Man, I don't know. | VERN'S REVIEWS on the FILMS of CINEMA

Man, I don’t know.

I wish I had it in me to write something beautiful and optimistic and give everybody some solace. Should’ve prepared something in advance, I guess. Right now it feels like the bad guys won for the rest of my lifetime and it’s hard to even think or do anything. Evil, chaotic times ahead. I’ll be back on my movie review bullshit soon I hope but for now I need to regroup. Take care everybody.

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174 Responses to “Man, I don’t know.”

Ben Railton
November 6th, 2024 at 9:14 am

To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, “In the dark times / will there still be movie reviewing? / Yes, there will be movie reviewing / About the dark times.”

La lucha continua,
Ben
CJ Holden
November 6th, 2024 at 9:23 am

I was in elementary school during the first Iraq war and it obviously scared me. Not just me, but many people around me, both kids and adults. One day we talked about it in school and one of the other kids swore he heard bombs going off in the distance at night! I remember some of my neighbours hanging white bedsheets into their windows as a sign that if Saddam shows up in Germany, they will surrender. It was of course a biiiiiit of an irrational fear, but keep in mind that back then “war” was, at least for countries like mine, something that didn’t happen anymore. Vietnam was decades ago! If there was a war, it was in some “third world” country and we weren’t involved. But suddenly we had A-fucking-Merica involved and it was live on TV! They even cancelled my Saturday Morning Cartoons one week! I expected to see YOGI BEAR and instead saw the news.

Still, it felt kinda alien and unreal to me. I was scared, but not SCARED-scared.

When 9/11 happened, we were of course in an “Aw fuck, it’s WWIII” mood for a while, but even that normalized itself pretty quickly, because again, it was a war in a foreign country and despite some “minor” acts of terror, there was no 2nd 9/11.

It did make me feel a bit safe, because I knew that the world is a horrible place, but even if some foreign terror leader decides to start shit in one of our “civilized” places, we will take care of it. So of course when other shit went down, like North Korea threatening once a week to nuke the rest of the world, I was like “Yeah, right, not gonna happen. You talk the talk, but not even you are willing and able to risk another world war, asshole!”

But what can I say? I am actually scared now and I’m sure so are you. I have been scared since 2016! This isn’t some “foreign war”, this isn’t even just Trump, this is a bunch of actual Nazis manipulating seemingly every single government around us and doing so successfully. Is this the end of the world? Do I have to learn how to shoot a rifle, just in case I have to join an underground resistance? Should I buy some hockey pads and huge spikes for my bicycle in case the world goes MAD MAX?

I still believe that humans are good. That when Trump will go full DEAD ZONE on us, some military general will shoot him in the head instead of just pushing the red button after being threatened with getting his hand chopped off. That…I don’t know, Biden and Harris start a coup, arrest all of these motherfuckers and start a good dictatorship or whatever.

But shit is bleak, yo. Even I spent the day sleeping, listening to Ambient music and watching harmless kids movies.

Just remember to stay good.
Aktion Figures
November 6th, 2024 at 10:12 am

I forget where it comes from off the top of my head, is it Watchmen? Where a complete dead-end of a president sits and contemplates whether or not the big red button *clicks* when he presses it.

That’s the scariest proposition and we’re inching closer to that person having that deluded power. Imagine that guy on the highway you had to swerve to avoid your entire family dying in a burning wreckage just because he wanted to check what speed he can pull.

Fucking terrifying.
BR Baraka
November 6th, 2024 at 10:27 am

it sucks

not much else to say

hope never ends

but this is a kick in the stomach
Nick Proctor
November 6th, 2024 at 10:35 am

I’m sorry Vern – it is heartbreaking. If it’s any consolation, it’s guys like you and sites like this, the quality of your writing and the kindness and tolerance that underpin it, that provides a bit of hope and maybe a welcome distraction as the world goes up in flames around us. Take it easy man.
Ben C.
November 6th, 2024 at 11:04 am

Nick, agree 100%. It’s love and community (and anger) that will get us through. I find some of the love and community in my life on this site, and I appreciate it every day.
Kevin W
November 6th, 2024 at 11:18 am

KKKaplan: have fun finding out your Dear Leader doesn’t give a fuck about you or your country.
Crudnasty
November 6th, 2024 at 11:25 am

Kaplan- you voted for a serial rapist and pedophile Fuck off with your concern trolling about protecting women from men.
Kevin W
November 6th, 2024 at 11:27 am

Crudnasty – you said it better than I did, thank you.
Glaive Robber
November 6th, 2024 at 11:37 am

Wow, Kaplan. Thanks for stopping by to act like a total boy among men. Very valuable addition to the conversation.

Some people don’t understand that this election was more about President J.D. Vance and his Heritage Foundation buddies. A 78 year old manchild with a grudge and a limited understanding of how the world works will make vindictive decisions that get people killed. But The Heritage Foundation? That shit will be apocalyptic.

There is zero positive spin I can put on this devastating result. Stay safe, guys.
jojo
November 6th, 2024 at 1:20 pm

I honestly shocked to come home to discover how honestly shocked the interwebs seems to be.

I guess there’s a larger difference between those who have to deal with a diverse section of the population irl, and those in the wfh or whatever bubble that can pick and choose what they want to look at and/or deal with than I knew (or even imagined).

As a member of the former, it seemed everyone made peace with certain expected results at least a couple weeks ago. So today was just a lot of “Well… I did what I could…” among the disappointed. So it’s a bit odd to come home to “I’m CRUSHED. I can’t even crawl about bed for a zoom meeting. HOW COULD THEY EVEN SCHEDULE SUCH A THING??”
Kyle
November 6th, 2024 at 1:26 pm

I live in Trump Country and just a few hours from where Vance was born. To GR’s point I learned just really this week having a discussion with some of my customers that Vance is the draw especially for millennial Trump supporters and younger I think. He’s the guy behind Trump they always wanted that Pence never gave them. And these people have not read his shitty book. Just loved the shitty movie.
Zed
November 6th, 2024 at 1:39 pm

The most optimism I can muster today is that Trump and his cronies are nasty, backstabbing people, and regimes like that generally don’t last very long. Even so, the damage they can do in the meantime will be enormous and long-lasting.

Vern, I enjoy your reviews very much, but I come here every bit as much to read the comments (even though I myself comment rarely). In dark times, communities and spaces like this offer all the more solace. Not saying you need to keep writing, but you ARE doing something in the world that matters. To quote a certain BLADE actor: don’t let the bastards get you down.
Felix Ng
November 6th, 2024 at 1:55 pm

Never give up everyone! It’s only over when we stop fighting.

On the plusa side, human blimp Steven Seagal might be invited back into the US.
MaggieMayPie
November 6th, 2024 at 2:09 pm

I wouldn’t say I’m shocked, but I did start to let some hope build, so it is a blow. I think deep down inside I couldn’t let myself think he would win again. Once again I’m forced to face the fact that America hates women so much they would rather elect a lying, cheating, cowardly, stupid, deranged, inept, bigoted, convicted felon, rapist than a qualified woman. While it’s not necessarily shocking, it’s very disheartening to keep getting this shoved into our faces.
Peter Campbell
November 6th, 2024 at 2:37 pm

Over in the UK we’re shocked too. We got rid of the conservatives after 14 years of truly insane hell this year and hoped some optimism would continue over in America. Alas not. This is a painful time but it won’t last forever.
jojo
November 6th, 2024 at 3:13 pm

Once again I’m forced to face the fact that America hates women so much they would rather elect a lying, cheating, cowardly, stupid, deranged, inept, bigoted, convicted felon, rapist than a qualified woman.

While I will concur that America is FAR more sexist than racist (I’ve been saying that since reading the fucking NY Times cover a Sarah Palin rally, and spend three paragraphs on hair, make-up, and clothes, give two sentences to what was actually said, then conclude with a summation that her wardrobe, hair-do, and lipstick choice of the previous rally was superior. Things have gotten a little better since then), but in this case, the qualified woman in question didn’t seem to do herself to many favors towards the cause.

From my perch, her campaign (well, Plouffe’s and Cutter’s campaign for her) was probably the most bewildering I’ve ever seen. I could give 50 object examples, but it really can be summarized by me stating I honestly have no idea who she thought her constituency was, so I in turn have no idea if she reached them. But, those I interacted with on a daily basis who I thought were her constituency (poor to lower-middle class working folk of various creeds, colors, religions, etc) seemed to just get pushed further and further and further away from her. Would it be enough for a lying, cheating, cowardly, stupid, deranged, inept, bigoted, convicted felon, rapist to do a Bill Clinton routine for a couple weeks to soak up these votes? I think we have an answer.
Mr. Subtlety
November 6th, 2024 at 3:22 pm

Jojo — the real crushing blow is not just to find out we lost — it was always a knife’s edge election– but to discover that we lost everywhere, at every level. Probably won’t even get the popular vote. Trump gained with basically every group, and everyone he didn’t gain just sat it out. Harris got hundreds of thousands of votes less than Biden; even people who aren’t Trump fans didn’t deign to stop him, either didn’t give a shit or just wanted to spite the Democrats. This isn’t even some artifact of a broken electoral system — America knows exactly who this guy is and what he’s going to do, and we decided that’s what we wanted. This is a mandate for ethnonationalist oligarchy, and it’s not just here, it’s everywhere –can’t even flee to Europe or Canada, even if they’d have us, because it’s just happening there too– and I don’t think we’re going to see the end of it in our lifetimes. Because once these guys are in, they’re never leaving; I mean, they’ve been very clear about that. This was maybe our last chance to hold it back, and people just couldn’t be bothered. That’s what hurts. That’s why we’re crushed. Where’s the peace to be made with that?
renfield
November 6th, 2024 at 3:31 pm

My fear, among many, is that the Dems are just truly incapable of adjusting their strategy. They are far more committed to protecting megacapitalism than they are to changing material conditions for marginalized people or dismantling our imperial posture.

In other words, this outcome was literally preferable to them than any sort of democratic socialism or however you wanna term it. Like, their class and ideological interests coincide more with the GOP than with ours (as normal, non-ruling-class people, whether you consider yourself a socialist or not (apologies to any ruling-class people on this forum, just kidding go fuck yourselves)).

And what’s even more terrifying to me is that I don’t get how you build an alternative grassroots leftist movement in the face of Musk’s AI crypto hellscape / trillion-dollar media apparatus that is brainrotting the subsequent generations into embracing cruelty and believing in the simplistic and stupid answers that fascism provides. Especially not after Proj ’25 gets rid of the dept of education and makes it illegal to address mental health.

Sorry, not seeing any sort of silver lining on this one.
jojo
November 6th, 2024 at 3:40 pm

Sorry, it was just a little strange to go from “Well, can’t say we didn’t see this coming…” all day long, to “OH THE HUMANITY”

I understand that internet tends to be a bit amplified in the drama department, but I never experienced that level of amplification. I guess for a moment, I thought those “people who just block what they don’t what to see/hear a day generally have no idea what’s really going on” people have more of a point than I ever realized. But after some time, I realized it’s probably just overly demonstrative venting.
jojo
November 6th, 2024 at 3:52 pm

[i]My fear, among many, is that the Dems are just truly incapable of adjusting their strategy. They are far more committed to protecting megacapitalism than they are to changing material conditions for marginalized people or dismantling our imperial posture.[/i]

A bit ago, I read a book by Thomas Beer that pretty much had this exact sentence. Just instead of a fear, he was stating it as a fact.

It was written 102 years ago. Just saying.
Crudnasty
November 6th, 2024 at 4:02 pm

One trivial but topical (to the websight purpose anyway) thing that struck me, amidst all this is- how does someone like James Gunn proceed with this Superman reboot now? How does a non-maga creative type even approach a movie that champions something that literally represents Truth, Justice, and the American Way, when all of those things are now in the real world laying in tatters or twisted into a cruel mockery of their true meaning? Does this actually ruin a Superman movie, or do we get escapism and a giant robot from space or something and they just pretend everything is sanitized status quo otherwise?

How do you make more Marvel movies now? Do they all have to be Winter Soldier or just the first part of Infinity War without the big final victory of Endgame? If they are still gonna write happy endings- who are they going to be for? Who will believe a happy ending? What is their definition of “happy?”

I’m wondering if we are about to get ten more Logans from Marvel, or if Superman has some disturbing Homelander undertones now, or maybe Gunn says FUCK it and tries to channel his Troma DNA into something more ambitiously subversive.
jojo
November 6th, 2024 at 4:09 pm

Whoever runs on a ‘banning smartphones’ platform will get my vote (so I’ll stop trying to type on them)
deepfriednoir
November 6th, 2024 at 4:12 pm

These words from James Baldwin have been rattling around my head every few days for the last year.

“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one’s ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people.

Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also YOU. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. YOU could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself, NOT to be.

The logic of despair isn’t for me. You know, cut your throat, right? But there’s something wrong, you know, with someone who says he’s in despair who keeps on writing. Because a despairing man doesn’t write. Anyway, it’s too easy, it’s too fashionable. I’m aware, you know, that I and the people I love may perish in the morning. I know that. But there’s light on our faces now. If you live under the shadow of death, it gives you a certain freedom. I’m perfectly happy, odd as it sounds, you know, and relatively free.”
renfield
November 6th, 2024 at 4:26 pm

In case it wasn’t clear I meant Dem leadership, not the voting citizenry.
Glaive Robber
November 6th, 2024 at 4:45 pm

What’s staggering is largely the demographics. 69% of white women voted for Trump? That many white women went for this guy?
I’m Latino, and after years and years of denigrating us, we turned around and voted for this guy in bulk? What does it even mean to be Latino anymore?
This election also had a record high turnout from normally-unengaged 18-30 males. Which is interesting because of the supposed gender dating gap in that demographic. Once again, womens’ rights are trampled by young mens’ anger that they’re not getting laid.

I feel that a side effect of the media’s frankly-aggressive sanewashing of Trump’s last couple of years is that a lot of people really thought they were voting for the Trump of 2016. He is 78. Two years into his presidency, he will be 80. My father reached 79 last year, and he’s in much better shape than Trump. I watched it happen over the course of weeks, going from foggy-brained to speaking total gibberish. He ended up in a home because he was too eager to simply get up and follow his whims, whether it be walking down the street or getting on his bike, with no idea of where he was going or for how long. If Trump survives this presidency, his mind won’t. If Republican politicians were too scared to act against his foolish words and decisions, how will they try to cover up and whitewash it when he’s relieving himself in public? And if he doesn’t make it the full four years, we get J.D. Vance.

We all get the criticism that we’re maybe living in bubbles. But what the fuck kind of bubble are THESE people living in?
Crudnasty
November 6th, 2024 at 4:54 pm

Creative writing is going to hit new heights of absurdity as evidenced in the comment above by this AI level engrish 4chan meme that has apparently gone sentient.

Whoever said it’s now post-reality was onto something.

I wonder if I can get that good Strawberry Cough from Jasper via Sid in whatever camp I end up in. Will they still take my outlawed milk caps or whatever tf that guy was talking about as payment? I’m not up on this gamer slang.
VERN
November 6th, 2024 at 5:31 pm

FYI: This is my home, I’m not inviting fascists in for chit-chat, so I have deleted some posts. (P.S. the guy who said he was in Sweden had a Kansas City, Missouri ip address.)
Dreadguacamole
November 6th, 2024 at 6:00 pm

I grew up in… let’s call them shithole countries, so I can say this with confidence: Trump? He’s your typical third world president. The open corruption, venality, solipcism and narcissism, the swagger, the “I’m a normal person so I can say any dumb shit I want” attitude (which people eat up, because they’re all “hey! he’s just like us!”). The bald-faced lying… well, I’ve never seen it that bad (and I saw like a dozen presidents go through office, though that’s cheating because I lived in Argentina in the early ’00s), but it’s also of a piece.*
What gets me is that I’ve always felt one of the few good things about the difference between the first and third world is that people in first world countries wouldn’t take the sort of shit people in third world countries routinely let happen (not that there’s anything they can do about it). I guess this teaches me (yet again) that’s a thing of the past. And it’s happening here in the UK, too; Maybe we’re headed for a third world… world.

You all will pull through. You’ve already done so, once. Your country still stands, is still rich. You’ve got good people.
Enshittification of everything will continue, maybe at an accelerated pace, more brazenly, but it’s not like the dems would have tried too hard to hold the tide back that hard either. Late stages capitalism wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
I don’t think Trump will do anything dramatic like cause world war 3 (he didn’t last time). Certain ideologies will become more mainstream, but… well, if he got the popular vote, then there’s obviously an appetite for it. I have faith there’s still a majority in your country that’s sane and won’t start waving nazi flags around, even among the majority of Trump’s people. The ecological side of things looks bleak, but I’ve made peace with the fact that we’re all basically fucked in that sense already.

Don’t take it against Trump voters, at least until they prove they’re hateful individually. People make bad decisions all the time, demonizing them only makes things worse, and them more set in their ways. And anyways, a lot of the blame lies on the opposition with their choice of weak-ass candidates – I mean seriously, Kamala Harris? After tempting fate with Biden? Snatching defeat from the jaws of an easy win. We’ve done the same here in the UK, and the cost will probably be a hard swing to conservatism again on the next election. That’s despite the last, long run of cons demonstrably fucking up the country in so. Many. Ways.

What Renfield said is important, but I think it goes beyond ideology. If there was a borderline competent, charismatic candidate, however centrist, running against them, your Trumps or Boris Johnsons wouldn’t stand a fucking chance.

As for calling for a coup… come on, you’re angry but that’s what the other side does. Here’s hoping Trump proves corrupt or inept enough that he’s removed from office, but given that it didn’t happen during his first term… it doesn’t look likely.

*: There’s even the case of a guy who led an insurrection (Aldo Rico) and then become a political figure. Argentine politics are fucking depressing, you guys!
Glaive Robber
November 6th, 2024 at 6:35 pm

I think what bothers a lot of us is that we had chance after chance after chance after chance to stop this guy, through varied legal, justified means. And we didn’t, and it was humiliating and disastrous every time. So what happens when we CAN’T stop him?

I can’t stop thinking of all this in these grandiose terms. Trump is literally a one-dimensional villain, and his associates are hardly more dynamic.
Handsome Dan
November 6th, 2024 at 7:27 pm

I’m probably more disgusted by the Dems’ fecklessness, stupidity, and incompetence than I am by Trump himself at this point. He’s a craven shithead who I do not and would not support, but he’s just trying to press his advantage – why wouldn’t he? The total rudderlessness of the Biden and then Harris campaign in the face of that is inexcusable, bordering on treasonous. Several times over the last few months I found myself legitimately wondering if they actually wanted to win. I’m still not sure!

Yes, I know, the voters should have rejected Trump out of hand because they should have been as good and sweet and pure as we are. But, sorry, if you’re running for office you’re in the persuasion business, and the best the Dems had to offer was “we’re not Trump (except on things like immigration and Gaza and some other stuff, where we’re even more like Trump than Trump is!)” and I’m not surprised no one bought it. Biden can drool his remaining years away on a beach somewhere and Harris I’m sure will get in on the $200,000-a-speech game while the rest of us schmucks will have to deal with the actual consequences of their fuckups. Fuck them both and everyone who ever voted for them, including me.
CJ Holden
November 6th, 2024 at 7:40 pm

“Don’t take it against Trump voters, at least until they prove they’re hateful individually. People make bad decisions all the time, demonizing them only makes things worse, and them more set in their ways.”

Sorry, man, but this isn’t 2016 anymore. Yeah, the first time around it could’ve been “an accident”. People are dumb, they make mistakes, get conned by politicians all the time and we all heard the stories of Trump voters who got their shit together really soon and regretted what they did. But by now it’s clear that if you voted for him, you wanted him to win, because you agree with the evil shit he says and does. We are WAY past: “Well, they are not all bad. Calling them Nazis seems a bit harsh” stage.
renfield
November 6th, 2024 at 9:08 pm

I completely relate to Handsome Dan’s vitriol. I didn’t come up with it but someone made an analogy that the GOP is like the villain in a horror movie, but the Dems are like the bumbling cops who are near at hand, could easily intervene and save the day, but are far too incompetent to show up until the final girl has already saved herself.

I know it’s a huge oversimplification. And given the *immense* rightward shift and we saw across every demographic in this election, it does seem a bit pointless to even nitpick about what could have gone differently to lead to a different outcome. Not really in the mood for any “Bernie would have won” type of told-ya-soism at this point, although I campaigned for the dude both times and I get why people feel that way. Maybe the die’s been cast since Obama ran on a platform of hope and change and then immediately bailed out the banks, or Clinton slashed social safety nets, or Jimmy Carter embraced austerity, or or or.
Edgard
November 6th, 2024 at 10:31 pm

Man, this is really a tough time… and like many other here, i appreciate to have this space to read and share feelings on all this. And thanks to Vern to keeping the house clean for us all…
My brain has gone in overdrive these past 36 hours… although i am not American, this has really hit me hard at 3 levels…
First, as i said, i am not American, but as everyone knows, whatever happens in the US impacts everyone everywhere (it is in fact unfair we have no say in this election, and yet endure the consequences). I am European living in South Africa… but with (grown-up) kids and family in Europe. I worry for them. Worry about this new administration and their attitude to NATO and Russia. Worry about Ukraine. Worry about Middle East (although on that one, they were screwed no matter what). Worry about global economy. Worry about climate change impact. Worry about the European Far Right getting even more reasons to celebrate. I just worry about our world because the US is still the most influential country out there at all levels.
Second level of grief is more personal – i grew up in the 80’s in Western Europe where we all thought we would die under nuclear missiles from USSR… the US was the big brother protecting us. My grandparents were in their 20’s in 1944 when the US army came to free Belgium – as my grandparents were both language teachers (English and German), they got involved helping the US army. My grandfather even went with the US army into Germany and was among the first ones to reach some of the camps set up by the Nazis. All that to say that i grew up in a very ‘pro-America’ environment… up to the point of going for one year as an exchange student in the US when i was 17. That year is still today one of the most impactful year for me – i came back to Europe in love with America… had a US flag in my bedroom for a long time, and felt that Europe was old and un-cool. But eventually, in my mid-20’s i did embrace my European roots, took off the US flag from the wall (but kept it properly folded as it should!) and just found myself as European. Over the years, i went several times to the US for holidays… and many many times fir work. I have lots of friends in the US… my view on the US has evolved obviously… there are a lot of policies or foreign engagements that i don’t align with, but my love for the US never diminished… it is and always will be a special place in my heart. And whenever something bad happens – like 9/11 or 11/5/24 – i feel American. And that is my second grief.
The third and last one is the one that currently pisses me off the most and might be the most irrational of all – i am pissed because the bully won. I am pissed because this guy keeps getting away with everything and it feels just not right. As a parent, i tried to teach my kids to always be the bigger person, to be good to others… i refuse to believe that “good guys always end up last”… and yet… and yet… this guy keeps winning… and it drives me crazy.
That i don’t get.

But… life goes on and i cannot let that change my values and my hope for a better world. I cannot let the bully win AND affect my value system.

So… let’s keep fighting for what feels right and good… the world deserves better!
Colin Farth
November 7th, 2024 at 12:42 am

Hi,
long time reader without ever participating to many (great) debates I’ve read here.
I’m an European spaghetti-gabagool eater, so make out of my opinion whatever you prefer.

It is clear, painfully so, that a crook, a racist, a sexist, a rapist, a felon has won.
Feeling shocked didn’t change shit in 2016 and won’t change shit now.

The real question is WHY a crook, a racist, a sexist, a rapist, a felon has won.

And claiming that the voters were conned or that they are ignorant, or rednecks or whatever just reeks of privilege.

Perhaps it’s time to develop a better communication, I feel that someday it will be possible to aim at popular/tangent populist views while keeping clear that the aims are clearly on left-wing policies.

Sanders had great potential in this sense, but, WHOOOOPSIE, the establishment won that one too, even before seeing Trump winning.

And one last chip on my shoulder: Biden’s popular debacle was swept under the rug way too late for anyone’s good.

Shit, Harris’ campaign lasted around 12 weeks, how the fuck are yous supposed to make something out of that?

At least now deportation centers on the border will become unpopular again, when presidents are DEMs those are quite curiously ignored by the public eye.

Oh, the irony.

Get your shit together, opposition, my European, Italian ass is mostly in the hands of your enemy now.
pegsman
November 7th, 2024 at 1:29 am

Sadly, it matters quite a lot to the whole world who’s the leader of the US. And a “no going back” Trump, combined with all the scary right wing leaders we already have around the globe, doesn’t bode well for the working class. The best we can hope for is that enough of them realize that wars are bad for business. And some massive heart attacks down the road!
John Hayman
November 7th, 2024 at 1:40 am

Do you all understand why Trump pulled in an unprecedented number of minority votes? Hispanic, Black, Asian, gay, Muslim, and female voters all turned out for him in record numbers. It wasn’t just a win; it was a dramatic shift. Why? Because people are done with the Democrats. They see them for what they are: corrupt corporatists, warmongers, and criminals who weaponize the legal system to destroy their political enemies.

Under Biden, the economy cratered. Americans struggled to pay basic bills, while Biden sent hundreds of billions to Ukraine, pushing the world closer to nuclear conflict, and allowed millions of illegal migrants to flood the country. Many of these migrants were violent criminals released from prisons by their home countries, eager to offload their problems onto America. Meanwhile, Trump was focused on the issues that actually mattered: homelessness, jobs, crime, the economy, and ending the wars.

