They're Never Happy
They're Never Happy
298 comments
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The aversion to reading is always a red flag for me. Reading is a pillar of human intelligence.
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They'd be mad if they could understand anything that wasn't Facebook memes and bad email chains.
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I don't find reading books appealing. But I do look up things I am curious about and read few news articles I come across. Reading a book isn't the only way to gain knowledge but if they aren't reading/learning about anything then that's a problem.
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Reading narratives to escape into the fictional world and skimming articles for information are both literacy (reading). There are many more kinds as well. They all count.
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For me it depends, reading books is hard for me because it feels like a chore that never ends. Even if it is a thrilling story, it's just hard for me to focus for long enough to make any progress. Might be ADHD idk. But at least I keep reading news articles and other things that are relevant, because obviously I want to stay informed about what's happening in the world, especially when elections are around the corner.
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I thought this was always obvious. His whole appeal was 'he says it like it is' and 'he's brave enough to say what we're all thinking'.
That's why scandals didn't affect him, he never pretended to be virtuous like most of the other Republicans do.
A third of people in any society have authoritarian tendencies and will vote for the strong man 'that will set everything straight', and it's always a failure of mainstream politicians that allows these people to get into power (either by not motivating the other 70% to vote for their project, being too divided, or by going into a coalition with that party).
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Details are confusing. These people like "I'll fix all your problems" with no actual substance, and then when their problems are not solved, they like hearing "it's the
JewsImmigrants fault".Solutions are not even desired by these people, just a scapegoat for all their woes.
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He really is an accurate representative for his base: the worst scum sucking garbage alive.
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MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn't popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest. All of the descriptors in the OP are consequences of the driving factor of class interests, not the drivers themselves.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the "middle class," is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That's when fascism is established. Trying to "turn the clock back to the good old days" results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism's rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA.
I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds, fascism's irrationality has rational, material origins, that can be understood and defeated, and it isn't in the "marketplace of ideas."
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Genuine question from someone socialism curious: my understanding of petite bourgeoisie was they were upper class but non capital owners, like doctors and lawyers, but i guess business owners and landlords fit too. But Trump's support is largely non college educated white men. When I think of a Trump supporter I think a mechanic in Pennsylvania. I am thinking of the majority of teamsters based on their internal poll. To put a finer point on it, fascism under Trump seems to be driven by the proletariat. The petite bourgeoisie, if anything, is solidly in the Harris camp precisely because of its concern about fascism.
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America is a bit unique, it's made up nearly entirely of Labor Aristocracy, ie beneficiaries of Imperialism.
The Petite Bourgeoisie are Capital Owners that must labor, small business owners and the like. The lack of college education doesn't mean they won't be held back from becoming business owners, and the dominance among the religious and white is because of fascism's cultural characteristics, explained in the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds.
Fascism can also be described as Imperialism turned inwards.
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Why not both?
Clearly some people are attracted to far-right ideals without being in the petite bourgeoisie and some people who are in it are even repelled by such ideals, plus there is the whole domain of the "highly educated" who tend to be less attracted to far-right ideals and yet are often generally more prosperous than most shop keepers and similar and some even work in similar business structures (such as Architects with their own Studios or Lawyers with their own small Legal Practices) hence would count a that kind of petit burgeouisie.
I would say that it's a mix of what you point out (so people's petit burgeouis status or, as I would put it: "people who have just enough material wealth to think they're wealthy but without the education and worldliness to understand that they're nowhere close to real wealth"), certain character traits such as one's level of Empathy and Self-awareness, one's breadth of life experience (not in term of years but of how many different things one has done and seen and kinds of people one has met, which would explain why city people are less likely be attracted to the far-right that more provincial types) and one's style of thinking and practice with things like analysing real world situations and trying to solve real world problems (which would partly explain the effect of Education, the other part falling into breath of experience, specifically in the form of how much information one has the tools to understand).
This is without even going into the environment one grew up in and lives in: sometimes that kind of thinking is so widespread in one's family and were one lives that showing the social cues of far-right belief and even believing it is a natural element of fitting in if only for one's own protection, similarly to how people tend to be religious when coming from a religious family and living in a religious community.
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It isn't an iron-clad rule, but a tendency. Individuals vary, groups act on aggregates.
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This is why the Left always loses.
The Right puts forward a Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. They give great speeches and stir up people's emotions. The Left tells people to read a book.
