These might be the good old days. Go outside, feel the grass, say wassup to your neighbors,… whatever you do that means community, because sh*t might get bad for a while.
Like. Did people forget how insane everyday was when he was President? Like you never knew what was gonna happen he was always wanting the attention.
I’m just going to keep riding this horse until it fucking dies but the very first thing he did was take everything Obama did during his presidency and throw it out the window, including the pandemic playbook.
That playbook would have given us step by step instructions and reactions to deal with any type of suddenly erupting national pandemic like Ebola or coronavirus.
And because of this, which was by all measures a racially motivated attack on Obama, more than 1 million Americans died in a badly managed pandemic.
Trump’s racism killed a million Americans.
It undoubtedly exacerbated the problem for the entire world and his total kill count is likely much more than that.
How can you let somebody who genocided millions of people through racism sit in the oval office?
It’s a cult. They have people denying COVID ever existed. Heartily rejecting vaccines.
There’s just too much to list but it only ever makes sense if you take whatever he’s doing as right and readjust everyone around him to work does it ever make sense.
The fact that this election is even close is absolutely insane to me.
Se simply by popular vote because people are supporting that shit, knowingly or unknowingly
Well maybe if HARRIS killed Millions of Americans SHE could have WON this Election!
It’s crazy that the vote is apparently close. Really goes to show how many “average” americans have utterly lost any connection to actual reality and have guzzled enough of the kool-aid to believe the weird whacky world of wonders the religious fascists constantly conjure up.
I wonder though, is this ultimately a failure not of the education and internal offices, decades ago? We let schools let people down, leading to them becoming undereducated terrible parents who let their kids down and made them vulnerable to be exploited by republicans and churches and crypto grifters. :(
Racism and misogyny. That is all it is.
Large part of the country was built on that foundation. Shocking how proud of it they are.
And propaganda. LOTS of propaganda.
That’s not all, probably not even the main one. It’s a major cost of living crisis and impoverishment of average people while companies and the richest get richer. Neither the Ds nor the Rs want to do anything against it, they get their money from there.
The people kinda understand this. But they’re not intelligent enough to distinguish “actually changing the system” with “just saying they’re gonna change the system”, like Trump does. Trump is always talking about uprooting the deep state and bringing an “average person”(white middle/lower class) perspective to politics, and people just gobble it up and believe it because he’s kinda good at talking with conviction.
Of course the misogyny and racism is part of it and an extra, but it’s not the main reason at all. For some people it is, of course.
That’s a really black and white way to look at it. These are complex issues. Any attempt to find a simple explanation to them is by definition going to be oversimplifying it massively.
Dont take polls so seriously. Even pollsters know that they have no idea how accurate they might be.
Turns out it wasn’t close at all :(
As recently as yesterday morning I had people in my social feeds posting pictures of themselves voting and “excited to witness our first female president!” assuming a Harris victory. What a shocker.
exactly what i was thinking about. it was such a tense and shameful period.
I woke up every day worried that we’d nuked Spain overnight.
“There’s a horse. In the hospital.”
One thing I’ve had to absorb from all this is that the Trump I see is not the Trump they see. Yes their media outlets are lying to them, but my media outlets are also working overtime to turn every comment he makes into a sure sign of goose-stepping fascism right around the corner. His every off color remark, and he has a lot of them, are so amplified by the press I consume that he seems an obvious villain.
I usually don’t “both sides” anything, but I do believe that while right wing media distort Trump, so does left wing media, and both contribute to this sense of “what can people possibly be thinking, to vote for him?” It’s because they haven’t been drinking from the same Trump hate firehose as me.
Yes.
Just as insane as it is today if you ask me
I just hope if he loses, it’s by a wide margin so there’s no challenge. Just decisive victory and we can all move on….
Don’t underestimate their tactic. For the republican presidential campaign, they will recognize only one of two outcomes: victory, or election tampering/fraud/manipulation. And, the wider the margin of win, the stronger the rhetoric will be.
Trump insisted he won the popular vote in 2016. That was him setting this whole thing up.
