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[–] 64 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

That's what I keep saying: Trump isn't the problem, he's a symptom.

And the disease is that a majority of voting Americans are either morally bankrupt and gullible enough to overlook all that Trump did and said and elect him, or actively fascist.

And that's why, when people tell me I need to "make space" for those people and give them an exit ramp, so that when Trump finally turns on them too, and they realize what they done did, the nation can heal and come back together, I say: fuck this shit.

I don't want to make space for immoral morons and fascists. These people deserve what they're about to get, and what they've inflicted on the rest of us who didn't sell out, and they'll never come back from the moral quagmire that made them think it's a-okay to elect a fascist POTUS.

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  • [–] 38 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Trump isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom.

    The problem is America , systemically not socially. The idiot Trump voters are likewise symptoms.

    The sad part is many Americans simply think if you just get rid of Trump and his supporters that it would fix the problems with the country when in reality it perpetuates them by ignoring the underlying issues.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    You were correct in the first half then you fell right off. Name a president that didn't suck. You can't, you won't. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democratic being worst. BOTH are traitors to the American people.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago

    I do not understand how "vote for the better option" could possibly not be the correct move. If you want to change the candidates we have in the general election, no strategy for voting within the general election will change that; you would need to vote in the primaries to get the legitimately good candidates into the general. This is once again voting for the best option. If you have another theory I would love to hear how you expect it to work.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    You were correct in the first half then you fell right off.

    I was going to comment that as well. They've identified the problem correctly, but rather than trying to fix it they decide to cement it in. We want people to be able to accept they were wrong and think (and vote) differently going forward. That sort of growth is how things get better. This vindictiveness just makes people defensive and want to double down on mistakes when doubt and regret could have lead to character development.

    By all means, hold people accountable, but if you don't allow them to change you are giving up hope entirely.

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    [–] 36 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Never ask a man his salary

    Never ask a woman her age

    Never ask what George Orwell was doing in Myanmar in the 1920s

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 21 points 10 months ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Days

    Set in British Burma during the waning days of empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as "a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj." At the centre of the novel is John Flory, "the lone and lacking individual trapped within a bigger system that is undermining the better side of human nature."[1] The novel describes "both indigenous corruption and imperial bigotry" in a society where, "after all, natives were natives—interesting, no doubt, but finally...an inferior people".[2]

    To be clear, that last bit of that last sentence is meant to be read as hideously haughty and privileged... it is dripping with irony, a self-cariacature, as the novel showcases the craven nature of characters in all kinds of social positions, from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds.

    The whole thing is meant as an unflinching critique of how colonialism ruins everyone involved.


    I guess we could also maybe ask Orwell what he was doing in Spain in the 1930s, but at the time, he would again have difficulty telling you.

    Turns out that when you join an internationalist anti fascist militia to go personally shoot fascists yourself, well, sometimes they shoot back, and sometimes they hit you in the neck.

    ... thankfully, writing exists.

    I find it absolutely incredible that George Orwell, a man who has likely personally shot more fascists than probably anyone you'll find on the internet... somehow doesn't clear the ideological purity test these days.

    And that is because Orwell, while literally shooting at fascists in Spain, also found himself as the target of a pro-Soviet, pro-Stalin smear campaign, which tried to paint him and his outfit as Trotskyists and also as fascists.

    Apparently, this smear campaign remains quite influential, to this day.

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  • [+] 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)
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    [–] 31 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    In 2016 both Hillary and Trump had a lower than 50% approval rating and yet they were the frontrunners: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

    Congress has a less than 50% approval rating and it's made up of elected politicians: https://www.statista.com/statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress/

    We don't have a democracy, we have a system where you can only choose which representative for billionaires you dislike the least. They're all corrupt, any that aren't are quickly drowned out by well-funded opposition.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    People tend to approve of their own representatives, and blame others in Congress for unsolved issues. We have become good at identifying problems while minimizing our own contributions to them. And in general, as a country we are very divided on the way things should be changing.

    For presidential candidates especially, I've found people tend to latch on to reasons to dislike someone and ignore positive things, except perhaps for their favorite candidate. It's a form of tribalism. But from what I remember Trump and Hilary were both considered distinctly weak candidates at the time.

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    [–] 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)
    The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
    To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
    To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
    

    Douglas Adams

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    [–] 23 points 10 months ago

    “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

    —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago* (4 children)

    Try saying this yourself, without a famous pen name to append after it, and people call you absurd, extreme, unrealistic, violent.

    ... I call those people cowards.

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    [–] 11 points 10 months ago

    All according to plan so farmland can be bought up by large corporations and billionaires. They want to control and commodify every aspect of survival.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    On the one hand yeah sure, but on the other hand in the USA youre an accomplice if you didnt vote or if you wasted your vote on a 3rd party.

    Vote for baddy, your fault. Vote for less baddy, youre propping up the system. Vote for good guy, you wasted your chance to vote against baddy. Dont vote, you wasted your chance yo vote against baddy.

    Everyone gets the boot on the neck, everyone gets the blame, there are no winners

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    [–] 8 points 10 months ago*

    In some cases.

    In other

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Is this a shitpost?

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (6 children)
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    [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    This includes people who give everyone shit for not voting for the “lesser” corruption. Accomplices all.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    The people represent the government, i am ashamed of my people.

    Or mabye im not, here in Italy the meloni got elected by only 40% of the people, only beacouse of a law made by the DC

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah, it's your personal responsibility to vote for the "good" candidate, with voting for the "bad" candidate being an individual's moral and mental failure as opposed to it being caused by shifting material conditions, crises or simply just failure of liberal political side to garner enough support or them targeting only the affluent middle-class intelligentsia.

    Why don't everyone just vote for the good guys, are they stupid?

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    [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I got the book 1984 for $1 on Kobo a couple months ago

    Still haven't read it. (Surely next year)

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    How do you do that, specifically in the US?

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Ooh that's a good one

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