People still talk about Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg because then understood this; they stirred the people up and got them excited.
Instead of suggesting a book, why don't you try naming an actual candidate that people can vote for? We're going to have the 2026 election a lot sooner than we're going to have a Socialist uprising.
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The book is supplementary to the comment, I explained the big picture in my comment. Blackshirts and Reds isn't a call to action or an explanation of what to do, but an examination of fascism and Communism, who they served historically, and the material basis for them.
Voting for Harris won't stop fascism, because it won't stop Capitalist decay. You can even see her trying to appeal to small business owners, attempting to "turn the clock back," in her own campaign. Neither will voting for Claudia De La Crúz, PSL's candidate, nor will Stein, and obviously nor will Trump.
Electoralism cannot solve the conditions giving rise to fascism.
The answer is to join revolutionary orgs like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) or Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). Only through organization outside the electoral system does the Proletariat have any hope of steering the ship and seizing the reigns.
The Right puts forward a Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. They give great speeches and stir up people's emotions. The Left tells people to read a book.
The US Empire is far-right, they can field candidates supporting the status quo in both the DNC and GOP. Liberalism is the status quo, taught from birth. Leftism requires reading, because they don't teach it in school, they censor leftism and shun it. It's a struggle, yes, but it's a winnable one.
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Instead of suggesting a book, why don't you try naming an actual candidate that people can vote for?
$16 billion was spent on the political campaigns of the 2020 election. $16 billion! Roughly $8 billion per party. The deeply uncomfortable truth is that the oligarch class has nearly full control over which candidates have the funds necessary to have any chance at winning an election. There are rare exceptions, sure, but most candidates are either oligarchs themselves like Trump or Bloomberg, or they have sold out completely to other oligarchs (like JD Vance belonging to Peter Thiel)
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They don’t like to read more than a couple of sentences.
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Honestly I wonder how much reading comprehension they struggle with. Like the average reading level is 8th grade, if that iirc. I swear they drop out as soon as there are big words cuz they get pissed they can't understand. People that lean left are clinically shown to be more* (not not) open minded, and I imagine are the ones going and googling when they don't know or have someone right there they trust to explain.
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If I had to categorize myself I would say that I am a pragmatic idealist.
I have a concept of a world where people tend to work together and generally operate in methods and manners that are mutually beneficial for the betterment of all.
That idealism is tempered by my pragmatic understanding that stupidity is praised and given friendships and social connections because no matter how many smart people there are the stupid people will always outnumber them.
And the stupid people don't know that they are stupid.
So you cannot pretend that things will work out the way you think they will because no matter how stupid you think the people are around you they are far more stupid than that.
They will destroy you and themselves just to prove to you that being smart and capable is not enough to succeed in the world.
They will do horrendous things to you in order to prove to you that people do horrendous things to people.
And they truly in their heart of hearts and soul of souls before the Lord God Almighty believe they are doing the right thing when they do it.
My politics are left but my optimism is non-existent.
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Something like half of US adults cannot read at a 6th grade level. That's like reading for plot. That's reading a couple paragraphs about like "Sally moved to New Jersey from Maine when she was 17. She went to college at NYU, where she met her future husband Jake. They got married and now have two children." -> "Where did Sally meet her husband?". A lot of people struggle with that. And we kind of expect them to keep up with politics.
Some of that is their fault. They don't try. They don't want to be literate. But a lot of it is a failure of our public education system. But that is largely the fault of conservatives who don't want to fund it.
You're also not going to find a lot of those people on a platform like this that's mostly written, and where the norms generally a somewhat high level of diction that adheres to standard english.
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Some want to listen - others merely to speak.
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And the main reason they're not happy is that they got left behind by the evil fucks they keep voting for. It's beyond maddening.
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I had an old lady get emotional over a government subsidy offered to help reduce some of her septic system expenses. It was the first time in a long time the government ever helped her she said. It felt good to help.
Then I had another old lady tell me she was going to die and it was going to be my fault and I deserved to go to hell because that same rebate program ended and there was no funding left.
One step forward one step back.
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My daughter calls them trumpy grumpies and I thought it was a good name.
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my mother who works at a high-class nursery full of milfs, calls them yummy mummies and I think that's a good name
\end tangent
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I'm never happy and it didn't turn me into a MAGA dipshit. I don't think I'm even an asshole most of the time or at least I try not to be.