As long as he loses I think it’s mostly good. He currently does not hold the levers of power, and I think as much as his supporters like to play the victim, I think a second loss will lead to evaporating support. Hard to pretend to be a strongman when you look weak
A second loss should be a death knell of the current Republican party. He won’t transition any of his power to Vance or any other Republicans. He could die and we still would see 10% of the Americans to vote for him in 2028 because his death was just media propaganda as far as they are concerned.
Stop teasing me with best case scenarios.
His breakfast Big Mac could still go down wrong this morning.
I can easily see the party fracture, Republicans and MAGA. If they do split it may be a while before they come back into power.
10%? Try 25%-30%
His rallies have fizzled and I suspect this year (unlike 2016) a lot of these attendees were paid for their attendance, hence the common early exodus we have seen from his “supporters”.
Expect the challenge. I’ve been watching the usual suspects on Twitter, they’re completely bwashed into thinking there’s only one possible outcome, and if it goes against them it means there’s been election fraud. They’re already calling it a landslide.
Trump will challenge no matter what the margin is, if he loses. He will never concede because he’s a narcissistic loser and his moron followers will blindly do his bidding, especially on the next January 6.
This, after ten years of this orange baboon dominating the headlines and flinging shit everywhere I’m ready for it to end.
I hoped for his removal.
Tbh I’m honestly kinda surprised that electoral fuckery wasn’t even needed.
If we are being honest I suspect this election will be tight. Let’s try not to pull a democrat this time. In 2020 they voted to uphold the election without any recounts because there was a democrat majority in Congress. When you are elected leader it is your job to serve the people. They should’ve at least looked into Trumps claims even if they were fabricated.
They did… and found nothing except an occasional republican fraud. The facts don’t matter to facists.
They should’ve at least looked into Trumps claims even if they were fabricated.
to be clear, trump has made 10x the amount of public claims, privately, every single one was either incredibly illegal. Or fucking wrong. Not a single one was correct.
I voted Trump but I completely agree. We need a landslide, even if Harris wins. Anything else gives the bad actors on either side fuel for an already out of control fire.
Sorry, but I just had to take a peek at your profile. You claim to be on an autism spectrum, yet you voted for a man who will - as the first order of business - make your very life extremely miserable.
That is my take. May I ask what is yours?
I’ve never been one to believe fake political fear mongering bullshit. The right does it too. He’s not Hitler. He’s not going to go after disabled people. It’s bullshit lies. We’re getting more of his first 4 years if he wins.
I sure hope that’s the case. Are there any particular resolutions you hope he can pull through in his term?
Im hoping his foxus is on dropping energy prices mixed with lowering taxes on tips or overtime or social security. I know he wants to do all 3 but we know all 3 probably won’t happen because that’s how our politics works. Nothing ever happens fast
You do realize that lowering the energy prices will be at a cost of dropping climate policies? Are you not worried about the earth changing drastically as we speak?
It has changed before us. It will change after us. To me climate change is a non issue.
so basically the entire reason you voted for trump is schizophrenic economics. When you could’ve voted for kamala harris, who has actual real tangible economic policy.
Lol that’s bullshit and you know it. She lost anyway so her lack of plans no longer matter.
It dosen’t say what Trump said.
Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump has been accused of once saying that it may be better for people living with serious disabilities to “just die.” The startling revelation was laid out in a new book authored by Trump’s nephew Fred Trump III the son of the former President’s older brother Fred Trump Jr who passed away in 1981.
bOTh SiDEs 🙄
What we need is to slow down and take everything slowly. Don’t rush and recount and investigate if needed.
I agree with that.
If the Dems win and they don’t put a boot on the neck of this fascist movement it will take over eventually.
But that would require them to reign in the very same companies that sponsor them. One can hope, but it seems unlikely.
Companies don’t want fascism, they just want tax breaks. Civil war and dictatorships are bad for business.
Fascism is very good for businesses. They squash dissent like unions and the publics voice. Then only the billionaire class will have a voice.
Billionaires in China have been disappeared before. There’s only the head of state that matters in fascism.
Only the chosen few businesses, and entirely at the whims of the dictator. Your CEO pisses off the leader, your business goes bye bye.
Fascists weren’t bad for companies like VW, BMW, and Hugo Boss.