The Democrats, on the other hand, ran on nonsense. They scared people with lies about abortion rights, even though Trump made it clear he had no intention of changing that. The real threat wasn’t Trump; it was the far-left agenda that prioritized foreign interests, illegal immigration, and spent four years gaslighting the American public — pretending Biden wasn’t suffering from cognitive decline and was actually running the country.
jojo
November 7th, 2024 at 1:50 am

(P.S. the guy who said he was in Sweden had a Kansas City, Missouri ip address.)

I don’t know who this guy is, but one can make their ip be from pretty much anywhere they want (i.e. mine currently says Houston, TX–home of Archie Bell and the Drells–the last time I was physically in Houston was 1998)
daniel
November 7th, 2024 at 2:35 am

@jojo, Glaive Robber, renfield & Handsome Dan
Ok, I’m not American, so Trump’s presidency will probably not effect me, except probably in some weird sneaky ways, and this is probably a weird point to make here, but comments like you guys are making have really been annoying me the last couple of years.

Yeah sure, angry incels gotta make up a huge part of Trump voters, and maybe it’s still early days to say for sure, but it seems like he gained a lot of women and people in Black and Latino communities. I fell into a MAGA debate YouTube rabbit hole in the last couple of months, and they seemed like a pretty diverse crowd, with the only thing they had in common was that they were all bat-shit crazy – though to be fair, maybe that’s just Internet personalities.

I like Biden and Harris, they were good for my part of the world, and I honestly believe that a decade-plus of boring Democrats in the White House is what the world needs to get its shit together at this point. Now, with Trump, I’m expecting dark days ahead. But if a huge chunk of progressive leftists and socialists dipped from this election because establishment Dems were too centre-right, or warmongery, or they’re waiting for a leftist revolutionary to sweep them off their feet, then they are children, and they fucked this up.
Dreadguacamole
November 7th, 2024 at 3:11 am

– We are WAY past: “Well, they are not all bad. Calling them Nazis seems a bit harsh” stage.

I don’t agree. A lot of people willfully don’t pay attention to politics. Thanks to social media bubbles and polarization, some just don’t live in the same world we do. And.. well, we’re just willfully stupid creatures sometimes. We like to bury our head in the sand.
Not saying they should be completely let off the hook, or that a lot of them aren’t horrible people. But demonization, while understandable as a gut reaction is just counterproductive on any number of levels.

I have a lot more bile reserved for the fecklessness of the tech bros that run social media “services”, the outright cravenness of the moral authorities and ‘serious’, established politicians that endorsed Trump, or Fox and their ilk. People are dumb, but those fucks are evil. And, yeah, as other people have repeatedly brought up, the role of the opposition in this cannot be understated.
The Winchester
November 7th, 2024 at 5:08 am

Yeah.

Speechless and shoring up for whats to come. Again.

All because half of my fellow citizens think its a football game to be won.

My anniversary was yesterday, so I went out to celebrate that with my family. And i wore my Red Dragon brewery shirt from Vern. Cuz i gotta accentuate as much freaking positivity as I can.

Keep up the good work Vern. I got you!
Tobias
November 7th, 2024 at 6:17 am

Truly heartbreaking election result and I feel for you. Hang in there, all you clear-headed Americans who have seen this clown for what he is since the beginning. The US needs you and your rational voices, as do we who live in the rest of the world who will be directly or indirectly affected by another Trump presidency. Here’s hoping he’ll be at least as ineffective and lazy as he was during his first term to be unable to do as much damage as has been threatened by him and his cronies.

I have to say though, the 51% or so who voted for him – Those people scare me. Like, I’d like to go live in the real world and not this parody dimension we all seem to be trapped in.
jojo
November 7th, 2024 at 6:43 am

If forced to point a finger, my finger is towards the Cloon.

He gets his wish and Biden drops out. Now, if there was an open DNC, the WORLD would be watching because ‘democracy in action = exciting!’. And during this open DNC, my man George strolls onstage. Dead silence. “My God! Who is the Cloon going to endorse????”

He walks to the mic, stares at the ground for a beat, smirks, then goes “You know what? Fuck it, I got this shit”

The roof would be TORE THE FUCK OFF.

Trump could pay eight more motherfuckers to shoot him and NO ONE would care. Eventually making the concession on Oct 8th. Could you imagine the DEBATE???

You let this country down George. That’s all I’m saying
Handsome Dan
November 7th, 2024 at 6:46 am

Daniel–

The number of “progressive leftists” – let alone “socialists” – in the United States is minuscule compared to the broader population. Even if we had a popular vote, all of them voting in concert would be unlikely to affect a national election; with our horse shit state-by-state system we’re talking a few hundred votes here or there. You mentioned that you’re not in the U.S., so it’s likely that you have at least some remnant of a communist party that occasionally gets into a coalition with the ruling parliamentary party. Such a thing is completely outside the realm of the possible in the U.S. at the moment and for the foreseeable future. The fucking Kansas City Chiefs probably have more potential to influence an election here than does any kind of “left.”

But let’s say you’re right, and Harris did lose because the left managed to put together a disciplined bloc of voters who could be persuaded to grant or withhold their support en masse. In 2020, Joe Biden wound up with about 81 million votes. As it stands now, it looks like Harris will walk away with a little more than 68 million, a difference of about 13 million votes. 13 fucking million! That’s larger than the population of the state I live in. If that’s the kind of electoral power that the left has in the U.S. (which, LOL), then it is the job of the candidate to persuade that significant slice of the electorate to support them, end of story. Make concessions, promise things, address their specific concerns in public, something! I don’t know exactly who those 14 million lost voters are – I don’t think anyone does at the moment – but I’m willing to bet that it’s as least as diverse as the coalition that voted Trump into office. The 2020 Biden campaign identified them and appealed to them and won, the 2024 Biden/Harris campaign did not and lost.
Miguel Hombre
November 7th, 2024 at 6:47 am

Anyone who claims that because they are not living in America that the situation in America ” will probably not effect me, except probably in some weird sneaky ways” is either a mega wealthy non – American citizen or delusional in the extreme. As America goes , so goes the world (unfortunately.)

It is going to directly affect every single inhabitant of the planet – most directly in a further erosion of the financial wellbeing of nearly everyone, the continued, accelerated destruction of the environment(and a further slow down in even tackling the climate crisis,) – an existential civization threatening crisis, it will lead to directly even more deaths in the Middle East, Africa and the global south.

If RFKJR and the anti-science people like him are given control of health policy it will directly lead to many, many, many more children’s death and medical destruction due to vaccine denial/hesitancy – as well as the charge by the right to bring back legalized child labor – even in California a proposition for voters that explicitly outlawed enforced child labor was voted against by the majority of voters.

And when the next pandemic hits imagine the scenario’s.

Trump and the Republican Party is under the control of evangelical Christian fascists who truly believe in a destructive ending under fire that will cleanse the earth of the unbelievers and dirty unworthy hordes. They truly believe that the dead true believers will spend eternity in heaven. Don’t tell me that this raises the nuclear stakes – the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (the foremost experts in the state of nuclear issues in the world) has placed the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than at any point since it started 1947. People pining for how more superhero movies will get made under Trump would be better versed in watching DR STRANGELOVE OF HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB and reflecting on how it’s warnings are truer today.

And in regards to superhero movies – although most of the people who star in them profess to be Democrats – make no mistake – the people who make them (sign the checks to finance them) are rightwing, Trump/Republican people – as long as you keep watching them they will keep regurgitating them for you.

What can Americans do? First realize that the Democrats are not interested in saving you – they are the same as the Republicans – hopelessly enmeshed with the Warmongers – Oligarchs and Technocrats and Trillionaires – they can say whatever they want – but when the only people better off every 4 years under Democrats are the rich, that should be all the evidence you need – actions always speak louder than words – and reveal the truth.

The last time it was this bad in America for democratic society was the 1920s 1930s – and what did Americans have to do – they had to organize through their communities – labor groups etc., and strike and resist. This means when you’re in a union and another union strikes – you strike too. The leaders of these resistance movements movements went to jail for years, were killed/ forced from the country. The workers/protestors were killed, lost everything in the battles, but ultimately prevailed.

Americans have to undertake mass civil non – violent protest – on inauguration day in 2025 there needs to be protests in every city in the country – millions and millions of people – and they need to protest every weekend. The rights and freedoms you are loosing will never be handed back – that never happens – power never gives it back willingly. Black people had to fight for decades to get the vote/freedom – women had to fight for decades to get the vote/equal rights – every marginalized people has to fight, fight, fight to get back their rights or attain their rights/power etc. One weekend or voting once every 4 years ain’t gonna do it. History proves it.

Americans need to lead the charge and bring this mass civil resistance to the world.

Even then, will it work? I say 1 chance in 3 (kinda like the odds of the Red October getting to America.) Every empire in the history of the world has crumbled and fallen, and there is absolutely no reason to think the American empire will be any different. It might only be a question of whether we are talking about the world or just America.

This is where your hope lies – the solutions to your problems are known – are you going to be able to but down your latte’s and don something about it, or not?

I will leave with a quote from Chris Hedges – probably the best public intellectual in America right now – from his recent essay:

“We must invest our energy into organizing mass movements to overthrow the corporate state through sustained acts of mass civil disobedience. This includes the most powerful weapon we possess – the strike. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims or Blacks. We give people an alternative to a corporate-indentured Democratic Party that cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society, one that serves the common good rather than corporate profit. We must demand nothing less than full employment, guaranteed minimum incomes, universal health insurance, free education at all levels, robust protection of the natural world and an end to militarism and imperialism. We must create the possibility for a life of dignity, purpose and self-esteem. If we do not, it will ensure a Christianized fascism and ultimately, with the accelerating ecocide, our obliteration.”

I’m 54 and hopefully will not see the worst of what might be to come, but god I loose sleep at night fearing for my friends (no kids of my own thank god) kids will be experiencing.
Mr. Subtlety
November 7th, 2024 at 7:23 am

I’m sorry, but the claims here that the Harris campaign was some kind of boondoggle repeat of the Clinton campaign of ’16 is flat-out wrong. She was demonstrably a competent public servant, a perfectly appealing public speaker, had a platform that very specifically targeted the problems people are most concerned about. She’s coming out of an administration who’s biggest problem was that for two years coming out of the fucking pandemic, the economy was running too hot, who saw the first real wage gains for Americans in living memory, passed what would have been (if they weren’t about to be instantly repealed) era-defining legislation designed to bring American manufacturing back, tackle climate change, and shore up American strength around the world. That campaign had all the money it needed, had specific targeting. I personally spent hours canvasing in a swing state, going door to door, and was impressed by the campaign’s thoroughness and organization. Every single person I worked with cared enough to devote days –months, sometimes– of their time and hundreds or thousands of their dollars of to trying to make this happen. You think they wanted to lose? You think they were incompetent, or lazy? Get fucked. Do you understand the enormity of the problem facing them? Their only hope was to unite everyone else, every non-MAGA voter, from urban Black voters to suburban soccer moms to immigrant business owners, in one last desperate attempt to hold out against the ascendant reactionaries. The idea that there was some ideal person or perfect message that they could have put forward, but chose not to, is absurd magical thinking. Insulting, even.

And meanwhile, Trump had no ground game at all, a nonsense platform, and spent the entire campaign shouting rambling, incoherent, rate-baiting, blatant lies through his dentures, while he and his cronies insulted every group they could think of this side of Timothy McVeigh.

Everyone could see what the choices were. And they unambiguously, and across every strata, went with the incoherent, race-baiting liar. It wasn’t a mistake. Nobody was fooled. It wasn’t that the Democrats campaigned badly. America simply didn’t want what they were selling.

This was it, folks. We knew the neoliberal world order was not working, but this was our chance to hang on for a few more years in the hopes that somebody thought of something better to replace it. But guess what: we ran out of time. The people have made their choice. Every day more ordinary folks are on board with them, and less are with us. That was the ballgame. We lost. There won’t be another season, not with this team, anyway. The left will now spend the next decade doing what it does best –viciously fighting a civil holy war amongst itself– while the Ethno-Oligarchs put down roots into every crevice of the system (completely legally, I should add) making it impossible to remove them and increasingly difficult to criticize them, exactly as they promised they would, out loud, multiple times. There was a perfectly viable alternative, it was right there, and people just didn’t want it.

So, after a long night of the soul, the conclusion I’ve come to is: I was investing too much of myself in something I had no control over. It’s time to let go and focus on other things. I’m never going to completely not care, I’ll still vote and all, it’s just no longer emotionally viable for me to keep shilling for a dying religion and to stake my own happiness on that religion prevailing. I got into politics in the first place because I thought it was a tool to make the world better, but not only has it never broadly or consistently been used that way in my lifetime, it isn’t even politics anymore. There were no political issues in this election, no policy that anyone cared about, as the Democrats discovered after foolishly trying to run a political campaign for a political office. They needn’t have bothered. Nobody listened, nobody cared. It’s culture war all the way down now, just an endless, pointless news cycle of mutual recriminations and virtue signaling while the work of governance is left undone or farmed out to self-interested rent seekers and grifters. The very idea of political solutions to real-world problems has become a cruel joke; there are no “real-world” problems now, just this week’s news cycle of outrage porn, designed to spike our cortisol for a few hours and then be forgotten as the next peak hits, and even if we were capable of identifying and focusing on a problem, the idea that our political system could address it is laughable nonsense, and even if it did –as the Biden Administration did with a handful of truly remarkable landmark pieces of real legislation– nobody notices or cares, in fact that hate it just as much as they hated Trump’s pathetic, petty chaos machine.

The world’s beyond saving, doesn’t even want to be saved. To be heartbroken about it is just as much an exercise in futility as thinking I could change it in the first place. The world will be a categorically worse place for my kids. Uglier, meaner, deader, more unfair. Not by accident, but by choice. By popular consensus. It’s what the majority want, or at least they don’t care enough to stop it. That’s not what I wanted, but I think it’s abundantly clear by this point what a fool’s errand it’s been to try and tell people what they ought to want. And I’m done with it. Time to take up a healthier hobby.
BuzzFeedAldrin
November 7th, 2024 at 7:24 am

I appreciate you, Vern, and the perspective on films you provide despite my limited engagement here.
Just want to echo a few sentiments: yes, what happens in America very much effects the rest of the world. NO, America is not “world” but it’s an incredibly large economic driver that would literally destroy whole countries economies if trade stopped.
While the autopsy is still ongoing, it looks like people voted the way they did because “prices high now, prices low then.” This is capitalism working as intended, keeping most people’s heads just above water so they have to act in their own interests in the immediate without thought to future ramifications. Yes there was a good amount of racism and sexism built in, but Harris never once said “I will lower the cost of eggs.” She did the usual Dem thing of talking about policy which most people can’t be bothered to learn or think about. That’s also capitalism working to keep people ignorant so they’ll happily be complicit in their own demise. Keeping that in mind rather than just assuming every other person I meet is a psychopath is the one thing getting me out of bed this week.
There are bad times ahead. No two ways about it. I work in federally funded grant research and I’ve already had contracts held up and reworked because they mentioned “diversity.” No matter how white you are, you very well might be touched this time around.
BUT, you can change things in your community. Find mutual aid groups, volunteer, vote local. Believe me, it will provide some modicum of control. Even nationally, the midterms are only two years away and trump won’t even take office until January so that’s really only a year and some change before the “blue wave” comes back like it always does in this nonsense, two party system we’ve adopted.
Stand strong, stand for what’s right, and kick some fucking ass!
Crudnasty
November 7th, 2024 at 7:52 am

Thank you, Mr. Subtlety, for bringing some actual sane perspective back to this. It’s one thing to read these hot takes of leftist circular firing squad mentality on the wider internet, it feels like a nightmare reading about “Biden cratering the economy” and “if only we had a competent candidate” on Vern’s page. Clooney would have saved us with a WWE ring entrance? Biden is drooling on a beach?

The electorate is just straight fucked in America. Whether that’s due to gleeful misogyny or media induced “both sides” gnorance, or just a defect of human nature that I now have to just overlook the fact that half the voters in this country want to herd undesirable people into camps and roll their eyes as women bleed out in ERs… I’m not going to be able to be friends with these people. I can still say excuse me when I pass them in a supermarket aisle, but if civilization depends on me being ok with the horrors above, I’m not gonna pretend it’s ok. The problem isn’t the candidates or the policies or the campaign. It’s the citizens. We the People are no longer We. And I’m not going to be chastised into sliding further down that slope to join the masses where they are now.
psychic_hits
November 7th, 2024 at 8:28 am

Enjoy the tradition of saying “excuse me” in the supermarket aisle while it lasts, Crudnasty; I don’t see it persisting in Trump’s America.

As far as Gunn’s SUPERMAN goes, who knows– maybe he’ll see the writing on the wall and decide, Fuck it, this one’s a Troma homage, what do I really have to lose. That would make for the rare superhero movie I’d have interest in.

Seeing all the perspectives from around the world here is really grounding for me, thanks to everyone who’s offered one. I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t been said by someone else above. And thank you Vern for keeping the house you do.
Dtroyt
November 7th, 2024 at 8:38 am

Just like 8 years ago, I’m sitting here in California saying, “Can we just fucking secede?” I mean economically, our state would be better off without the dead weight of most of the rest of the US, most of the food in the country is grown here, do we really need the rest of this country? Clearly, we are not aligned with the rest of the country politically. (The coverage I was watching was able to call CA for Harris before the polls even closed, no other state was called that quickly for either candidate).

I know it isn’t going to happen, and I’m sure there are major issues it would cause of which I’m just not smart enough or whatever to know about, but I honestly think I no longer love the United States and really don’t understand all the fucking weird assholes in other parts of the country. (To be clear, I don’t think every single person outside of CA is a weird fucking asshole, and there are plenty of weird fucking assholes here of course, but so much of the country just seems ideologically opposed to basic human values)

I’m not completely shocked by the results. I had a bad feeling about this for a few weeks. But I am a little shocked that people are so fucking stupid that they will buy anything this fucking con artist tries to sell them.

Anyway, here comes at least 4 shitty years.
jojo
November 7th, 2024 at 8:51 am

I’m sorry, but the claims here that the Harris campaign was some kind of boondoggle repeat of the Clinton campaign of ’16 is flat-out wrong

I’ll claim it was boondoggle all right.

I personally spent hours canvasing in a swing state, going door to door

Maybe she should have done the same? Maybe at least the Al Smith dinner?

Look, as merely an object example, I currently live in a place with two registered independents (THE decisive swing votes), in the state of Pennsylvania (THE decisive swing state). Do you know how many pieces of Trump propaganda have been stuffed in my mailbox since August? About 300,000. Harris? Four. All within the last two weeks. All easy to mistake as Trump propaganda since that’s all they talked about (an important distinction, because the vast majority of his talked about how awesome he was. While all four of her’s just talked about how terrible HE was. Her four ads didn’t even talk about her!)

So while I believe you that you found the campaign thorough and organized, but I remain confused as the whom this thoroughness and organization was for.
Miguel Hombre
November 7th, 2024 at 9:01 am

“I’m sorry, but the claims here that the Harris campaign was some kind of boondoggle repeat of the Clinton campaign of ’16 is flat-out wrong”

When most Americans are earning less in real dollars than they did 50 years ago – through both Democrat and Republican federal governments and are justly upset and mad about it – for Harris to go on the view and then claim she would do nothing different and then campaign with Liz Cheney but not make one appearance with Bernie Sanders.

That’s the very definition of a poorly run campaign that reads of the mistakes Clinton made in 2016.
Comrade Question
November 7th, 2024 at 9:12 am

Mr. Subtlety – I basically agree with 100% of your post. Sincerely, thank you for trying. For what it’s worth, this random guy on the Internet appreciates it. (And anyone else who donated time or money.)

What was the vibe on the ground in the couple days leading up to the election? Did canvassing seem to be going well? The evening before the election I saw a Twitter post from some random NY assemblywoman laying out that nobody expected to win, that canvassing was going very badly and it was down to saving the House and limiting the damage in the Senate. I feel naive now, but I was genuinely shocked; my assumption was that it was Twitter disinfo bullshit, but of course now it seems like prophecy (which doesn’t rule out it being Twitter disinfo bullshit that was coincidentally correct).
Zed
November 7th, 2024 at 10:31 am

I just want to add Vern that while I value this community being centered around movies and your general tolerance of politics other than your own, I am relieved you deleted an openly transphobic comment (among others). Kicking Nazis out of the bar, etc.
Mr. Subtlety
November 7th, 2024 at 10:59 am

This is the last thing I’m going to say on the subject. I wish all of you guys had volunteered for the campaign since apparently you’ve been silently sitting on such brilliant strategic insights. Obviously whatever the Harris campaign did, it didn’t work. We’ll know more by next week about who we didn’t reach, and hopefully get some insight into why. There will be endless rounds of could haves and should haves. I’m sorry you only got four mailers. I know there were lots of people desperately waiting for that fifth one. I’m sorry you felt she didn’t shamelessly distance herself from the administration she was part of for four years, the one that kept the US economy out of a recession, raised actual wages for the first time in living memory, fought its way out of painful inflation in two years, passed comprehensive legislation that I never thought was possible in this broken political system with the thinnest imaginable margin. I’m sorry you thought she focused too much on Trump, although in her few major addresses she spoke almost exclusively about her reasonable, issue-based policy plans, and was consequently completely ignored. I’m sorry she only proposed realistic, achievable real-world solutions to address issues people said they cared about, and didn’t say whatever the magic thing you think she could have said that would have gotten everyone on board was.

But I was there, man. I watched old Black church ladies walk until their legs were stiff. I saw young lawyers who haven’t taken a day off work since grad school bus for hours to knock on doors. I saw retirees organizing student carpools and baking cookies. Recent immigrants terrified that the governments they thought they’d left behind were coming for them here. An Australian guy who said he was afraid that if we couldn’t hold them back here, they’d come for his homeland. We were hopeful, we stayed positive, because that’s what you have to do when you canvas. At the higher levels, they were organized. They were well-funded. They thought about how Hillary put her headquarters in Brooklyn, how she took everyone for granted. They swore they wouldn’t make the same mistake. They had a system to coordinate volunteers, to train them, to bus them where they were needed. They did intensive polling to figure out exactly what voters cared about. They had a huge, frightening amount of information about every voter which they could put on an app for every volunteer. And we hit the pavement. Just the group I was with knocked on 2,000 doors the first day, and spoke mostly to people who were already completely exhausted from having been contacted so many times already. We went into rural areas where houses were a mile apart. We contacted every single person who had ever voted Democratic or Independent in the state. Called them. Emailed them. Texted them. Left literature if they weren’t home. It didn’t work, I know that. I don’t know what we could have done differently. But we fucking tried. To sit there and smugly claim that it was all a farce, a conspiracy, some kind of controlled opposition secretly calculated to put Donald Trump in office… I’m sorry, but it makes my blood boil. I know you’re hurting too, I know everyone is looking for an explanation, I know everyone wants an answer, I know everyone wants a way forward. I guess we’re all looking for someone to blame. I want that too. But if you’re going to sit there and blithely claim that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans, that they didn’t really want this, that they didn’t work their asses off and try as hard as they humanly possible to win this thing, that they weren’t terrified to the very core of losing… I’m sorry, but you’re part of the problem. I’ll take your informed criticism about strategy, about resource allocation, about messaging, about dealing with the media. We earned it, hell, we need it, since whatever we did obviously didn’t work. But don’t you dare fucking say we didn’t try.
Skani
November 7th, 2024 at 11:12 am

It does not need to be a circular firing squad. My big issue here is with the way Democrats is the the cowardliness and whininess of some in the face of defeat — what I hear called “cope.” If it’s not blaming voter suppression or the electoral college or the rural bias of the senate or “misinformation,” now it’s the very last refuge when none of these obvious “cope” strategies works anymore for the circumstance at hand: actually just declare that the American electorate writ large *is* a basket of deplorables. If you actually believe that, then why claim you care about or are fighting for democracy? You’re not fighting for democracy, you’re in denial about the fact that the median voter is not more persuaded by your preferred candidate than by the candidate who won.

I am well aware of the typical responses. “But Trump will end democracy.” Maybe he will. That is irrelevant to my point, which is NOT that Trump is a good candidate or person. My point is that if Democrats truly cherish democracy, then they will do an effective job of using all legal means to win FUCKING DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS, i.e., sussing out the will of the electorate in aggregate (values, relative priorities) and coming up with a mix of candidates, policy positions, governing priorities, organizational leadership, rhetoric, long-term capacity building, strategy, and campaign skill. If you can’t accept that the Democrats loss is by definition a failure of the Democrats to do the thing you are supposed to do in a democracy (win democratic elections), then you do not want democracy, you just want your values and priorities to prevail over the median voter every time without your party/candidate clearing the bar of persuading and/or compromising with the median voter to a sufficient extent that they join your coalition and pull the lever for your person.

If your position is that you would prefer an authoritarian government that imposes your policies (vis a vis whatever — LGBTQ issues, climate, economic redistribution, etc.) over a democraticallly elected government that rejects some of your policies, then I guess just own that. You are not motivated by a principled commitment to democracy and value pluralism. You are just a different form of authoritarian. By definition.
Skani
November 7th, 2024 at 11:15 am

…and I say this as someone how had the Kamala sign in my yard, has given money to democratic candidates, has tried ardently to persuade Trump voters I know to vote against him, etc.
VERN
November 7th, 2024 at 11:31 am

Subtlety – I’m sorry to see the frustration but I really appreciate your insights into how the operation worked, as well as the fact that you did all that. Thank you for writing about it, even though I know it’s a bummer.

