My one coworker, a former Trump supporter, asked me today “Are you still 100% positive Trump will lose? Please tell me he’s going to lose.” She was visibly worried. Actually sounded upset, and was practically begging me to tell her yes. Never seen her like that before…
This has become a very confusing time in our political history. I’m nervous, if not outright afraid, because I can’t tell which way the scales are going to tip. We need everyone to do their duty as a citizen, now more than ever.
Yep.
I’m in a red state full of Trumpers.
It doesn’t even feel like an election year. There’s no signs or new bumper stickers like the last two. But they all still hate Biden.
A lot of people are just voting against the other candidate this year.
I hate to say it, but voting against the other guy has been going on a long time, and I think it has a lot to do with why we find ourselves in this situation. “Vote for me because I’m not the other guy” is one of the oldest political strategies there is, and Democrats have been using it for a long time; even going so far as to donate to the campaigns of the most extremist candidates in their race to set themselves up with an easy win.
However, as my boss when I was a teenager would say - and my grandfather decades before him - “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.” There’s a core block of Republicans who don’t care who the Republican candidate is. They’re gonna vote for him regardless of his policies just because he’s the Republican. He could be Trump, Biden, Putin, or Stalin himself, risen from the grave to destroy the specter of capitalism once and for all. And the Democrats have never accounted for these people voting against them rather than voting for a candidate they like, which has led to this slide further and further towards right-wing extremism as the craziest candidates get propped up by Democrats looking for an easy win - to the point that even the old Republicans have lost control of this core group of voters who became the MAGA cultists, and the party as a whole along with them.
It’s unfortunate, but all we can do at this point is vote against the crazies and hope that the Republicans clean out their party of extremists. But I don’t think we’ll see that happen any time soon. The rot is rampant.
I was wondering about that. I’m in California, and there are basically no political signs this year. I figured it was because they thought we would forget whose signs were in their yards in 2016 and 2020
Nope, they’re pretty much over trump.
The danger is they vote against Biden.
With the electoral college though, it’s especially important to get people from states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia to vote for Biden instead of Trump.
One in five Americans enjoy the country sliding into chaos.
I haven’t been stockpiling all these canned goods and pornography for nothing!
In the after days, may I barter for a nice Sears catalog? Preferably spring edition?
If you join my legions.
I can’t commit. I will scour the wasteland for my sustenance
The wild part is that both sides think this, but for totally different reasons. The center all the way over to semi-Left we have in the US sees the danger Trump posses to democracy, his weaponization of the courts (even without being in power), and his disdain for the rule of law.
The Right (minus Republicans that aren’t MAGA that I would put more center thanks to the shifted Overton window) think that the “radical Left” is trying to replace them with “brown people”, and trying to make everyone “woke”, and somehow make everyone a pedophile by having a drag queen read them a story.
The Right uses “FUD” to control their base, with only wanting power over people and having zero desire to actually govern (as seen with congress currently), and everyone else that is paying any attention is afraid of what that means for everyone in their lives that will be affected by this cult. And even once Trump is gone from this earth, it’s going to take years of mental health crisis to try and bring these people back from a cult this large and powerful. This is the kind of thing that Scientology looks at just goes “sploosh”.
Hari* Seldon on Foundations watch.
I want to first say thank you, this looks very interesting! But to help people of the future I want to point out that you have a typo in his name, Hari Seldon which was no doubt a thwarting by auto-correct.
Thank you kind sir. You’d be correct.
5th American welcomes it.
5th American thinks they are Canadian
hop-skipping into chaos
Yeah but who out of those five describe “chaos” as things like social policy, lgbtq rights, and those “damn illegals coming in to the country”?
I think American politics today can be broken down as follows:
There are three main groups in America today: revolutionaries (we’ll call them progressives), reactionaries (we’ll call them conservatives), and the supporters of the status quo (we’ll call them centrists).
The centrists are people who are generally doing well, are generally happy and content, and therefore don’t want things to change significantly. They might be willing to accept relatively minor changes, but only if the changes don’t negatively impact them in any meaningful way.
Progressives are people who are generally unhappy and discontent. They don’t feel that things are working for them, so they want to radically change things, in the hopes of making society more like their hypothetical or theoretical ideal.
Conservatives are generally a reaction to progressives. Like progressives, conservatives aren’t entirely content with the status quo, but they generally blame progressives for any problems. They believe it was progressives who created the problems when they tried to make radical changes, and conservatives therefore think the best way to solve the problems is to roll back any of the changes and to just generally go back to a better, more stable, more traditional past.
Progressives hate the centrists, for their opposition to the radical changes they propose, changes that progressives view as absolutely necessary. Progressives feel that the centrists lack empathy, as they are unable to see, or don’t care, that progressives are very unhappy and discontented, and may even be suffering.
The centrists see progressives as overly idealistic malcontents who are simply blind to how good they have it and to all the status quo has given them. The centrists also resent the progressives for asking them to make sacrifices. The centrists believe they earned their success, and there’s no reason to punish them for it, and that progressives are just “sore losers.”
Conservatives absolutely hate progressives, with a murderous rage. They hate that progressives want to radically change things, and they hate that progressives reject tradition and established hierarchies/hegemony. conservatives are infuriated that progressives won’t show deference to traditional authority, and even dare, in some cases, to call for the destruction of said authority.
Conservatives don’t necessarily like the centrists either, but any problems they have with the centrists comes down to any willingness they may have to work with progressives. For instance, if the centrists are ever willing to listen to or compromise with progressives, conservatives view that as total capitulation to the progressives, and/or the status quo being completely co-opted or infiltrated by progressives.
Conservatives now believe that the status quo has been taken over by progressives, and thus they make no distinction between the centrists and progressives, viewing both as the enemy. Therefore, it has become necessary for the centrists to ally with progressives (as much as they might hate that thought) against conservatives. However, the alliance is restricted only to opposing conservatives, and does nothing to change the centrists’ general opposition to the aims and ambitions of progressives. For this reason, progressives are reluctant to form an alliance with the centrists, since they believe the centrists are asking for the progressives’ help without offering anything in return. The centrists argue that they don’t have to offer anything to the progressives, and that the progressives should help the centrists because it is also in their interest to see the conservatives defeated.
Progressives are people who are generally unhappy and discontent. They don’t feel that things are working for them, so they want to radically change things, in the hopes of making society more like their hypothetical or theoretical ideal.
Things are working fine for me but I care about other people. I am progressive.
I think this is a deeply flawed and simplistic categorization of Americans’ political sentiment. “Progressives” capture a broad swathe of people with different concerns and intents, very many of whom are doing just fine but appreciate the myriad systemic issues that merit address. Keep in mind, Republicans have effectively turned being focused on the existential threat that is unchecked climate change into a “progressive” issue and part of their culture war.
Moreover, political spectrum positioning historically shifts only one step one way or another between generations (i.e., children are usually one step more centrist than their parents when they settle into a stable political outlook). What this means is that most people just don’t give significant thought about their politics and their practical and lived impact on their lives. This isn’t to say most people are stupid, but rather they are thoughtless and myopic. It also means that a very large portion are not reacting to anything-- they’re just bumbling along like humans always have and it’s the incidental cascade from flapping butterflies here and there that cause the population level swings and societal changes we ultimately see.
You are making the same mistake that economists (used to and some still do) make in that you are baking perfect rationality, at least along some axes, where it just does not exist. And trying to build any sort of model from such a flawed axiom is doomed.
I think this is a deeply flawed and simplistic categorization of Americans’ political sentiment.
It is an oversimplification, I don’t deny that. But just because my analysis is a simplification doesn’t mean it is wholly inaccurate or lacking in usefulness.
“Progressives” capture a broad swathe of people with different concerns and intents, very many of whom are doing just fine but appreciate the myriad systemic issues that merit address.
That’s true, although I don’t know how many progressives are “doing just fine.” Perhaps it’s many, or even most, but I don’t think anyone can say for certain. I’m not sure it matters, either, whether progressives are just disaffected people or disaffected people and their allies and advocates. The point is, despite their differences, they want radical change, and that is ultimately what puts them at odds with centrists.
most people just don’t give significant thought about their politics and their practical and lived impact on their lives.
I think that’s true as well, but I’m not really making a distinction between the people who identify with and lend their loyalty to one political tribe or the other, even if passively, and the thought leaders of said tribes.
It also means that a very large portion are not reacting to anything-- they’re just bumbling along like humans always have and it’s the incidental cascade from flapping butterflies here and there that cause the population level swings and societal changes we ultimately see.
Well, I think you might be doing the thing you accused me of and oversimplifying. I don’t think societal changes are simply a result of an incidental cascade brought on by bumbling, thoughtless humans flapping around mindlessly. Certainly some people have much more influence on societal change than others, and many people are mostly just passengers, but that doesn’t mean societal changes are merely random.
I think you are missing out on the fourth group of people too tired, too overwhelmed or simply too disenfranchised to care enough to actually do anything for any side… this group is by far the largest of them all
Progressives are people who are generally unhappy and discontent. They don’t feel that things are working for them, so they want to radically change things, in the hopes of making society more like their hypothetical or theoretical ideal.
In so much as things are not working out for progressives, it’s because many of them are usually people with higher levels of compassion and empathy. I think you’re equating socioeconomic status with political alignment, which will lead to inaccurate conclusions.
On the flip side, there are many conservatives who are poor, trapped in abusive jobs or U.S. states, dying of one reason or another but will blame progressives for their problems because of the culture war bullshit/distraction tactic.
We’re all victims of unabated greed, it’s just that some of us have Stockholm syndrome or a delusional fantasy of one day becoming
an abusera captain of industryI think you’re equating socioeconomic status with political alignment
I’m not, necessarily. I think a person can be unhappy and discontented even if they aren’t of low socioeconomic status. I think you can be unhappy even if you are doing relatively ok economically. I think that because that’s my exact situation. I’m not poor or trapped in an abusive job, yet I am very dissatisfied with the status quo.
You could practically swap conversations and progressives in this, depending on the audience.
Bruh…it may be the dab I just hit, but you just blew my freaking mind with the accuracy of that description. I’m stealing this for a future family argument.
Then vote…
I’m going to but either party winning the election is not going to stop America’s decline
That may be true, but one party is loaded with criminals actively trying to hasten said decline.
Sure, but note that these 80% are described as about equal between Republicans and Democrats. Meaning 80% of people are afraid the ‘other side’ is going to lead to catastrophe, but they don’t agree on which side is the threat, and probably a fair share that believe that both of the likely “sides” will end in catastrophe.
If four out of five people voted, then I think we’d be in a lot better shape as a country. Civic engagement does not seem to be on the uptick, would love to see some better stats on that.
I don’t disagree, but I will say that 80% are afraid it is sliding into chaos, and after the election you may have about 40% of people somewhat relieved, but expect the other 40% to be extra afraid.
Five out of five Americans ain’t seen nothing yet
American Politics: “hold my beer…”
Hey look! Another poll! Let’s see what they want us to believe!
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four in five americans have eyes
That’s great news. Chaos is good for ratings and that means more advertising dollars.
/s explicit if not implied.
Legit doesn’t matter what side your on. The other side is destroying America and your guy is the savior. The outrage cycle won, guys. Now we’re all outraged. What next?
And the fifth is a stern Trumpist and QAnon fetishist, and enjoys breaking the country.
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It is, fucking do something about it.