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I think the larger thing lacking is two-fold.
- Perspective. These people lack the ability to look at the world objectively and outside themselves to see the larger picture of where they fit in the world. They are unable or unwilling to comprehend anything remotely complex.
- Empathy. They are unable or unwilling to walk a step let alone a mile in anyone's shoes but their own.
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On 1, someone pointed out to me that a lot of people who are susceptible to MAGA are people who don't know what it is to be an expert on something.
They don't have PhDs and MDs and JDs in their social or peer groups. They assume everyone's knowledge of complex things is as superficial and uncertain as their own; literally they do not recognize the difference between things stated as fact versus things stated as opinion. Their day-to-day practice, as far as anything complex, is to let their emotions rule; practice makes perfect.
The thing they exercise most is their amygdala, and that's why conservatism causes an enlargement of the amygdala.
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oh, number 2 is worse than you think. I picked up on a talk show on the radio the other night with a guest author who wrote, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion". They're actively teaching to avoid empathy,
In Toxic Empathy, Allie Beth Stuckey argues that empathy has become a tool of manipulation by left-wing activists who bully people into believing that they must adopt progressive positions to be loving. She explores the five most heated issues through which toxic empathy is deployed: abortion, gender, sexuality, immigration, and social justice.
This is what fills the airwaves around here of which a lot of elderly and rural citizens are inundated with daily.
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Maybe you should blame others more, especially foreigners, liberals, and education. Your problem is that you’re not blaming the right people.
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It's a serious culture issue. Big companies make lives worse and since th big companies own the media (except tiktok) they lie and blame the issue on something else.
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I am so, so glad Democrats have finally woken up to the fact that Republicans are not just misinformed Democrats. There's no amount of facts we can throw at them to make them stop being terrible people. They're not going to suddenly go "oh my God, I was wrong!" This is who they are.
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My take is that with Harris courting endorsements from many formerly rank-and-file Republicans, this drives the point home. If anybody is still confused that Trump's party is VERY different from what the Republican Party used to be, the Cheney's endorsing her should settle that. Anybody still unconvinced is wilfully ignorant at minimum.
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If anybody is still confused that Trump's party is VERY different from what the Republican Party used to be, the Cheney's endorsing her should settle that.
And then you have the braindead .MLs who argue that awful people supporting the normal candidate over the fascist means we really need to rethink our support for the normal candidate 🙄
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A basketful of deplorables, as it were.
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They're dixiecrats, they used to be the worst part of the democrats before LBJ dared to sign civil rights, an unforgivable sin.
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It's the dixiecrats after we took the one thing they loved: Jim Crow and their ability to be superior to anyone who isn't white.
We even dared to elect a black person president over them, they will NEVER forgive us for that, it went against everything they believe in.
You don't understand, to them this is justice for our unimaginable crimes against them, we took the only thing they had in life.
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And that's how the orange turd built a cult...but constantly whining and complaining when Obama was elected. 8 years of slowly stroking the flames, birther crap, pointing out every single minor inconvenience and a failure of the president.
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My wife is Indonesian Muslim, hates Kamala for what we're doing in Palestine and told me not to vote for her. I'm still voting for Kamala but man that was a hard conversation I never would have expected. Seems like the military owns everything these days
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Oof, that must be a weird conversation. Am Indonesian.
Any conversation touching Islam adjacent lost any nuance with the general population more often than not . Not saying your wife is one, but let's be honest the education quality here is abysmal and at the same time we're number 1 muslim by population. Also our "Netizen" is notorious for wrongly attacking any issue they misunderstood.
One of our top singer got berated nationwide because she wore a skirt with a random arabic text in it, people thought it was a Holy script and she's Christian.
I kid you not one election season I saw an angry mob with a banner that said USA = COMMUNIST !!
Most have hard enough time just to get by day to day so I get it, they take anything to blame. With corruption top to bottom it's a sad state all around. I'm grateful it's still a relatively peaceful affair though, at least here in Java.
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The rest of us, and themselves, hang for it.*
Too many minorities that support their system forget that they're are minorities, and have no seat at the table. They're just useful idiots for now, and bodies in the end game. Think of people like Rafael Cruz, Nimrata Haley, and Vivek Ramashwarmy. The fact that two of them had to change their name to have a seat at the table now is evidence enough.