Skani – Who is asking for an authoritarian government to impose left wing values? Of course that would be ridiculous, who are you arguing with?
Crudnasty
November 7th, 2024 at 11:35 am

I respect your points Skani. I don’t want Biden to pull a coup to protect women and LGBTQ folx and immigrants from the horrors of Project 2025, I would feel even more lost if that was the response. I had hoped that the American electorate had enough decency and integrity to make that choice, but they rejected it in favor of the horror plan and the rapist pedophile figurehead.

I will however die on the hill that anyone who supports this plan and it’s architects and enablers is objectively deplorable and morally wrong. I have no problem generalizing a nation based on it’s actions, and rejecting the justifications as the Kayfabe horse shit it is based on. I have to live in a place that is dominated by people who happily, excitedly reinforce their deplorable ideas at every opportunity given to clarify them. So I have to reevaluate my own ideologies, to consider that democracy is just another broken system among more-deeply broken systems. I was fighting for what I thought democracy represented, and now I learn that it’s just the same story of human history with the illusion that it is the path to deliverance from all the previous failures. I think we are all trying to figure out what “labels” we do/don’t stand for now that the mask has slipped to show America is way over the line of being the kind of garbage we used to act like we were against.

Maybe democracy comes through after all, when we peer a little further over the abyss and see the bottom, but I can’t fully trust in that anymore. What other ideologies get us back to actual truth and justice and just enough freedom to pursue happiness without people acting like burning trash in the shared apartment foyer is their god given right? I have no idea.
psychic_hits
November 7th, 2024 at 12:00 pm

Mr Subtlety- thanks for posting, and for the work you did trying to put off this outcome. You’re reminding me of a friend I had years ago. Early in the Obama era, I worked with & eventually had as a roommate an incredible woman who, when I first met her, had just come off a hardcore experience working as a campaign coordinator for Obama’s first victory. At the time, I strongly believed that George W. Bush had stolen both of his electoral victories, and so I remember obliviously saying to her soon after we met that, happy as I was that Obama had won, after what had happened with George W. Bush, who could say how it all worked. Thankfully, she set me straight with a firsthand view from the ground in much the same way you do above. I’ll always be grateful to her for that, because it opened an extremely valuable door in my mind. The older I got, the more random jobs I had, the more I got involved in various human institutional systems, the more I saw how things really worked and how insulting the idea of a faceless, omnipotent “They” is for the people who care enough & have the ability to try and make their desires real with the means made available to them. So, again, thank you not only for the work you on Harris’s (and thus, our) behalf, but for sharing the broader perspective that it gave you.
jojo
November 7th, 2024 at 12:21 pm

Thankfully, when I did campaign work I got paid an okay sum to distribute things to the volunteers, and order take-out for the higher-ups who got paid an ungodly sum to eat it. This was in San Francisco, and I can’t remember who won. But for some reason, I remember who the DA was. Weird how that works.
Dreadguacamole
November 7th, 2024 at 2:01 pm

Skipping sideways, I recently watched IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, and thinking about it today, it feels very… apposite.

I mean, it’s about an insidious force of pure evil that oozes into our world, turns seemingly normal people into raving maniacs through consumed media, and slowly brings society – and the world – down to its level.
What’s more, the ending handily illustrates that sometimes laughter is the only sane response when everything goes batshit crazy. Though I guess that’s no help in this case.

Not that I’d insult the capital-e Evil in the movie by comparing it to Trump – One’s an incomprehensible, hostile menace that’s more akin to a force of nature, the other a pathetic mess of venality, pettiness and corruption.

Guess what I’m saying is that Carpenter is a fucking legend, QED. Also I had no memory that ITMOM was so full of humour, despite having watched it multiple times over the years.
Skani
November 7th, 2024 at 5:53 pm

Hey, Vern – Of course, no Democrat I know is literally calling for someone to install an authoritarian Democratic government (though I do have a Marxist friend who has said a government like Cuba’s would be better than America’s, which is coming pretty close).

My point is that there is a contradiction between harping on about how vital it is to protect democracy and fight against Trump’s assault on democracy and then turn around and, when you decisively lose a democratic election, express contempt for the American electorate and American democracy at work. I think there is plenty of that in this thread, and that sentiment is more and more prevalent among Democratic political commentators, celebrities, public intellectuals, political news junkies, social media personalities, left and center-left journalists, and website commenters.

Apocalypticism, stereotyping and demonization of cultural and political outgroups, lots of litmus-testing and policing people for not having down-the-line progressive views (even if you were 7/10 on board with the Democratic party agenda, you can expect to be shamed or ridiculed or worse for the 3/10 where you’re not), and engaging in a lot of weird moving-target arguments for why Democrats losing is not Democrats fault for failing to win (it’s someone else’s fault for failing to be persuaded). I have read so many articles and comments over the years attributing Democratic losses to this or that external factor — the unfairness of the electoral college, rural bias, gerrymandering, voter id laws, misinformation, etc. Anything but the Democrats’ own failure to deliver and execute on a clear and compelling message based on something more than vibes + “Trump is bad.”

Trump substantially over-performed his own previous numbers with Latinos, young black men, young voters in general. 46% of the Americans who “hate women” are women. The Democrats cannot be a nationally competitive party without doing substantially better with non-college voters, white voters, rural voters, young voters, men, Latinos. Most of these people do not hate America, women, etc. They are culturally moderate-to-conservative, they don’t pay a ton of attention to politics, they hate inflation, and they are not convinced that Trump will end democracy. I know people like this. If it makes you (one) feel better to demonize them, then that is fine, but that sort of attitude and rhetoric will only further the Democratic party’s relevance and drive people further away fromt the party.

I truly sympathize with anyone hurting about the outcome. It’s not what I hoped for. However, I think our views on failure and what lessons to learn tend to be self-pitying, histrionic, uncharitable, and generally counter-productive. Like, I know all of those things also are true about Trump, but those are reasons he sucks not reasons to do likewise.
Crudnasty
November 7th, 2024 at 6:38 pm

Skani- since I’m the one in here expressing very genuine raw contempt for the electorate that did this, I’ll respond.

I don’t really care about the Democratic party or it’s survival. If they can’t win- fuck em. They are a means to an end, that end being the ability for my daughters (and myself) to live their lives in reasonable prosperity without being stripped of very real and very specific freedoms we now enjoy that are likely and literally about to be taken away. Same goes for America- I’m stuck here but if I wasn’t I’d move my family to a place that had a more plausible promise of ensuring those things for us. If the King of Zamunda could do that, I’d say fuck democracy, I stan a monarchy now. Democracy is a means to an end as well. If it doesn’t provide that end, then fuck it.

Maybe this means I suck, maybe I’m part of the problem, frankly I don’t care. People that made the choice to return to power the worst person in the world and his legion of turds to carry out trollish retribution on the rest of us can forever and always know that I for one find them to be scum of the lowest order, based entirely on one action. I don’t care what their excuse is. I’ll have nothing to do with them, even if that worsens the divide. It’s not a high bar- if you (not you- I want you to specifically know, amid this spewing of verbal bile, that I hold you in high esteem due to your many thoughtful comments through the years, even if I haven’t felt informed enough to engage on whatever topics you’re discussing) aren’t aware enough to understand the consequences of your actions, or worse you do understand and are ok with it, you’re not welcome at my house, no matter how many kittens you’ve saved from trees or how good your casserole might be. The Overton window may shift, I’m not moving with it. I’ll burn any bridge that leads to people who can’t clear that ground level bar, and have burned plenty since 2016, family included. The divide is fine with me at this point, even if that makes me culturally Amish, tacitly judging others as being wicked just for engaging with this sick new world order. I’ve tried the other way for decades, and only ever gotten DARVO from them in return. So fuck it. Fuck them. Sic semper trump voters.
Skani
November 7th, 2024 at 7:02 pm

Hey, Crudnasty. I appreciate your honesty and you not taking my comments too personally. I understand that things are raw for a lot of people right now.

I’ve felt many of the same things at times. Particularly during COVID times, we were on the edge with some of our family. I thought some of those relationshisp would just end. I have wrestled with a lot of contempt and frustration with Trump voters. And do not get me wrong, there are some people who engage in a truly monstrous and sociopathic way. If I’m being honest, I don’t like the way he has coarsened discourse and is a bad role model. As a kid, I was a Charles Barkley fan, and I always hated that Nike commercial he did where the whole thing was “I’m not a role model.” I was like, fuck you, yes you are. You don’t get to abdicate. Trump is a straight-up terrible role model, and I don’t even need to go into all of the bad that is there.”

I focus my criticism on Democrats and progressive for a few reasons. One, because that’s the primary make-up of this site. Two, because I think the apocalyptic doomerism and living off anger and anxiety is bad and contagious. Three, because I think there is a lack of basic cognitive empathy and introspection and in-touch-ness-with-reality about weaknesses of the Democratic party (or the anti-Trump coalition, if you prefer to think more broadly and less partisanly) and what it takes to get elected and why Trump appeals to a lot of people. Fourth, I think a lot of these dynamics are self-reinforcing. The more people dig into these echo chambers, getting addicted to outrage, fear, and caricatures of people, the worse things get. One of my best friends is someone I first really got to know fighting on Facebook (he was a socialist, I at that time was more of a centrist Democrat). We would really get into it being keyboard warriors, but then once we hung out in person, we developed a deep friendship. Even now, if we start emailing back and forth on something, it often goes weird. Then we get together in person and smooth it out. Similar with my brother. Three-time Trump voter. We argue. I am frustrated. But I love him. He is just wrong, in my view.

Fifth, I do believe in pluralism, democracy, and give-and-take, and thermostatic politics. People were pissed at Trump about COVID (not his fault) and all his bullshit, so, they narrowly booted his ass out. Now they’re pissed at Biden about inflation (only partially his fault) and illegal immigration (he misread the room on that). At some point, probably sooner than later, they’ll be pissed at Trump because he will overreach or just because something bad will happen and he’ll get blamed for it whether it’s his fault or not. It’s the way it goes.

I appreciate your comments and respect the authenticity with which you share them.
Aktion Figure
November 7th, 2024 at 7:25 pm

The forest gets lost for the trees here, to me.

The problem is that decent, ingrained American morality lost. Thinking about other people who share your same exact desires is now obsolete. America has NOW, zero moral compass. There is no more love for Rocky, Gordon Gecko is our king.

I cannot believe that we live in a world where Captain Planet villains actually win. It is beyond my ken.
Crudnasty
November 7th, 2024 at 8:27 pm

Thank you, Skani. There are precious few spaces online I trust anymore to be a place where I can engage honestly and in good faith, and expect the same in return, no matter how heated and prickly the topic might be. Vern (hi Vern it’s always weird to talk about you like you aren’t here but I wanna pay you a compliment too, hope this isn’t too weird) has done an amazing job of making this the gold standard for that kind of space, inviting different views but moderating the troll BS that degrades the whole endeavor, and it’s as much the commenters/conversation as the content that keeps me clicking back. I worry my less-than-nuanced very-hot very-frothy ranting disturbs that balance so I DO worry that I’m part of the noise and coarsening, but I am challenged to rise above it by the stellar level of discourse on display here, in no small part due to your comments. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to me to find this engagement and understanding, along with that challenge.

I mean, FFS- dreadguacamole taught me a whole new word today, APPOSITE. For an English (language not culture) geek like me that’s like finding an Easter egg from a game you felt like you completed years ago. And now I wanna watch ITMOM. Cheers for that, DG.

There’s a lot to think about in your replies and the points you listed. That’s true for nearly every comment here. I wish this timeline had been less destructive to my own family, but while a mentally ill antivax sister and a narcissist regressive Catholic mother who drove her to near death from body shaming eating disorders were something I could deal with when it was just me swatting it down, by the time I had young daughters susceptible to those things, every visit was like watching the psychological version of female genital mutilation play out in slow motion. 2016 was all the oxygen that little flame needed to turn into a sudden Backdraft level inferno. When I walked in one day (“post” COVID) to see my girls wide eyed listening to her casually discuss why Dr Fauci should face a firing squad in the same sentence invoking Jesus, the switch that flipped in me severed all those bonds at once. We haven’t spoken since and I don’t have any inclination to change that, seeing secondhand snippets of how much worse they have gotten.

Did my estrangement of them make them worse? Probably. Do I care about that? I used to. I feel weirdly responsible for them falling off, but this followed literal DECADES of the most raw, heart wrenching pleading and Socratic but compassionate questioning to try to find any kind of common value or starting point between us besides just DNA. I have spent years of nights soul searching to try to retrace the steps I took to preserve that bond, to try to understand, and I still can’t think of anything more I could have done. I’ve made the conscious choice to devote that energy and that striving and self reflection toward the relationship with my girls, to make sure it doesn’t end like that for us. My mom used to end every conversation that got too close to changing her mind with “well I’m old and I can’t change,” despite having changed over her life from a literal Berkeley hippie who only escaped a bad relationship due to an abortion that allowed her to have me, who has a daughter (my sister) who nearly DIED from an ectopic pregnancy, into a Catholic school teacher who gives all her money to organizations dedicated to removing that life saving choice from MY daughters while “protecting them from the horrible masks and doctors.”

I don’t know how many of you are parents, and I don’t intend this as gatekeeping or anything- but anything that threatens my girls health and happiness is something that will make me jump straight to nuke-from-orbit-to-be-sure fuckin A response. I’m sure there are those on the “other side” who feel that threat about trans people with their kids, and I can understand their freakouts- but just like my BIL, who would readily tell anyone how he had a loaded gun out (where his own daughter could find it) but the REAL threat was trans ideology indoctrination and some kind of sex traffickers using colored tape to mark cars with abductable children that were menacing our local park- they are scared of a FICTION. Fiction they wrote!!! I don’t know how to make peace with all that, is what I’m saying. So the peace I made for myself was to peace the fuck out of it. Am I wrong? Maybe. Idk. I’m numb to it anymore. Until scars are opened by things like this election. But this is my cross to bear now. And I don’t know a way forward for myself, to be what my girls need, other than to walk away from that, and to keep the rest of it at arm’s length or further away for as long as parenting is still my job.

In summary – I gotta go watch Blade 2 now. Thank you to all you in here helping us motherfuckers up this icy ass hill.
Crudnasty
November 7th, 2024 at 8:34 pm

Jeeze. Nobody needs to read all that. You’ll get bile and heart blood all over you. But thanks for letting me use this page to spleen. I gotta watch more movies to return my focus to the dojo’s true purpose. Those body snatchers reviews seem really prescient now, I should start there.
Bartel
November 7th, 2024 at 10:25 pm

Stay strong and somehow optimistic everybody! We will push through!
We always do!
JTS
November 7th, 2024 at 11:07 pm

I agree that it’s not good politics to tell Trump voters to their faces that they are pieces of shit. You shouldn’t even say it out loud, at least not where they can hear it, because Trump voters are very sensitive and insulting them only hardens them into even bigger pieces of shit and reduces the chance they might ever reform. Their leader is allowed to say whatever vitriolic thought that crosses his addled mind about anybody who opposes him, he’s allowed to call the supporters of his opponents scum and absolute garbage, that’s cool, his supporters love it actually, it gets them fired up — but if someone calls his supporters anything negative (deplorable, garbage, whatever) that’s an unacceptable breach of decorum that they can never get over, that’s why they actually have no choice but to support Trump, they can’t brook that can’t kind of negativity. That’s how Trump voters think, fair enough, they are dumb hypocrites, but if you’re the other side you still need to try to get them to vote for you out, or at least sit out, so you have to be smart about how you engage them. I agree with that. Don’t say that stuff out loud, it’s not effective, it’s not persuasive, it’s actually counterproductive. Opposition parties, especially, should try other tactics.

But just because you shouldn’t say something out loud doesn’t just make it obviously true. Trump is going to do a lot of damage to the country and a lot of damage to vulnerable people and the people who voted for him are complicit in that. They took an affirmative action to make it happen and they didn’t have to. Just because you’re a good brother and your family loves you doesn’t mean you’re not a piece of shit.
JTS
November 7th, 2024 at 11:08 pm

But just because you shouldn’t say something out loud doesn’t just mean it’s not obviously true***
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs
November 8th, 2024 at 1:01 am

I had yesterday off, so I was able to drink until I blacked out, then woke up and drank some more. That’s not a solution, though, and my liver can’t take 4 more years of drinking like I did under Trump 45 or during the pandemic. I have spent the last ten years falling apart in frustration with the world and myself. Well, it’s pretty obvious the world isn’t going to change at this point, at least not for the better. Time to focus on what I can change. I have been trying to watch more movies and write more, instead of half-watching youtube clips or old TV shows. I need to keep that up. But I need to start taking care of myself physically. Need to motivate myself so I can motivate my wife, need to be healthier because we sure aren’t going to have decent healthcare when the piper comes calling for years of poor living. Need to figure out my mental and emotional state and who I want to be. I kept waiting for the world to be a safer and more welcoming place, that’s not happening. I need to figure out if I have the courage to be myself despite that. So much of my life has been spent avoiding conflict or friction, for too long I confused complacency with comfort and now I find myself real fucking uncomfortable while bigots get louder and more comfortable every day. And I need to try and find a creative endeavor beyond just writing about others’ art.

I need to strive for excellence on my own, because no one else is going to motivate or reward it.

That said, we still need to think about and watch out for each other. I appreciate this community, and the words you all shared here (minus whatever was deleted before I arrived). We have to make sure we maintain our principles and decency and stick up for other people when we can.

Mr. Subtlety, I appreciate your efforts and the details you provided. Do you have any suggestions for finding our way into community activism and outreach beyond stumping for the party itself?
daniel
November 8th, 2024 at 1:17 am

@Miguel Hombre
“Anyone who claims that because they are not living in America that the situation in America ” will probably not effect me, except probably in some weird sneaky ways” is either a mega wealthy non – American citizen or delusional in the extreme. As America goes , so goes the world (unfortunately.)”

Hey man, I said “probably”. It’s totally possible that Trump’s presidency will fuck me in the ass hard. He certainly has a bigger chance of doing it now then on his first go around, that’s for sure. That’s way it would have been nice if you (and by you, I mean the American people) would have voted him out. Besides, I’m neighbours with a different crumbling “Evil Empire” that I need to be worried about.

@Handsome Dan
“The number of “progressive leftists” – let alone “socialists” – in the United States is minuscule compared to the broader population.”

Sure, it’s possible that the left in the US couldn’t fill a football stadium. But online, at least to me, they, and other anti-establishment types, ever since Russia Ukraine went hot in 2022, have been little loudmouths with dog shit hot takes and entitled bullshit about how the administration is not really doing it for them.

@Miguel Hombre
“Americans have to undertake mass civil non – violent protest – on inauguration day in 2025 there needs to be protests in every city in the country – millions and millions of people – and they need to protest every weekend.”

Ok, you go ahead and have fun with that. I’m probably not educated enough to be aware of the full win loss ratio for that sorta thing. But when I rack my brain for the amount of times the “true” left tried that sorta thing and actually succeed and made things better, I start getting pot-kettle-black vibes on criticizing the Democratic campaign.

@Mr. Subtlety
I get that the election was a gut punch, but I hope once things settle down you reconsider and continue your involvement in US politics. I’ll certainly feel much better knowing that Trump’s opposition is comprised of some responsible adults and not only online dreamers who wax poetically about a proletarian revolution.
Skani
November 8th, 2024 at 3:19 am

@Crudnasty, that probably would have done it for me, too, honestly. The Fauci firing squad shit. We have similar issues. My in-laws are anti-vax, and that was a whole thing. About 10 years ago they got a massive gun safe in their living room, full of guns (banana clips, all that shit). They literally had to get extra supports in their basement to ensure that it wouldn’t damage or fall through the floor. That was when we stopped allowing our kids (littler at that time) to do sleep-overs. We’ve set boundaries and come close to cutting ties, and it still could happen. That was not me on my high horse about being better than other people who don’t cut ties in general, because I think there are red lines. But not everybody is my in-laws. Not everybody is the caricature or your worst experience. There are persuadable voters, and not all (one-or-more-time) Trump voters perfectly match the caricature. Anyway, sorry about those awful experiences you had. I totally respect your choices there and think I would’ve done the same.

@JTS – For once, I agree with most of you are saying here, I just think dismissing people as “pieces of shit” for making misinformed or bad choices is the kind of thing that is counter-productive. I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Whoops! I guess I’m a piece of shit. I haven’t voted for a Republican since. Some people are malleable, and all of us have darker impulses or have lapses or make mistakes. It is amazing to me the selective empathy. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom I like, is a known serial womanizer and sexual harasser. Mike Tyson – convicted rapist. Snoop Dogg – known to have participated in a drive-by and been an actual pimp. Are they pieces of shit? I don’t think so. We make exceptions and excuses for people we “know” and like for other reasons, and in many cases, because they’ve changed (like I have vis a vis my regrettable George W. Bush vote). I don’t think Ice Cube is a piece of shit for going on a Tucker Carlson interview or being anti-vax, either. I think he’s just wrong and hopefully will realize it some day. People are not a monolith, and they can change. Many don’t, some do, but writing them all off serves no purpose.
Toxic
November 8th, 2024 at 6:39 am

My wife hoped she’d live long enough to vote for and see the election of the first female US president. At least she didn’t live long enough to see Trump win a 2nd time. Cold comfort I guess.
We’ll probably get the female French president in 2027, and she’s a fucking nazi. So at least my wife won’t have to see that either. It’s so crazy that so many people, given the choice of « do you want to vote for someone you don’t completely agree with and who won’t be able to fix all your problems, or do you want to get fucked in the ass with a red hot fireplace poker? », are like « well I’m tired of that lesser of two evils bullshit, maybe it’s time we all try that fireplace poker thing », or believe there’s a fence they can safely sit on.
BuzzFeedAldrin
November 8th, 2024 at 6:52 am

@Skani – ” Some people are malleable, and all of us have darker impulses or have lapses or make mistakes.”

This is why I focus my rage towards oppressive systems that harness our worst impulses for the dark side, not people. Cognitive dissonance is a uniquely human trait. We can hold several conflicting points of view in our heads and yet still somehow get dressed every morning. I mean, the founding fathers wrote “all men are created equal” while literally owning people!! Capitalism pushes us to make choices that benefit us in the immediate and more often than not, our base impulse wins out. It truly takes strength to go without for the greater good. Sadly, Louis C.K of all people laid this bare when he said “I have my beliefs but they’re just my beliefs. If they get in the way of what I want, fuck ’em!”
Glaive Robber
November 8th, 2024 at 8:05 am

It’s hard for me to look kindly on Trump voters. As Skani mentioned, some people really aren’t a piece of shit. But in some cases, he mentioned people who have repented, who have turned their lives around, who had provided positivity in the world. It’s not about sins, it’s about the actions following the sins. You deserve forgiveness if you ask for it. Even if it’s Mike Tyson, and you ask for it in particularly bizarre, colorful ways, you admit your faults and try to help people.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump built his whole brand off never showing remorse. Never retreat, never apologize, never admit faults. And I have such minimal respect for that. The man was proven to be a rapist, possible serial, definitely unrepentant. That deserves no respect. And supporting that? Used to be verboten. Still should be. I have NO fuckin’ respect for that.

Today, tomorrow, yesterday, I have NO problem telling a Donald Trump voter, “You shot yourself in the face, and you hit the rest of us too, you piece of shit.” NO problem doing that. None.
renfield
November 8th, 2024 at 8:12 am

I appreciate Mr. Subtlety’s perspective and candor here and I empathize with his righteous anger. (yes this is a diplomatic preamble to me highlighting some disagreements between us)

What people think of my position isn’t important, I guess, but nonetheless I just want to clarify that my position is not “Harris should have run a more left-wing campaign to appeal to leftists because that would have helped helped her win.” As I said, I think it’s likely there isn’t anything this campaign could have done to have won, and I feel like the specifics Mr. Subtlety elucidated put a lot of concrete data behind that.

I think the Dems should be more left wing because I think left wing solutions will actually help the world become a better place. I think it will deliver results that neutralize the creep of fascism. And I admit I really bristle and being told that the policies and platforms I believe will achieve this result are childish, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky bullshit and I’m just not pragmatic or informed enough to understand that the dems are actually doing everything they can and in fact in some ways *are* achieving the results I want.

Well let’s say that’s true, the party is doing everything right within the constraints of our political system’s reality. Does anybody really think the narrative they were selling was “We know things are unacceptable, we know you’re hurting, and we need to do so much more to turn things around, and the political constraints we’re working against are the GOP’s fault and need to be defeated”? Maybe that was the story that was being presented door to door, but it really more feels like the story being told at the national stage was to convince people that this deeply unpopular incumbent regime was doing a better job than we understood.

Sorry if I’m eroding any nuances here.
Crudnasty
November 8th, 2024 at 8:41 am

“deeply unpopular incumbent regime was doing a better job than we understood.”

Is this NOT generally the truth though? I get that anecdotally it may not apply to everyone, but I’m reading economists talk about how we are the strongest economy in the world again.

I go back to Skani’s point about the perspective that it’s “not Democrats fault for failing to win (it’s someone else’s fault for failing to be persuaded)”

If someone is presented a choice between mundane nuanced truth next to outlandish bias confirming lies, and that person excitedly picks the early confirmed lie- isn’t that a failure that should be condemned as such? I agree with (I think it was Mr. S who said, essentially) Democrats ran a political campaign based on policy, in the middle of a feelings based culture war election, and that’s why they lost. Doesn’t the electorate EARN that scorn, by choosing bullshit over reality, when every respectable source is pointing out the bullshit they are about to step in?

It might not be realpolitik advisable to respond to the electorate with the equivalent of “you dumb bitch, it’s a sailboat,” but isn’t it coddling and counter productive infantilizing to say “it’s ok, MAGAs, you were upset by the big words and graphs and broke America, but you dindunuffìn wrong, you didn’t know any better”?
Crudnasty
November 8th, 2024 at 8:43 am

*easily confirmed lie
BuzzFeedAldrin
November 8th, 2024 at 8:57 am

To clarify, no, trump supporters should not be coddled and, if you feel safe doing so, should be screamed at publicly, daily, forever, until the end of time. There is a lot of blood on their hands.
But, my perspective if we’re truly going to move society forward is to focus on the root cause of this hate and fear, not the individual assholes. You can kill the liar but you can’t kill the lie, etc. And that’s the cruel and oppressive economic and political systems we have. Reach out to those whose ears are open to change before trying to change the most far gone.
MIguel Hombre
November 8th, 2024 at 9:16 am

Daniel.

“Hey man, I said “probably”. It’s totally possible that Trump’s presidency will fuck me in the ass hard. He certainly has a bigger chance of doing it now then on his first go around, that’s for sure. That’s way it would have been nice if you (and by you, I mean the American people) would have voted him out. Besides, I’m neighbours with a different crumbling “Evil Empire” that I need to be worried about.”

I’m Canadian (and believe me I’m not trying to lecture,) in Canada we are about to elect in 2025 a version of JD Vance. It’s gonna get just as bad up here as down south. The premier of Alberta just appeased her evangelical base by introducing ‘health’ reforms that will basically kill gay/lesbian/trans/queer youth. Half of the provincial government in BC believe in chem trails. The federal conservative (Republican/rightwing) party that is probably going to win 85% of the seats in government in the next election is filled with 75% of members who are against women’s access to abortion.

““Americans have to undertake mass civil non – violent protest – on inauguration day in 2025 there needs to be protests in every city in the country – millions and millions of people – and they need to protest every weekend.”

Ok, you go ahead and have fun with that. I’m probably not educated enough to be aware of the full win loss ratio for that sorta thing. But when I rack my brain for the amount of times the “true” left tried that sorta thing and actually succeed and made things better, I start getting pot-kettle-black vibes on criticizing the Democratic campaign.”

Hey – it ain’t gonna be fun – to give two recent examples that most Vern readers should have some knowledge of – did black people have ‘fun’ in the 1950s and 1960s fighting for their civil rights? Nope – but they fought every day/weekend/month/year to get them. Do you think Malcolm X, MLK and John Lewis we’re having ‘fun’?

Women’s suffragate movements fought from 1880s to early 1900s in US and England – in England and Ireland for 2 years 1912 – 1914 they engaged in a bombing campaign and had to battle other women who headed up organizations opposed to women’s right.

Look at the American Indian Movement in the 1960s – 1970s.

I’m not talking about the ‘left’ I’m talking about working class Americans, educated American’s, union workers, teachers, doctors, railroad workers, Boeing employees, house wives, retail workers, Amazon workers – Americans from all classes/races/ethnic backgrounds etc., they have all seen their lives destroyed by the handiwork of both Democrats and Republicans for 50 years. It’s taken decades to get here – it’s going to take years to get out of it. And man it will not be fun.
Crudnasty
November 8th, 2024 at 9:24 am

But if you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, “how do we reach these kids?”

I’ve thought a lot about how the only way I believe anyone could “convert” my Catholic mom would be to convince her that trump is the literal antichrist. But she already named Obama as the antichrist a decade ago, so that’s a dead end. Do we just need to come up with “sexier lies” to seduce them into coming over to our side? That doesn’t seem like the answer, and I don’t know how you compete with a half century of embedded right wing lie machine anyway.

The unfortunate conclusion I’ve reached is that MAGAs will need to live through the actual results of their chosen policies to feel them firsthand. After all, they only decide abortion is a choice when they are faced with the choice. But the powers that be seem to have sanitized war to the point that we had a whole nother Viet Nam in the early 2000s and basically nobody cared this time. Will anyone even care if there’s another Holocaust as long as there are new tiktok dances? Current events in Gaza and the corresponding actions taken by the Muslim community in the election seem to show nothing actually matters to the American people anymore but what is literally in front of their faces one moment to the next. Feels like we could be living in a Cormac McCarthy story soon and half the country would actually love it because “at least I’m my own boss now.”
Crudnasty
November 8th, 2024 at 9:41 am

I should clarify that last response – plenty of people cared about stopping the War on Terror, I know people spent huge amounts of energy protesting and pushing against it, I don’t want to minimize or trivialize that. But it felt like it was split on the same tribal divide that affects everything else now. There was not the same unified national feeling of “this is fucked up” as seems evident from history during Viet Nam. The horrors seemed muted, and more easily swept under the national rug by aggressively lionizing the military to make the sacrifice of thousands of kids seem noble instead of a waste like the (seemingly, since I wasn’t there) prevailing opinion of Viet Nam. Maybe that’s just because people think there’s significance to the Middle East that doesn’t really translate to Asia.
VERN
November 8th, 2024 at 9:46 am

Skani, there just isn’t any contradiction between caring about democracy and having contempt for the people who voted to end the democracy. I understand getting mad alone doesn’t get us anywhere, but it’s fucking crazy not to be mad.
BuzzFeedAldrin
November 8th, 2024 at 9:58 am

@Crudnasty – But if you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, “how do we reach these kids?”

Through demonstration. This is where local action is critical. Most people have to see change to believe it’s possible. You can talk until you’re blue in the face but when someone sees material improvement to their day to day conditions through compassion, care, and collective action – there’s no going back.
Glaive Robber
November 8th, 2024 at 10:52 am

I think people get lost when they talk about the policies. If Trump voters actually paid attention to the Trump policies, they’d realize they were shooting themselves in the fucking face.

So what did Trump voters vote for? They voted for the Show, something Democrats can’t seem to understand. The took that “we go high” Michelle Obama thing to be the party line. And I get it, and I think that SHOULD be a winning message. I concur.

Here’s the thing: while the Democrats were ignoring the idea of putting on a show, they were ignoring a crucial fact:
The Trump Show SUCKS. It’s boring, repetitive, one-dimensional. Trump voters KNEW this. Even when they went to his bullshit rallies, they left halfway through his meandering speeches. That megaMAGAstar MSG rally a couple of weeks ago earned all those headlines, but halfway through his own speech, that audience was GONE.

Trump’s whole thing is being kind of an insult comic, a shit-talker. And no one has been willing to acknowledge that he SUCKS as an insult comic, and he’s getting way worse with age. He kept throwing bait out there, and even Kamala Harris, who is sort of acerbic, wouldn’t take it. I hold fast to the idea that the Democrats needed someone who grabbed that bait and, with ease, threw it right back in this guy’s face. I think that honestly would be all it takes. Find someone with charisma and with class who could EASILY volley with a Republican candidate who was at the bottom of your local Improv Class’s depth chart. A guy like Donald Trump having to deal with someone who can actually deliver a real, honest to god insult? You’d watch him fall apart in real time, dismantling the male worship of this composure-free pig.

Just talk shit to his face. You could be G-Rated and still do it. Just shake him. Remind everyone of who he is — a scared boy.
The Democrats insisted “that’s not us.” And that’s how you lose.
Skani
November 8th, 2024 at 10:53 am

Vern, your perception is that these people “voted to end the democracy.” That is not their interpretation or my interpretation for that matter: plenty of New York Times analyses and elsewhere digging into why voters voted how they did. When I vote Democrat, it’s not because I’m “voting to support baby-killing” or because I’m a “war-monger who wants to see us get into WWIII with Russia,” or whatever other uncharitable thing a person on the other side would say. I vote Democrat because they make the most sense to me, all things considered, and it’s a lot of things to consider, and I honestly only consider some of them and as best I can.

You’re getting hung up on the semantics of contradiction. This isn’t Logic 101. A healthy American democracy requires not only peaceful transfer of power and acceptance of election results, it requires American citizens who understand that there are lots of issues and complexities, that people have very different configurations of values and issues and reasons for doing what they do, and that our system is founded on the idea that good ideas and effective leaders and communicators that are able to win the allegiance of a broad majority of Americans are the ones who will and should win. Contempt for the electorate and blaming the electorate for a particular party or candidate’s failure is anti-democratic.

Retreating further and further into a self-selected group of high-fiving dittoheads and becoming increasingly contemptuous of anyone who is culturally moderate or conservative (a far larger group than has ever been culturally progressive) is anti-democratic and is also doomed to failure. It’s the reverse Fox-News-ification of the Democratic party. You can have every belief and political issue position you want, and I probably share most of them. It’s the broad-based contempt and homogeneization of all people based on a single behavior or failure to agree with you on whatever issue is important to you but less so to them or they see differently. It does not resolve conflict or lead to compromise, which is the problem.
VERN
November 8th, 2024 at 11:11 am

I don’t disagree with all of that Skani, and I know you’re staying calm and reasonable and that’s good. But you’re partaking in the exact sort of pussyfooting around trying to pretend what’s happening must not actually be happening that got us here. He has promised what he will do, including “mass deportation” of immigrants including legal ones, dismissing the numerous cases against him, prosecuting his enemies, turning the military against protesters, I can’t even remember all of them. He talks about putting Lynne Cheney in front of a firing squad, Fox News is already talking about executing the prosecutors who did their job of trying to hold him accountable but couldn’t in our broken system. Authoritarianism, tyranny and revenge is his campaign platform and frankly it wouldn’t have had to be – anyone paying even vague half-hearted attention to his first term would know this was the agenda if he was pretending otherwise. Yes, of course they voted to end democracy. If they didn’t look to see what it said on the button they still pushed it. And I pray that a couple years from now we can laugh at how overblown my reaction was, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
JTS
November 8th, 2024 at 11:23 am

Sounds like it’s not right to have contempt for anyone ever for any reason then. Doesn’t matter what heinous shit they believe in or did, they had reasons that made sense to them, and it’s solipsistic not to consider that. Maybe they even have brothers who love them, even.
emteem
November 8th, 2024 at 11:42 am

What a terrible week to not be a terrible person.
Crudnasty
November 8th, 2024 at 11:44 am

JTS- I think it’s a valid point Skani makes, and worth considering. And I say this as someone who has cut ties with his entire family over this shit. It is simply not possible for me to view a maga without feeling the most burning contempt and revulsion a human could feel (short of that of a parent who actually lost a child to this) and if someone mustered up an armed resistance that was intended to go to war against this shit, I’d join it and readily kill people with the same nonchalance as any GI in Bastogne. I don’t feel any kinship or even much basic empathy with these people, after this. But I need to hear the critique and the challenge to that perspective, all the same, no matter how much I might feel it could just be pussyfooting or cynicism. I know you’re pushing back just the same on those views. I somehow agree with you both, just not sure what the correct answer is, or if there even is a correct answer here.
VERN
November 8th, 2024 at 12:45 pm

Also it just really infuriates me that when this reprehensible movement was resoundingly defeated four years ago we were told (including by you, I believe, Skani) that it was of utmost importance for us to understand why they felt the way they did. Now that they’ve won again and any hope of any progressive change in our lifetimes is squashed by a corrupt extreme right Supreme Court, it’s once again on us to understand their feelings. And one of the feelings we hear about is that they’re mad that WE care about the feelings of minorities, including a specific tiny one they’ve run on demonizing and drafting cruel laws against.

No columnist, no pundit, no politician, and no Skani has ever told them it was important to understand where we were coming from. Why we don’t want our neighbors to be thrown out of the country, why we think slavery was bad, why we think it’s more important for children to have heads than for them to have military grade weapons, why we actually know (or are) trans people and it’s not a big fucking deal to just let people be free to live their lives the way they want to without us bothering them. We don’t matter, we never matter, it’s also offensive that we said Black lives mattered. We’re always the problem, we failed to take the time to understand and admire these noble savages, who have no choice but to join a violent hate movement against everything we value.

I think your instinct is that if we understand them we can get through to them. We understand them. We can’t get through to them. They’ll be crushed by their strong man along with the rest of us, and if we’re still around that will be our fault too. And if we survive it and things get better it will be on us to forgive and pardon and forget. Always on us.

This has been my bad attitude for the day, I’ll try to cheer up next week. I got Godzilla reviews to write and shit.
Miguel Hombre
November 8th, 2024 at 1:03 pm

The most visceral moment of anger and hate I’ve felt for many years (15+ years) was last spring. I had seen my best friend of nearly 30 years and her family a few weeks before, and I was in a store and someone started going off about trans people. My best friend has 2 kids – including a trans teenager. They are one of the loveliest, kindest, most thoughtful humans I know – if at 16 I was as intelligent and mature I would haven’t believed it – (they have chosen to call themselves Argent (Spanish for silver.) The vileness from the person in the store was truly shocking – I restrained myself somewhat but still had words – and I asked him (a white man in his sixties) if he even knew a trans person – of course not. For so many of them that is such a big issue – they don’t even know personally any of the people their hatred is harming (and worse.)

It’s like watching 4 wealthy white people on the news discuss Canada’s native/indigenous people’s concerns – do they even know a indigenous Canadian?

There was an issue about an intersex athlete at the Olympics in the summer (drawing the usual hateful reactions from the usual twitter verse formerly beloved children’s book author and the like.) I was moved by the compassion of one of the athletics official who began his statement by reminding everyone that they were discussing a human being first and foremost.

I’m always struck by the ease with which people can so quickly reduce someone to less than human – truly the darkest aspect of human nature in some.
psychic_hits
November 8th, 2024 at 2:00 pm

Glaive Robber, while I agree with your dim view of the Republicans’ idea of entertainment– Hulk Hogan rips his shirt off at the RNC and the media frames it like it’s the fucking Gettysburg Address– the bummer for me is that, for once in my life, I feel like the Democrats DID get the memo about The Show this time. They were actually awake at the wheel. Enough so that they knew to lean into the whole Brat Summer thing, which blew my fucking mind and, regardless of electoral outcome, should be enshrined as a historic moment of in-touch-ness for their notoriously unable-to-connect party. And did you watch the debate? Harris did what voters have either wanted or needed to see for 8 years: she actually stood up to Trump, over and over again, and said right to his face exactly all of the things that a reasonable, thinking, aware individual would have to say to him by now. They didn’t do a perfect job of it, but they took a serious swing, connected, and drove it into the outfield (or whatever happens in baseball, I’m not a sports guy). And it STILL did nothing.
jojo
November 8th, 2024 at 2:38 pm

As I said, I think it’s likely there isn’t anything this campaign could have done to have won, and I feel like the specifics Mr. Subtlety elucidated put a lot of concrete data behind that.

What an very odd statement. Because pavement was pounded and doors knocked? As if the trump campaign didn’t pound pavement and knock on doors? The Chase Oliver campaign pounded pavement and knocked on doors in hopes they’d get 3% of the vote this time.

I called the campaign bewildering. A certain New England senator called it “Disastrous”. I figure he knows more than me.

Look, I think we all can agree that only a very dumb population would make Donald Trump their leader TWICE. Perhaps they’re SO dumb that they don’t care about transgendered sports, immigration policies, who can own what gun, Israel, etc. Perhaps their primary concern is as SIMPLE as “My rent is 60% higher since Biden took office and my wage is 15% higher. I am STRUGGLING, I am BROKE, I am TIRED, and I am FRIGHTENED. What are you going to do about this????”

And the vice president of this regime says “It’s going great. We will stay the course”

Yes, I can imagine a scenario where she could of won.
Barbauld
November 8th, 2024 at 3:05 pm

I’ve read a shitload of these reviews, enough that I feel like a member of the community, but have never posted.

Skani, I want to say how much I appreciate this perspective. I’m a diehard liberal Democrat and I can say I’ve never once voted for a Republican. I found 2004 absolutely gutting. 2016 the same.

This one hurts. But this time, I feel like as a liberal Democrat with some friends who aren’t, I have a better perspective or understanding of how we failed strategically. In 2004, I felt like Kerry ran a good campaign against an insane administration and we lost because American were terrified — I think Americans corrected that in 2008 but with absolutely disastrous human cost in the meantime. In 2016, I think we ran a candidate that fairly or unfairly (I think mostly unfairly, but you have to take the voters where they are) was hated generally more than most democratic nominees are and we had an election that wasn’t taken seriously enough writ large with absolutely disastrous consequences.

This time though, it seems clear to me what happened. I have a few good friends who are not Democrats (although not that many despite living in a deep red state, we all live in bubbles). One of my best friends has not and would never vote for Trump but has fairly idiosyncratic political views and is a very useful corrective for me when I am trying to assess were regular people who are into politics are.

He absolutely hates anything he perceives as woke. Hates it. It drives him crazy. He feels it is fundamentally dishonest. He thinks Trump is a total piece of shit but liberals do not deserve to win either. That they (liberals) try to gaslight reality. He lives in a dense urban city that he loves and hates it when he is told crime is down because he sees stores close and everything is in locked down on CVS. He sees homeless people get more aggressive as local ordinances aren’t enforced as intensely as they used to be. He is absolutely livid at Democrats for in his mind covering up for Biden being totally senile.

I think I used to pooh-pooh these critiques. More than I do now, that’s for sure. But I think there’s legitimately something real here. You can see the pushback in San Francisco, GrowSF endorsed candidates out performing. The criminal referendums in California are saying something too. There’s that ridiculous thing twitter 20,000,000 missing votes and anyone who is in the know realizes this is just California being late to count their votes. But why is it their late to count their votes? What is happening in Democratic governance that is failing? Why is everyone moving out of California to go to Texas and Florida? Why can’t we build housing? Hell, if this continues just from a straight up House/electoral college perspective it’s going to be a problem.

I think Mrs. Harris ran a pretty solid campaign given the circumstances. I may personally grumble that she could have done more media or thrown Biden under the bus more (even though I agree the Biden economic policies implemented have been excellent) but these are quibbles. She ran a tactically sound campaign.

The problem I think is one of broad left culture. I don’t disagree with anyone complaining about how any reasonable comparison of Trump to any Democrat is a slam dunk. But clearly most of these non political people don’t see it that way. They look at BLM and think riots or people supporting Hamas and equate that with the Democratic party even though these are small activist communities. The feel like they’re constantly being hectored about being racist and sexist – and to what end? What are these fuckin’ liberals doing – really doing to change people’s lives?

I personally think this is totally unfair. But how much does that matter? You have to win to effect change. And if I really value equity and a pluralist society and I want fairness, the question must be asked, how much has BLM really helped black people mitigate police violence?

The broader point that I think you are making which I agree with is that without realizing it we have shrunk our tent since 2016. Mrs. Clinton’s quote about deplorables was taken out of context and was terribly unfair, but I think is a much more accurate way of how we view Trump supporters now. I think we have to reckon with how we run our institutions in blue states and how we see our fellow citizens if we want to be relevant politically which I think we can do. Venting spleens is necessary. But we have to live this country where Trump got the majority of American voters. I just don’t believe people can’t be convinced, and while potentially ruinous, I’d be surprised if Trump manages to fuck the country up as badly as our old pal W.

This is long and rambling but I think my point is that I really appreciate your spirit Skani, and I think this is the spirit we are going to need to have in order to win moving forward. And I think we will.
Skani
November 8th, 2024 at 5:15 pm

I appreciate all the comments.

Vern, I’m well-versed in all of Trump’s stuff. I am not defending Trump, sanewashing Trump, both-sides-ing Trump, or any other thing. And I never have, nor have I suggested that the next four years are going to be good from a policy standpoint. Voting for Trump is a bad decision, the wrong decision, and I believe that people who vote for him are misguided. The consequences could well be dire. No one hear is denying or pussyfooting about that.

There are gradations of Trump supporter — from the rabid true believer January 6-er, to the tepid support, to people who just don’t pay much attention and are cross-pressured voters who are mixed up. Some of them are true creeps, and not all of them are. Not all Trump voters are beyond hope, and concluding that they are beyond hope is to despair of democracy itself. This is just not consistent with the actual way power has oscillated back and forth thermostatically over the last 30 years: America elected W. Bush to a second term, then it elected Obama to two terms, then it elected Trump, then it through his ass out, and on we go. Trump is very Nixonian. Nixon was very Trumpian. History rhymes.

JTS, you can have contempt for whomever you want. I have contempt for Trump himself, and I have contempt for many of his supporters. Others I’m just very frustrated with. “Very frustrated with” is about the most positive thing I can say about any Trump supporter as pertains to their support for Trump. But I don’t think it is constructive or grounded it reality to have contempt for an entire monolith of people you do not know or deciding you know them based on what your particular media sources tell you about them.

All the best.
Jules
November 8th, 2024 at 7:45 pm

Yeah, it’s just horrible. The most obviously evil, vain and imbecilic person ever to run for president won the fucking popular vote this time. It like an actual majority of our countrymen are infected by a zombie plague—reduced to brainless, bloodthirsty monsters.

There’s also no getting around it: this country may never be willing to elect a woman president, and if it ever happens it’s decades away. Even more despairing is that that isn’t even entirely due to shitty men (although there are plenty of those), a depressing amount of women are indifferent to or even put off by a female presidential candidate. I don’t expect people to vote for their “own kind” automatically, but the most misogynistic, sexually depraved candidate of all time has now soundly defeated the first two women to run as major party nominees, and the motherfucker somehow got there with millions of votes from women too. It’s just unbelievable.

The fucking guy is a corrupter. It’s like the end of the Dark Knight but this time the people on the commuter ferry gleefully pushed the button. If I were religious I’d be be certain he was the antichrist. Fuck him. There is no fate that is too awful for him to suffer.
renfield
November 8th, 2024 at 8:49 pm

@Crudnasty Just to put a some contour behind my assertion that regardless of whatever graphs an economist can point to, people are not morons to think that shit is tough out there:

-78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
-Average rent is higher than minimum wage will afford you in all 50 states
-Average cost of a hospital stay is $30,000
-Average age for buying a house is 38, the highest ever
-The number of people who experienced homelessness rose by 23% from 2019-2023, to an all time record high

Now, *every single one of these items is the fault of right wing politics*, and every single one of them is better addressed by the Dem’s more-centrist-than-I’d-like policy than the absolute horror show that is coming. And it’s almost impossible to not feel the utmost contempt for somebody dumb enough to fall for the GOP’s scam and believe that it’s the fault of immigrants, or Woke, or whatever. Especially when they’re obviously the ones pressing down on the gas to make it all much, much worse.

But I still think there’s too much of Hillary’s “America is already great” attitude among Dem leadership, and it doesn’t address how shitty things are. And I’m not trying to say it explains or excuses why so many Americans are fucking nazis, but it may help explain why so many people have just completely checked out of politics and don’t see any hope offered by either party.
Karlos
November 9th, 2024 at 6:44 am

I don’t really post online anymore but I just wanted to say that mt heart is, like yours, utterly broken.

I’m trying to think of something hopeful to say but right now the words just won’t come.

All we can do is keep ourselves – don’t give in to fear, hatred and ignorance. Don’t become apathetic, either.

Just keep on being awesome, keep being positive and
Keep on loving what you love.

The sun will still rise tomorrow.

Look after yourselves, guys. Hopefully, this shit is fixable and the world will finally wake up to what’s going on.
VERN
November 9th, 2024 at 3:17 pm

Skani – Thanks for taking my very negative post lightly, I appreciate that.

Renfield – Very well put.

Karlos – Good to hear from you, thanks for checking in.
Skani
November 9th, 2024 at 6:19 pm

Oh, thanks, sensei. You are well within your rights to be angry and frightened, and it was not my intent to minimize the feelings, though that may have been the effect. Sorry for anything that was insensitive or “above it all,” or whatever. This guy’s bad news, and there’s a darkness that gets hold of anybody who moves to close into his orbit, and that is troubling to say the least. I also believe he is beatable, and I think there will be blowback when and if he overreaches. So, I am just not sold on the idea that the honeymoon will last or that the American public will go gently into the good night of abandoning free and fair elections, but it’s possible, and it’s not good that we’re even thinking that’s a live possibility. I also stand by my criticisms of the Democratic party and what I consider some of the overreaches of progressive online/media/academic culture stand, which I do think played a significant role in what happened, even if there really is no excuse for picking this fucking guy.
Franchise Fred
November 10th, 2024 at 10:51 am

Vern, I also noticed that phenomenon where it seems to always be the responsibility of the people who disagree to reach out and understand the other parties. No matter who is in charge or what’s happening. I would even say it goes back to the 2000/04 elections vs 08/12. I am theoretically in favor of having difficult conversations for the sake of progress, education and empathy but it’s hard not to trust my gut when I see people acting in bad faith.

I had one experience online I think 2018 after Parkland. Someone said the libs refuse to understand us so I said ok I’m liberal and I want to have this discussion. I will hear you out. He told me he was afraid of losing guns and having no protection and several other things. So I said ok I hear you’re concerned about x, y and Z. Have I got that right?

When he confirmed I asked now can I share why I support reforms? He literally said “No, I already know you liberals want to take our guns” and several other assumptions. So there you go, in real time. I understand this is an extreme example of a stranger online but it has become challenging to imagine how I can be responsible for building bridges with people who don’t want to meet not even halfway, not even 1/3 or 1/4 way.

I hope Skani is right that most of the voters didn’t choose for such extreme reasons. I still find it hard to reconcile how they think these policies will benefit them given the track record.
Skani
November 10th, 2024 at 11:39 am

Seeing if these links go through

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/why-trump-reasons-11-8/ (liberal pollster)
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-shattering-of-the-democratic (Democratic author, author of The Emerging Democratic Majority)
Skani
November 10th, 2024 at 12:06 pm

The thing is that, this is not like Mom is telling you that you need to be nice to your shithead brother because it’s the nice thing to do. Like, there is no parental authority figure here telling you what you need to do to be bigger man or a nice boy, there is reality telling you that you are losing and what the definition of insanity is.

It’s much more realpolitik and self-interest than that: Does the Democratic party want to win? The secrete to winning is not converting hardcorde, dyed-in-the-wool Trump shitheads to be BLM activists, it’s about winning enough people. There just are swing voters, and there just are Obama-to-Trump and Trump-to-Biden, and Trump-to-Biden-back-to-Trump voters. And there are low-propensity voters or first-time voters. If the electorate was permanently out of reach, you would not see power change hands the way it has, and you would not see these sorts of patterns. If every voter matched the caricature, states like Ohio (J.D. Vance) and Missouri (Josh Hawley) would not be voting to protect abortion rights.

This is now a few years old (so, don’t trust every detail as still accurate), but it shows you the diversity within coalitions (to say nothing of true swing voters or non-voters):
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/the-republican-coalition/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/the-democratic-coalition/

The point is that you need to understand which of your issues actually land with the electorate. And, of course, it’s not just about issues. It’s about candidate charisma and communication skill, thermostatic public opinion, and various aspects of execution. And it’s also a long game. Sherrod Brown won Ohio (my home state) in 2018 by a massive-by-today’s-standards 7%, and the state passed the law protecting abortion in 2023. It’s simply not the case that these places are utterly lost, but they certainly are being lost as the Democratic brand becomes more and more toxic, because non-college-educated people in general, non-colleged-educated men in particular, and those in the ~$30-100K/year household income range are too many Americans to lose, and those people tend to have less progressive and more “traditional” type values on issues like immigration, racism and racial justice issues, trans issues, machismo, work (work as job vs work as profession), etc. The Democratic party has to tack aggressively to the cultural “normie” center in its image (if not its policies) in a lot of ways and in a sustained fashion to win, other things beinq equal (meaning other factors are: is the economy good, is unemployment low, are prices low, are taxes low, is gas cheap, does the candidate seem likeable or at least authentic).

Obviously, Trump does not check all of those boxes in that last sentence either, but he has the advantage that racial depolarization is happening, educational polarization is accelerating, and there are fewer college-educated people (and far fewer highly culturally progressive people) than non-college-educated and/or culturally moderate-to-conservative people.
Franchise Fred
November 10th, 2024 at 5:54 pm

Oh I definitely blame the Dems for losing this. And having done political advocacy in a Democratic state I am none too fond of Dem politicians (tho my new congresswoman is good.)

That’s above my pay grade and I can’t fix the party. I’m just focused on what more am I supposed to do to make the people in power feel better? You won! Your guy is in! Nothing I can do about it.
Kevin Holsinger
November 11th, 2024 at 2:02 am

Morning, Vern.
I only just got here (I check in on Mondays), but here’s what I can offer: there’s nothing wrong with taking time for sadness, fear, or anger. Just make sure to move past them at some point. Most importantly, use this nightmare that over 70 million of us inflicted upon not just the rest of us, but themselves as well, to inspire you to be a better person. Grow wiser, grow stronger.
Just don’t hook up with Liam Neeson and a bunch of ninjas in the mountains of Asia. They’re not the good guys either.
Best to you and your loved ones.
Skani
November 11th, 2024 at 5:50 am

Honestly, Fred, there is not much you can do personally that is going to move the needle. As I said, I give money sometimes, I put the lawn signs out. I talk to Trumpies in my extended family*, I try to advocate for this viewpoint here to magnify my very, very limited influence the best I know how. I think the main thing you can do is to try to present as a reasonable and kind person and to just pick your battles as far as arguments. When I see people foaming at the mouth online, and both the content and the tone of the message just feels like it might has well have been an e-mail chain letter “TRUMP BAD!!! EVERYTHING SCARY!!! WORLD ENDING!!! ***ALL*** TRUMP VOTERS AND PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME HOPELESS IRREDEEMABLE SHITHEADS” — that is counter-productive if anyone in your audience is in one of these swing voter, on the fence spaces, because you’ve essentially encouraged them to polarize. You’ve told them that they are irredeemable and under no circumstances welcome to engage with you or be a part of your community, or if they do, they should be in the closet. Over time, the cognitive dissonance is going to lead to one of a handful of outcomes, but a common one is to polarize against you and really commit themselves to actually becoming what you said they were in the first place, i.e., “Fine, you obviously think I’m a hopeless and idiotic shithead, I will go over there with those guys who validate some of my intuitions and accept me as a human being.” People start off Trump-curious or “woke”-skeptical, and over time, through experience, they polarize further away from any kind of “center-right / center-left” or generally muddled swing voter positiion to a more right position. By and large, I suspect this is what has happened with Kaplan, though he might have been hardcore to begin with. This does not mean you cannot take a stand for your positions or that you have to hide them, it’s really more about timing, frequency, stridency, and whether you leave any room for others to (for now) disagree and still be within the circle of acceptable interlocutor. As long as I am in relationship with people like this and staying in relationship with them and advocating formy views and sharing my convicition that they are wrong on this point, they are less able to pain “my side” with their stereotypes and propaganda. There is a lot of research on this by Matthew Levendusky and Anna Krupnikov that you are free to google or not.

Also, these issues are complex and they unfold over time. Let me give you an example. When Barack Obama took office, he opposed gay marriage. He did not lead on the issue. Now gay marriage is broadly accepted, and it is now the normie, center position to support gay rights. The center moves, just not always at your pace. My older brother supports trans rights and will call you the gender you identify is. He is just completely confounded and aggreived specifically by “they/them” pronouns. I know, it’s fucking stupid. He also supports gay rights. It just takes time for people to catch up with what’s going on. By today’s standards, 2008 Barack Obama is a fucking homophobe piece of shit, just like my older broth is a fucking transphobe piece of shit. These issues are a work in progress. You don’t have to stop advocating for your viewpoint, but the world takes time to catch up. And, yes, people suffer and die in the meantime. That sucks. Becoming more and more angry and condemnatory and exclusionary of people who disagree with you on the finest slices of all these issues — of which there are many — does not accelerate change. Being level-headed, kind, and stating your piece firmly while building bridges does when it comes to progressive ideas that are pushing the envelope. The gay rights thing broke through suddenly, kind of all-at-once, but it was a long, long campaign (look how long from even the ELLEN thing to gay marriage happening). My dumbass brother supports gay marriage and basic trans rights but has pronouns derangement syndrome for whatever reason. It will be a process, but I’m not cutting ties or haranguing him about it. We just talk about it every now and then, and I try to represent the other side. I wish it happened faster, and it does happen faster now than in the past I think. But it doesn’t happen over night.

Anyway, I’m way beyond rambling right now, but everything gets so flattened out, and I’m not trying to say this is how the world should be, I’m just trying to say how it is as I understand it.

*again, with respect to Crudnasty’s case and others like it, if such people are truly abusive just monstrous assholes, you are under no obligation to stay in dialogue or relationship with them.
Da Keys!
November 11th, 2024 at 10:01 am

Hi everyone. I’ve been in rage mode for the past week, ever since finding out what the election results were. My first online words were ‘Fuck this country’, because millions of my fellow countrymen decided that enabling the shitty behavior of a bunch of shitty men was the way to go. Enabling everything I’d been taught was unacceptable from a young age. My religion tells me to love everyone, regardless, but how am I supposed to love people who just co-signed on all the bigotry, injustice, and all the worst qualities this country has to offer? Not to mention how it’s going to affect not only a lot of people here in America, but elsewhere across the world…The Ukrainians are going to have a much tougher fight with our incoming president being a huge Putin fanboy. It’s going to be worse for the Palestinians in Gaza. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve been hating these millions of Trump voters despite all the positive things I’m supposed to stand for. But I’m not so far gone that I wasn’t looking for reasons not to hate all these millions of people. The women that voted for a rapist. The people of color who voted for a racist. The Christians who turn up in church every Sunday who voted for one of the most ungodly men who ever sat in the White House. The less fortunate people who voted for a rich man who wants nothing to do with them, except for providing him money, cheers and applause.

This particular discussion thread has been one of the places I’ve been going to, so I could find it in me to stop letting my rage and disgust feed that desire to hate them. As Skani just alluded to, I had all the attitude of “TRUMP BAD!!! EVERYTHING SCARY!!! WORLD ENDING!!! ***ALL*** TRUMP VOTERS AND PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME HOPELESS IRREDEEMABLE SHITHEADS”. But I’ve been following along with all the dialogue that’s been happening here, and I feel like I’ve turned a corner today. I’m still mad that a lot of people just enabled a lot of vile crap to happen over the next four years, but I finally found it in me to turn off that hate. I don’t know that I could’ve or would’ve done it, at least this soon, without a lot of the things that got said in this thread. So I just want to say THANK YOU, for helping me find what I’d been looking for. We have a great community here, and you guys have made a difference. I can get started on moving forward with the sentiments offered above by Skani, Kevin Holsinger, Karlos, Buzzfeed Aldrin, and so many more of you.
Franchise Fred
November 11th, 2024 at 10:36 am

Thank you, Skani. I’m definitely staying out of the online space, though I shared one of severs attempts to connect in that forum. It’s funny seeing people realize social media is poison, only took 15 years. And it’s surely worse under Musk but it was always a big lie meant to line the pockets of Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. Even when people were having fun posting to their circles it was about fueling rage spirals, rude reply guys and seeking validation that will never come that way. Glad blue sky seems to be good but I’m happy for this to be my “done with social media” point. I’ll check in occasionally for the people I met there.

One thing that has markedly changed for me is in 2016 I was inspired to get out and protest. I hoped it could be like the 60s again but it wasn’t. I’ve realized why. None of those protests were organized. (Watch Rustin or Shirley and see how the Civil Rights movement had a plan and leadership). The last decade has largely been memes where people go take selfies to show their support. And they jump from cause to cause, hence the memefication of social activism. I’m sure many believe in the causes and supported whatever was available but I no longer have hope in a protest movement. Perhaps this time it will be more organized with clear demands and objectives. (Yes I agree “cops stop killing people” is a good cause but as your comments suggest it has to be more specific than that. What step 1 reform are we talking?) plus I have done hands on political activism which totally burned me out even though we succeeded. Plus now it would be crowds of people in an ongoing pandemic. I still mask when I go to the movies!

So perhaps I have already done what I can in my field (entertainment journalism) and stepped up when I heard the call. I can still use my platform to support good projects and artists. I’ve always believed in being the change you wish to see. And that’s a good reminder when people are saying “you have to do more to understand me,” well, a lot of people are going to demand I do a lot of things. I can only be a beacon of kindness. And another thing therapy is teaching me is I don’t have infinite reserves so sometimes I need to recharge so I can be that.

All this to say 2024 is different than 2016. I’ll figure it out and I’ve learned some of what did and didn’t work back then. All were worthwhile attempts but I’m not starting from zero I guess. There are still movies to see so I’ll start there.
Aktion Figure
November 11th, 2024 at 12:07 pm

I dunno. I’m not what I would consider a purely rational, thinking creature. So my input feels small. However, the handwringing over “failure” seems to lampshade the pure fact that we, as a democracy, haven’t moved beyond simple material worth. If you are poor, you are poor. If you aren’t poor you’re worthy. The poor buy into this narrative and the “worthy” don’t even know how or why they SHOULD want any change. We side-eye our neighbors, wishing like Hell they’d be more “like us, the good ones”. While they do the same from the other side of the fence.

The “poor” aren’t ever given, nor have they ever gotten a fair share of the stick in this nation.
daniel
November 12th, 2024 at 5:56 am

@renfield
“Does anybody really think the narrative they were selling was “We know things are unacceptable, we know you’re hurting, and we need to do so much more to turn things around, and the political constraints we’re working against are the GOP’s fault and need to be defeated”? Maybe that was the story that was being presented door to door, but it really more feels like the story being told at the national stage was to convince people that this deeply unpopular incumbent regime was doing a better job than we understood.”
“But I still think there’s too much of Hillary’s “America is already great” attitude among Dem leadership, and it doesn’t address how shitty things are.”

Nah, bro, I do think that what you’re saying is stupid and unpragmatic, and that many of you don’t realise how good you had it. American lefties often have some weird vision of Europe as a land of cool communist/post-communist politicians, universal health care, and multi-party systems. I have all of those things in my country, but none of them really work that well. Our abortion law was changed four years ago because of our multi-party system. We had a restrictive conservative abortion law that became even more restrictive, because our right wing government started pandering to a smaller, even more right wing party to win an election. I generally live in a country that’s not unlike one of your backwards red states with not a lot of chance for progressive reform. And now, with Trump, if he neuters NATO and Putin continues his special operation, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, that in a few years, I’ll be living in an actual war zone.

Not that long ago, our last conservative government got voted out, but not because everybody realised how unprogressive they are, but because after the pandemic, and economic complications that came after the Russia-Ukraine war sanctions, the prices and inflation was so bad that there was no chance of keeping the voters happy. I imagine something similar happened with the Dems in your election. Currently, our right wingers are pretty stoked for Trump, because last time around they had a decent relationship with him, and they can present him to the voter as a powerful Western ally. Security concerns and having good connections to the West will probably be important in the next election cycle. Now I have zero faith that our politicians are capable enough to have some successful collab with Trump, but I gotta tell you, if that somehow happens, and my country will be secure because of that, then I’m gonna sleep like a baby, in my bed, in my shithole, little Eastern European country, knowing full well that you had a perfectly fine alternative for the orange, reality show baboon, but you were still pooh-pooing it.
?
November 12th, 2024 at 8:25 am

Says a whole lot that not one person here has brought up rising antisemitism on the Left. The party that loves calling others Nazis.

There’s one above who called out rapper Ice Cube for being anti-vaxxer but not one word about how he openly hates Jews. Says pretty much everything.

Vern did not and will continue not to blow up over every little thing Trump does but kept his mouth shut during the October 7 massacre and has since started reviewing Pakistan movie using very specific languange.

But I guess Trump won because he and his voters are evil and dumb people.
Crudnasty
November 12th, 2024 at 9:53 am

And yet ? has no problem with the actual Nazi flags being displayed by actual Nazis at Diaper Don rallies and marches. But oh no! Vern reviewed a Palestinian film and called out the ongoing genocide being committed by the government of Israel as bad. That’s unforgivable!

Shove that shit right back up your asshole where it came from, homie. Speaking of dumb, evil people. FFS.
Miguel Hombre
November 12th, 2024 at 2:15 pm

? –

anyone who seeks to couch a debate/comment/understanding of the ongoing atrocities in Gaza by couching everything as starting/beginning on October 7, 2023 is so intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt that their opinion becomes ludicrous.

The 1917 British Balfour Declaration was clearly understood by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour himself (and his government) “was open about the fact that the plan was to be supported regardless of the views of those who lived there (Palestine.)” ‘The Plan’ was the euphemism meaning the enforced removal of Palestinians in favour of Jewish settlement. Balfour said “whatever deference should be paid to the views of those who live there, the powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them. That’s government obfuscation saying – the Palestinians already live there, who know that, were going to ignore that and them and force them out by whatever means necessary. That was a hundred years ago.

In 1930 David Ben-Gurion (Israels first prime Minister in 1948) said of the plan for the Palestinians and Gaza/Palestine (using the euphemism of ‘transfer’ to cover for enforced removal from their homelands) – “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral about it.” In other words whatever means we use to get the Palestiians out is fine.

If vern thoughtfully, with nuance and intelligence makes impassioned, thoughtful statements about a move/peoples/ situation, good for him.

And as for the left/Democrats – I firmly believe that Biden?Harris and their government have been immorally/illegally funding/arming and providing diplomatic cover for Israeli and their genocidal war in Gaza – and condemn them as well.
VERN
November 12th, 2024 at 6:47 pm

Reviewing a handful of movies from a Palestinian director feels like such a pathetic gesture on my part, but it’s the best I could figure out to do to show solidarity with people undergoing systematic death, destruction and terror for more than a year now courtesy of our tax dollars. The fact that even something so small is offensive to fuckos like “?” (who apparently supports genocide against a country he can’t even remember the name of) is very telling. I guess I better find more to review.
daniel
November 13th, 2024 at 12:39 am

@Miguel Hombre
“In 1930 David Ben-Gurion (Israels first prime Minister in 1948) said of the plan for the Palestinians and Gaza/Palestine (using the euphemism of ‘transfer’ to cover for enforced removal from their homelands) – “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral about it.” In other words whatever means we use to get the Palestiians out is fine.”

I don’t know that much about this, and I’m not saying that the Israeli Jews are completely blameless there, but before 1930 there was a bunch of really violent riots, and on the other side, Amin al-Husseini, the British appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, was a staunch anti-Zionist and later palled around with Hitler and Mussolini.

Also, it would be silly for any normal nation to not support Israel after October 7 and say something like: Yo, these terrorists that just attacked you? Maybe you guys should give in to their demands.
pegsman
November 13th, 2024 at 1:30 am

Amin al-Husseini?! Really?! I was wondering how far down this thread we had to go before a dozen different years, dates and persons are mentioned. Read Miguel’s answer to ? again.
Shoot McKay
November 13th, 2024 at 1:39 am

This site has turned into a very hostile leftwing activist page with people who dont even care if they are being called antisemites. Think about that. And when muslims shot down Swedes on an open street and no muslim communities voiced outrage and insted chose silent consent, my opionns changed from not all muslims are terrorists to muslims as one homogenous group of entrenched religious zealots. They can fuck off,and the Palestines who only have themselves to blsme after October 7.

I am out of here for good. Have a good life.
daniel
November 13th, 2024 at 3:36 am

@pegsman
I’m not sure what you mean.

As far as i know there where riots before 1930, I think the ones in 1929 were particularly bloody, which might have caused Ben-Gurion to go off the cuff liike that.

And al-Husseini was Mufti between 1921 to 1937. The fact that the Brits appointed a Palestinian nationalist to a seat of power, I think, shows that they might have wanted different factions there to hash it out and talk it through.

I’m certainly no expert on that conflict and I’m not trying to be a Zionist here or whatever, but I think the history is more complicated than Brits-Jews-colonialism-genocide-bad
pegsman
November 13th, 2024 at 4:22 am

daniel, if you read up on Amin al-Husseini, you’ll know excactly what I mean.

Shoot, please go back into hiding!
Dreadguacamole
November 13th, 2024 at 4:38 am

Sorry to see you go, Shoot – I’ve enjoyed your comments over the years.

For what it’s worth, my wife (who is part Jewish) and most of the Jewish people in my life are staunchly against most of the current Israeli stances (basically anything that comes out of the mouth of Netanyahoo, whom they see as an extremist asshole). It’s not a monolith, just like many Muslims are against HAMAS. See the fatwa issued against them for the oct.7 attacks people keep bringing up, if you want a very public, visible example of Muslim condemnation.
Hardliners on both sides fucking suck and it’s a fucked up situation for both civilian populations… a fucked up situation full stop. But I think it’s fair to be aghast at how far things are being taken by the current Israeli administration, especially when one’s government (and tax money is abetting it). And the current political climate probably means it’s gonna get a lot worse before things ease up.

@Daniel: I’m very far from being an expert (only read a couple books which were more about the area in general) but is anyone arguing that the whole British handling of Palestine and the mandate wasn’t throughly botched from the get-go?

I would absolutely argue (and I’m purposely misconstruing your point here!) that British colonialism and genocide are bad : )
Skani
November 13th, 2024 at 5:08 am

Not surprised this discussion took this turn, and it is an interesting case study for what I was talking about above (I was wondering what happened to Shoot). I keep meaning to get a book about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, because it’s one of those things I have not gotten to.

To get this part out of the way: My own impression is that Palestine and Israel have been at each others’ throats (and, more broadly, Israel and the rest of the Middle East at each others’ throats) since … ever. And certainly for the last 100 years. And there have been a variety of attempts at some kind of a settlement that have all failed. It’s also my impression that Israel has been very oppressive toward Palestine, particularly in the Netanyahu era. I know there are lots, and lots, and lots of layers to this conflict. I could spend a day studying all the Middle East wars in the 1960s and 1970s, the settlements, the Oslo Accord attempts, the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, the conflicts between Hamas and Fatah, the rocket attacks, and so on. And that’s just semi-recent modern history. So, I have to confess there is just a lot I don’t know about this, so, I have been reluctant to form or assert an opion other than that killing is bad and killing innocent people is worse.

I will say that this is a contentious issue, because even a lot of people — like myself — who think the Israeli government’s behavior in the past year has been excessive and awful also think that October 7th was horrific and awful. When I hear pro-Palestine sentiment, it tends to be strangely silent on Hamas and October 7th, as if this all started happening out of nowhere. And while it is abolutely true that there is a long bloody history here, it’s pretty clear that October 7th was the immediate proximal trigger for the current hot conflict. And I think if you have not condemned October 7th as an act of horrific evil but are condemning Israeli’s behavior as horrific evil, then that seems unbalanced. I should say that this is part of my problem with critiques against “both-sides-ism,” which is that they have the awkward implication that complicated issues and blame are in fact one-sided.

So, I don’t understand what I see as the one-side-ism with respect to this conflict. That is not to say that Israel’s current actions are justified, only that the implication that Hamas and October 7th are just incidental factors or that a massive, barbaric, pre-mediated attack on Israeli civilians 15x the scale of 9/11 is cosmically Israel’s fault — seems wrong. In any event, the issue is at least very contentious, and the broader suite of Middle East peace issues have been very contentious for about 100 years or so (and, of course, going back to the pre-modern era in many respects). And the Shoot McKay thing is another example of a person who has gone from an engaged interlocutor to a lurker to a leaver, and that is the dynamic of one-sides-ism and creating moral-ideological litmus tests and shaming people for being ambivalent or uncertain as to whether this is a one-sided situation with a simple answer.

All that to say, I would like to hear a pro-Palestinian perspective that makes clear its views on October 7th and Hamas and Israel’s right to exist and the hostages (issues that I think are usually out of view in pro-Palestine social media posts), in addition to all the other legitimate topics like the settlements, apartheid, starvation, charges of genocide. You can take a side in the conflict and condemn atrocity, but why not condemn all atrocity (yes, this is my “all atrocities matter” moment, I guess), and what is the actual *long-term* solution that both Israel and Palestine would agree on. My both-sides-ism here reflects two things: (1) I don’t have time to become an expert on the issues, (2) I don’t like violence, (3) I don’t think mutual recriminations, expulsions, or taking your marbles and going home are good solutions to weird conflicted feelings and disagreements about complicated issues. I think kind, good faith, open-handed dialogue is the place to start.

Also, as people have said about trans issues and much else besides, it’s not going to be better under Trump. It’s almost definitely going to be worse. So, I’m wondering what we accomplish by driving more and more people away from the Democratic party and progressive causes and dialogue in general with strident rhetoric (to be clear: “War is bad and Israel needs to seek a peaceful solution now” is not strident rhetoric). Seems list a vicious cycle of alienation, polarization, and conflict leading to more of the same.
Miguel Hombre
November 13th, 2024 at 5:40 am

If I might offer some recommendations that might help deepen one’s understanding of the Middle East:

Fictional films that come to mind include: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, MUNICH, INCENDIES. Certainly the first two movies should be somewhat familiar – Lawrence of Arabia is not specifically about Israel/Palestine, but it certainly provides a mostly accurate portrayal of the West’s largely ignorant meddling and manipulative colonial strategies towards the areas native populations. Munich is Spielberg’s quite nuanced take on the more modern day history of the region – including a quite moving, perceptive scene where an Arab and Israeli have a pretty honest conversation on a staircase about their beliefs/motives etc. In addition – Spielberg directs the f*** out of this movie – some of his extended camera moves/rack focus shots rank with the best stuff he has ever shot. Incendies is from 2010 and was directed by Denis Villeneuve (DUNE, SICARIO.) It’s the best of the 3 films. It’s based on a play by a Lebanese playwright – it doesn’t outright name any country/religion or political ideology – Villeneuve decided that he wanted to present themes/characters and events in an allegorical way – so that he could question things like the corrosive effect of religious violence (are god vs. your god) and the intergenerational trauma that it creates. It’s a very powerful film (nominated for best foreign Oscar.) From a filmmaking standpoint it’s also interesting in that Villeneuve’s DUNE films also feature commentary on the realm of religious based violence and colonialism – DUNE is after all a villain origin story.

In terms of written works I actually think the best/most accessible work on Palestine is the journalist/cartoonist Joe Sacco’s two volume works ‘Palestine’ and ‘Footsteps in Gaza.’ These are impeccable researched, compelling illustrated works. It makes an effective, illuminating read, especially when read in concert with another graphic work of equal magnificence and brilliance – Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ – the biography of his families experiences during the holocaust.

