The 2024 Us Presidential Election Thread
- Thread starter The Predaking
- Start date
A racist winning emboldens racists.
What a shock.
www.nbcnews.com
What a shock.
Black people are receiving racist text messages about picking cotton 'at the nearest plantation'
The FBI and the FCC have weighed in on the messages that multiple Black people across the country received on Wednesday.
www.nbcnews.com
Yup, and some misogynists are now telling random women 'Your body, my choice'..... It's gonna be rough. Homophobes and transphobes are similarly ramping up their harassment campaigns. If I wasn't responsible for most of my families income, I'd go out and protest and protest hard to let these idiots know where they stand.
I’ve pretty much given up trying to explain my side to my coworkers here in Oklahoma. Humans being held in camps? “They shouldn’t come across illegally to begin with”. Trump’s tariff garbage? “Good, let things be made in America again”. Trump is horrible person who doesn’t care about anyone but himself? “I’m not voting for his personality”.
They know I’m not happy Trump won and I’m the “crazy liberal” (though, one did, accurately, point out my views skew more moderate, being from Iowa and all).
Unless it DIRECTLY and TANGIBLY affects them? They don’t care. And I guess that’s the reason Trump won: He appealed to a dissatisfaction with pricing and the “way things were going” and promised change (even if MOST of it was perception bias). It felt like (and this is probably the mainstream media’s fault as well) Harris’s run was all about how “bad” Trump was, but not a lot of coverage to her policies. Even if NOTHING he promises ever gets passed, he ran on an idea people liked, where Harris seemed to simply be “Trump is a bad man” and responding to his bullshit on that front.
For most of the people I work with (and my father even), they voted for Trump to make their 401K better. Policies effecting people be damned.
That’s not to say I don’t have a few “I tried to tell you” or “I told you so” sitting in the back pocket for when/if his policies create a mess people here can’t ignore.
They know I’m not happy Trump won and I’m the “crazy liberal” (though, one did, accurately, point out my views skew more moderate, being from Iowa and all).
Unless it DIRECTLY and TANGIBLY affects them? They don’t care. And I guess that’s the reason Trump won: He appealed to a dissatisfaction with pricing and the “way things were going” and promised change (even if MOST of it was perception bias). It felt like (and this is probably the mainstream media’s fault as well) Harris’s run was all about how “bad” Trump was, but not a lot of coverage to her policies. Even if NOTHING he promises ever gets passed, he ran on an idea people liked, where Harris seemed to simply be “Trump is a bad man” and responding to his bullshit on that front.
For most of the people I work with (and my father even), they voted for Trump to make their 401K better. Policies effecting people be damned.
That’s not to say I don’t have a few “I tried to tell you” or “I told you so” sitting in the back pocket for when/if his policies create a mess people here can’t ignore.
Search interest for 'did Joe Biden drop out' is spiking on Election Day even though he withdrew months ago
President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, but some folks didn’t appear to know that.
This is right up there with the fact that "what does it mean to leave the EU" spiked after the UK voted for Brexit.
Oh, if you thought the price rises during and after the pandemic were bad, wait until there’s those tariffs.
I said this before, promising to “end inflation” by placing tariffs on everything, that’s like trying to extinguish an open fire by pouring petrol onto it.
(Trump/Vance won’t be able to fairly win another free and open election after that economic damage, which is why I’m convinced there won’t be any.)
Sure they will - they'll just blame it on Biden despite any evidence to the contrary and their voter base will take it as gospel.
So, every week, you as them how much they paid for bread and eggs.
And in a year when it's doubled, ask 'em who's fault it is. They're going to blame literally everyone else trump, because these people are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions and the subsequent consequences, but some of the answers might be funny for a minute.
Now that it's the weekend and I'm allowed to have my own thoughts.
As someone who lives and breathes sci-fi, I spend a lot of time thinking about political theory; how would you run a Galactic Empire? What would a utopian Federation actually look like? How would you explain democracy to someone from, say, Westeros, or Katolis, or Pharaonic Egypt, or Sengoku-era Japan? I think I've come to realize something about democracy.
Democracy is like a table, built to stand on four legs: Education, a Free Media, Infrastructure, and the Rule of Law. Without one of those legs, the table wobbles. Without two, it will collapse.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, if you have those four pillars, a society will tend toward democracy inevitably. If the population is educated, well-informed, organized, and able to trust in some form of justice, they will demand an equal voice. This is why attempts to "establish" or "declare" a democracy always collapse: you can't just install a beloved leader and walk away; the whole government will eventually collapse (leading to the rise of a demagogue).
When it comes right down to it, a democracy is actually the ultimate evolution of a monarchy: one in which the entire population is royalty. "Voter" is just another word for the nobility, because that's what nobles do; they (alone) get a vote on what the king actually does. Democracy is just the idea that "nobleman," "citizen," and "person" should all mean the same thing. If a democratic state is a nation of kings and queens, then we should look at what kings and queens need.
We like to say that there's a price to be paid to live in a "Free Country," an idea often used to justify military adventurism and increasingly militarized law enforcement, but that doesn't actually contribute to democracy. All it does --at best-- is to defend the physical borders of the state; it has nothing to do with what goes on in the state.
The price is this:
A citizen in a democracy must be educated.
A citizen in a democracy must be well-informed.
A citizen in a democracy must have access to social infrastructure (i.e., the physical ability to vote).
A citizen in a democracy must be protected by the law.
You'll notice that none of these "prices" are paid by the citizen; they are the responsibility of the state, if it wants to defend its own survival.
