery. We need to repeal Citizens United but then we need to keep going and rework the whole campaign finance and lobbying systems too.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm terms of policy, yes. But a lot of dipshit blue collar workers believe the propaganda from Fox News and adjacent outlets, and their propaganda says that the republican party is the party of the working class, so a lot of the working class votes republican. These people believe what they're told instead of using critical thinking skills to observe and analyze the actual actions taking place. Some of them are finally starting to wake up, but they'll fall back asleep the moment somebody more palatable than trump rises up and keeps the pain focused on marginalized groups instead of leaking out to hurt rural whites so much and so obviously.

    I hope that AI development makes the internet and social media so dogshit that it pushes people to spend less time in online echo chamber spaces and more time in person with actual people face to face. We're radically divided due to algorithms slapping us with culture war bullshit, so we're forgetting that so many of us are united in wanting comfortable homes, affordable food, leisure time and money to enjoy with our families, and peace of mind that we're safe and secure. Crying about trans athletes does nothing for my family, but my father in law being furloughed during this shutdown due to an insistence on taking healthcare away from my sister sure as shit impacts my family.

    Of course I don't want people to suffer, but some people will just never see what the fuck is actually happening until it affects them or people close to them. And those of us who already know are just that much more pissed off when these people only just now start to figure it out and cry for help now that it's hurting somebody other than the out group. And it's gonna be extra infuriating when they forget all about the pain they were finally exposed to and turn around and vote for it all over again. Mark my words, trump is not the last fascist these people will have sold their decency to support. They will forget where it got them within weeks.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I hope that AI development makes the internet and social media so dogshit that it pushes people to spend less time in online echo chamber spaces and more time in person with actual people face to face.

    I sure would love that to happen, but my more cynical self sees the incel broligarchy-loving types and how they look forward to the day when females will be put in their place by having a compliant robot wife instead, not having to worry about a woman "taking all their money" and so on....

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    They can have their advanced waifu bodypillows, and I'll still make fun of them like I do the weebs with their regular waifu bodypillows.

    But realistically, the broligarchy manchildren are the exact people who worship Elon Musk, and Elon Musk is the exact guy championing the idea that white birthrate decline is a horrible tragedy and we need to have more white babies. These losers will need to choose between their robo waifus and their techbro visionary prophet, and musk will have to choose between making the product in demand by his fans or his Nazi white genocide ideology.

    I think they're most likely to agree on trying to making all women into free use breeding objects that "real alpha men" are allowed to stake claim on without consequence. In other words, legalize rape for white men. It sounds absurd, but five years ago you wouldn't have believed me if I'd told you that he'd do some public sieg heil Nazi salutes within a few years.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Working class people tend to be less-educated, live in more rural areas, be a part of less-diverse communities, and be prone to accept authority figures. And the GOP has spent a half-century trying to convince that exact group that every problem they're experiencing is actually the opposite. So they vote against their best interests in election after election, and then the people they voted for successfully convince them that the Democrats actually torpedoed it all and they could've actually made everything better if they just had one more term...rinse and repeat across 25+ election cycles.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [+] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's definitely getting broader than that, with the way that wealth stratification continues to skyrocket. But I don't mean "actually rural," I really do mean "more rural." A good amount of city real estate prices have priced lower-income folks out of the urban core in many (most?) cities, gentrifying the downtown and resulting in a reversal of 1980s White Flight as the working class move to now-cheaper suburban and rural communities.

    I didn't mean just farmers or whatever. I just mean people who haven't got the money to live in the Trader Joe's district.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I think we overemphasize education and should talk more about people's ability to act and think independently.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I think we overemphasize water and should talk more about people's hydration.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Sounds like something the CEO of Nestle would say.

    Education doesn't make people act independently, often to the contrary.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Right-wing propaganda nonsense. Education teaches you how to evaluate sources and interrogate assumptions.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    My "source" on education being a tool of Hegemony is Micheal Foucault, not exactly a right-wing propagandist. The right has a tendency to take arguments from others and twist them to accomplish the opposite.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    My apologies, I thought you were making the opposite argument. But I still disagree.

    All other things being equal, educated people are statistically less susceptible to disinformation and fallacious arguments. If they weren't, the fascists wouldn't be trying to eliminate public education, and the electoral map wouldn't correlate so strongly with education.

    Foucault wasn't wrong about right-wingers using educational systems for indoctrination, but that's not the current GOP playbook. Their strategy relies on people being too anxious and uneducated to separate fact from fiction, and to provide the propaganda another way (specifically, via carpet-bombing media, social and otherwise, with disinformation). Why bother wasting time at the school district level when there are nationwide platforms where people line up voluntarily to get their ration of AI-generated, foreign-actor-crafted lies delivered straight into to their eyeballs?

    Yeah, we've gotta fix the education system. And yeah, we've gotta get people to recognize where they're being controlled. But I don't think that eliminating the former is going to accomplish the latter; and clearly the other side knows it, too.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Wasn't trying to argue we should abolish public education but that we can't rely on reforming education to fix our political system. It flows the other way. Which means we also need to find ways to cultivate independent thought outside of traditional education. This comes in many forms, mutual aide, potlucks, new art, community workshops, etc but the through line is you are offering people more independence to be well.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not since at least the Clinton years. The US doesn’t have a mainstream working class party.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Hasn't been one in the anglosphere in general for a long time. The NDP is the closest but they've given up their working class cred years ago. And labor, well, if Blair didn't convince you they were a lost cause Starmer will. I'm not familiar enough with auspol but I'd imagine the trend holds.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    USA according to tRump: Dead country, dead parties... jeeze, what's next a dead president?!

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [+] 23 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    It’s a well known fact that the party in power usually suffers losses during midterms. So it’s great that DEMs are winning. But it isn’t over by any stretch. Gotta keep fighting.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    These weren't midterms, they were an off-year election. The midterms will be next year.

    They are usually low turnout, but saw a historic turnout in NY and NJ, not sure about the others offhand.

    Off-years you do not typically see this kind of sweeping response, its absolutely atypical.

    I'm not suggesting its time to stop, but clarifying that this is not the norm.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    These weren't midterms, they were an off-year election. The midterms will be next year.

    Still applies

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Kind of.

    Its a barometer, and it usually features some degree of losses for the party in power. The degree of which is a big indicator for the midterms. While the presidents party tends to lose out overall in off-years, the degree to which can vary drastically.

    Off year elections do not have sweeping losses or historically significant voter turnout though. They also dont generate anywhere near the kind of media attention this year saw, or the historic amounts of money being put into a mayoral election as we saw in NYC.

    We shouldn't downplay the significance of yesterdays election. And it was significant.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, it is a good win that should be celebrate. Just don’t want people getting complacent.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We shouldn't be complacent or lose hope.

    I'm... not exactly a fan of the existence of a state in general, but I'll happily support more dem-socialists and the ousting of establishment democrats (aka "traditional" republicans with a blue sign).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Hmmm, wonder who killed it

  • source
  • He's falling into our Cardiac Trap. 🤫

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Hate to see it.

  • source
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago