She put my recent thoughts into words: they simply can NOT admit that they were wrong about Trump, especially since they’ve curated their new identity around him.
After all, many sacrificed their family life on the altar of Trump. If you make a stand for bigotry that’s so rancid it drives your kids to sever contact, you have to believe it’s in service of something higher or else come to grips with your own moral failings. I know which one I believe is more likely.
It’s the rotten core of the anti-intellectual ideology that the right has been pushing for decades.
This. I can’t solve this, and neither can any other individual person.
It will take a wide spread implosion, but they’ve got a resilient ecosystem that will just switch messianic figures out once Trump is no longer able to hold public sway.
The further out from Trump you go the more these people will treat him like Reagan and pretend he solved all their problems if only for a fleeting moment in history.
And if they don’t switch, it may straight-up become religious
Sunk Cost Fallacy for president
Anti-intellectual theology as well. “God and Country” evangelical churches from the smallest to the largest find it absolutely crucial to brainwash their congregations against higher ed and critical thinking.
Anti intellectualism has traditionally been a problem across the board. Until COVID the most likely cohort to avoid vaccinating kids in the US were college educated white mothers. I have met a ton of leftists who think economics is bullshit. I know people who think all social science is bullshit.
Anti-intellectualism is an American trait.
Anti-intellectualism is an American trait
But tbf, it’s not uniquely American *rubs temples while staring at own country*
True. I think we’re fortunate in that anti intellectualism (and just plain old stupidity) is less common on the left, and tends to be more harmless when it is there.
I’m left but the tankies are idiots and their ideology requires sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending history didn’t happen. Though lemmy is the first time I encountered large numbers of such folk.
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“…the first rule of MAGA is to never, ever, under any circumstances, admit that liberals might be right about something.”
People in cults stay in them for the same reasons. So many times, they were told they were wrong, that they couldn’t take the embarrassment of making such a mistake.
Maybe MAGA people need to be coddled a bit. Tell them that Trump changed towards the end. They were right, but he betrayed them in the end. Something else should be tried. Many of these people are dangerous in the mental state their in.
Maybe. But this just kicks the can down the road. They’ll do the same shit with a new messiah figure as soon as they find one that can string two words together and make them feel like they’re virtuous for their hatred.
It’s inevitable. There is no solution to the problem.
Ultimately, it’s because we let them get away with a literal civil war. Here in 2023, almost every protection put in place after the civil war has eroded to nothingness, and they/their ancestors weren’t held accountable, and have been allowed to lie a false narrative into being for almost two centuries.
They’ve told us they still view this as a civil war. I wonder when enough normal people will believe them.
Mollycoddling them is what caused the problem in the first place. They need to be forced to accept responsibility for the choices they made even if it hurts them. Them entrenching themselves out of embarrassment is a moral failing on their part, not ours.
They need to be forced to accept responsibility
I won’t hold my breath.
The only solution is the California model: vote them into powerlessness. They’ll never change. Just leave them to their impotent rage while the rest of us move on.
You forget that California actually allows for a fair amount of direct democracy - the South will cling to Republican government and will fight any movement toward direct democracy and ballot initiatives because every effort to appeal to their base would be defeated.
True but if we get enough dems in office, we naturally progress towards stronger ballot measures. We can’t do anything while Republicans are in office.
And it will take some bizarre set of circumstances to ever get the GOP out of state office because they have gerrymandered everything to fuck, and the rural base is seemingly forever captured by the GOP, and the states’ supreme courts are GOP, and …
I frequently fantasize about Canada, where the assholes are fewer in number. Though I was recently in upstate New York and I realized how much I fucking miss the Northeast.
There’s a lot of Black people in the South. That’s where we need to focus our efforts. Stacey Abrams style.
I hear you, but the black community has been saying the system is rigged (regardless of who wins) for far longer than nearly anyone else. I don’t know how you go from massive disengagement to engagement given the levels of distrust that exist. Or how you get black politicians elected to office outside of statewide office or city government. The youth vote decided to suddenly show up, but it’s not enough by itself.
Exactly, some people deserve to get exactly what they want, fuck em.
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more rational concerns (e.g. economic precarity)
It was never, ever, about “economic anxiety”. It was about hurting the right people, and they didn’t care if they had to suffer too as long as the right people suffered
He pretended to want to help them during his campaign. They fell for it and just ignored all facts and evidence since. Doubt they’re going to see the light.
Yeah, this is along the lines of what I was thinking.
or give them hover bikes.
Clinton was right about everything. In 20 years its going to be really hard to explain why she wasn’t the obvious choice who should have won by a landslide
It’s actually an easy explanation.
People were more concerned with a Democrat being likeable, after decades of character assassination, while they didn’t care that the republican was a criminal, and also foreign interference and an FBI that was paralyzed by biased agents and management fear of appearing biased, actual outcomes be damned.
It was a perfect storm of regressive misinformation and every individual with the ability to stop the train wreck trying to cover their own asses and pass the buck instead.
wasn’t this also the election that was heavily influenced by Cambridge Analytica? while Facebook being the biggest social media site in thebworld/us?
I just want to also call out the Internet Research Agency, Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear: All Russian information groups, a disrupted our elections in one way or another through different types of social engineering, hacking, trolling and misinformation creation. They went after individualls, businesses, and government organizations, not limited to the DNC.
She didn’t even campaign in Michigan thinking it was a sure thing. She ran a terrible campaign.
I’m sure that will be something people in 20years understand. She didn’t campaign well enough so we elected a narcissistic sociopath who bragged about grabbing women by the genitals and then fucked our country into fascism.
But her emails…
Everything is a bit of a stretch. She was certainly wrong about how she ran her campaign. Poisoning the well in the primary worked out so fucking well for her. It was her turn, she earned it. No reason to convince the voters to show up by campaigning, or creating a platform people were excited about. Just say how bad Bernie is, then how bad trump is a few times and hide.
“Poisoning the well” aka “winning by 3 million votes”
I don’t like how the system works either, but that doesn’t change it or invalidate her loss.
Yeah, the DNC clearing the field for her looks really bad in hindsight. A lot would be different if Biden had run in 2016 when the whole Bidenbro phenomenon was really popular.
This conclusion has been obvious for fucking decades.
Yes but this gets us nowhere
No, I’m happy to take every opportunity to shame the people who refused to vote for Clinton out of sheer fucking stupidity in 2016.
Your vote fucking matters. Never forget it. This is a lesson. Never forget it.
💀
The mainstream media has treated Republicans with contempt and derision for years. Why wouldn’t they be bitter?
It’s embarrassing how much the mainstream media coddles Republicans. Working the refs the only play you guys know these days.
Those pieces of human shit deserve more contempt and derision for their appealing crimes against humanity.
Persecution complex says what?
And how many years are we talking here? It’s been 7 years since the party chose the known sexual predator to be the face of the party, and most of them still love him now that he used that choice to commit a bunch of crimes and betray our country.
Republicans who stay with the party after the last 7 years either don’t give a shit about the future or are complete idiots or both.
