But there were SO MANY dealbreakers before we even got to that point
But there were SO MANY dealbreakers before we even got to that point
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I disagree (with the title but agree with you the post), Jan 6th should truly be the dealbreaker. Why? Cause it’s not even politics, it’s simple rules of games.
If you can’t accept when you lose, you don’t get to play anymore.
They had 4 years to jail him over treason and they didn’t. I said it before and I’ll say it again, Biden should have jailed him for Jan 6th.
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Biden should have used the bully pulpit and pushed hard to prosecute. Merrick Garland is technically the one who sat on his ass for 2 years before getting started, which is how Trump was able to delay through the election then throw out his own cases.
Based on the strong bipartisan coverup of the Epstein Files, clearly there are reasons Biden’s donors didn’t want to prosecute one of “their own.” So they didn’t, because the people don’t get represented in America, only capital owners do.
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Merrick Garland deserves a place in hell with Newt Gingrich, The Koch Family, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Mitch McConnell.
Now I personally believe that Garland was just that incompetent rather than malicious as the others are.
However, his incompetence is dammingly damaging to the future of the entire planet.
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I'll never understand how Biden just let that go. He should have made it impossible for Trump or any of the other criminals from the previous administration to participate in politics again.
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A legacy of cordiality and decorum that allowed fascism back in.
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If I were Biden, locking all those traitors up would have been priority number one. Had they done that, the world would be a much better place.
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Limp dick energy dating back to Andrew Johnson?
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Oh come on, he's not THAT old. /s
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They all should have been on a plane to Gitmo before the sun set on inauguration day.
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If not then, the very instant the supreme court ruled that anything the president does is legal as long as it's an official act.
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Why would people think it was a big deal when the entire news media played it down, and then the guy who did it was allowed to run for the highest political office again.
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Yup, the Republican party allowed Trump to go after the nomination, and his Republican opponents in the primaries never brought Jan 6 up for the disgusting act it was. Instead they all protected Trump by repeating the Big Lie.
Imagine Fox News right now, if Jan 6 had been Democrats and Obama. Seriously, they would be screaming for the dismantling of the Democratic party.
And that's the difference, the Left has NOTHING like Fox News and Newsmax, MSNBC doesn't even get CLOSE.
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the closest thing to a left wing on TV at least, is DEMocracy now. and its not even that left, plus its also on late night where nobody else watches it.
every other one is center right or right wing, that glorfies the military to keep up enlistment numbers. movies and shows: copaganda, and right-wing ganda helps too.
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i noticed its coordinated with right wing influencers/grifters also downplayed or dint bother discussing the insurrection. its not by accident its all coordinated through troll farms.
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Because, for his supporters, anything but them getting their own way is an injustice.
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He's the narcissist's hero.
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It's the moderates and centrists that worry me. I know he had a laundry list of deal breakers. But after Jan 6th, he should have lost every sliver of support from anyone who doesn't support treason.
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The problem is that he did, in that moment, and then media and people walked it back and minimized it for 3.5 years until by the time everyone voted again, well, he didn't go to prison so maybe they made it up or it wasn't so bad? See also: his felonies were "political".
Truth is that most Americans are so busy living or surviving that they don't go learn or seek out different views to become more well-rounded. Propaganda works.
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I don't understand why AIPAC, Citizens United, exorbitant health care and education costs, tax rates for the rich, slavery in prisons, and every other goddamned ridiculous thing that other first world countries don't have wasn't a deal breaker.
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While I agree, what would it mean for these to be "dealbreakers"?
Bill Clinton gave tax rates for the rich, but he didn't run on that -- he ran on expanding the Middle Class. Barack Obama ran on a platform of fixing healthcare, and he sorta did. Citizens United v FEC was decided in 2010. The next election, Bernie Sanders' common-sense social safety nets were wildly popular among Democats and purple state voters -- not enough to beat the entire Democratic line-up that gave their delegates to Hillary Clinton, but still very popular.
On the debate stage, Donald Trump called out the same ridiculous Republican warmongering and perils of the USAmerican people that Bernie called out. In doing so, Trump sweeped out Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and every other preferred neo-conservative candidate -- while being a billionaire rapist fraudster who owned a gold-plated apartment. Trump continued that diagonalization campaign strategy in 2024, to great success. He's naming real issues, and rallying up support with it, because people are exactly as fed up as you presume they should be. This is why MAGA voters are so aggressive. This is what the Jan 6th insurrectionists thought they were fighting for.
