Increasingly, I’m seeing stories about how Trump’s policies are going to actually hurt the people who voted for him.
I don’t care. We’re all feeling the pain now, and it’s not going to end soon, and it’s going to get worse. These people who voted for him deserve all the pain they experience, and I’m all for making them miserable about it for the rest of their lives. It looks like Rebecca Watson feels the same way.
I won’t forgive them. Every day of this horrific administration does greater damage to the country.
Did you know Trump is going to take over the US Postal Service? You know, the service many Americans use to vote? It’s going to be a wasteland here.
QFT.
That is so true.
I had lunch with my friend two weeks ago.
We were both getting physically sick.
She has Long Covid and it was finally getting better. And In January, it started getting worse. I wasn’t doing so well physically either.
We decided we had to take a big step back and just watch from a distance for a while.
I’m seeing this from a lot of other people I know.
They are depressed, angry, and not sleeping well.
We all remember when the USA was a stable democracy with the Rule of Law.
Sure it was long ago, over a month, but we aren’t going to forget it for a long time.
They are the lucky ones.
One of my acquaintances was an employee at the local coffee shop hangout in town. Spoke English with a heavy Spanish accent, probably indigenous from Mexico or Guatamala. Always smiling, worked hard, liked to talk to the customers even though I sometimes couldn’t understand her.
Was. She worked there for years and disappeared 3 weeks ago.
I have no idea exactly why but I’m sure it had something to do with being an immigrant.
‘Xitler Youth’. Nice one.
Don’t forget the people on the left who thought petty purity politics were more important than stopping fascism, Never forget them. Never forgive them. Do not treat them with an ounce of respect and don’t give them a second chance ever. Enough is enough.
“Fuck that duffus, he will vote for trump again.”
I’ll hold on to the hope that that won’t happen, in the meantime, I’ll remain pessimistic. Like the lady in video said, until they fix the root cause, they will continue to be scammed. Many of these under informed people will remain gullible, toss in the fact they have been convinced voting for a Democrat is a vote for Beelzebub. Even the most severe pain they will endure may not cause them to desert their wrongly held convictions. Education was stressed as a way to protect those susceptible to scamming, but those are the same people who only want to be educated with bumper sticker axioms. It (education) should be tried, but the success rate will probably be low.
The worst is everybody has their particular part of the system being destroyed, either a part they work in or a part they personally support (e.g., I’m a supporter of the national parks), and others who have their own get mad when we don’t also echo THEIR personal fav stuff.
We can’t all fight every battle (other than when we vote). It is the fastest way to outrage fatigue and Bannon’s plans, as executed by Trump and Musk et al, are COUNTING on us burning ourselves out trying to fight every battle all the time. Bannon said so multiple times and it got coded into P25.
Pick your fights. Talk about what you need to talk about, and scroll past what you don’t, knowing others are fighting that battle for you. Don’t get mad if you don’t get a ‘like’ or share or supportive reply from all of your friends on your post on one topic. Spread the fight rather than taking it all.
hey! leopards!
GO GET THOSE FACES!!!!!!
The infighting between the left and liberals on this has felt for a long time like the old accommodationist / firebrand divide. Where liberals keep telling leftists to play nice or we’ll never win anything and leftists are saying never, they’re doing actual harm and we should have a diversity of tactics to fight them. And then the accommodationists/liberals NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE the second part. They all focus on how people are being scared away and never on how some people aren’t or are actively looking for something to do/believe in and not just pat themselves on the back fro not being the other guy.
I wish I could take all the lessons we learned during those online fights and apply them here but i’m afraid the primary lesson I learned was that liberal thought-thinkers like that only get worse and more dogmatic over time and will never stop chiding the people on their side so they can cozy up to the people that would rather see them gone/dead. Any ideas anyone?
I’m happy that MuskRump is making more enemies. These disgruntled types have to recognize that the opposition is not just about their pet peeve, but about the very nature of American governance in the last few decades (at least).
I saw a reel last night about the difficulty the allies faced at the end of World War II. They had to change from seeing the Germans, Japanese, and their allies as “the enemy” and even “animals” given the Holocaust, to seeing them as human beings. It took some time.