Tell that to Volkswagen, BMW, Messerschmitt, Audi, Deutsche Bank… And all these guys: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust
It’s a cult of personality. Jack Smith and the Judiciary just needs to step on the gas as soon as the election is called for Harris, get him gone. It’ll be interesting to see where the GOP goes from there, but MAGA will be dead. Would anyone else be happy with your normal everyday NeoCons running the GOP again?
Like what happened after the last presidential election?
Us on the left need to stop depending on a government whose military is overwhelmingly in support of Trump. We already know nearly all police are the same fascists (not to mention uvalde)
Arm yourself and train your family. Be silently ready for anything, don’t make yourself a target
If the US military was overwhelmingly in support of Trump Jan 6 would have gone completely differently.
Top brass seem to swing the other way though. These are generations that tangled with Russia and china for decades now. They see much more behind the curtain than others do.
My sisters biological father just retired as a captain from New York City Police.
When the subject of homosexuals came up one time he got all red in the face in was stopping about how he would use his AR-15 against any gay person that talked to his (adult) children.
During the Floyd protests I overheard him talking on the phone about shutting down Bridges to prevent movement.
There is a video on YouTube of him kicking down a memorial well the family of the deceased are crying on the street. He brings us up with pride.
He is a die hard maga fascist. He was a leader for hundreds of officers. He is their example
Luckily the police and the military have a bit different standards. Army generals are mostly well educated and very well read men who deal with the whole world and not just their neck of the woods, and possibly more important is that in the world of the military they do not have the monopoly on violence. They have to deal with adversaries who are equals and thus changes the power dynamic A LOT. A police captain can in the end just escalate all the way to the national guard and stomp out anything… in the military they cannot as their escalations immediately leads to deaths and escalates all the way to nuclear Armageddon. So luckily they are of a different breed.
But now, trump might replace the top brass with his loyalists, (loyalty > competence) fast tracking some appointments of people that normally not have made it to that level.
The guard rails are off… the world is in for a wild ride.
He literally said that he would do that, citing the loyalty of Hitlers pawns as the example to live up to. This isn’t hyperbole these are the words that came out of his mouth.
Whoever he puts in power will not uphold the Constitution or the rights of our citizens. He will exact the wishes of their leader without question. They will be hired based on this ‘loyalty’
Yup, he said he will. I don’t know how this works in practice, but this is dangerous. Project 2025 is very clear about stacking the institutions.
I see a path where we become very similar to Russia. Oligarchs controlling the nation with absolute loyalty to a single leader. An all powerful alliance that would erode our freedom until journalists are assassinated by the military at the president’s orders.
We already have the largest prison population in the world, imagine if Trump gave them an offer to fight for him or remain in prison, just like the mercenaries in Russia
This ^
Here’s the problem with that, though. It’s not going to be like there will be roving goon squads going from door to door snatching away your wives and daughters or anything. Even the MAGA-heads are just barely clever enough not to form themselves into any kind of entity that you could physically fight.
Instead, they’re going to chip away at everybody with asinine laws and legislation, selective enforcement and remote harassment, by filing mountains of frivolous lawsuits, etc. They’ll seize property. They’ll get you fired from your job. They’ll kick you off of your health insurance and freeze your bank accounts. Those responsible are never going to actually expose themselves in any capacity in which they can get got, because they’re cowards; they’re going to hide behind their desks and layers of security and fences and metal detectors and cops and the secret service. If it turns to outright violence vis-a-vis war in our own cities, it would be monumentally stupid for them to send troops marching down the street, and they won’t. They’ll just remotely bombard an entire city block and blame all the collateral damage on “leftists” or “wokeism” or whatever. And idiots will believe it, and then blame the victims.
“That’s ridiculous,” you say. “The government would never bomb anyone on US soil.”
Operation MOVE
The police literally fire bombed American children in an American home
I think everything you said is correct but you are forgetting that Trump said he will give immunity to all police. That means that police can now break the law, they can rape and kill you with immunity. You don’t think they’re going to use this to their advantage?
I don’t know if you’ve known any leadership in policing, but they are bloodthirsty. My sister’s biological father is a recent retiree from the NYPD as a captain. You would not believe the stories I’ve heard in the conversations I’ve overheard him have with his officers. I’ve actually recorded some of them just in case. Many of them seriously want a reason to kill someone and get away with it.