While I curse out the generation before me who allowed this country to get this way, I can't really say what they should have done differently. It's not like there weren't massive anti-war protests. It's not like the USA populace wanted to be deployed in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran. Bush hid the facts. It's not like people want these massive medical costs and unreasonable student loans... but what do we do? Changes were being teased in Congress; there was hope in the Supreme Court; presidential campaigns promised prosperity and ease, and USAmericans clung to that hope.
So did we sleepwalk through it all? Yes -- But I don't see how people could have been persuaded differently with anything short of foresight of exactly this reality of the year 2025. Reformists aren't going to burn down the Capitol when Congress is debating Medicare For All, even if it's the 40th year debating this issue; even after the vote fails.
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You touched on it; Citizens United. Change that and we're back to a coherent timeline.
I also think the consolidation of media outlets into massive billionaire-controlled mouthpieces of industry alongside with Cambridge Analytica opening the flood gates on social medianl propagandization were crucial, but Citizens United will always be the death of the USA for me; it just took a few years for the corpse to start really stinking up the place.
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I think we can only make more laws and regulations against it moving forward. High school requirements on media literacy and propaganda to graduate. Also, mandatory elections after 30 days of shutdowns. Laws that no votes in a state can be counted until every able voter has cast a ballot. Term limits. Taxes higher as income increases. Assets can't be hidden as corporate property. Billionaires taxed out of existence. We just have to prevent more shit like it happening again.
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Look, all you have to do is accept my one and only axiom: Most people on this planet are total and absolute idiots.
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Actually this always was a point against democracy
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Even the smart people aren't smart enough.
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I'm not inclined to agree with "most", but the idiot:not-idiot ratio in society is way higher than I'm comfortable with. It's almost enough to make the question the wisdom of putting so many people on the road, driving their own cars.
The part that really shook me is when I talked to enough people to figure out that stupidity isn't always obvious. A person can speak well, be exposed to a lot of different news sources, have ample access to information, graduate from a decent school, and still be a total moron when it comes to a lot of things. Like functional illiteracy, grown adults learn how to cope and mask in ways that are shockingly good, considering they cover for huge deficits at the same time.
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There are Americans that believe Trump has never lied. Like ever. About anything. He is truth. Some Americans actually believe this.
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So they have no capacity to think logically, not even a tiny bit? Or do they just have no capacity in remembering stuff?
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They don’t want to think. At all. Just listen to what they’re told by fox or Facebook and get comfort in hating some group(s) “ worse than them “ while they believe they’re better than most people. They’re fully delusional.
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They are terminally uncurious. Explaining to his cult individually that he has said things himself they can listen to is baffling to them. They only hear it through their filter of choice.
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They are literally brainwashed. I do not know what the solution to that is.
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That just breaks my brain.
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Mine was George Floyd. When I saw so many people stand up and say that man deserved death over a bounced check I knew they lost their damn mind.
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The idea that death is an acceptable outcome from being suspected of any minor infraction underpins the conversation around basically every police killing, with every single person on the side justifying it being tacitly accepting of that premise.
It's lunacy.
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A few years after 9-11 for me. I grew up watching my classmates sing songs about indiscriminately bombing people in Afghanistan, and news reports of people being beaten or killed in the US for wearing any clothing that appeared Middle-Eastern. It made me sick to my stomach.
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Perception is reality.
Control news, social media, and church and you can distort/gaslight reality.
Only the better educated can sometimes see through bullshit.
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The second I saw he was running the first time, I knew it was going to be a disaster. Maybe I couldn't appreciate just how much of a disaster it would be though
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that escalator keeps going down to this day
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Where was his cameraman when we really needed him?
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"those people are ignorant"
-My conservative mother, pretending Trump didn't work tirelessly for years enraging them, tell them to do exactly what they did, and then gleefully watch for 2 hours while they did it.
In other words, she thinks trump had nothing to do with it, as laughable as that is.
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January 6 gave the Nazis hope and basically exposed how easy it is to topple the government if they have law enforcement on their side.
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Because half the fucking country is treating it like sports.
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I thought I understood this as a Canadian until this current World Series. "My team good, your team bad." Then I saw comments from the fanbases of the teams that the Blue Jays faced, and now I understand that people are absolutely deranged. Calling for violence for opposing players for daring to face their team? Yikes.