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Testing
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I've gotten a disturbing number of messages on grindr from men that are hard core right wing, yet are on a gay dating app. The level of hate, ignorance, and cognitive dissonance is unprecedented. And it's all fueled by highly addictive apps, and pumped at unimaginable scales thanks to AI.
I hate to say it, but I think this really is the end.
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"Hmm there sure are a lot of hateful conservatives in this space I keep occupying"
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I'm confused. Are you implying I'm a hateful conservative? Or that by virtue of being in this space, I'm attracting hateful conservatives to me?
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they are selfish.
That's where all of those symptoms stem from.
selfish greed.
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MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn't popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest. All of the descriptors in the OP are consequences of the driving factor of class interests, not the drivers themselves.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the "middle class," is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That's when fascism is established. Trying to "turn the clock back to the good old days" results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism's rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA.
I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds, fascism's irrationality has rational, material origins, that can be understood and defeated, and it isn't in the "marketplace of ideas."
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That's a modern take that doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny since there was conservatism before capitalism.
It's a convenient rallying cry of people who prefer socialism as they understand it, but the direct comparison doesn't hold any historical water.
mega fits into capitalism and socialist. I think they're such broad concepts, but definitely not the instigating concepts of fascism are conservatism.
I remember that book, it's older right? I read it in college or high school at some point.
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Lots of them are, but it's stupid comments like this which make me shake my head. The left will lose 2024 with their fake moral superiority and fail to understand what happened.
Again.
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get your maga out of here.
*The left will lose 2024 with their fake moral superiority..."
it is not a fake moral superiority, the left has a practical moral superiority demonstrated by material policy that positively affects the lives of people.
The left beat you in 2020 because of their tangible moral superiority by providing civil protections and material assets for the rights of the electorate.
conservatives are legally trying and succeeding in stealing the rights, liberties and property of Americans.
Americans don't like that, and voted to the left.
they're fighting back by prosecuting and removing the selfish conservatives who are harming people, and are creating laws and funds protecting everyone,
civil rights are not a "fake" moral superiority, they are a tangible moral superiority effected through practical, respectful policy.
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One of the lawyers that defended a handful of J6 insurrectionists said they would give them a reading list to help them understand on a general level what any of the legal charges they faced concerned or what the consequences could be, or just how government worked, and because this was ''you need to read this before trial so you can ACTUALLY have a chance of getting a plea deal or even a dismissal if you can actually convince a judge you now grasp what you did and how bad it was, and you're super duper sorry'' some actually read them. And they came out of it going ''oh... I've been lied to and manipulated into doing very illegal shit by a political party that knows it can no longer win elections and needs to do very illegal shit to retain any level of power'' and similar thoughts.
But yes. If they instead acquired a smidge of curiosity and interest in worthwhile pursuits they would probably stop being garbage ass people. Maybe we need to make reading cool? Possible dinosaurs reading on posters. That's what got me reading.
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Bring back the Pizza Hut reading club!
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Many of them started in camp 1 and entered camp 2.
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my (lifelong republican) aunt and uncle were trump haters in the 2016 primaries. but of course they voted for him in the election because Hillary is literally the devil, and once he won they were all in.
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I need to ask my parents, cuz last I heard around June my dad had snapped out enough to at least to say he was considering not voting for the first time ever in a national election. There's an ironic push for ranked choice style options moving forward now thanks to our state Republicans trying to revert back to caucuses and pissing a bunch of constituents off by having us vote to ban other options
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A lot of conservatives are authoritarians that value group cohesion above most everything else. Going against the group feels bad in a deep way, I think, so all sorts of justifications will be made to stay with the group.
Honestly, as far as I'm concerned that's a form of stupid. Kind of funny given the boomer cliche of "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?". It turns out yes, a lot of people would.
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They don't like to read
I argue that's the issue right there.
Reading only headlines will get you there quickly. But headlines are click bait and insufficient.
I recall seeing a study on the demographics of who actually reads articles and MAGAs were among the most that did not read.
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Sounds like a basket of deplorables to me.
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No, you mustn't say!
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A lot of them feel betrayed/wronged by the system, or by lleft leaning/progressive politics.
That's why they don't mind Trump's wrongdoings. They see things like his felony mugshot and think "he's been betrayed and attacked by the system just like me!"...