Dems are chasing Repubs, so either party winning won’t really change this fact.
With Dems we’re delaying this outcome. With Repubs we’re accelerating it.
Which fascist movement? american or israel?
Y’all queda
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As a person from Europe, who’s is living next to Ukraine, who’s girlfriend is ukranian, who’s many friends are Ukrainian, who’s many friends died due to that terrorist state: If you were eligible to vote in the US and didn’t, fuck you.
Any vote that didn’t go to Kamala, is a vote for fascism, a vote to accelerate and finish the genocide of palestine, a vote to cease support for Ukraine and a vote to help terrorists in ruzzia. If you support any of that, Fuck. You.
But I know my ukranian brothers, they will not surrender. Even if you selfish American pricks don’t support them. They will fight until they can’t fight anymore, and then they will still fight.
Unlike you, they are brave. They are heroes. They know whats fucking right.
And frankly, for all terrible things coming to the US, if you didnt vote, you deserve them all.
If you are from the LGBTQ+ community, not white or a woman, and you didn’t vote, you have just commited suicide.
I will still support Ukraine, financially. Its not much but I don’t care. And if its not enough and the worst comes, I am ready to die to save my brothers, just like my people did in the past.
I am willing to do my part, if you didn’t vote, you didnt. So one, last fuck you.
I wonder if those folks who cast a protest vote for Jill Stein will be sleeping soundly tonight… I sure hope not. I hope they’re fucking terrified.
Of course they are sleeping soundly. They’d literally be marching into the camps convinced they did the right thing.
“F ė brıf momimt, Uı þıŋk ð establicmint lṙnd itſ leſėn…”
spoiler
“For a brief moment, I think the eetablishment learned its lesson…”
With how few actual thoughts go through their minds I’m sure they’ll sleep well enough.
Isn’t Jill Stein effectively a republican asset at this point? Like not just a spoiler candidate but one actively funded by the right?
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If you’re so concerned about 3rd parties being a spoiler, then you must work towards replacing First-past-the-post voting in your state.
With a more representative electoral system, people would be free to vote for those they feel best represent them, with their vote still being counted against the republicans.
State level electoral reform is possible, some states have already done away with FPTP voting, and others are voting on it!
Given how this structural flaw in our voting system can be repaired, and your high level of concern of the spoiler effect, I invite you to my asklemmy post to discuss your new commitment to replacing FPTP voting in your state after the election.
replacing First-past-the-post voting in your state
Yeah, well, incidentally, ranked choice voting was on the ballot in 2020. We had a sign out encouraging people to vote for it, and I talked it up to whomever it would listen when political discourse came up, but it didn’t pass, so here we still are.
Voted PSL, and yah, I am terrified.
The difference is I am also terrified about what will happen with the Democrats in power. About the unlimited slop being handed to the military-industrial complex so they can ship guns to Israel to continue a genocide. About the crackdown on immigrants and refugees. About the global poor being crushed under the bootheels of American-led capitalism.
To support the Democratic party is to actively decide to place less value on the lives of non-Americans, something I simply cannot do. You want to vote for Harris as harm reduction, be my guest. But understand that the problems facing America cannot, and will not, be solved by voting. Voting should be an absolutely minor thing in the totality of your political actions. Join, start, or support a union. Find what mutual aids groups are nearby, and participate. Join protests. Pressure your local politicians. Support your comrades in their direct action campaigns. Build political power that is under your control, not the control of a system invented in the 1700s by a bunch of wealthy white slaveowners.
Voting should be an absolutely minor thing in the totality of your political actions. Join, start, or support a union. Find what mutual aids groups are nearby, and participate. Join protests. Pressure your local politicians. Support your comrades in their direct action campaigns. Build political power that is under your control, not the control of a system invented in the 1700s by a bunch of wealthy white slaveowners.
Totally with you!
Voted PSL, and yah, I am terrified.
Ah, you lost me. You see a problem, but you seem to be unwilling to accept that there are incremental steps to solving that problem, and the first step is to make sure Trump loses this election. If you aren’t doing everything you can to effect that result, you are, to put it simply, fucking up.