A non-fiction work recently published that presents an unvarnished history of American involvement in the Palestine/Israeli situation is “The Myth of American Idealism” by Nathan J. Robinson & Noam Chomsky. It authoritatively but with brevity covers not only the Middle East but a number of foreign areas (Europe/South America and Asia) that have been on the receiving end of American meddling.

And vern – I apologize if I’ve made comments that offended people or lost you readers.
daniel
November 13th, 2024 at 5:47 am

@pegsman
Or you could just tell me. We don’t have to reenact a scene where you’re the offended girl and I’m the dumbass shrugging his arms, and saying “What did I do?”

@Dreadguacamole
Yeah, Netanyahu is a hawkish right-winger and he’s a problem. And the British botched it 100%. I’m just saying, I don’t think they ware twirling their mustaches, and going “Nyahaha, who are we going to genocide today.”
daniel
November 13th, 2024 at 5:54 am

Miguel, I’m sure you mean well, but I read some things that Chomsky said on Russia and post-Warsaw Pact countries, that doesn’t make me a fan.
Skani
November 13th, 2024 at 7:57 am

Yeah, Chomsky is beyond the pale for me, and is in many ways the architect of the most toxic, counter-productive monomaniacally reflexive anti-Americanism and general purpose leftist apocalypticism, that citing him is pretty much immediately disqualifying. He is an ideological extremist. I invite you to reflect on what the world would like like if the single great power dictating the terms of the global order was Russia, China, Cuba, most African countries, or any Islamic middle eastern country. If you value freedom of speech, thought, dissent, LGBTQ rights, protection of religious minorities, intellectual inquiry, reproductive rights, etc., please think long and hard about how any other nation would (or, where applicable, has) conducted itself as a world power. With all respect to the many wonderful citizens of these countries I have mentioned, and with all recognition of the horrific acts of Amercians, the idea that war, slavery, genocide, occupation, exploitation, slavery, etc. are uniquely American or even uniquely Western exports is a dangerous and malicious delusion. People like Chomsky and many other on the extreme left traffic in utopian fantasies that, when tried in practice, have almost invariably resulted in mass atrocities and extreme forms of illiberalism. Cuba, Venezuela, Rwanda, Sudan, North Korea, Uganda, Cambodia, China, Russia, Myanmar, etc. These places are rife with corruption, persecution of minorities, extreme restrictions on basic civil liberties and democatic rights. Criticism of America is abosolutely fair game — including condemning American government support of Israel. Tear it all down, self-righteous, reflexive Chomsky-against-the-machine anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism is an intellectually and morally bankrupt utopian fantasy ideology that is rife with internal contradictions and gives birth to as many if not more dangerous extremists as the right-wing does.
Dreadguacamole
November 13th, 2024 at 8:40 am

As a primer for the middle east post-colonial situation, I really enjoyed The Poisoned Well by Thomas Hardy. It centers around the whole area on the first half of the 20th century, and gave a dumbass like me what I feel is a pretty good grounding.

Love the movie recommendations. Any excuse to rewatch LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or MUNICH are good by me. And INCENDIES is kind of incredible. Just… be aware it’s got a really dodgy ending. I kind of hated it even knowing it was coming on a rewatch, but it doesn’t ruin the movie for me.

Re: Chomsky – I disagree, with the caveat that I haven’t read that much of his stuff, and nothing newer than… three decades, maybe; He struck me as insightful and fair in his harshness, and never seemed too enamoured of the Eastern bloc either. Also, I come at it from a non-American perspective, which might make me more tolerant of his more extreme views.
But yeah, toxic people in the left do tend to gravitate towards him.
JTS
November 13th, 2024 at 8:45 am

Shoot McKay said he’s now a proud racist because of a real-life incident and he’s leaving because he can no longer tolerate non-racist discourse on the topic. How is that an example of “creating moral-ideological litmus tests and shaming people for being ambivalent or uncertain as to whether this is a one-sided situation with a simple answer”?
Skani
November 13th, 2024 at 10:19 am

I don’t have the energy to go on at length about Chomsky, I’ll have to leave that as an exercise for the reader, as I’ve already gone on at length about many other things and provided links. He holds his preferred foil (the U.S. government) to a very different moral standard than he holds all other governments, and this becomes fodder for these sorts of one-sided moralistic utopian argumens that selectively champion and demonize.

JTS, I don’t generally believe in Shoot’s (or your or my) ability to give a fully accurate and articulate narrative account of how we arrive at the places we do. So, I do not acept your reductive and typically smug “Shoot is just a racist, so fuck him” -esque assessment of the situation. It’s exactly what I’ve been talking about this whole thread in a nutshell. Some pivotal traumatic experience, combined with other experiences, along with his perception that some of the pro-Palestine sentiment has shades of antisemitism, along with the increasing stridency with which these views are pushed, has clearly been at work on him. I don’t think makes him a proud racist, it makes him embittered and racist, but I also think that throwing around the word racist is overdone even when it’s true, because there is all kinds of bigotry out there, and I find that some of the biggest thrower-arounders of the word “racist” traffic in a lot of stereotyping, bigotry, and simple-minded thinking, and, yes, that includes you.

In any event, I am not hear to defend Shoot’s statements in specific or offer some precise accounting of everything he does. Condemning Muslims in toto is something I condemn. That said, I am telling you for myself, as a long-time Democratic voter, sometime Democratic party contributors, support of LGBTQ rights, supporter of social safety nets, and person who is generally horrified by the situation in Palestine, that speech that portrays anyone as having differing or ambivalent thoughts on these issues as being some class of bad person — as you have done here — is itself a form of defacto ideological purging. Obviously, long-time, hardcore conservatives and racists and cranks are going to be repelled. But so are moderate and faithful Democratic voters like myself. Meanwhile, as non-white folks, middle-income folks, culturally moderate folks and others who are not a part of your niche demograhpic continue to roll their eyes, check out of discourse, and either disengage from politics or go over to the GOP, you can keep comforting yourself with you sense of superiority.
VERN
November 13th, 2024 at 10:39 am

I didn’t think Shoot would be back after calling us all terrorists a while back. But before that he had been a regular here for years and seemed to be our friend. Now he says he hates all Muslims as well as us (for not hating all Muslims) because a Muslim shot Swedes and “no muslim communities voiced outrage and instead chose silent consent.” Unsurprisingly a couple minutes on broken Google show that his excuse is the horse shit it sounds like. Of course it was widely condemned.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/746314/belgiums-muslim-council-condemns-deadly-brussels-attack-pledges-to-confront-extremism

People have this hatred and there’s no way to justify it but they have to tell themselves it’s okay so they make up these kind of dumb explanations.
JTS
November 13th, 2024 at 10:42 am

You pray to the Gods of Equivocation and Excuse-Making. In your view, Shoot McKay saying something racist and me calling him racist are equally problematic. In fact, me calling it racist is actually *why* it’s racist. I already said that I agree from a political-campaigning/persuasion perspective that it’s not effective, but I’m not campaigning for office here, I’m posting on outlawvern.com and I’m not going to walk on eggshells and censor myself. And if you were ideologically consistent you wouldn’t want me to, because you believe people being made to feel like they have to walk on eggshells and censor themselves is what makes them reactionaries.
JTS
November 13th, 2024 at 11:21 am

If there was an edit or delete button, I’d probably delete a lot of my comments in this thread, not because I don’t think I’m right, but because this stuff is not fun or productive. When I read something that annoys me, I sometimes can’t help but react, and it doesn’t gain me anything. Skani, I’ll tell you what — and I mean this, I won’t slip, but if somehow I do please hold me to account — I will never respond to your posts on this site again. I may or may not react to something like Shoot’s statement in the future, but I promise I will leave you out of it. You can ofc respond or not respond to whatever you want, I’m not asking the same thing of you, just promising no more sniping or arguments from me towards you ever again for any reason.
Dreadguacamole
November 13th, 2024 at 11:28 am

@Skani – don’t worry about justifying Chomski, I do take your point (from my limited knowledge of his work, even).

I have friends whom I don’t talk about politics any more because they’ve gone right-wing… not quite loonies, but close, depending on the specific subject (it’s usually some progressive/woke policy). One of them used Manufacturing Consent – a book I recommended to him a long time ago – to defend Trump’s “fake news” bullshit.
Now, I still think it’s a great book. But arguments against the establishment are weaponizable (especially when used with intellectual dishonesty) and can be used to attack the establishment to the advantage of something that’s demonstrably worse.
And sadly we live in an age of open intellectual dishonesty.

It’d also make sense to me that Chomsky’s gone bitter as the world gets shittier. Whatever comment I’ve heard every now and then from him over the years tends to support that. His take on Ukraine might make sense from a realpolitik point of view, but they were hard to stomach.

“People have this hatred and there’s no way to justify it but they have to tell themselves it’s okay so they make up these kind of dumb explanations.”
100%. And a lot of those explanations – and even that hatred – is transmitted culturally. No one sees themselves, to use Daniel’s words, as a moustache-twirling villain.

Now Trump’s appointments have come out, gotta say it’s got me aligning closer to the consensus here – Musk, in the government, in a department named after a fucking crypto memecoin… Don’t think I could write a more worrying, repellent sentence if I tried.
pegsman
November 13th, 2024 at 11:43 am

daniel, it feels a bit pointless now, after all that’s been said in the meantime. You too have elaborated on your views since this morning (for me). But what I meant at the time was that since you are familiar with the life of Amin al-Husseini, I took it for granted that you know that he can be used as an example of everything from the old world, to British colonialism, French arroganse, muslim militarism, fascism etc, etc. PS! I find it interesting that you went straight for the girlfriend vs boyfriend comparison.

My views on Chomsky seems to be a bit different from the majority here, but after a long days work I don’t have the stamina to go further into it.

As for Shoot…oh man!
VERN
November 13th, 2024 at 12:39 pm

I keep thinking about when I was a teenager in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It was not a more enlightened time, we all know that. But if someone came at me with the virulent anti-immigrant stuff that is now the mainstream official Republican position, and was recently posted here by a long time commenter, it would’ve meant they had fallen in with a white power or neo-nazi group. Back then, those were the people who talked about immigrants being criminals and “illegals,” deportation, building walls – fringe backwards kooks mailing out for pamphlets from David Duke, or living in compounds in Idaho.

When I was in high school there actually was a member of my friend group who started hanging out with skinheads. So he was no longer our friend. We weren’t some particularly politically minded kids, we were just weirdo artists and stoners and stuff, but everybody knew that hatred was not something you wanted to be anywhere near. If we had known how to change him – yes, of course that would’ve been better. But we didn’t, and I don’t.

In this matter it’s not me who’s gotten more extreme over time. If I know someone believes that shit I can’t set it aside and have friendly conversations about other topics. That’s always gonna be a dealbreaker for me.
Skani
November 13th, 2024 at 12:51 pm

JTS, respond to me or not. Snipe at me or not. I can take it. My nuance is your “equivocation.” It doesn’t matter how many times I condemn racism, condemn Trump, tell you I vote Democrat, tell you voting for Trump is bad and misguided, tell you I support clear-minded people who do need to cut ties with truly abusive conservatives, etc., etc., etc. When I try to challenge a non-conservative audience from a non-conservative perspective with a call to exercise more empathy and nuance in their categorizations of and interactions with people with whom they disagree — without compromising or hiding your principles or beliefs — this is equivocating or blaming you for someone else’s racism. I have encountered a lot of that here, “so, you’re saying … (thing i did not say).” What I am saying is that Shoot and Kaplan and Trump and you and I bear responsibility for our own choices and actions and some (hard to precisely quantify or isolate) responsibility for our words and the impact they have on others.

Obviously, I don’t begrudge someone for not having perfect words or whatever. My posts are chronically full of typos and word salad. I dont’ hold you responsible for any imperfections in you comments. I hold you responsible for generally going out of your way to be combative or snipey or contrarian specifically toward me for as long as I can remember (and there is no other individual on this webzeit that I can put in that category), and I am responsible for failing to resist the impulse to call you out on it from time to time. I have never ever experienced a question or comment from you that is directed to me to be offered in vulnerability or basic good faith.

I wish you a good day, good life, happiness, health, good movie watching and all forms of relief and absolution, along with my sincere apology for any inartful or non-empathetic ways I have interacted with you. Feel free to continue sniping, not sniping, being kind, not being kind, whatever.

Only the best.
dreadguacamole
November 13th, 2024 at 2:17 pm

@Vern

I like to think that if someone came to me with proper racist viewpoints I’d cut them off. No, the friends/acquaintances that have gone to the right haven’t turned virulently racist or something like that. They’re mostly anti-woke, reacting against what they see as a harmful (to society and culture) shift. I think being butthurt at having to re-examine their values has a lot to do with it, especially as some of them still consider themselves lefties.

Racism as it is in the US is not the same in Argentina (the country that’s the biggest part of my cultural makeup, since I grew up there). For whatever reason, despite our proximity to Brazil, there are basically no black people – we’re 99-dot-something% white/latin/indigenous to different degrees. Not that there’s no racism, but it tends to go across class lines.
Which it always does, of course, but I mean explicitly. Argentines (the shitty ones) call poor people ‘negros’, because their skin *tends* to be a little darker, but its a cultural group rather than a racial one. A lot of people on the other side of the divide have the same skin color, and no one bats an eye at it. (this information is out of date, because…)

I don’t have a clear handle of how Racism works here in the UK, even after what, two decades?
it’s still not as acceptable socially the way it seems to be in the US, at least in the middle-class, mostly urban circles I move in. Brexit is still a thing, though, and it was clearly racist-driven, and it seems like it’s kind of OK to hate on immigrant groups, both in general and some specific ethnicities (travellers, Albanians). I got tired at one point of co-workers having a go against immigrants, only to turn around and say something along the lines ‘but not you, you’re one of the good ones’. FWIW, I don’t get that so much these days. Maybe they’re just talking around my back and don’t bother to exclude me from their comments.

Of my newer, UK friends/acquaintances that shifted right, one got turned around by misogynistic shit on the interwebs after a really dark period, a sort of half-life crisis (I think I mentioned him somewhere above). That one really hurt. Another one’s against muslim culture, which… is pretty fucking terrible, but I don’t know if it’s strong enough to edge into hate. It’s islamophobia for sure – he hates islam-run countries- but he’s also semi-recently hired a practicing muslim into his (tiny) company… and never once brought it up in conversation. He has no problems with them personally. People are complicated.
Skani
November 14th, 2024 at 4:44 am

Vern, in regards to your post about not changing and things when you were a teenager, that may be the case with respect to you, but the broad sociological trend of the last 10 or 15 years has been for democrats and self-identified liberals to have polarized much more in their views on race, racism, and immigration than self-identified conservatives. Without having to read or agree with this article, this is clear from the charts alone.

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020

It’s also evident that there is a fairly broad trend in liberal circles toward deeming certain people unfit for dialogue or relationship based on their political views, as there are increasing trends toward family disownment or public shaming or academic discipline or calls for firing people over a whole range of issues.

It is also the case that there have been various trends in the direction of self-censorship and a valuing of people feeling “safe” online over free speech. Among other things in the links below report:

“Two in 3 students say self-censorship limits educationally valuable conversations on campus, and 2 in 3 report self-censoring on some topics during classroom discussions. This is particularly true when it comes to discussing topics of gender or LGBTQ+ issues, racial issues, or religion.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/08/30/more-so-than-adults-u-s-teens-value-people-feeling-safe-online-over-being-able-to-speak-freely/
https://knightfoundation.org/reports/college-student-views-on-free-expression-and-campus-speech-2024/

It is also obviously quite clear that Democratic views on trans individuals have rapidly and radically changed. The issue was barely on the radar as a political flashpoint 10 years ago, and the the show 30 ROCK has its characters unironically using words like “tranny.” Now, we have an entire suite of vocabulary to describe the different sorts of ways your speech might be offensive (deadnaming, misgendering), and I have on numerous occasions online seen people aggressively policing other progressive people online for inadvertent misgendering (this is clear, because, when called out, the misgender-er apologizes profusely).

Meanwhile, words like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” have made their way into public discourse when they were not at all on the radar 10 years ago (I actually learned about “white privilege” and “heterosexual privilege” in graduate school over 20 years ago, but it was only in the last 10 years that they made their way into mainstream discourse). Likewise, popular discourse on systemic and structural racism are new. Fifteen years ago the discourse on racism was still couched in terms of racism being a condition of indvidiual people who openly espouse or privately harbor classically racist views about the inferiority or undesirability of entire people groups, whereas now it is not uncommon to be considered racist based on political views even if you are happily married to someone of another racial or ethnic group.

And, of course, we have seen all sorts of other cultural flashpoints. METOO obviously led to a serious reconsideration of how people think and talk about sex and objectification and so forth. The concept of “microaggressions” was introduced. People are now discouraged from saying, “man, that’s crazy!” on grounds of this being ableist (as someone who as mental health problems and is medicated, I think this is dumb). During COVID, masking became an extremely charged issue, with all sorts of nuances and debates and mutual recriminations among those who had more or less strict views on masking. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there were circles where it was deemed racist or contributing to Asian hate if you entertained the COVID lab leak theory.

So, there absolutely have been all sorts of trends in the direction of more voluminous, more varying, quickly evolving, much more strongly held, and much more aggressively enforced or vehemently argued expectations regarding which sorts of views, questions, or speech is tolerated in all sorts of places, about all sorts of issues concerning race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, along with the politicization of all manner of theoretically non-political topic. And that is absolutely a part of the dynamic: strongly polarizing / Overton window-shifting views on a myriad of social justice, speech, and other issues among culturally progressive liberals and Democrats (particularly those highly active on social media), and strong reactionary tendencies among culturally more moderate and conservative individuals (including 80s and 90s “union Democrat” types), increasingly including many non-white moderate and conservative individuals. Of course, immigration patterns in Europe, the “browning” of America, and the resulting cultural tensions and anxieties are a big force, too.

It’s also evident to me that your own way of speaking and interacting on these sorts of issues has changed quite a bit as you became more active on Twitter and during the Trump era. I have seen you opine repeatedly that an act as seemingly innocuous as watching SCREAM 7 is now a test of one’s of political integrity, to cite just one example.

So, this is a major subtext of all my “equivocating” (to use JTS’s term) on this topic. There have been massive cultural changes, substantially emanating from progressive cultural academic and online spaces, with strongly emotionally and morally charged and positions being taken on a range of issues, such that various political views, attitudes, and forms of speech that were non-salient or even non-existent 10-15 years ago are now very much implicit litmus tests. I’ve given all sorts of examples. How many of you knew what pronouns or “deadnaming” were 10 years ago, much less had a strongly felt opinion about it? Five years ago, were you avoiding use of the term “nuts” or “crazy” to describe something that shocked you? I was once called an “ableist” for suggesting that people should feel free to stop masking around Fall 2021.

Ultimately, I have come to accept most of these changes and even embrace some of them, but lots of people find the speed, breadth, and stridency of these things overwhelming and alienating and do feel that it has a chilling effect on the free expression of good faith questions about some of these things. People feel that change is happening rapidly, and the general environment is more socially coercive, and it unnerves them. That, along with all the broader social upheaval we have experienced (viz., COVID, inflation) has deranged a lot of folks.

Meanwhile, basic social psychology (see “group polarization” and “contact hypothesis”) holds that as people self-select into increasingly narrow ideological groups and cease having contact with people of different groups, these groups become increasingly alienated against each other and increasingly extreme in their own original direction and susceptible to groupthink.
daniel
November 14th, 2024 at 5:04 am

@pegsman
My convictions on Israel, Palestine, and that whole region are pretty soft, so I’m definitely prepared to, as the kids say, take an L on that one whenever you want to elaborate on the subject.

And I didn’t mean anything by the comparison. I find it true-to-life, I get eyes rolled at me, and the things I say, often by women, and often justifiably, a lot :)

I missed most of the Chomsky talk, and I’m Polish, so someone might say that I’m not being objective about him, because I benefited from Western “meddling” in my region – and I do believe that most people here (as in, in my region) benefited from it, sought it out, and welcomed it.

Personally, out of celebrity intellectuals, I thought Slavoj Zizek has a cool take on Ukraine.

Chomsky, in my view, does the: I’m not racist, but… (say’s something racist), except in his case it’s: I’m not excusing the crimes of an anti-West autocratic regime, but… (excuses the crimes of an anti-West autocratic regime, say’s the US and the West did way worse crimes, and really, when you think about it, the US and the West are somehow responsible for the crimes of said anti-West autocratic regime).

As far as I know even some people on the left give him shit for that. His takes on the Khmer Rouge genocide aged like milk. And George Monbiot wrote about a correspondence he had with him on his website.

Changing the subject, since Villeneuve was mentioned, his younger brother, Martin, directed a dorky movie based on a comic book called MARS ET AVRIL, and I liked it quite a bit.
jojo
November 14th, 2024 at 5:40 am

But if someone came at me with the virulent anti-immigrant stuff that is now the mainstream official Republican position, and was recently posted here by a long time commenter, it would’ve meant they had fallen in with a white power or neo-nazi group.

In the spirit of complete fairness, probably a month ago there was a co-worker who had the tendency to parrot things he read on twitter about the Israel/Palestine situation to anyone in earshot (probably still does). I would mostly ignore him best I could, but finally, after his 134th diatribe on the subject, I had to ask: “why is it that every reported dastardly deed done by Israel the gospel, but every reported dastardly deed done by a member of their opposition completely fabricated Israeli propaganda?”

Without missing a beat, he responded–using a ‘Duhhhh!’ tone–with “Weeelllll, the jews control the media!”

“You do realize the last person I heard say that was a neo-nazi?”

It’s the times when one hears people from both sides of the aisle sounding like neo-nazis, that my nerves start to jangle a mite…
pegsman
November 14th, 2024 at 7:52 am

Since I have, or at least had, a tendency to talk myself into some really intense online discussions I will just say that I’m a member of the Norwegian Committee for Palestine – and let you draw your own conclusions.
VERN
November 14th, 2024 at 10:27 am

Skani, you misunderstand me. Yes, of course, I have grown and changed since the ’90s in ten million ways. And most of the things you’ve listed are obviously good things we should be proud as a society to have tried to learn. Note that all of this “political” polarization is about seeking fairness and equality. If that’s left then yes, reach for the extreme left, not the middle of the road in that department.

But my point was specifically about the way Republicans talk about immigrants being how only KKK/neo-nazis/white power people talked about them when I was growing up. I think it’s my right and duty to tell anyone spewing that shit to stay away from me and I always will.

(And what the fuck with the SCREAM 7 comment. I don’t plan to support it, never expected others to do the same, have also explained that repeatedly even though I shouldn’t have to.)
VERN
November 14th, 2024 at 10:36 am

jojo – Okay, but that is not representative of most people who oppose the genocide. I believe that non-Jews control the media but are very transparently biased toward defending the action of Israel, police, American military, etc.
jojo
November 14th, 2024 at 11:34 am

Okay, but that is not representative of most people who oppose the genocide

I understand this. But what really kind of made my stomach do a loop-de-loop about the interaction, was that seriously 95% of what comes out of this guy’s mouth comes directly from his twitter feed. So for him to just blurt this out like it was an universally understood truism, kind of gives me pause.

Like Mulder, I want to believe that this was just some big idea he came about independently, and he’s just a dummy (I mean, if he would think about that for 1/10 of a second, that statement would mean these all-media controlling jews were also reporting the things he believes to be 100% accurate. Stereotypical self-loathing jews, perhaps?). But like Scully, I have skepticism.
renfield
November 14th, 2024 at 5:14 pm

This entire thread reminds me of why I’ve come to view politics as more or less impossible to discuss. I can’t tell if I was accused of being stupid because I actually disagree with the person who made that assessment, or because they have an inaccurate view of what I was trying to present, or because I just live in a completely different reality than they do as far as our respective understandings of history and current events. And it feels like it would be a sisyphusean task to try and unravel which of these it is, and establish enough of a common framework to even begin convincing one another of anything.

I obviously feel that way about right wingers, but it increasingly seems like it’s the case with people who are ostensibly on more or less the same side.

And I’m not just saying this because I personally got insulted, although I am a thin skinned baby boy who doesn’t enjoy that. I really can’t make heads or tails of half the shit being bandied about here. So I guess the moral of the story is stop trying to convince anybody of anything, and just prove that your theory of politics is correct by organizing and putting it into effect and thereby effecting the change you want to see in the world.
Skani
November 14th, 2024 at 8:20 pm

Vern, I appreciate the comments. Thank you for all that you do and all that you have meant to me as a role model and leader over the years. You’ve had a powerful and formative influence for me and been someone I could look to as a steady and true force. I apologize for the offense.

And I was too harsh to JTS, sorry.

And I was too harsh to Mr. Majestyk back when I went off him. I am sorry.

Sometimes my comments come off judegy or scoldy, which is a shame — because I dislike judginess and scoldiness. And I am ashamed for having shamed others. I apologize. There are feal feelings and perceptions underneath my statements — a baby in the bathwater — but I have not always expressed them with the gentleness I wish I had. I’m not immune to hypocrisy. My bad. I broadly believe the content of the things I’ve said, and I believe they cohere (it’s like magic eye picture, you just have to focus and connect the dots), but the tone was hit or miss.

Let me just say a few more things (some recap, some new):
1. It has always been the case that most Americans have been well to the right of left progressives, and as left progressives have moved further and more aggressively to the left on a range of cultural social justice issues in the last 10 or so years (see the Vox link among others), there is a backlash. It is perceived as overreach — too much, too far, too fast.