...a lot of it is emotional for them, and it's a difficult mindset they're unlikely to leave behind.
Still at least it's a better ratio than in places like Israel, where the vast majority of the population are far-right (many of whom are conspiracy theory inclined, particularly when it comes to the assassination of their former PM Yitzhak Rabin).
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That scene gets more and more perfect every year. Tho the worst morons dont actually work or live on the land, they live in the suburbs and drive around in their monster trucks that have never been off road or hauled jack shit in the beds
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You're not wrong.
These are the same people onsite who never take responsibility.
Also, they're willing to listen to children. Literally saw one yesterday comment on Facebook repeating the "kamala," nonsense.
Seriously, they act like children.. Their dictator is literally a child, and no body in high school even would act this way
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The oldest human need politicians learned to exploit since before villages became a thing, I think.
'Apes together strong' was a message from nerds, not politicians, imo.
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Weird shitheads.
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Doors?
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I believe they're referring to canvassing for a politician. So like, knocking on doors and asking people if they're registered to vote/offering to register unregistered people, talking to people about who theyre going to vote for and why, that sort of thing.
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People are strange.
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gang i think some percentage of the FREE CITIZENS OF THE COLONIAL SLAVERY EMPIRE might be violently bigoted
when they were knocking doors did they check with anybody who the slave empire has imprisoned or any of the folks that don't have doors
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i appreciate that you held on to that naive but optimistic assumption, Vivian.
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I came conclusion long ago and I'm still unsure how to feel about it.
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I think that's a serious medical issue bro, get that checked out.
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shouldve recorded all their names so they can all be properly routed to russia after the election
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There isn't really agreement on who is too shitty to "participate in society", whatever that means. And if you build a mechanism to exclude people, assholes will use it for evil.
But like if I had a magic wand I would remove all republicans from power. They make it easy by self identifying as shitheads.
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They're all depressed. seriously we can again blame nixon for the drug war and the subsequent rise in depression in our culture. (hint: shrooms, go take them)
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I would place the most blame on Regan for gutting social infrastructure surrounding mental health and safety
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They both fucked up bigly.
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smile magic mushrooms are a treatment for depression that was widely available and frequently used. no prescription needed and SSRIs which were invented in the 90s are the closest analog we have available today because of nixon. the lack of mental health infrastructure is pointless if you've banned the only effective treatment for 40 years.
but yes, also bad regan.
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Never really liked this argument, since it's not really a contemporary political movement where you just read the policy and go "yup that sounds good", it's more akin to a cult with a large indoctrination campaign.
You have alternative news floating around on the same platforms as real ones, you're told to not believe the "other side" as they're all in league with one another and always lie, you can have coworkers or your community reinforce these things making it very hard to escape especially if you've been a part of it for years. The current 'liberal politics' and the living situation doesn't help either too and does contribute to the general stress that makes people fall down these rabbitholes.
Granted, people who have a lot to benefit from MAGA and are acting as influencers for the movement should be rightfully hated, but not really regular people. I do believe that a lot of people who currently are going to (begrudgingly) vote for democrats could definitely be part of the MAGA cult given different environment (such as work, living area or community they're part of).
Point is, hate the movement, not the people. While it's very difficult, it's possible to deradicalize someone and vilification is not really going to help with that.
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i think what you are saying is the thing op in the screenshot also belives in originally. but after doorknocks after doorknocks talking to many people she changed her minds.
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Great response. I'm an independent and the loudest voices on the left and the right are hateful but almost none of the people are. This post is just, "hate the right because they hated you first" and that shit gets old and gets us nowhere and widens divides. Oh but election season! The shrieking continues...
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Don't get me wrong, I think that the left/right divide and talking shit about the right are both necessary. There are some right-wingers who aren't idiots in the world, but most of the right-wing parties nowadays are just spreading hate and endangering certain groups of people while having policies that benefit the top crop.
My comment is about how while MAGA is a hate ideology and should be fought against, the anger shouldn't be turned into personal attacks against regular people and should be directed towards ideology itself and people who benefit from it. It's much harder to deprogram someone when the side that tries to deprogram them are actively shunning them on a personal level and calling them inherently terrible people, while it's likely that the person joined MAGA because of their environment, similar to how religious communities and being born into them work.
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based
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I mean outside of the racism, I can see this being applied to liberals too
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Care to elaborate?
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298 comments