To support the Democratic party is to actively decide to place less value on the lives of non-Americans
Netanyahu wants Trump to win, and with good reason. Harris might not have good policy with regards to Israel / Palestine, but Trump’s is indisputably worse, if you aren’t staunchly pro-Israel. Furthermore, Harris is better in pretty much every measurable metric including climate change, where Trump’s “Burn it all down” policy would doom us all.
To be clear, if I was going to be a single issue voter, climate change would be that issue, not foreign policy, because if we fuck that one up, everyone loses.
It’s cool, though - I’m sure the people dying in Gaza if Trump wins will understand that you couldn’t vote for “better” because it wasn’t “perfect”. Your 12-16 year plan for change will surely make them feel better about their situation, when Trump is encouraging Israel to do whatever they need to to end the conflict quickly.
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You definitely are going to sleep better by not supporting any criminal with blood on his hands. There’s many other things other than voting you can do to change things for good, if you are not fine with Jill Stein and believe she’s evil don’t vote for them either
I’m seeing a lot of “democracy is going to die” posts… But… I hate to break it to you:
America is not a democracy. And if somehow it is a democracy, then it’s an incredibly bad one. It’s the least democratic democracy in the Western world.
The two party system, the first past the post voting system, the indirect method of counting votes, lobbying, gerrymandering, the electoral collage. Systems to try and manipulate what a vote means. Systems that try to remove as much democracy from democracy as possible, while still being able to keep up some mock appearance.
Your whole country is fucked and backwards from the very beginning, and that wouldn’t be so bad. But if America does something we all have to suffer for it!
I don’t think it was ever a true democracy, we’re just cycling back to the white male landowner as the only vote being counted as the norm. Another rally at MSG, all the racist rhetoric, all the dog whistles are just regular shouting now
Everyone on Lemmy is like “Trump is back in office oh no it’s all gonna be over this is the end of America” when the entire west is the dictatorship of the Bilderberg Group and WEF, if you wanna vote you’re better off bribing them than showing up to a voting booth.
What’ll happen is another 4 years will pass, things will get a little worse like they did with every other president, and at the next election people will try to vote their way out of it again and not learn a thing. Bookmark this comment and come back to it if you don’t believe me
There will not be another election. We now live under a dictatorship.
He says that, I’m still hanging on that between now and that day something, anything could happen. Sure he won the vote, but I’ve yet to meet the person who would sit idly if he declares himself dictator.
Hahahahhahahaha you think Trump is the last guy to feel threatened by? The dude was just the starter. There’s a whole movement now with tons of corrupt politicians who will try to get a shot at the presidency. I’m thinking about the Florida governor for example.
USA is a country with a lot of inequality, if not rising inequality, so a fertile breeding ground for populists. And it has an ancient voting system that always gives a two party system so perfect for this kind of polarisation. The system with campaign contributions will also make sure nothing changes about inequality and is making things worse. Yeah, it’ll happen again.
The voting system is so insane. I mean sure, back in the 18th century it made sense due to the travel required, but the fact that americans still use a voting system from that time says it all really…
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
Nothing to do with travel, it was just the only way to launder slave votes
You’re right in concept but DeSantis utterly fizzled nationally. Even in Florida he’s aging like last week’s fish.
Trump is still around though. I bet FL man takes a big step up in popularity once that’s no longer true.
If he had been a hit I expect he would have been in the VP slot. I think/expect he’ll fade away into lucrative consulting gigs and rake in the dough.
Maybe him personally but someone like him will replace Trump. I’d bet lots of money they’re not going back to someone like Mitt Romney or John McCain.
Only because he fucked up and went after the Mouse lol
Mouse will fuck you up
They still killed Reedy Creek which I still find surprising.
You mean Dicksantis?
Yeah that douche.
Jeb Bush?
I think you mean Jeb!
Please clap.
“Please clap”
People around the world already live in terror of what USA government may do to them
Exactly. OP is most privileged take, most useless “allies”.
And the thing is: Trump is not a clever man. In fact, he’s blantantly, obviously, ferociously stupid. He didn’t just appear out of nowhere. The rest of us have been watching this dog eat grass for the last 50 years.