I realize we’re not anywhere near that given that this is just some people disgruntled that their pet program is getting Mucked.
My partner told me about a story she read of a farmer who had gone into debt for some equipment as part of a government program that was cut. However, the farmer said even given that he would vote for Trump again.
I know it feels hopeless. But, it’s only been a month. The Trump-Musk administration will overreach. If they go through with all their plans, they’ll cause an economic crisis. Look at what a mere 9% inflation did — it essentially brought down the Harris campaign (yes, I know, she was a nonwhite woman who laughed a lot and many people branded as stupid). People like to make comparisons to Hitler’s rise to power, and discuss all the salient issues that facilitated that rise, but it was hyperinflation that killed the Weimar Republik, not the onerous demands of the Versailles Treaty. By 1923 one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 marks. You read that right, 4 trillion! A loaf of bread cost 200 million marks by late 1923. You literally needed a wheelbarrow full of marks to go shopping.
It obviously won’t get that bad here, but if Americans experienced just 20% inflation for an extended period of time, Trump would be toast. It’s possible that could happen, considering the haphazard, illogical way they’re attacking the international trade order.
I’d like to say I don’t want to see that happen, but I’d be lying if I did. If that’s what it takes to bring down this facsist, Christian nationalist regime, so be it.
@John Watts #8
Hyperinflation did not kill the Weimar Republic, that was no longer a thing by the time the NSDAP rose. It was the economical downturn caused by Black Friday 1929 which put a lot of people out of jobs and caused mass-poverty. Ironically, it wasn’t those people who then flocked to the nazis, it was the burgeois and wealthy who saw all those poor and were afraid that they might start a communist revolution, so they backed the strongly anti-communist NSDAP. Even more ironic, by 1933 the economy was recovering and the only reason Hitler got to be in the Führer’s seat was that a cabal of conservatives was plotting against another cabal of conservatives and wanted to use the nazis as their pawns. What a merry band of assholes who weren’t even punished for that as their ringleader, Franz von Papen got off scot-free after the war.
The Postal Service Board members have already said they will fight dismissal in Court and the Postal Service is specified as a Congressional responsibility in the Constitution and the structure of the Postal Service governance is tightly specified in law. Trump/Musk can’t just reach in the way they have with agencies under the executive branch.
Oh, then can, and probably will. The question is whether they can get away with it; and my guess at present is that SCOTUS’ gang of six will have Trump’s back whatever he does.
wait wait waitwaitwait
Does this mean we get rid of DeJoy? :)
“The Postal Service Board members have already said they will fight dismissal”
I, for one, sincerely hope that they GO POSTAL on Musk.
Yeah, dumbass rednecks. Where I live, that’s all you need to know. Wish I could be more positive.
I’m getting tired of hearing this endless drumbeat of articles and commentary that’s been saying, at least since the late 1990s, that we can’t ever argue or dissuade or reason with a conservative. Now some people are saying we have to be nice and forgiving to the poor little Trumpanzees ‘cuz they’re innocent victims who didn’t know any better (and who we could never reason with anyway, remember?). I strongly suspect all of these Wormtongue-style whispers of defeatism are part of ongoing Republican manipulative propaganda, just like those phony right-wing “think-tanks” and Republican-financed libertarians and “leftists” like Jill Stein.
As for Trump voters with “buyers’ remorse,” I think if they won’t listen to reason or facts, maybe a good dose of shaming and ostracism might make them think “whoa, all these people are mad at me, maybe I should figure out why, maybe the rest of the country don’t see things the same way as I do?” That might kick some of them out of their bubble, and maybe get some others to at least hide their noxious opinions…which might, in the longer term, lead them to ask themselves why they have to hide their support for Trump.
This isn’t just about how to treat Trumpers — it’s about taking control of the public conversation overall. We need to all work together to re-create a public climate where noxious bigoted or insane ideas never go unchallenged, and where no one can expect to be able to just blurt out such nonsense without being called out for it and having to get an earful of pushback. If we can’t get them to question their own prejudices or admit they’ve been conned, we should at least make it plain to them that their assumptions/prejudices are being questioned, and that we all know they’ve fallen for a con and won’t let them pretend otherwise.
