Comment by adamors
3 hours ago
Tens of millions have voted for this 3 times in the past 10 years, it succeeded twice. This is not going away, half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule and will do anything to take the whole country with them.
I think if I lived in a truly authoritarian country I'd be a bit taken aback to have my situation equated to that of Americans'.
Only because you think authoritarian means poor.
Yes Americans do not understand how lucky they are.
Voter preferences can change with time, as voters observe the effects of their previous selections. Most voters don't want and didn't vote for authoritarian rule. They are humans with many diverse challenges & concerns in their lives. Their votes are an attempt to balance/compromise among those.
Yet after Jan 6th more people voted or Trump than voted for the Harris
The US wanted this.
Voters change their mind all the time. Sure, there are still plenty in the US who want all this, but Trump's approval ratings are at or near all-time lows, and at least some people who voted for him finally see his lies for what they are, and have regrets.
It's still worrying! His supporters still number lots of people who a) are still somehow too gullible to realize Trump and the MAGA crowd are not going to make their lives better, and b) actively want what's going on. But there are easily more eligible voters in the US who wouldn't vote for a Republican with a gun to their head, or who are finally starting to understand that "sticking it to the libs" is hurting themselves.
It's not going away, but it's likely that it's declining, and possible it will continue to do so. Whether or not it declines quickly enough, before these jackasses consolidate power and break what's left of our institutions... well, that remains to be seen.
I take some solace for how there is such a hard floor of support for Trump. Counterintuitively, I consider that good news. Because any regular politician would be so far underwater at this point that they might well fear for their life. What Trump has is a solid 1/3 of the population that are so far up his ass they can't see daylight. That works out great for him, and poorly for every other GOP politician. He's achieved demagogue status, which is easier said than done. Vance ain't got it, Rubio ain't got it, there's not really anybody on the sidelines who looks like they may have it either. So when Trump is gone, the GOP is going to undergo another wild gyration in ideology after the infighting settles down. And if they don't find another halfway plausible demagogue, they might be a back into minority party status for the next two decades. There is precedent for this.
But the dems are almost certainly getting ready for their own come to jesus moment, their base is pretty pissed off too. Could get interesting. A boring candidate will probably be the preferred choice after the chaos of these years, but after that I think it might get wild.
Yep if Kent State happened today half of America would be cheering.
You can rage against Trump and republicans as much as you want but in the end the democrats must learn to formulate why anybody should vote FOR them. Even in the current chaos they aren’t able to bring up a coherent message and follow through when they are in power. I see the same in Germany. AfD is getting stronger while the established parties get nothing done.
It reminds me somewhat of the state of the Weimar Republic. The democratic parties failed which gave an opening to the nazis.
Somehow, no one votes for nazi because they believe that stuff. Rhetorically. They are always victims with no agency.
They do believe in stuff. And their soft supporters succesfully manage to turm the blame to others.
Trump situation is result of years of hard work of heritage foundation, conservative preachers, tech bros, supreme court and so on. He represents their project being succesfull.
You don't give Trump enough credit. It is about him personally, this is not the big win for the heritage foundation that you portray it as.
>half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule
That's half the people who showed up to vote, not "half the voting population". 1/3 of the eligible voters simply didn't vote, and from the people I've encountered that don't vote, they are mostly left-leaning.
No, stupidity and self-harm aren't going away, those are human traits. The current admin is actively hurting everyone, with tariffs and stupid wars he campaigned that he wouldn't start, ICE in every city everywhere causing chaos even to right-wing supporter-owned businesses (they wanted immigration reform but not like that!). This admin has shit the bed, and even his supporters are feeling that. They are now in the "finding out" phase, and the next phase doesn't look so good for republicans in the next election because of it.