I can’t beleive the number of New Yorkers (NYC residents and expats) that trust Trump. He has wreaked havoc across the city and metro area with terrible buildings, stiffed contractors, and constant financial mockery. His post-TV show perception has done an insane job of making even the most affected people forget what a sack of shit he his. They really think 1. He runs businesses well due to his continued financial growth and that 2. Running the country like his businesses will somehow benefit them, the national equivalent of those laid off from his private endeavors.
So anyway, that’s how I know they just racist assholes.
Trump and team don’t need to win the election. They just need to make it tainted with enough irregularities that it forms the basis for the entire thing to be called into question. Even if that evidence is created by them. And this time they’re more prepared for that outcome. They’ve had years to work on his scenario.
The court cases and investigations will go on for years.
Doesn’t need to win a vote at all.
They already won culturally, as they managed to shift the political culture closer towards theirs. They also managed to set issues that are “theirs”. We see the same shit in Europe, were supposedly progressive parties are implementing the wildest dreams of racist anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-science and authoritarian surveillance state policies that the fascists dreamed off. All in the name of “stopping” them, while neglecting actually relevant issues like social services and infrastructure investments. Rinse and repeat and by the time the fascists take over all they have to do is remove the remaining formalities of division of power and democracy.
The major difference is that he’s not president this time, Biden is. Republicans only control the House, and that control is narrow. He will try, but he has very few people in government who support him this time.
That’s true… They just need enough to start a civil war (and the entire point by Trump, and the rest of his cronies is to stay out of prison).
And all he needs to do, is start a coup, but not be 100% upfront this time. And he’s been sowing those seeds… He also needs to take over the justice system and the voting system (and he’s been trying to do that too). The idea, like dealing drugs or the mafia, is to try to put measures in place so that other people get blamed
Frankly that is BS
Anyway what happens if he wins fair in square? Would there be a group of people who refused to accept it? Maybe even a violent mob on the capital?
I think both sides need to chill. I’ve seen so many people questioning the polls even though there is little evidence to back it up. We don’t need mobs from either side causing chaos. I think a lot of uncertainty is coming from US adversaries who want to destabilize the US. It is scary how well it is working.
Also calling the election into question isn’t a problem by itself. If they want to do a recount that is perfectly fine by me. I think it is way more important to have accurate results. Follow the law and official policies. If doing a recount means settling a dispute then go for it.
Ah yes we should just back down and allow an orange fascist to take over
Also, vote if you haven’t yet.
Yep, already dropped of my mail-in ballot in person and received an email from the county election supervisor that my vote counted 🤠
I voted, but since I’m not in a swing state I wouldn’t go so far as to say my vote counted.
House and Senate matter far more than the presidency, without them the president has very little influence on policy with exception of veto power.
With 2/3 control, the president wouldn’t even have veto power and would be entirely powerless.
Vote for your congressional representation! This is the one day that the little guys can determine the policy direction of the country.
I voted mostly for my local elections. Those are sometimes determined by a dozen votes and can have a huge impact on day to day life.
Iowa wasn’t considered a swing state till the Selzer Poll. Thank you for helping to build consensus!
Not with that attitude.
I don’t think I can
People outside the US have always been terrified of what the US president might do. Imagine if China had military bases all over the world.
Valid take. The military industrial complex is a terrifying ordeal.
The Kenyan Ambassador to the UN once addressed criticism of his country’s relationship with China thusly:
“Every time the English visit Kenya, they bring a lecture. Every time the Chinese visit Kenyan, they build a hospital”
Which is exactly why China is going to win. They play the long game where we only care about the next quarterly report. We drop bombs, they build schools and hospitals and install water wells. We trap countries into IMF loan scams, they give interest free loans.
We make mass graves. China makes friends.
While this is true, I suggest reading “All trade war are class wars” by Michael Pettis and Michael C. Klein.
Basically, both China and America have been persuing trade policies (which result in persistent trade imbalances) which are unsustainable.
China through subsiding it’s export sector through preferential interest rates (transfer income from savers to borrowers like industrial enterprises), managed currencies (transfers income from importers to exporters), weak labor laws (workers to companies), etc. which results in smaller household sector which cannot consume what it produces.
