I will judge, and I will not forget

My father and I became estranged about a decade before he passed, for reasons other than but similar to politics. Our world views just did not align and in ways that I could not ultimately forgive. We did not really ever reconcile before his passing and I don't regret it to this day. I don't believe in unconditional love and he did not earn mine, imho. I am estranged with most of my extended family for similar reasons. I'm not really willing to compromise certain morals.

The good fight. Keeping majority voters accountable for the choices they impose on everyone else is as much a part of democracy as anything else, especially with candidates who actually deliver on the promises they make during elections.

God speed. I hope you can be reunited with your family again.

My dad died young. He was only 52. I like to think he wouldn't have been brainwashed by the qult, but honestly who knows? He was running in circles that are now full of trump clowns. He ran a construction company and was a registered Republican, but gave up on them after W and voted for Obama twice. I wonder how he would have reacted to this shit. I like to think he'd have been logical and stayed on the Dems side, but I always wonder if he'd have gone to the dark side. There's a real chance I wouldn't be talking to him right now if he did. I'm glad I never had to deal with it because I was very close to him. I feel for you OP.

I am fortunate that there is no real family divide for me. I do have a few relatives who voted Trump, but I am not close to them.

Given that the rest of the family has cut them out (it was already underway, but this was the last straw), it's really nothing for me to do so as well.

Your poor father. You sound insufferable.

I think issues are too complicated for uneducated voters to understand when lectured to. People can learn, but many often only in hindsight when they experience something first hand. The educated/uneducated divide sheds light on this so obviously. Which is why it is so frustrating. Not suggesting being educated makes people smarter, but I think people who pursue education are more accepting of lecture. Obviously.

Democrats have to stop and realize this. It's why there is no debate to be had with many Republicans. They don't think about issues through rational extrapolation and curiosity. Everything is an emotional response to the now. They are just wired that way.

What made you change your mind?

The DOJ had four years to prosecute him under Biden and they dragged their heels.

The Southern District of New York had ample reason and opportunity to prosecute him as a mobbed to businessman in the '00s and '10s, but he was friends with the mayor so they didn't.

The Clintons certainly knew about Epstein in the 90s and could have busted that whole thing up 30 years ago. But the donations were too sweet, so they didn't.

Trump is a creature of consequences.

there would not be many left to govern

Good. There is not that many positions to fill anyway.

It's not normal that a criminal record that would make it almost impossible to find an entry-level grocery packer job is completely OK for a politician.

If you are rich you can rape and do whatever you want.

This is why I hate capitalism so much. Extreme power disparity is the heart of tyranny and the extreme disparities in wealth that capitalism creates only leads to extreme disparities in political power.

I fear that the US went past a breaking point and that the US will fully be an oligarchy after Trump is done

I refuse to think about it that way lol. Quantity does not equal acceptance for me. We have to hold our countries' representatives to a higher standard than being outright criminals, guilty of many, serious offenses. If there are only a handful of politicians left after such a sift, then so be it.

Thank God I'm not in the USA. But it's not like this doesn't fuck over the rest of the world too.

if you disqualified politicians who engaged in some kind of sexual assault there would not be many left to govern.

I've heard arguments to the effect that politicians who are too clean simply don't succeed, because people don't want to give you big campaign checks unless they have Compromat on you.

So you get invited to the Eyes Wide Shut party, your rich friends catalog your debauchery, and this is what keeps you loyal.

There would absolutely be men who would qualify, as well as a lot of women. Why do you think everyone is sexually assaulting everyone else? Let's not allow violent criminals (which rape is both violent and a crime, it is torture via sexual acts) to be in office. At a minimum.

It's time for Josh Duggar to run for office

The problem with disqualifying anyone based on any crimes is that it would enable the current ruling party to stick crimes on the opposition to eliminate the competition.

Just in case to clarify, I'm not defending child rapists who most surely did commit the crime in question, just saying it's a dangerous concept.

Still at it... She lost, dude. Go away.

Yes, we were already hopeless, but we recognized that there was one option (out of the four: Trump, Harris, third party, or abstention) that provided a possible chance of ending the genocide, while the other three were a guarantee of not only the complete elimination of the Palestinian people, but the expansion into a much larger conflict across the Middle East and possibly the world.

I hope that moral superiority makes you feel better when you see the what the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in Gaza (and beyond) will be. Assuming you actually give a shit.

They should, yes. (I'm not American.)

The problem with simply being "frustrated" about current material conditions is that frustration is unproductive.