@3. AugustusVerger
Truth. Seconded. Anyone who didn’t unite behind and fully support Kamala Harris. Anyone who undermined and attacked the ONLY actual alternative to Trump’s fascists has blood on their hands here and should NEVER be allowed to forget that.
Oh and where are Jill fucking Stein and Cornell fucking West now? What fucking use and good are they – and for who?
AugustusVerger@10–
I would take it even further and argue that, morally speaking, the 2024 American electorate is even more culpable than the German electorate of 1932. The NSDAP’s best result in free elections was 37% in July 1932, making it the largest single party but with only 230 of the 608 seats in the Reichstag It was not even invited to join the coalition conservative minority government because the other conservative parties despised Hitler. Political instability within that minority government triggered a no-confidence motion and thence a second election in November. German voters were already showing signs of disenchantment with Hitler. The NDSAP vote dropped to 33% and they lost 34 seats — in only 4 months.
Hitler was able to seize absolute power through a combination of paramilitary thuggery, exploitable weaknesses in the Wiemar Constitution, the stupid and heartless ambition of von Papen, and the untimely death of Hindenberg. Trump didn’t have to go to all that trouble. The American electorate handed it straight to him.
(I am talking about the electorate overall, not Americans in general. Most Americans did not vote for Trump. Those Americans who did what they could to keep him out of power have my utmost sympathies.)
Raging Bee@16–
Completely agree. Astonished at the self-defeatism of insisting that conciliatory debate is the only way to move forward while conservatives have become increasingly strident, even to the point of spreading blatantly inflammatory lies…and yet somehow gaining in power.
I’m all in favour of calm, polite discourse when dealing with reasonable people, but how on earth can anyone insist conciliatory speech will work against politicians who blame, with impunity, “Jewish space lasers” for starting wildfires?
“I’m all in favour of calm, polite discourse when dealing with reasonable people, but how on earth can anyone insist conciliatory speech will work against politicians who blame, with impunity, “Jewish space lasers” for starting wildfires?”
Elected politicians.
Who were voted in by their constituents.
Based on their stances, at least supposedly.
That’s the very point, no? Represent your electorate, the electorate will elect you.
(Representative) Democracy.
—
Way I see it, very many people are under the impression that only a minority support MAGA, whatever that it, and so that it’s in no way representative.
I myself am not too sure about that.
(Yes, I know about the electoral college and noncompulsory voting and jerrymandering and so forth. But, still)
well I have to agree that the fact remains the “magots” whether they decide that the asshole lied and turn against him or not they still think the same way for the same reasons.
The only consolation I see and it is a small one is the fascists authoritarian power worshiping policies and actions will lead to ultimate utter failure.
I am reminded of McTeague, a novel by Frank Norris, I did not read it but heard the dramatization with Stacy Keach. in the end it is death in the desert chained to the gold
What do you win if in the struggle you become just like the enemy
Galadriel speech at her mirror/well
Here is an example from the region where PZ grew up, the Puget Sound.
Around here, most of us (about 92% according to the Washington Trails Association) use the trails. We have all kinds of trails from the really tough, strenuous trails that wind from the bottom to the top of a tall mountain, to family-friendly trails that meander through a nice forest. We love our trails. MAGA or not, we get out there and love the outdoors.
The thugs in DC have decided to cut Forest Service jobs. And the people they fired are the very people who help keep trails open. So now, trails are closing. But are the local MAGA dispshits owning up? Not at all. They think the local Forest Service personnel are just throwing a fit because they did not get what they wanted in November. It is nonsense – I know because I visited one of the local ranger stations a couple of days ago and talked with the shocked and depressed and angry survivors.
One downstream problem the MAGA types will soon experience is the fact that the state and local trail workers who maintain and build the trails need to coordinate with the local land managers to plan and get permissions. But the land managers are almost all gone so the federal downsizing is going to dramatically affect all trails in this area, not jut the trails in the national parks and forests.
The fascist/oligarch/theocrats who are running this shit show are miserable SOB’s who have no concept of what they are doing, They just like the image of Musk with a chainsaw. And the chainsaws we need to help cut up the winter blowdowns will be missing in action.