These policies primarily benefit industrial exporters at the expense of everyone else.
Note: This is not unique to China. Germany, Japan, Taiwan, America (up to the great depression), etc. have persued such policies.
American subsidies consumption via policies which encourage a higher dollar (being attractive for foreign capital), higher debt, etc. which results in an household sector than consumes more than it produces.
Note: This is not unique to America. The Anglo-Saxon economies all have this issue (noting that at times of high commodity prices Canada and Australia sometimes run trade surpluses).
These policies primarily benefit importers and financial sector at the expense of everyone else, particularly the industrial sector.
Although in America’s case, being the reserve currency provides great geopolitical advantages.
These policies are unsustainable. One cannot import more than you export forever.
America cannot to grow such vast sums of private and public debt. Eventually, there is a limit.
Every other country that has persued such policies in the past have had difficult corrections. These can be quick and brutal (the great depression for the USA, where the economy shrunk 1/3 but the household sector only shrunk ~17% and thus the economy was rebalanced) or a slow adjustment like Japan (where household consumption grows marginally faster than overall GDP growth for 1-2 decades).
This issue was seen and written about during the great depression (“beggar thy neighbour” policies). After WW2, John Keynes suggested a mechanism to rebalance trade so there were not persistent trade imbalances (the USA opposed this mechanism because it was running surpluses).
Why does this matter in this instance? China is having great difficulty raising consumption and moving away from it’s export driven model. So it is looking for new partners to export to (given the West and even other devleoping economies like Brazil and India are unwilling to accept more of China’s subsided exports), like Kenya.
It is running into the trouble Western counties had in the 1980s with developing countries being unable to service their loans for infrastructure, etc.
China may not be popular soon because it (like the West during the 1980s) is unwilling to write off loans which cannot be paid.
We haven’t been
I like your optimism but I think he was just the test run.
If Trump loses there are the next two months of wondering how many people will die around the inauguration, then the next two years of wondering what the project 2027 people are going to do, then…
The only way to stop this is to fix the US system. Fix the courts. Fix the elections. Fix gerrymandering. Fix the right wing control of the media. Fix the lies from the “news”.
A law that said the press can not be for-profit, would never happen, but would probably help
Thank Reagan. He ended the Fairness Doctrine. Which is the only reason Trumpism ever happened.
Gerrymandering is a complicated one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwBslntC3xg
Only in the United States. Canada solved the problem years ago.
I’m not sure there is a perfectly solution. Mapmen cover it very well (and it’s funny as always).
Canada has an independent electoral commision that sets electoral boundaries, mostly on geographic borders, like county lines. My electoral district, for example, is Leed, the Grenville, the Thousand Islands, and Rideau Lakes and encompases those four geographic districts. It can also be done by a computer using maximum n-sided polygons with equal populations.
You didn’t MapMen. 😃 You can’t just do it on population numbers because minorities can end up completely unrepresented. You have to include more factors than just population numbers. But it certainty should be kept apart from politicians, and it be criminal for them to rig it…
As a Canadian I always forget to take the racist factor into account.
as an european, i am watching in absolute shock. i really dont understand how HALF the USA can still vote for this Chicken Nugget of a person.
Some people only have information from one side of the story. If Trump wins, he will likely try to mimic what both Putin and Orbán did with the media.
Wait, you think the US has had independent media at any time?
It will have even less so, but the only “bad media” will be the ones that doesn’t use “trans groomers” and “illegal migrants” in their headlines…
So: start organising to fight fascism immediately. We’ve been saying this for years: you don’t fight fascism at the urns. Unionize, make collective grassroots power, read leftist theory (the only ones who managed to stop fascism in the last century).
Managed to stop fascism? That was a collective effort, but ok. Stop totalitarian dictatorship? Not at all.
Americans love chicken nuggets, that is why
While you’re mostly right, it isn’t really half because we have this fun thing called the electoral college, that likes to make Republicans win.
Well and so far the popular vote is more red then blue. I think the USA will get the government the voters deserve.
Here’s hoping the rest of the world can not get pulled down.