What we're seeing right now in the USA is the result of a deliberate, generations-long attack on these four pillars, and thus on the idea of democracy itself. A small band of wealthy and powerful oligarchs have repeatedly taken steps to gut the education system, subvert the free press, suborn and discredit the Supreme Court, and sabotage election infrastructure.
The "billionaire donors" are, by any description, the nobility of America, and they are trying to install a monarchy that they alone will have full control of. In order to do that, they have to shrink the voting class until it includes only them. By defunding public education, eliminating the Fairness Doctrine, disenfranchising voters and discrediting the electoral system, and subverting the Supreme Court, they have removed the tools that citizens need in order to participate in democracy, and thus turned those citizens into something else.
So what do you call someone who doesn't get access to education, knowing only superstition and folk wisdom? Who lacks accurate and detailed information and must rely on rumour and hearsay? Who doesn't have a way to make their voice heard? Who lives in fear of arbitrary laws that are wielded like weapons by the powerful?
In a monarchy, those are "commoners."
As someone who lives and breathes sci-fi, I spend a lot of time thinking about political theory; how would you run a Galactic Empire? What would a utopian Federation actually look like? How would you explain democracy to someone from, say, Westeros, or Katolis, or Pharaonic Egypt, or Sengoku-era Japan? I think I've come to realize something about democracy.
Democracy is like a table, built to stand on four legs: Education, a Free Media, Infrastructure, and the Rule of Law. Without one of those legs, the table wobbles. Without two, it will collapse.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, if you have those four pillars, a society will tend toward democracy inevitably. If the population is educated, well-informed, organized, and able to trust in some form of justice, they will demand an equal voice. This is why attempts to "establish" or "declare" a democracy always collapse: you can't just install a beloved leader and walk away; the whole government will eventually collapse (leading to the rise of a demagogue).
When it comes right down to it, a democracy is actually the ultimate evolution of a monarchy: one in which the entire population is royalty. "Voter" is just another word for the nobility, because that's what nobles do; they (alone) get a vote on what the king actually does. Democracy is just the idea that "nobleman," "citizen," and "person" should all mean the same thing. If a democratic state is a nation of kings and queens, then we should look at what kings and queens need.
We like to say that there's a price to be paid to live in a "Free Country," an idea often used to justify military adventurism and increasingly militarized law enforcement, but that doesn't actually contribute to democracy. All it does --at best-- is to defend the physical borders of the state; it has nothing to do with what goes on in the state.
The price is this:
A citizen in a democracy must be educated.
A citizen in a democracy must be well-informed.
A citizen in a democracy must have access to social infrastructure (i.e., the physical ability to vote).
A citizen in a democracy must be protected by the law.
You'll notice that none of these "prices" are paid by the citizen; they are the responsibility of the state, if it wants to defend its own survival.
What we're seeing right now in the USA is the result of a deliberate, generations-long attack on these four pillars, and thus on the idea of democracy itself. A small band of wealthy and powerful oligarchs have repeatedly taken steps to gut the education system, subvert the free press, suborn and discredit the Supreme Court, and sabotage election infrastructure.
The "billionaire donors" are, by any description, the nobility of America, and they are trying to install a monarchy that they alone will have full control of. In order to do that, they have to shrink the voting class until it includes only them. By defunding public education, eliminating the Fairness Doctrine, disenfranchising voters and discrediting the electoral system, and subverting the Supreme Court, they have removed the tools that citizens need in order to participate in democracy, and thus turned those citizens into something else.
So what do you call someone who doesn't get access to education, knowing only superstition and folk wisdom? Who lacks accurate and detailed information and must rely on rumour and hearsay? Who doesn't have a way to make their voice heard? Who lives in fear of arbitrary laws that are wielded like weapons by the powerful?
In a monarchy, those are "commoners."
I don't see how Democrats ever win a major election again.
Their messaging is so inefficient, the leadership is too concerned with "REACHING ACROSS THE AISLE" to build actual party cohesion and the opposition Party controls most major media outlets to tell the voting base exactly what they want to hear that reinforces their hatred.
And that's assuming we still HAVE major elections...
Their messaging is so inefficient, the leadership is too concerned with "REACHING ACROSS THE AISLE" to build actual party cohesion and the opposition Party controls most major media outlets to tell the voting base exactly what they want to hear that reinforces their hatred.
And that's assuming we still HAVE major elections...
Unfortunately the marketplace of ideas is like the free market itself. In the absence of any system that forcibly stamps down any players who become too powerful, the natural tendency is toward consolidation of power from the many to the few. People often speak of late-stage capitalism; maybe this is what late-stage democracy looks like.
A lot of Hasbro's stuff is currently made in Vietnam, not just China
Whatever direction the Democrats go after this crushing defeat, I really hope that they don't end up taking the same route as the UK Labour Party, as in offering essentially the same policies as the Right, just with "sensible and grown-up" delivery and presentation. I mean, if there are any more free national elections in the States, of course.
Why would there be free elections in the US? They went this far to claim power, why republicans give it up?
Free elections is a slogan. It is hard to define the edges. If there has been intentional gerrymandering to suppress the other party, is the election free? If even a single legitimate voter's registration was dropped in a supposed-effort to stop fraud, was the election free?
I think the answer is still essentially yes. Just with some marked problems. But these are the things you have to worry about, I think. The American people as yet are schooled and proud of the right to free elections. You won't get away with suspending them. But you can definitely sneak around and mess them up.
I think the answer is still essentially yes. Just with some marked problems. But these are the things you have to worry about, I think. The American people as yet are schooled and proud of the right to free elections. You won't get away with suspending them. But you can definitely sneak around and mess them up.