I want to see that chainsaw firmly embedded in Musk’s ass before it gets fired up.
Trumplets are the sort of people who will keep putting their hands on the stove just to spite mommy until they burn them off. They are so far stuck up their own ass that extreme pain is really the only way for them to take lessons. Comforting and compromising with them is the worst thing you can do because that just allows them to keep indulging their narcissism. They need to take a nosedive and hit the pavement face-first.
Second chances are for people with self-awareness. They are wasted on those without.
I don’t believe in “deserve” as a concept. Yes, they’ll experience consequences, and they’re pretty low on my list to care about, but it isn’t justice either. I wish they weren’t so determined to make things worse for everybody. Maybe they’ll learn something. Probably not.
raven@1
I was just thinking about China recently and how the demise of USAID gives them an opportunity to expand soft power, as they have already been doing in Africa for 20 years or more. Lo and behold, NPR said the same thing: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/18/nx-s1-5300108/aid-cuts-and-china-muscles-in
I am neutral on China. I work with a lot of Chinese colleagues and enjoyed visiting there 20 years ago. Obviously there are many problems, such as their treatment of the Uyghurs, and Tibet, and the likelihood that they’ll invade Taiwan when they get a chance. Xi Jinping makes Deng Xiaoping look like George Washington. But…
I am now of the view that China has a more stable government than the US. Of course, it’s not a democracy, and it is quite corrupt. But it is not nearly as corrupt as the Trump autogolpe. They have laws and they follow them. They make plans and carry them out. They value expertise. The US is is rapidly becoming a failed state.
John Morales@20
I used to think it was about 37%. I now think it may be as much as 45%. However, the 2024 election was determined by people who were angry about inflation (and then angry about increasing interest rates used for fighting inflation). They weren’t demanding “mass deportation” though they would probably disagree with my stance on immigration. They probably didn’t care much one way or the other about diversity, equity, inclusion programs. In fact, Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote. It came in about 49.8% I think. Kamala Harris was the first Black woman to run as a major party candidate in a general presidential election and did quite well, considering the short period of time she had to prepare (and I realize that “quite well” doesn’t matter).
So… yeah, liberals like me may be too optimistic about the general electorate. But MAGA is still a minority. The ones who got Trump over the finish line are probably not all that political, and you really cannot discount racism in the subtle form of unconscious bias.
Whereas I align with Rebeccca’s well-worded sentiments here, I am thinking back to what happened post-apartheid in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation commission. I am not saying this is the same thing, and in fact, I believe it exactly served what Rebecca is highlighting here: Allowing culpable people to be faced with the suffering they incurred on their fellow human beings while “following orders” in the hope of drilling down to their humanity. In the end, Solzhenitsyn’s phrasing is as beautiful as it is poignant: The reason systemic evil persists through its banality is because most people enabled it, not because they were fully evil themselves, but still evil enough. And now I need to re-watch the movie “Good” starring Viggo Mortensen, which also is painfully relevant here.
“In fact, Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote. It came in about 49.8% I think.”
Donald Trump Republican Florida 77,302,580 49.80%
Kamala Harris Democratic California 75,017,613 48.32%
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election#Results)
A plurality.
Anyway, I don’t stay in a media bubble; I have seen how many people used specious reasoning to vote for him, not just the rah rah rah MAGA America!!! stuff.
Not the most cluey, rational, informed electorate ever, your way.
(“The government you elect is the government you deserve.”, by someone or other)
I second the sentiment, but as usual this sort of situation leaves everyone feeling dirty (that’s their talent isn’t it. Bemerding everyone and everything, Primo Levi called them “demons” for good reason).
What gets me is not the nastiness of the died-in-the wool MAGAts, that I can understand. Some people are natural born bastards and that is known and inevitable.
The unfathomable thing is how normal, average people are 100% blind to the dangers of such situations.
Example: in 2016 I could read an interview with two women, quite well-to-do, married to each other, who moreover could keep their children in their home (thanks to all that “woke” business in the Obama admin), and yeah they were going to vote Trump. He’s good for business, right?