2. People feel that the overall discourse environment –online, in workplaces, in academia, among center-left and left legacy news media — tends to be more strident, coercive, and shame-based. One where people do not feel that it is safe to offer a dissenting or “I’m not so sure” view without catching a lot of shit for it. The Knight Foundation poll I cited says that 2/3 of college students feel this way. Not 2/3 of conservatives, 2/3 of white people, 2/3 of rural people, 2/3 or high school dropouts, 2/3 of voters, or 2/3 of boomers — 2/3 of *all* people (within the polling margin of error) pursuing college education.

3. In some cases, you will see people vocally flailing about and openly expressing bigotted views. Those are the visible cases. More numerous are the lurkers, who don’t openly express any view at all, and who are not at the extremes of bigotry at all, but who also get stressed out at trying to keep up with what views are okay to have and what words are okay to say. There’s a whole continuum.

4. Most of these people are more quietly uncomfortable or frustrated as they watch left-oriented people who seem to be constantly or at least very often freaking out and lashing out with fear, anger, contempt, judginess, and strongly held, morally charged opinions implicitly telling them how one needs to think, talk, and feel about all manner of things (I recognize the irony that I have been doing some of the same). Everything seems to be politicized and negative. People on social media constantly broadcasting their anger, terror, and disgust and propagating it like a virus. It’s not just sharing an opinion or connection, it’s creating a climate of alarm, anger, and addiction to negativity and conflict. We are constantly being asked to meet the moment and be on the right side of history in real-time, and we are frequently being told to fear the worst. We seem to move from one crisis to the next, and a lot of this reflects a kind of addiction to drama and crusading. When one crusade ends (say, COVID), the next crusade beings. It’s exhausting. I felt a lot of that coming through your twitter feed in recent years, and it hurt my heart and made me feel yucky and discouraged. I couldn’t come here anymore for awhile. That was only my experience, I can’t speak for others.

5. In a climate like the one I’ve described, my view is that we don’t advance our cause or do well by people by burning bridges and condemning people. I believe in “love the sinner, hate the sin” — bad behavior or inappropriate comments deserve pushback, but how to do it in a manner that invites the person to become their best self vs. telling them they are their worst self (e.g., Shoot, Kaplan). I believe that the way progressives express themselves has been oriented toward making more and more people feel unwelcome or just exhausted with all the politics. These are not just people who openly express bigotry, but people who are just not that interested in it or actively annoyed by it.

6. I don’t know your friend who hung out with the skinheads. Did he become a hardcore skinhead, or was he just mixed up? Did he need non-skinhead friends in his life to be a counterpoint and a counterweight when he as mixed up? Was his dad a prick or out of the picture? Or was he just a hopeless shithead? I don’t know.. Maybe Shoot and Kaplan are David Duke, or maybe they are mixed up and hurt and going through mental health shit, or have a marriage falling apart, or are horny and lonely, or struggling with substance abuse (Shoot has admitted as much in the past). You don’t have to tolerate or condone the behavior. My point is that not all who wander are lost, and not all who are lost are permanently lost. When we shame them, we urge them to dive deeper into becoming the worst self we are telling them they are. For some people, that is where they are heading and there is nothing we can do to stop them. But don’t always be so sure. I think a lot of people are more touch-and-go, in-and-out, hanging by a thread, on the margins, vacillating, struggling. You don’t have to change who they are, you just don’t have to confirm their fears that they are beyond the pale. This is all the more true with respect to the lurkers who are at various points on the Trump-curious or curmudgeon continuum. You don’t see or hear them, because they’re not making noise, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there watching, listenign. There are people all along the continuum, and how do we build bridges. Sometimes we have to cut ties, but I don’t think that is a thing to be celebrated or worn like a badge of honor.

7. Again, I think this is what is happening on a larger scale societally. A lot of people experience progressive culture as judgey, stifling, petty, moralistic, etc. I would be one of them. It’s real, and it drives people away and into the arms of worse influences or just drives them out of the game (e.g., stop voting, etc.). It’s not about who’s “fault” that is — of course, each of us bears responsiblity for our choices. It’s about how our words are actually contributing to making things better.

With that said: Sorry for my bad words and instances of hypocrisy — judging, scolding, splaining, shaming, lashing out. Typically when I’m lashing out and being judgey and negative, it’s when I’m struggling with what I perceive to be other people’s negativity — I get meta-negative about negativity (fear, anger, etc.). I think Yoda was right — it’s the path to the dark side and suffering. Anyhoo, I will probably always be a splainer, because it’s just how I process my thoughts. And the typos and word salad are just part of the deal. But I’m sorry for judging people about judginess and shaming people about shaming people It’s not who I want to be. I know I’ve hurt people with my words here at times, and it’s not right. I’m sorry for that, and I want to be striving for excellence.
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs
November 14th, 2024 at 10:53 pm

In the last year or two that I lurked and started posting here, I have read a lot of the old reviews and comment sections. That means I have seen a condensed timeline of long-time commenters here, whether it’s arguments that go on for years or the constant off-topic digressions about Batman (goddamn y’all, and I thought I talked about Batman too much!).

One of the most depressing trends to emerge was watching former commenter Griff go off the rails. His posts would be genuinely useful to someone trying to understand and detail how young men today have ended up Trump voters. I really wish I had been here years ago, because I am younger than most of you but a couple years older than Griff and there are conversations where I wonder if I might have been able to reason with him. Because I know where he was getting all that bullshit from. Hasan Piker called it out after this election, basically any hobby that young guys are into from video games to comics to weightlifting have right-wing pipelines that are stoking the natural defensiveness Skani describes and these guys’ (genuine) unhappiness and frustration with the world into a burning hate (all for the profits of the shitheads making money off views or “health supplements”). I know this garbage enough to explain the bullshit of Gamergate and Comicsgate that others could only broadly reference.

And here is where I am going to go waaaaay out on a limb beyond objective examples and entirely based on me reading into his comments (although sometimes it was more text than subtext): I think Griff genuinely had some unanswered questions about his gender and sexuality that he only sometimes came close to asking. Yeah, usually he would usually just talk about how hot an actress was or her breast size. But some of his posts were about his curiosity about women and their social and sex lives, and even jealousy of aspects of them. Yes, it was mostly based on ignorance and broad stereotypes about women as a whole, but there seemed to be something more behind it than general horny “I wish I was a chick so I could get laid whenever I wanted” schtick. I think sometimes he was assuming the role he thought the straight man was “supposed” to play, and the fact that the world still didn’t supply him with the success, love and happiness that are “supposed” to come with being a straight white man made him even more sad and defensive. He also had a ridiculous rose-colored view of the 90s when he was a kid and the 80s that he didn’t live through, that made it a lot easier to be sold on the lie that things would have been great for him a couple years earlier if not for the “woke agenda” bringing white men down.
VERN
November 14th, 2024 at 11:03 pm

It’s okay Skani, I appreciate you too. I do wish I knew how to get through to Kaplan and especially Shoot. But Kaplan shat in my living room too many times to be welcome here and Shoot I did nothing to, he just up and announced he hated Muslims and us and was never speaking to us. Not much I can do there. But I sincerely respect your wish that there was a way to heal that. I do too.

Anyway, I suspect most of this will be irrelevant after a couple years of Trump 2: This Time It’s Personal. I hope you won’t still be posting about lefty language sensitivity after those guys are building camps and yanking people into vans and shit.
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs
November 14th, 2024 at 11:05 pm

Skani- maybe people don’t say it every time the issue comes up, but with a few extremist exceptions everyone on the left who is trying to support Palestine was horrified by Oct 7th. Being aware of the issues that lead to it and speaking on them is not trying to justify it, just to place it in the larger context of this back-and-forth conflict. People are worried about Palestinian civilians (and the Israeli hostages), not caping for Hammas.

And I do understand where you are coming from on polarization driving people away or making them uncomfortable, but I don’t know how you treat them with kid-gloves while actually trying to progress. Yes, some people are more strident about language online, but at its heart if I am trying to support the safety and freedom of trans people to exist in society or for black people in poor neighborhoods not to get harassed or killed by the police, and someone’s response to that hurting their feelings or challenging their worldview to become MORE hateful or ignorant, what the fuck do we do? Just be quiet about it and hope shit changes? I was born in ’85 and was a perceptive and inquisitive enough kid that I recognized and was upset by homophobia and racism even while I was in elementary school. In middle school and high school we regularly used the word retard, it took me years to remove that from my regular speech. I didn’t say f*ggot even then, but most other kids did and plenty of them called me that. A couple years after high school most of them wouldn’t say that in public. And just in the transition from middle school to high school I noticed a reduction in how many people would say casually racist shit or jokes, over the years it went from extremely common to limited to the people I knew or suspected were actually racist. Now it’s obvious that a lot of that stuff was still being thought and said on the DL or in niche online communities, and during/after Obama it bubbled over the surface… And now they feel MORE empowered to say that shit with their whole chest. People are policing each other because social media is a crazy wild west without enough moderation or accountability, that has allowed Nazi-ass opinions to spread and be profitable. Shit that used to be confined to the Stormfront website is now on Twitter’s front page.

Almost everyone is scared. Some people are scared that they might have to explain sex or “alternative” lifestyles to their child. Some people are scared they might be killed because of those “alternative” lifestyles. Right before I started working at my last hotel, a trans couple were followed back to the hotel from the boardwalk (in a car, not walking) by two random assholes who then cornered and brutally beat them in the elevator. Just because they noticed them existing. The fear-mongering isn’t caused by woke language policing online, that is at most an irritation or an inconvenience unless you make your living off a media platform that bans you. The fear is driven by right-wing media telling people that the left is going to force everyone to be trans or that trans people are predators hiding in their bathrooms. That the immigrants are going to take your jobs and now eat your pets. The cops that are told that everyone has a weapon and is out to get them. There is fear of violence and fear that CAUSES violence. Where do we meet in the middle with people whose starting position is “Jews control the media” or “Black people are inherently violent” or “trans people are dangerous perverts and pedophiles”?
daniel
November 15th, 2024 at 12:27 am

@Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs
Well, IMO Hasan Piker and his crew of streamers/pundits/entertainers do dip their toes in Hammas sympathizing.
daniel
November 15th, 2024 at 1:03 am

… also, does anybody here remember the issue number of that Batman comic where a Jewish rabbi creates a clay golem to chase of neo-nazies from his neighborhood? If I remember correctly, it had pretty sweet Jim Aparo art.
Skani
November 15th, 2024 at 6:15 am

I take the pushback. But again, I maintain that I am reaching out in a “wear the damn glasses” way. If you don’t think they are the right glasses, I’m not going to bash you into a dumpster over it — you try them on or not. I’m always trying to look for and try on different pairs of glasses, hoping they’ll let me see another part of the electromagnetic spectrum that my current glasses don’t pick up or are filtering out.

Here are a couple more pairs:
https://www.vox.com/politics/385394/why-kamala-harris-lost-2024-democrats-moderation
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/farewell-to-the-rising-american-electorate

It is interesting to me that you think I am handling conservatives with “kid gloves.” If you were a fly on the wall of my conversations with my brother, in-laws, and my conservative friends, you would see a different side of things. You only see that if you are the conservative I am talking to. I modulate when I am talking to mostly liberals. I try to breach echo chambers and call people out on their groupthink — and I try to mind my own.

Adam – No one is asking you not to support these people groups or to own your position. What I am speaking to is the fact that we advance rights, equality, safety, and freedom by winning elections and building coalitions. A coalition that only allows pro-choice, anti-police, anti-military, anti-rural, very online, non-religious people who speak in unconventional language and who are highly fixated on language and sensitivity and calling or belittling or implicitly or excluding others is not a winning coalition. The math does not work. It is a pathway to marginalization, and that is the path we are on. I also really don’t think you can separae Hamas from all of this or strip them of their agency or role here, but that is another subject. To be clear, I think Netanyahu’s actions are egregious.

In any case, precisely because I am horrified about Trump (still waiting for Alex Jones to be announced as FCC chair), that is why I speak these words. It saddens me that this is not plainly evident. That I’m here out of some general, perverted desire to champion and protect the Donald Trumps, Matt Gaetz’s, and skinheads of the world and that I don’t care about the others. I’m speaking with specific emphases to a specific audience for specific reasons, and I speak differently, with different emphases to other audiences.

The glasses are there. Peace.
renfield
November 15th, 2024 at 8:37 am

I guess, to immediately double back on the temper tantrum I just threw in my last post, I feel compelled to push back on the equivalence Skani is drawing between The Left and the restrictive language policing that I fully acknowledge many people find alienating.

It doesn’t at all match up with my experience, which is that leftists actually get criticized (by people they perceive as being to the right of them) for being “class reductionists” and not focusing *enough* on policies that are targeted towards specifically marginalized groups.

This was something us Bernie brethren got all sorts of shit for in 2020. “What are you doing *specifically* for [insert group]?” Well, since that marginalized group gets fucked over the most by the inequities of, say, our barbaric for-profit healthcare system, obviously a single payer healthcare system will *specifically* benefit that group much moreso than nonmarginalized folks. But I think there were definitely people who (accurately, imo) detected a hesitancy on Sanders’ part to focus on that aspect and lean into the “identity politics” angle, maybe as a strategy specifically to avoid alienating the sort of people Skani is concerned that the left is alienating.

This isn’t completely antithetical to what you’re saying, Skani, but I do think a lot of leftists would disagree with one of the basic premises you’re working with, anjesud say the whole language policing game is more the purview of centrist libs than actual leftism.

Anyway, here’s an article about the governor of Kentucky, who cruised to a landslide victory in a deep red state while vocally supporting trans rights. I would argue he was able to do that because if you are delivering actual results for working class citizens, they suddenly stop giving a shit about the culture war and whether or not you are “woke”
renfield
November 15th, 2024 at 8:42 am

Sorry about that link and I don’t know what “anjesud” means, but here is the salient section from the article I referred to:

“We do this through policy and by taking direct action that gets results. In 2023, I expanded Medicaid in Kentucky to include vision, hearing and dental coverage and, throughout my time in office, have signed bills prioritizing mental health, capping the cost of insulin and expanding telehealth. I also worked with our private and nonprofit sectors in opening a pediatric autism center in Appalachia and just celebrated the opening of the first new hospital in one of our largest African American communities in 150 years. These are tangible results, where some seniors could finally afford dentures or glasses and parents didn’t have to drive two hours or take two buses to get their child to a doctor.

The Democratic Party must show the American people that it cares about creating a better life for each and every American and re-earn the public’s trust about its focus and its direction.

None of this means we abandon important values and principles. As governor, I have vetoed numerous anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and anti-choice bills, yet I still beat Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate last fall. That happened because even if some voters might have disagreed with the vetoes, they knew the next day I would be announcing new jobs, opening a new health clinic or finishing a new road that would cut 20 minutes off their commute. They knew my focus and effort was on their daily needs and that our gains as a commonwealth would help every single one of our families.”
Skani
November 15th, 2024 at 10:05 am

Renfield, thank you for presenting a concrete test case for me to clarify. Everything this guy is saying and doing — based on your excerpts, at least — seem right on to me. Once again, I’m not saying that people should be in the closet about their support for trans rights or actively start going anti-trans for votes.

A problem here is that the aperture is so wide, we could trade examples of things all day. I’m mostly talking about the cultural reputation that social media liberals, journalists, etc. have. Along the lines of your example here, I’ve already pointed to the fact that abortion performs well even in many red states, so, the idea that Democratic politicians have to run from certain policies or play the role of public transphobe is not at all what I’m talking about. Beyond that, I’m not really going to go back and forth. I’ve shared like umpteen billion election post-mortems and polling / demographic analyses by way of sourcing my general points, deliberately erring on the side of citing pretty liberal sources (I hope you will agree that Vox qualifies) to underscore that this is not me being a generic centrist for the sake of fetishizing centrism.

I sincerely doubt that Andy Beshear spends a significant portion of his time performatively shitposting with 10 tweets per week about Palestine and how Dave Chappelle is putting trans people in danger and democracy is now definitely over, and we are destined for a climate apocalypse — and that is a big part of what I’m talking about. If you have an alternative explanation for the Knight Foundation poll, the electoral outcome, and the demographic voting trends (granting that inflation and Kamala being a weak candidate are big factors), feel free to press them. People are just more bigotted and shitty and stupid now in general is not a compelling argument in my view, for any number of reasons.

And I agree with you about delivering on people’s material needs, although I think the window for Bernie 2016 leftism (my preferred policy vision) is closed for now. The idea that going aggressively left on everything is going to create a windfall of new voters is contradicted by a lot of evidence. At the same time, government meeting real material needs, putting money in mailboxes, protecting social security, protecting healthcare, protecting abortion rights — these are absolutely winning issues. For me, it’s more about culture war issues: a lot of them are losing or at least not winning issues for Dems if they make them highly salient — as the Christopher Rufos of the world have shown. Abortion is about the only culture war issue where Democrats have a clear, strong wedge advantage, and even there, most voters support later-term restrictions. I actually think Tim Walz is right about a lot of things: Help people materially, stand up for common sense, don’t be neurotic, don’t be performatively “weird.”

As a side note: Will be interesting to see where dems go on Voter ID and voter suppression now that less strict Voter id type requirements actually favor Republicans. There was a lot of hand-wringing and angsting about voter suppression and voter id in progrerssive spaces over the years, but I expect we’ll hear a lot less about that going forward.
Glaive Robber
November 15th, 2024 at 3:16 pm

Btw, I know Twitter fucking sucks. I just wanted to invite you all to read Mickey ROURKE’S mind.

https://x.com/olivermaltman/status/1705216653196214567/mediaviewer
jojo
November 15th, 2024 at 4:43 pm

Btw, I know Twitter fucking sucks. I just wanted to invite you all to read Mickey ROURKE’S mind.

And just when I thought there was going to be something on twitter I was actually interested in, the link doesn’t work…
Glaive Robber
November 15th, 2024 at 5:21 pm

Okay, this is a better link, with some added context!
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/mickey-rourkes-strange-hilarious-interview-195937971.html
Skani
November 16th, 2024 at 5:54 am

I know I’ve overstayed my welcome on this particular thread, but I realize there are a few important background contextual things I believe that I have not said or not said clearly, and I know — in general and from elsewhere in this thread — that omissions can give rise to incorrect assumptions.

SO I KNOW THIS IS A LONG-ASS RAMBLING POST THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT READ, BUT I’M PUTTING IT HERE FOR THE ONE PERSON WHO DOES AND FOR POSTERITY.

1. I think the primary reason we lost the election was inflation.

2. I think that was partially Biden’s fault, but a lot of it was supply shocks and the Federal Reserve. Inflation has happened globally (although that’s a bit muddled, because U.S. monetary policy significantly impacts global inflation), and every incumbent (including conservative party incumbents) is getting hammered off it.

3. Biden and his team fucked up colossally by him having the hubris to seek a second term and only give it up at essentially the last minute under extreme duress. I personally think Biden was a tremendously effective policymaker and get-shit-done-er, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for threading the needle to beat Trump in 2020, but he and his team fucked up royally here.

4. Kamala pleasantly surprised me by doing a lot of things right, but I’ve always found her to be a wooden, “hello, is anybody home?” candidate who seems like she has no core and has no ability to credibly and authentically answer the most basic, easily anticipated challenge questions. That did her in. Someone said that she is very good at asking questions (she was a prosecutor) and going on the attack against Trump, but she is ironically terrible at answering questions or making the case for herself. The fact that she seems like a calculating, conviction-less flip flopping maneuver-er with respect to her policy positions, that she did not adequately distance herself from Biden, and that her responses to layup questions seemed like one-sentence canned talking points being uttered by an unconvincing chatbot — that was a big problem for a lot of people who could have been persuaded. Are those people infuriating for thinking that Trump was somehow preferable? Yes, they are. Nevertheless, I believe in spite of all the headwinds that this was a winnable election. Down-ballot Democrats significantly outperformed her in key states. They have a whole fanny pack full of eye rolls and/or middle fingers for Harris voters and the media who want to serve up takes about how not voting for Kamala is evidence of their racism and sexism and not because of anything Kamala or Biden did or failed to do.

5. Kamala would not have won an open Democratic primary. It’s down to mostly Biden and his team but partially Kamala that there wasn’t one (Kamala quickly and aggressively locked down the nomination through behind the scenes maneuvering, so, she aggressively chased and caught the car on this one).

6. In large part, inflation is the byproduct of our incredible successful and financially generous COVID response, where we stimulated the hell out of an economy that was seized up and/or in freefal (pick your metaphor) during COVID year 1. The government and Federal Reserve flooded the gas so that people could shelter in place (except the disproportionately blue collar and non-college essential workers door dashing the food and working the Amazon factory floors and delivery trucks). Inflation is in large part an indication of how successfully the government kept precarious Americans and the economy afloat, but in hindsight we overshot that shit — it’s not easy to stick the landing — and it cost Biden-Harris. I’m not actually sure there’s a lesson to be learned there (kind of a damned either way situation), but maybe it’s “be on the lookout for early signs of inflation and act aggressively.”

7. Trump is not a popular figure, even now. Our system funnels people into two choices, and most people are cross-pressured on the issues, aren’t reading policy platforms anyway, and are voting off of vibes and social networks. Beyond that, if people feel good about the economy, and the incumbent is moderately charismatic and compelling to moderates in the electorate, the incumbent will win. People’s feelings about the economy are complicated. In many ways, our economy is and has been doing phenomenally well, but people only see how much gas and eggs cost now compared to 4 years ago, and they see it often. If you’ve got “door dash every night and leasing a new car money,” you don’t break a sweat over this. If you’re the one delivering the door dash, you do. Despite all this, I believe the Democrats could’ve one if Biden and Kamala hadn’t fucked it up, and if the Democratic / progressive brand were not so culturally toxic.

8. Most people are averse to what they experience as “radical” change relative to their cultural status quo, and they find culture war issues exhausting and stressful. They are averse to what they see as extremes relative to their status quo: They were weird and skittish about gay rights for about a 30 year period (the thirty year period was preceded by a much longer period where it was simply unthinkable and considered a mental illness), until they finally warmed up via years of strategic advocacy and “lived experience” with family, with lots of thermostatic electoral and cultural back and forth in the process. This sort of change-averse / let’s-not-go-too-fast political and social psychology is not the unusually bigotted exception to the rule –it is the default, primal human behavior, and the miracle of the United States and Western democracies is the actual ability to absorb diversity, the rise of women, and various civil liberty type freedoms as well as we have.

9. I have admittedly been all over the place in my many posts here, but if you look at the links I’ve talked about, the matrix for all of this is that broad swaths of the public associate the Democratic party and its voting coalition as (what are perceived to be) niche and/or divisive and highly emotionally charged and morally charged cultural issues to high levels of salience. Things like masking, getting the COVID vaccine, putting your pronouns in your work bio, taking away guns, stopping “misinformation,” proclaiming impending extinction, proclaiming that opposition to illegal immigration is by definition racist, and treating any indication of culturally insensitive speech or sentiment as grounds for all kinds of shame and even pariahood. There is constant catastrophism and neuroticism that draws from a seemingly bottomless well of stock topics to catastrophize about — when COVID dies down, we can go back to climate or Palestine or police brutality or impending civil war or dictatorship or whatever AI will do to us.

***My point is not that these are fake or unimportant issues, but that the typical human brain that is not deeply psychologically invested in progressive causes and tracking these topics does not have the capacity to process them all at once and does not wish to constantly be marinated in despair, anxiety, hatred, and a paradoxical toxic brew of self-loathing and self-righteousness. They do not see left twitter’s (or blue sky or whatever) strongly held positions on all of these issues to be obviously true or existential***

10. For justifiable reasons, people in rural areas, white men, non-college educated people, and most others resent or roll their eyes at being told that traditionally masculine pursuits are inherently toxic. If they genuinely would have voted for Bernie but instead chose Trump and were subseqently told they were sexist and racist for it, many of them have polarized against the Democratic party and their vague sense of rank-and-file Democrats since then. And they have no interest in aligning themselves with a party of smug shitposters — a lot of them don’t like Trump or Elon either (the idea that all these people have a double-standard and are totally cool with all Trump’s bullshit does not follow). Likewise, a majority of Americans simply are more moderate to conservative on illegal immigration (this moves around thermostatically over time), they want to preserve some gun rights and do not see mass shootings as the major social problem (it accounts for about 1% of gun deaths), they believe there are cases or class of abortion that should not be permitted, they think the Israel-Palestine situation is just a perpetually fucked up intractable dumpster fire and have some-but-limited fucks to give about that or Ukraine, they like vague feel-good patriotism, they want police on their streets and in their neighborhoods (this includes “communities of color”), the majority of them still believe in God, the maority of them believe in the death penalty, the majority of them believe in Voter ID laws, they are gradually coming along on trans issues but still have reservations about teens transitioning and people with penises being naked in women’s locker rooms and are just taking some time to not feel weirded out about it all, as people are wont to do about a rapid and major social change. This is not my personal policy wishlist or ideology: This is your electorate, deal with it, and get creative about engaging it, or continue to marginalize yourself and your political priorities for change. You can see the exahustion with this stuff in all kinds of forms and places, and its evident in Blueprint polling post-mortem, the Knight Foundation survey.

11. It is not my job to defend Trump voters’ or non-voters’ choices, and that’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to describe and explain it. I will defend many of these people as imperfect and wrong-on-this-point people who are persuadable on the issues, and I will readily agree that some of them are straight-up creeps. But I’m not defending their voting choices as perfectly good ones. I’m telling you what they think — and, as I’ve said, it’s a continuum. I’m capturing modal tendencies and subsets of the broad pie that is “people who didn’t vote for Kamala this time.”