And this is literally just a game. It doesn't actually have a bearing on people's lives in the long term. (Except the actual teams, I guess.) No wonder American politics is the way it is. Unfortunately, parts of Canada are trying to emulate this here, too.
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There's something going on for sure. For many years, we were able to have sports without death threats.
I suspect it has something to do with the current attempts to manipulate people. We have news and politicians trying to pit us against each other and calling for violence against non-violent people. It's the Jose took your lunch kind of thing, and the conditioning feels like it's running rampant.
I worry about Canada; I don't think your people are emulating it. I think they're being influenced and are the next target.
I'm awfully tired of unprecedented times, but I fear we're setting the new bar for precedent.
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Until my final breath I'll never understand how George W. Bush wasn't a dealbreaker for every future Republican president. And then they voted for Trump of all people.
Like that's it. We humans have failed evolution.
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He kind of was in a way. The 2016 primary featured a dozen Bush wannabes, and Trump just went on stage and embarrassed them all by pointing out all the things they did horribly wrong (war, healthcare, etc), he correctly identified what made Republicans unelectable nationally. People related to that anger.
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That's one of the most frustrating things about this right wing populism. They're correctly pointing out problems: wealth inequality, expensive housing, warmongering, etc. The problem they then cause is that they blame the source of these problems squarely on some scapegoats and then do things that only exacerbate the existing problems they diagnosed in the first place.
Billionaire donors gaining even more power and stripping the few checks against said power, doing shit all to make groceries cheaper, and now they're out there blowing up boats in international waters and committing large scale violence against people in this county. Yet... crickets from the folks who voted them in. Just maddening. They just wanted to shit on the scapegoats
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its always anger or fear, these are the only 2 emotions conservatives can express.
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Well....Americans have failed evolution.
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Devo was right.
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it isnt because evangelicals are afraid of losing thier influence in government, plus thier hold on the US, and oppression of POCs and lgbtq+ people, and are afraid of retribution and reprisal from the latter 2 groups.
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If you pour enough money/resources into anyone, you can get them to win an election. Trump was just the easiest one to pour money into: he's easily swayed, even more easily bought, and has a certain... shudders charisma (?) that makes him more electable than a rando mild conservative.
What you're witnessing here is just capitalism. People with a lot of money and power wanted to gain even more money and power. Trump a convenient vehicle for that. So they poured money into his campaign and he won.
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It's because the Democrats didn't inflict any consequences on Republicans and used the "let's look to the future and not dwell on the past" framing on it. How can you blame voters for not taking it seriously if Democrats didn't?
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You're speaking of long after Jan 6th occurred. The OP post is talking about on that day. As in, "how did those that would actually stand to benefit become willing to benefit at the cost of following the rule of law?" The disappointing answer is that those performing the insurrection on Jan 6th, as well as those that would stand to gain, are more concerned with being in power rather than respecting justice and the rule of law.
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The disappointing answer is that those performing the insurrection on Jan 6th, as well as those that would stand to gain, are more concerned with being in power rather than respecting justice and the rule of law.
Yes you nailed it. Kamala recently expressed sadness at the level of capitulation, saying she didn't expect it. A lot of us had a rude awakening in the days after J6 when we realized that lot of our fellow citizens did not take the lessons on democracy taught to us since grade school to heart.
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They called it out and Americans didn't care.
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alot of the dnc are Dinos, republicans that cant get elected from the right, so they have to pretend to be Dems on some issues, but republicans on most other ones. why we get people like schumer, jefferies, fetterman
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Propaganda
Fox news Oann Newsmax
All propaganda channels that literally only publish lies. Fox news sued (and won) for the right to call itself a news channel yet lie their asses off without any legal problems
I'm just amazed that nobody saw this coming since at least 2-3 decades ago
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waves hands I've been watching this train for decades... no one listens.
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I understand it.
People are paying 30% more to live now than they did before. No one cares about a person's politics if they claim they'll put food on your table.
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This chart is the whole story. Unfortunately people don't understand how the economy lags behind everything and Trumps recent actions are going to make the surge from COVID checks look like a blip.
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that may explain how desperate idiots fall for the ruse the firtst time… but over and over again?
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Propaganda is a helluva drug
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It's because every time until the NEXT one they were hindered into the process by the "bad" others. So you see, it's once again time to remove others who are preventing success.
/s obviously
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Well the answer to "why did people still support Trump after Jan 6th" is actually "Jan 6th."
Those people that came to DC and walked to the Capitol and stormed out are Americans who were a) pissed off and b) willing and able to travel and march and attack on behalf of Trump.