I’m someone smack in the middle of a liberal city in an always blue state, I don’t know what else there is for me to do. I’ve attempted helping educate and getting people to vote in other states who normally choose not to, I’ve voted in every election down to local boards and try to know who I’m voting for. Locally, we had a lot of successes so far this election in our state…but that won’t help much if, y’know, fascism.
People turn fascist when they’re desperate and angry, same as always. So when people experience economic hardship they look for somone to blame, often immigrants. So we call them racists, and I guess that’s true, but it comes from something else; economic inequality.
In Europe we do the same thing, in the French elections the rural population voted overwhelmingly for the fascists - here in brown.
In the German elections, the poorer former East-German provinces also supported the fascist AfD, here shown in the darker colours.
Even in Denmark, where I live, the more right-wing and extremist parties are popular in the southern, western, and northern parst of the country - the poorer rural areas, who’s seen their jobs disappear, their shops close, and their income stall even as the country as a whole gets richer.
So the challenge of liberal democracy is clear; show the population outside the cities that they, too, can get their piece of the pie. If we cannot solve that, then we’ll see more countries turn fascist in the next decade.
Jesus, been scrolling for hours and finally someone has said it. It’s why someone like Bernie trended so well and actually had a chance if the DNC would’ve ran him in 2016. He wanted to raise EVERYONE up, regardless of any identity or ideology. He came with receipts and actual plans that he non-stopped harped on every second he had a mic in front of him. This election cycle I didn’t hear a single actual legislative plan fleshed out like they did with the healthcare for all in 2016 debates. You’re not gonna win a mud-slinging contest of “he said, she said” when people just don’t care.
A lot of people (white and/or rich mostly) also know that they have benefited from racial discrimination and opportunities stolen from other people. They saw their parents buying homes, getting loans and jobs. They vaguely heard how difficult it was for POC or displaced individuals, they don’t want the system turning on them. In their bleak futurism that the right-wing paints, we will all be treated equally so everyone is a target. Instead of targeting voters concerns in an economical way, they went with a polisci approach like Harris’s horrible housing innovative.
Harris proposes to provide $25,000 down-payment assistance to first-time homebuyers who have paid rent on time for two years, with more generous support for qualifying first-generation homeowners. … The proposal stems from an idea the Biden-Harris administration presented earlier this year, which called on Congress to implement $25,000 in down-payment assistance exclusively for 400,000 first-generation buyers, or first-time buyers whose parents weren’t homeowners, and a $10,000 tax credit for first-time buyers.
You’re parents had a shack? sorry. Get no economical support from parents but they effect your government support? sorry. Congress didn’t pass it? sorry. We’ve decided to change the definition of a “starter-home”. Sorry.
The piece of the pie was a perfect way to put it, I’ve seen so many shit takes from everyone on here I’m flabbergasted. From people “getting popcorn to watch everyone get their just desserts” to “maybe we shouldn’t of ran a woman-POC this election cycle”.
Back in 2016 I was living in the middle of Trump country, but when I told them I was supporting Bernie and not Clinton they’d say something like “I don’t agree with him on a lot of stuff but I respect him and like that he hates billionaires.”
I really think he could have won.
Yes, thank you for putting it in plain language. People are not in a good place all over the world and telling people the economy (markets and stats people no longer have faith in) is great has the opposite effect then what the Dems intended.
This mess stems from a combo of a two party system (you know that thing the US founders warned you about) and a fundamental failure (real or perceived) of society’s ability to reward people fairly. Now you don’t have a middle class to pander to, you just have levels of poor and a few ultra wealthy (both demographics that tend to vote more right then left).
The real telling stat here is women voters. At what point would a woman vote contrary to her own body autonomy, safety and general rights? Like anyone else, when she is poor, hungry and angry.
Not sure what to tell you, I am in another nation but a similar situation. The state of things is now to the point media is untrusted, nationalism is both here and missing, while people are angry but happy to blame the “other guys”.
It’s not even close to half. Republicans are a quarter to a third of the country.
It’s voter suppression and Democrats being the biggest possible fuckups they could be at every fucking opportunity.
You could watch the reactionism ramp up as they slipped into the minority during Clinton. White men struggling to deal with the loss of their relevance has basically been the story of American politics since.