Remedies for such clueless ignorance I know not.
Cody of the Soiem More News youtube channel has a good if over an hour and nearly a half minutes long clip linked here ;
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/03/infinite-thread-xxxiv/comment-page-5/#comment-2255431
On how Trump is hurting his own voters along with everyone else. Although, yeah, my sympathy for those who voted for – or even chose not to oppose and vote against – the Leopards Eating Peoples Faces Party (LEPFP) who are now getting their faces eaten, surprise, non-surprise is pretty limited. It does explain who it helps everyone tho. (Plus Cody’s gotten less annnoying than he he sometime is here.)
#22: But if they fire all the people who clear trails, how is Trump’s plan to prevent forest fires by grooming the forests into pristine, parklike spaces going to work?
#32, oh, I think that I know this one! That’s where the HHS Sec’s Brain Worm’s plan to strip me of my prescription psychopharmaceuticals and put me to work comes into play. I seem to recall some relevant German phrase wrought in iron from an X-Men movie…
Rebecca Watson says Trump voters weren’t by and large evil:
And that’s not evil?
…Remedies for such clueless ignorance I know not.
Truth be told, I’m pretty sure the tactics I’ve suggested have serious limits too. Historical experience shows that ordinary people in large numbers REALLY SUCK at admitting mistakes, even in the face of clear proof that the policies they voted for had bad consequences. Russians who supported (or at least condoned) Stalin, Germans who supported (or at least condoned) Hitler…hit ’em after the fact with the true history of their leaders’ actions, and they’ll have plenty of excuses ready to deliver with vehement hurt feelings and loud indignorance: You don’t understand how bad things were (they’ll even say this to neighbors who were right there with them), times were really tough, we had to make tough choices, it’s someone else’s fault for forcing us to deal so drastically with them, it was a terrible time of uncertainty, we didn’t know what else to do… George Will, for one, is already going down that path by blaming progressive for “de-legitimizing” the institutions the Republicans have been destroying.
However and whenever this shitshow ends, someone’s gonna have a lot of work to do just de-indoctrinating all the people who had gone along with it.
Raging Bee@35 George Will aside, I have sympathy for normal people who can honestly say they acted out of a credible fear of being killed, particularly if they had children to protect. It depends on the level of complicity. Even if they are reluctant even to admit any complicitly, I’m not about to judge anyone who was primarily motivated by survival. We haven’t reached that point in the US.
I have sympathy for some groups, like those in Kiryat Joel. For those unaware, Kiryat Joel is a pretty much all-Orthodox-Jewish town in New York. The reason I’d be willing to pardon them? Information availability.
1) The people in Kiryat Joel are generally skeptical of modern technology and so unlikely to have internet access — and even if they WANTED to, it’s one of the poorest towns per capita in the nation, thanks to its very young population (average age ~15). So, no internet.
2) Newspapers in these places are often controlled by Orthodox organizations closely tied to a community leader (typically a rebbe), or, at the very least, have rabbinical oversight (the latter category includes the popular magazines Mishpacha, VIN News — a rabbi oversees the editorial board, etc). As such the rebbe has substantial power over the news.
3) Furthermore, many only speak Yiddish comfortably — not a widely spoken language — which further limits their knowledge.
4) They are typically educated in private schools. The boys can often barely speak English if at all and the girls are little better.
5) All of this means that in general they hold their rebbe’s advice in high esteem — and rebbes are often Republican.
In such circumstances I would forgive a Trump voter. But unless it was in similar circumstances, I would probably not forgive others. The information is there, it was there, it is inexcusable. But if your only real, viable, options are censored? Ehh…
The Angry Cheeto is not the problem. Rather, the problem is the tens of millions of voters who looked at the Angry Cheeto and said, for whatever reason(s), “Yeah, I want that in the White House.” Absent those tens of millions of voters, the Cheeto would not have got installed in the White House for a second time.
Seems to me that it would be worthwhile to figure out how to get those voters to change their minds—give them an exit strategy, as it were. Am unsure how that can be done. The cult-like devotion MAGAts display towards the Cheeto would seem to call for deprogrammers, but there’s at least one or two obvious practical issues there…