That's not nothing in terms of power and influence. And it's indicative of a BUNCH of people who met condition (a) but not (b). Like probably an order of magnitude or more.
Since no Republican stepped up to steal those supporters from Trump by pointing out how absolutely un-American Jan 6th was, they stayed loyal to him. So the politicians followed, the owners followed, and the media followed.
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That's not quite correct. In 2021 we saw quite a few Republicans calling out January 6th as un-American, unacceptable political violence, etc, etc. The prosecution of the J6 ringleaders had wide bipartisan support. Plenty of Republicans tried to take the mantle of leadership from Trump in the belief that Republicans wouldn't support a criminal who'd attempted a coup.
But here's the thing: You're absolutely correct to say a ton of Americans implicitly supported January 6th. There were an enormous number of Americans who believed the 2020 election was stolen, or who, at the very least, had questions about it. There were a lot of conservative Americans who supported J6 because they believed having a conservative President was more important than following the law. And then there were the anons who believed in the Q conspiracy and were cheering on January 6th because they believed Trump was finally, as prophesied, going to declare martial law, dissolve the US government, and purge America of the secret cabal of billionaire Democrat child abusers - and if I remember the polls correctly, roughly one in four Republicans believed in Q.
And almost everyone in the United States - including those Republican Party leaders who tried to take the mantle of leadership from Trump - underestimated how widespread support for J6 was on the right.
And the more Biden's FBI tried to tie Trump to January 6th, tried to get him on whatever charges they could manage, the more Trump looked like a victim of political persecution instead of a failed candidate who couldn't accept defeat. The more Biden pressured social media to censor "election denial", the more it looked like the Biden administration had something to hide.
So as time passed, the "election deniers" got more and more common, and got more and more influence in the Republican Party - and ordinary rank and file Republicans heard over and over again that Trump was a victim of persecution and ordinary conservatives were being censored for supporting him, and became more and more loyal to Trump. Supporting Trump in 2024 became a loyalty test - Republicans supported him because Biden was trying so hard to have him convicted and disqualified from running for office, and choosing another candidate felt like giving in.
And as they rose in power, the Republicans who thought January 6th was unacceptable got quieter and quieter, because it became more and more obvious Trump was going to be the candidate in 2024, and they knew better than to piss him off.
In other words - as disgustingly ironic as it is - Democratic attempts to get justice for January 6th were one of the biggest reasons Trump was reelected in 2024.
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Because human brains are more frail than we think they are, and propaganda works amazingly well.
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American US vs them team mentality slammed into their heads from birth
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You’re looking for the word “indoctrination”. Also apparently calling indoctrination of children “child abuse” is an “opinion”.
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The current president is a culmination .... a celebration ... of the general dumbing down of the American public.
They spent the past 50 years just generally deluding themselves to the point where stupidity, complacency and ignorance is just celebrated and rewarded.
It's a nation of idiots .... a nation of idiots with nuclear weapons.
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Because so many people genuinely believe the election was stolen. It bewilders me
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I think a lot of that is because they want to believe it. It's confirmation bias exacerbated by using only news sources who are motivated to lie to them because billionaires don't want to pay taxes or fair wages.
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Fox News. That's like 90% of the reason. And Trump is a fucking manchild that can't handle reality.
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Simple. Back then were still naive enough to believe that there would be justice served.
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Trump was the perfect storm. Everybody that held some form of bigotry could see themselves in him. Because how could he be a bad person if they weren’t a bad person.
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anti-vaxxers, flat earthers all went to the right.
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The Democrats were been so certain it was they nominated an black asian woman. I like Harris but obviously rednecks aren't ready for that.
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It wasn't the rednecks that decided not to have a primary and run a man so senile they made Trump look lucid.
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The republicans have a very robust propaganda machine. They digested and reframed it very quickly.
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Because so many Americans hate America and what it stands for. They hate anyone who isn't like them, and they like that it bothers you. They enjoy your frustration and your confusion, because it gives them a feeling of power they would otherwise never experience on their own merits.
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The only reason a sizable chunk of the country wasn't there partaking would have been the cost of travel and time.
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...me, neither...
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A Trump voter from 2016 told me that he thought of Trump as a brick he was throwing at the window of The System. He started from the position that the system is broken and needs to be torn down before anything can be improved. I think that’s pretty stupid logic - people routinely underestimate the importance of incremental improvement.