12. Do not underestimate candidate-specific factors and charisma. Obama had a type of charisma (articulate, handsome, confident, calm, cool-but-not-scary-black-guy-who-panders-to-soft-white-bigotry-by-telling-black-people-to-get-their-shit-together). Bernie had a different type of charisma (authenticity, gravitas, moxie, avuncular-ness). Trump has a type of charisma (funny, gives zero fucks, speaks “truth” to power, not afraid, unkillable, stands up to prudes and scolds, not “of the system.”). Hillary had anti-charisma. Kamala seemed like a phony and an empty vessel who was entitled to win on vibes and being the Ashton Kutcher to replace Charlie Sheen in Season 7 of “the Trump is bad and scary” show. Jeb Bush — zero fucking charisma. Mitt Romeny — handsome but came off as a rich prick, which is why even though he good go toe-to-toe with incumbent Obama in the “handsome, articulate, cool, and presidential” sweepstakes, Obama spanked his ass (after a terrible first debate) by appealing to class politics and also seeming tough on geopolitics. Renfield, Andy Bashear does well in Kentucky largely because he’s part of a beloved family dynasty. Joe Manchin (the man who saved the Inflation Reduction Act and possibly sacrificed his career for it) did well in WV, because he was a beloved local figure how actively trolled the Democratic party (also key to Fetterman’s success now — he also has his own brand of charisma via authenticity and his whole steez being a troll agaisnt conventional politician oiliness).
Glaive Robber
November 16th, 2024 at 9:28 am

@Skani, my lie detector hasn’t found anything in your post. Pretty legit.

To that I’d add that yes, I think young men felt disparaged by what they perceived was a hostile environment for basic masculinity. However, as a society I think we need to examine how certain aspects have been affixed to a masculine identity that shouldn’t be. The refusal to listen, the cruelty and unfairness towards women, the emphasis of brute strength over reasoning. This stuff is perceived as masculinity over femininity, when it’s really just masculinity over intellectualism, which is a dangerous notion all its own. Men someone felt a kindred spirit with Donald Trump, a man who has never seen to have exercised, who begged his way out of the armed forces, and who is a serial sexual abuser who buried his second wife on a golf course. When these elements are somehow part of a larger picture of masculinity, we need to acknowledge that masculinity as a status of sorts is in deep trouble. I don’t think we’re pushing back hard enough against the Joe Rogan-ism of it all, the internet tough guys who can barely put a sentence together but somehow Garner massive amounts of attention, to the point where a twenty year old can probably identify someone like fucking Sneako instead of, I dunno, Paul Mescal (who is being groomed to be a big star but seems sensitive and thoughtful as well — but only in movies).

And we need a special shout-out to the mainstream media for this last couple of years of reckless, stupid headlines. They hid the truth about Donald Trump, claiming in speeches he was “sharpening his message” or “making an impassioned plea” when he would head up to the microphone and speak what an onlooker would HAVE to concede is dementia brain fog. There were years of “Biden’s too old!”, and now we’ll have to deal with an 80 year old Trump in the White House. Constantly, there would be ethics questions about Kamala Harris, but when it came to Donald Trump, his own criminal trials were depicted as trivialities. The desperately large problem is that most Americans think their local TV news is the most unbiased source of information when in fact they largely are within the stranglehold of Sinclair Media who have been nakedly outspoken about their support of Donald Trump. But to see the Washington Post and NY Times dance around obvious truths about, say, Project 2025 (which went dramatically underreported)? That’s negligence. That’s sickening.
Skani
November 16th, 2024 at 1:13 pm

Hey, @GlaiveRobber –

To your first point about masculinity. There definitely is a “there” there with the concept of “toxic masculinity.” Just like there is a “there” there with the concept of “white privilege.” These buzzwords track real phenomena. So, I think a lot of what you say makes sense. At the same time, I think there is a certain cultural feminization of the Democratic party that has happened, making it feel like the party of highly educated women, LGBTQ folks, and highly educated wife guys. There is a reason that people like Tim Ryan and Sherrod Brown over-performed in my state of Ohio (even if neither could close the deal this last couple cycles). It’s because they seem like pretty regular dudes and not “wife guys.” This is also the appeal of Eric Adams (that might not have worked out so great), Fetterman, maybe Mark Kelly. This is also why Gavin Newsom needs to go away forever as far as national politics go. He’s like the fucking Shooter McGavin of the Democratic party. Again, like it or not, but there is a spectrum from classic sociopathic toxic masculinity to non-toxic masculinity, and for non-wife guys, their masculine identity — trucks, sports, hunting, a typically strong libido, etc. These are important to them, and they don’t like it all being denigrated, especially if other aspects of their views or lifestyle, such as not having a degree, being white, being rural, are also the subject of mockery.

Since I anticipate that this will be misconstrued also. I think there are pretty significant biological sex differences in things like sex drive and propensity to be aggressive, and I think the argument that all of that is just socialization is just patent wishcasting bullshit promulgated by a self-selecting group atypical people. I also think there are plenty of dudes who don’t fit that pattern: I do not watch sports, I do not watch MMA, I do not have a truck, and I am pretty horrified by the idea of hunting or even fishing. And I am well aware of and have no qualms with strong women (in any sense) and MMA bad-ass bitches. It’s not an argument for gender stereotypes, women being in the kitchen, or rigid gender norms per se, it’s just that I think men and women tend to have some on average default differences around sex and nurturance qualities, and a lot of this stuff actually self-segregates and self-organizes. That’s probably controversial among the deconstructionists and social constructionists, but that’s because they are wrong, even though they do a good job of drawing attention to the tremendous diversity and push against rigid and prescriptive gender norms (which I also strongly oppose — I’m so woke af that my daughter and son blow up each others’ GI Joes and watch INSIDE OUT 2 together).

On the second part, I think I pretty much totally disagree with you. There wasn’t enough Biden’s too old and he was too old. The biggest problem with CNN and Vox and Slate and NYT was and has been the constant histrionics about Trump. People are now completely numb to that shit and have been since at least the Mueller report stuff, and they just either tune out or roll their eyes as Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper and fucking Jimmy Kimmel with his fucking endless nightly monologues about Trump. All of those platforms and personalities have essentially made an entire career out of pandering to and playing on and ratcheting up the anxieties of liberals. Here’s a fun exercise: Check in with google news every day a few times for a week, focus in on those outlets and their coverage of Trump, Climate, whatever fucking new emerging virus, AI, and just see how many times you count the word “anxious,” “fear,” “scary,” “concerned,” “frightened,” “terrifying,” and “dangerous.” You’ll be very drunk, very quickly. Grifting for clicks, but negativity is what our reptile brains want, so, I can’t entirely blame them.

I do agree with you that the horse race coverage is a problem, and there’s not enough attention to substantive issues of policy or authoritarian intent. I do think that the non-deranged, half-hearted, reluctant, or otherwise low-information Trump voters are going to have a serious case of buyer’s remorse. About a year ago my older brother sent me a video about climate change and asked if we could have a phone call. I was surprised, because the video seemed pretty reasonable and on-target about climate change. Then we had the call, and basically, he was like, “Hey, I think there is actuallly something to this. Like, this climate change actually is a really big problem.” …. Hmm, ya think?! This year is going to be very interesting to say the least. My hope is that it is so bad that it knocks some sense into people while not being so bad that it’s really, really, really bad for a prolonged period. We have survived a turbulent last ~10 years, and we can survive this, but it could get ugly. Are we headed for a prolonged period of authoritarianism? Maybe. I can’t really predict or stop that. I can only try to make the best decisions I know how one day at a time. Serenity prayer shit.

I welcome further thoughts and pushback, and I appreciate you and this community.
Skani
November 16th, 2024 at 1:25 pm

Actually, I should say — a lot of my analysis of media is based on written news, and I can’t really speak to the major non-cable U.S. network nightly news. My sense is that they actually do play the both-sides-ism game way too much, so, you probably have a good point there.

And, as far as Biden’s age, I’m kind of torn on that. Like, my sense is that he actually can think and even improvise pretty well in a lot of circumstances (go watch his recent-ish post-NATO press conference — he did just fine). I think he’s just old and gets tired and sort of sundowns. I am personally sympathetic to this, because for years I have struggled with this myself. When I am dealing with insomnia or stress, that is when I start doing word salad. And, like, I no that I just used the wrong version of know earlier in this sentence hear (here), but when I start flagging, I have trouble with my words. I think Biden had a strong enough team that even if he was out of it for a second term, his team running essentially on auto-pilot woule have been much better than Trump (not even close as far as I’m concerned), but I also know that the optics of that are bad, and we deserve a president who can articulate his case. I turned off that debate after that “We finally … beat Medicare” line. The thing is, he is right, the beat the drug companies and did some fucking awesome shit on prescription drugs, but being articulate and forceful is a big part of the job of getting elected president.
Franchise Fred
November 16th, 2024 at 5:16 pm

Skani, I have appreciated your very level headed posts about some very volatile subjects in this thread and would even like to connect with you off site if you’re on any of the platforms. Even if not I want you to know how appreciated it’s been.

Two weeks later I have not seen any comments expressing “whew, ok, we’re back in charge so we can relax. Now it’s time to reach out to liberals and progressives to understand them” so perhaps the calls for tolerance really only come when people feel threatened. Occam’s razor.

Finally, as a California democrat THANK YOU for articulating my frustration w Gavin Newsom. Love his wife’s films though.
Skani
November 16th, 2024 at 8:18 pm

Hey Fred, I’m glad some of this nonsense has been helpful to someone. Other than a LinkedIn account under my real name that I am not revealing (and never use) and a Letterboxd (I follow you there!) under the Skani name, I have not been on any social media platforms for a long time. I have a pseudonymous email account skaninow at yahoo dot com that you can use to to reach me and others can use to send death threats, catfishing attempts, etc.

Peace.
Glaive Robber
November 16th, 2024 at 8:24 pm

Skani, many thanks for the reply.

I may have been a little misunderstood. I do honestly think there should have been substantial (and respectful) coverage of Joe Biden’s age, and I think there was. I know right-wing media made it into a joke that Joe Biden could ramble, and their criticisms seemed less substantive and more petty, but whatever — it was discussed, and I was fine with it, because age is a serious concern. Joe Biden, at one point, would have been an 85 year old President, and that’s kind of insane.

My argument to that is that there were no similar discussions about Donald Trump’s advanced age and mental status. Yes Joe Biden was older, but he lived a more physically and intellectually rigorous life. Donald Trump was/is an elderly man in a stressful job who is awake during unusual hours and is powered entirely by Diet Coke and cheeseburgers.

My father is a year older than Trump. He retired close to twenty years ago, and as he moved into an advanced age, he modified his diet and kept regular exercise. But he retired and moved to a gated community, and none of us could get him interested in any new practices or ideas. He had no interest in vacationing anywhere, visiting somewhere new, learning a new language. We couldn’t find a hobby for him, and he never learned basic skills. He can’t even cook the most remedial dish. Truthfully, my loving mother took care of all of that, but he could have stayed sharp by taking a class, learning a new activity.

Instead, he launched himself into right wing media. Not the horror story of Newsmax or Truth Social or anything like that, again he wasn’t adventurous enough. But he stopped watching anything that wasn’t Fox News. He only read culture warrior books from the likes of Sean Hannity. Until recently, he would have Rush Limbaugh in the car for hours, and he’d stick to right wing radio beyond him. He stopped consuming movies and shows, save for marathons of newsmagazines, but he didn’t seriously distinguish between the investigations of “60 Minutes” and the sensationalized nonsense of “Dateline”.

Two years ago, he started getting foggy as far as memory and thought process. Conversations became repetitive, and he would only repeat talking points before he started to forget what time it was, where he needed to go or what he needed to do. And last year, almost overnight, I realized I had my last real conversation with my father. His thought process was shot, and now he would begin sentences like a runaway car, leaning into an anecdote that went nowhere, about people that he’s never met, doing things he’s never seen.

I really think that, when my father retired, if he had embarked upon a few new activities or skills, he would still be of sound mind for another few years. I tried my best to help with this, but then I fucked up my life and went to prison, and didn’t hear much from him after that. I say all this stuff because my father was in far better shape than Donald Trump, and he’s just Not There anymore. Around 2013, my father turned to me and confessed, like it was a fun little story, “I really only listen to news that I agree with.” Is that not what we’re dealing with in regards to the President-elect? I think that Trump/Biden debate was like “Dawn Of The Dead”, but once Biden was out, there needed to be a serious mainstream reckoning with Trump’s mental state. Instead, what likely happened was that people who weren’t plugged-in to the fringe-y media outlets that interviewed/flattered Trump during this election period probably thought they were voting for the Trump of 2016. And even his strongest supporters have to concede he is absolutely not that guy anymore.

People don’t talk a lot about the local news gap, which is dangerous. If I’m not mistaken, most regions schedule the local news side-by-side with the national news. And the national news spent the last year reporting on Trump’s legal troubles (because he made sure there was plenty to cover). But the local news is largely controlled, via clear monopoly, by Sinclair Broadcasting. And the bulk of that programming is going to be obviously what’s going on within the state, there will be crime and weather and whatever is happening to the local teams. But the five to ten minutes spent covering national issues, beyond the big headlines, will be right-wing narratives, usually around immigrant crimes, transgender women in sports, stuff that would NEVER influence the people actually watching, along with a critical report on the Democrats. A lot of people feel the national news is the “liberal” media, and they’ll go for the local news instead, believing it’s impartial. And a lot of those viewers ended up having uncertainty about Kamala Harris because the local news (which said NOT A PEEP about Project 2025) had to say something about “Biden’s economy” where you couldn’t afford milk.

As for THE PROBLEMS WITH MEN (TM), my main issue is that we’ve allowed a subculture to spring up that believes troubles with manhood stem from outside factors. It’s a culture of victimhood and blame, and it’s created this notion that women are lesser instead of celebrating the strengths of men. It’s not about the uprising of men in today’s world as much as it is about forcing control over gender roles through shame and peer pressure, turning men into Soldiers For The Cause. It used to be about Men Taking Responsibility, but I feel like the new world of the manosphere that boosted Donald Trump is all about eschewing responsibility and finding the fault of others. Instead of teaching charisma (which comes with empathy and worldliness) it teaches domination and ridicule.

Maybe my generation screwed that one up. Maybe we shouldn’t have let Joe Rogan, the Dumbest Guy Sitting At The End Of The Bar, to become a voice of authority. Maybe we should have shown more scrutiny towards professional sports when they kept diminishing the abuse and marginalization of women by athletes. I’m sorry to be such a cliche, but I think of it in prison terms. Donald Trump was a guy who needed to be shown that his behavior wouldn’t fly. When he disguised his misogyny with “locker room talk” in 2016, everyone who has been in a locker room should have stood up and said that was horseshit. He needed to be smacked in the mouth. Instead, Washington kissed his shoes, and mainstream media clutched their jewels. When people stood up to him — Obama, Pelosi, etc — it rattled him. And no one thought that they should do that more often. I dunno, we failed. And now men don’t even know what manhood is supposed to reflect, other than “Be A Giant Fucking Asshole”. I don’t sleep well with this thought.
Franchise Fred
November 16th, 2024 at 8:49 pm

Do I have a Letterboxd account? I never use it. Is there a fake Franchise Fred????
Skani
November 17th, 2024 at 3:34 am

Hi @GlaiveRobber –
I think you raise good points here. I think Trump is pretty damn hardy for his age, and has seemed more energetic, quick-witted, and generally robust than Biden for a long time. I think he definitely is losing a step and has no business being president for a variety of reasons. I have long felt that his basic temperament and character issues are disqualifying, even setting aside all the corruption, authoritarianism, etc. I’ll grant you that he’s losing a step. I have seen some coverage of this in the media, though, so, I’m not sure it’s just been swept under the rug. Trump has been far, far more out and about showing himself than Biden ever was this election cycle, and he was able to complete sentences at that first debate, so, I think you may be overplaying your hand here. But I like the Diet Coke and burgers line, and you have somewhat of a point here.

Men actually are struggling a lot and are not just being butthurt crybabies. And even if they are, since when does telling a person they suck and are a crybaby and a racist and a sexist and a this and that actually help anybody. I agree that going way down the manosphere rabbit hole is not the answer, just like joining the crips our becoming an alcoholic is not the answer, but people do bad things when they’re struggling. And, again, my goal is to establish some daylight between the most obnoxious, 2 standard deviations out, publicly visible performative assholes vs. the less extreme people. These extremes and highly visible examples point to another “there” there — a bigger issue beyond the caricatures.

Also, I feel you on Fox News, my mom went down that rabbit hole before she died. My in-laws have been there for 15 years. The sunken place.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/whats-the-matter-with-men
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-fewer-good-men/ (I think this guy Galloway is an overrated diletante dabbler and a bit of a tool with generally mediocre and overrated thoguhts, but he’s not entirely wrong here)
Skani
November 17th, 2024 at 5:20 am

@Fred, probably you’ve broken through to that next level of celebrity and have a fan account. Or maybe an evil doppleganger? Fred from the future sent back to present day to establish a dormant Letterboxd account?
Franchise Fred
November 17th, 2024 at 9:22 am

That’s me all right, my favorite films and looks like I dabbled when it first started but never kept up.
ron
November 19th, 2024 at 4:22 am

trump did not win, the dems lost. they dropped the ball so hard it shattered the earth’s crust. trump won with less votes than he got last time, the dems simply fucked up so badly that 10m less people voted for them. the democratic party is nothing but a grift, a jobs program for campaign strategists that exists to extract money from people who feel they have no other choice but to support the lesser evil. they don’t need to win to keep their jobs, and they can continue to fundraise off fear of what republicans might do or are doing regardless. the fact that democracy itself is facing an existential threat was less import to them than the corporate and zionist status quos. they tacked right HARD trying to target imaginary “swing voters” which is what they always do, and its what has put us in this death spiral towards fascism. kamala’s positions on issues like immigration and israel are literally to the right of reagan, she campaigned with the cheney’s and promised to put republicans in her admin – how is any of that supposed to excite anyone about voting for her? the only reason we ended up with harris in the first place was because of the way they ratfucked bernie during the last primary out of fear that someone with actual principles might get into a position to fuck up the grift. if anything good comes of this it will be a complete shakeup in the party or the emergence of an actual alternative.

trumps bigotry and fascism rile up his base and earn him a cult like following of truly despicable people, but the simple fact is most americans are totally disconnected from politics and have no idea how much truly fucked up shit trump has said he will do, or comprehend the fact that if he manages to implement even a fraction of it it will shred the constitution and destroy the global economy (partly because most of the media doesnt take him seriously enough to communicate any of this at all). they looked at the rent and price of groceries and said “this sucks” and kamala said “actually no, the economy is doing great and i will change nothing” so they either stayed home if they were a dem or voted for trump if they werent.

now is the time to educate yourself, brace for the storm, and take care of each other as best as possible these 10 ebooks free for the next 3 days and are a good start.
Skani
November 19th, 2024 at 7:27 pm

Okay, so, this is not accurate on many levels, Ron.

First, things like the CHIPS Act, IRA (big climate investments), Infrastructure act, Electoral Count Act, and the temporary expansion of the CTC were significant and would not have happened under Trump. Same with Obamacare. The GOP does not get these sorts of things done, and they have huge impacts. Same with NLRB’s actions on behalf of unions in the Biden administration, along with a much more aggressive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We also had a massive stimulus during covid to help people through, as well forebearance on evictions. There are lots of things the Democrats do wrongly, and many of them may be individually very craven and self-interested, but policy differences from the GOP are highly consequential. Dems would not vote to slash social security or medicare or medicaid, whereas GOP absolutely would.

I agree with you that the Dems are significantly in the tank for corporate interests, and I agree with you (and Renfield from before) that the Dems need to sharpen their economic and working class message — starting by actually agressively pushing for a major hike in the minimum wage, and I agree that Kamala’s message was muddled, but there is a ton of real daylight between Dem economic policies and Republican.

Second, swing voters are absolutely not imaginary. Lower-propensity and swing voters lean right to left on culture issues and generally have a lot of idiosyncratic opinions, and higher turnout now favors Republicans. Taking hard left positions on things like immigration would have been poison electorally in this environemnt — the idea that she’s going to gain more than she loses by pandering to the party’s left wing — certainly on cultural issues — is exactly backwards. The country is moderate to conservative on the full gamut of culture war issues (~ anything not explicitly and primarily economic) even on a good day, and in the current environment even more so. If she had tacked hard left on immigration, the Middle East, etc., she’d have gotten blown out even harder, because there are far more people culturally in the middle or right on these hot-button issues than there are on the progressive left. In this election there was substantial defection of traditional Democratic voting groups over to Trump, hardly consistent with the idea that they were holding out for someone more culturally progressive (think particularly of Latino voters, where the naive assumption has been that they are one-issue voters in favor of loose borders, when, if anything, they lean more right on this).

People who didn’t vote for her were far more likely to say she was too liberal and too soft on immigration than the opposite. And two of of the least-endorsed reasons for not choosing her were “Kamala Harris is too conservative” (-27), and “Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel” (-22). People who did not vote for her were more likely to say she was too pro-Palestine than to say she was too pro-Israel.

You are confusing your own policy and ideological preferences for a winning voting coalition. Bernie might have won in 2016, which would have been just fine with me, but he was much less bought in on left culture wars at that point. He was vocally against open borders and took the line that illegal immigrants are bad for U.S. labor in 2016.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/bernie-sanders-immigration-record-explained
Skani
November 20th, 2024 at 3:38 am

Here is some more information on swing voters and their impact on elections. While certainly decilining over time, they still absolutely decide elections. Biden would not have won key states like Georgia and Pennsylvania in 2020 without swing voters.

https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/how-donald-trump-turned-off-swing-voters-in-2020/

“In Georgia, 6% of 2016 Trump voters switched to Biden while only 3% of 2016 Clinton voters switched to Trump. In Pennsylvania, 7% of 2016 Trump voters switched to Biden while only 4% of 2016 Clinton voters switched to Trump. Finally, in both Michigan and Wisconsin, 6% of 2016 Trump voters switched to Biden while only 4% of 2016 Clinton voters switched to Trump.[2] These differences seem small, but given the closeness of the 2020 presidential election in all of these states, they might have been large enough to shift their electoral votes from Trump to Biden and that would have been enough to change the outcome of the election in the Electoral College.”

See also:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/bidens-problem-is-with-swing-voters

I do agree that turnout was more of a problem for Kamala this time, but a lot of that is more down to her ineffective messaging, general image as a flip flopper who lets the prevailing winds blow her whichever way, and broad dissatisfaction with inflation, immigration, and some of the perceived leftward cultural drift. Not because she was insufficiently left on this or that issue. The public tends to move in cycles, reacting against a given party, policy, or program when they feel it has performed incompetently, gone “too far” on cultural issues or policy, or mismanaged the economy. Inflation was a major major factor in first Ford and then Carter getting tossed. LBJ opted not to try for another term and Nixon won in 1968 with Vietnam fatigue, inflation already kicking up, and a backlash to civil rights breakthroughs, social unrest, and spending on Great Society programs. In addition to inflation, the general sense that Carter was weak and ineffectual in dealing with it and with other things did him in (oil embargos, Iran hostage crisis, “malaise” speech). The GOP lost in 2008, because voters were sick of the GOP after eight years of W. Bush’s war on terror, unpopular foreign wars, and the great financial crisis — and because Obama felt like and embraced the mantle of a “change” candidate in all sorts of ways. Despite a strong pre-Covid economy (whether he deserves credit for that or not), Trump lost with all the COVID drama and derangement and people being sick of the general chaos and scandals surrounding him. Biden-Harris lost in 2024 with inflation and immigration and broad exhaustion with the leftward cultural drift variously labeled “wokeness” or “cancel culture” [which I unpacked earlier in this thread without invoking those terms]. The true Trump wackos would not mind a permanent GOP majority (“burn it all down” and go full authoritarian), and everybody else who pulled the lever for Trump just thinks the media has Trump derangement syndrome. Between that, Harris’s weakness, and the sense that Trump is actually the “change” candidate (relative to the 2024 status quo), that’s all folks for Harris. You see these same cycles play out at a more narrow, fractal level, as well, which is why the presidential incumbent’s party usually loses control of congress in the mid-terms. People may sense the incumbent overreaching with their legislative program or failing to turn around what they see as a bad economy, or they just want to keep him in check.

These dynamics are evolving in new ways with education polarization, racial de-polarization, and changes to the media environment that are leading to a significant re-alignment (we’ve had two-consecutive cases of the presidential incumbent failing to win re-election after three consecutive cases of the incumbent winning two terms). But some of the basic tendencies remain: people tend to like the incumbent when the economy is good, domestic unrest is low (or if we are frightened and rallying around the flag in a time of war), and the challenger is not substantially more charismatic or articulate. That’s the “if it ain’t broke” theory that low-information voters operate with. But, even with being so, the honeymoon tends to be shortlived, and voters get itchy and eager to curb the incumbent’s power, which is why they tend to vote in the other party during the mid-terms. Of course, all of these are general trends, and you can find exceptions (especially since all these factors interact with each other, such that one of them might overwhelm the others in a given instance), but they are trends nonetheless.

Hey bud, thanks for reading.
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