But that’s what the thinking is anyway. The more we hate Trump the happier they are. He exists to knock our teeth out, personally if need be, but more importantly, collectively, as a system. Taking a shit on the floor of Congress? That’s all in the game.
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No issue with tearing down the system to me. But people need to realize that Donny's not tearing anything down besides the East wing
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"Cave man smash!" Is how I refer to that logic.
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Many conservatives have convinced themselves that the 6th was a false flag operation by the libtards. For "reasons"
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This is the one I've heard. By my own father, no less. I had no idea how to respond to it.
Someone once said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." Something along those lines, anyways. That expression has saved me from many a pointless argument.
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Most of them won't talk about it, that's how they are dealing with it
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Because sadly, the attitudes and views of people making up Jan 6 are shared by a large proportion of the US population, even if they would not have participated given the means/opportunity.
Jan 6 is viewed by them with analogous sentiment to how the left views civil disobedience for civil rights movements, regardless of the substance/justice of the event.
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Voters are just lazy and stupid.
Voters saw January 6th and were like "I'm gonna stay home because voting doesn't matter or I'm too busy and lazy to defend rights and democracy".
Voters also see Trump and are so stupid to think that he was gonna make their economic life better. SleePy JoE diD tHaT! jOeVeR
Single Issue voters are just absolutely f**king stupid.
Media also sanewashed RFK and Trump again. The cult will always vote for their candidate. The normal people need a "reason" to take action. People love blaming Kamala for not beating the "oh-so-easy" Trump but they wouldn't move their worthless asses to vote anyways.
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I think this is lazy and stupid.
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👍
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Because American anti-democracy people envisioned themselves as the pro-democracy HK protestors who stromed the LegCo Building.
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Oh, I don't hate Trump. It's just that he reminds me of the guy that sexually abused me when I was 11 years old. Same body build, same voice, same hair, same complexion...WAIT A MINUTE!
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I was working the day of j6 and I will never forget all of my coworkers watching it and fully cheering like it was the Super Bowl.
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See this is why I think the US missed a revolution somewhere after WWII.
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Boy am I glad I didn't have that going on.. that would've been problematic.
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Decades of propaganda and large regions of our nation with inadequate public education.
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Because you don't understand the American voter, but Trump does.
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So, given the mounting evidence for vote manipulation, I can't believe that anymore.
10mo ago, I would have agreed though.
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Mine was when I was a kid and learned Americans had a right to carry firearms.
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I sometimes wonder if mikey getting into that car would have been enough of a shock to cause the justice system to do just about anything, or if they would have found a way to make even that an event mild enough to sweep under the rug.
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It was a dealbreaker for many - that there was a side that wasn't with them. That's how 2024 happened.
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I totally feel that — sometimes you start noticing all the red flags way before things really fall apart. It’s kind of like missing notes in fnf (fun rhythm game); once the rhythm’s off early, it’s hard to get back on beat no matter how much you try later.
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The only thing that differentiates us from other primates is we run. They just like violence, gets them riled up.
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I don't think you are correct here.. just a hunch.
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Same way Liberals voting for a candidate actively enabling a genocide. Their side is also full of "you're not helping our electoral chance" politics.
If you can't understand how January 6th wasn't a deal breaker; but you also expect a genocide to NOT be a deal breaker at the same time. I have little hope for you to understand what is going on today and even how we got to this point.
The weird part is people expect MAGA to have moral lines; but if you're a leftist that can't exist. You have to listen to our "lesser evil" argument.
Edit: Lots of downvotes but not one person ready to reply and explain why January 6th should be a deal breaker while a genocide should not. I'll wait...
If the pussy grabbing thing wasn't, nothing ever will be.
Or the making fun of the disabled news reporter. Or the not renting to black people, or the using a charity as his personal piggy bank. I'm sure the list goes on and on
Or trying to have 5 young brown children executed for a crime they were later proven to have not committed.
Of course everybody with two functioning brain cells knew from the start that this fucker is spectacularly unqualified. But when this came out, it was very plain to see for everybody that all the values "conservatives" claimed to stand for meant absolutely nothing to him.
I've repeated this many times.
After the 'pussy' tape came out, a Conservative woman went on The View TV show to defend Trump. One of the other women on the panel kept repeating 'pussy' over and over. Finally the Conservative woman demand that the other panelist stop using that vulgar term.
I remember you saying this in a previous comment!
Or claiming Veterans who were killed or were captured were losers. I thought Americans were proud of their armed forces.