In this case it is not just unproductive, it's destructive. American voters, especially those who voted for Biden last time chose to stay at home.

Biden administration was stumbling so the voters gave the keys to someone who's going to cut off both legs.

I warned my wife if her dad makes the mistake of showing his removed ass face to me again he's dead, she was smart enough to already know

Fucker already literally threatened my life twice before on top of all the other horrid shit he's done, and now he knows hes not allowed near his favorite daughter or he's pig food

And all the fucking clowns that decided to stay home will still try to claim the moral high ground by claiming they supported neither.

Trump didnt gain or loose many voters.

Biden/Harris lost a lot of voters.

So really the change between 2020 and 2024 is not a popularity increase for Trump, but a huge popularity loss for Biden/Harris.

Now the question is, how did Biden/Harris manage to be so unpopular, that 12 million people decided to rather risk Trump winning, than vote for them again?

It's the same group voting trump, nothing changed there, but what did change I wonder....

Yeah, Dems should have been able to put a wet turd on the ticket and beat Trump. The people who voted for Trump are the actual problem.

Trump and his fascists deserve most of the blame, but I fear that liberals won't learn from this. Realpolitik is bullshit. When you promise to help people but then sell us out to lobbyists and the donor class decade after decade after decade, then people lose all faith in institutions. Facts don't matter because those facts were used to gaslight time and time again.

What you see on TikTok are the most entertaining videos. I have no idea if they have to cut out 2% of the videos because they're not entertaining, or 50% or 98%.

Viola?

Don’t forget they almost lost 2020 as well had it not been for covid they definitely would of lost.

Unger's book is extensive and quite established. He is a journalist.

And all narcissists care about is their ego. He gives so many fucks.

While reading the beginning of this comment, I thought I had actually witnessed a "genocide joe" moron admit they were wrong... But nope.

Never gonna happen, is it?

They don't think rationally, is the problem.

Do you understand how many times we've tried this already? They are perfectly fine with hypocrisy, lies, and projection.

I'm not saying we need to destroy them or anything, but this shit has gone too far. We need to try way harder to fight back against their hateful, regressive bullshit at this point.

No, the people that voted for Trump in this election will never vote for a non republican candidate regardless of how much you try to appease them. IMO you're more likely to lose even more voters than you stand to gain taking this approach. The democrats need to come up with a vision and candidate that is neither Harris, Biden, and certainly not anything close to Trump. They need someone that will make non-voters believe that there's a good chance their life will improve enough to make voting worthwhile.

Not just history, science, probably math, etc.

They don't want problem solvers or critical thinking skills, they want to create a class of low skilled, low intelligence, baby breeding, obedient working class people.

The owning class will be educated through private institutions.

There will be concepts of curriculum 🫲🍊🫱

This is the landlord…

That’s where all of the wealth he pissed away came from

Well 114 million people who could have voted this year didn't. It's a combination of apathy and laziness. We could be like Australia and mandate the vote.

Yeah I don't believe that for a fucking second to be honest with you, and I'm finding it difficult to not go insane with conspiracy theories about MAGA fucking with the vote counts, and becoming the same person I made fun of surrounding Jan 6 - except he has a proven record of being a cheat and all but outright stated his intent to cheat the election. I'm kind of dumbfounded that 3 hours after voting night closes the major news outlets are all reporting a Trump win which they couldn't possibly know yet, everyone takes this as fact and refuses to investigate any further. Official vote tally and certification isn't even until mid December by the usual schedule according to .gov sources.

Is it not just a little bit ridiculous to anyone else that in one of the most relentlessly politicized elections of the past century 15+ million people who voted last time suddenly didn't? 15 million people predominantly of the denominations that Trump and his goons particularly hate and wanted to silence? For that matter does anyone else find it strange that 45% of Latinos voted to deport themselves? I mean, some percentage I could expect, even up to like 20, I'd be disappointed but I'd understand, but 45%??

I am most certainly on some amount of copium here but I am incredibly surprised at the lack of any sort of investigation or push back or god damn anything surrounding what should certainly be contested results, at the very least. This feels very very fishy to me.

He was a meanie and very unpresidential and Hillary was disliked (even by me) and people wanted something different. Now he has been shown he will literally go against any advisors and literally tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Literal anti-democratic traitor to america.

Yeah, it made zero sense then and it has never made sense.

When asked about healthcare, they said they had “concepts” of a plan.

Oh wait, no, that was the other guy.

The DNC and Biden failed us. His legacy will be tainted due to his failure to step aside for the nation. Kamala as a VP was already unpopular the DNC should've known they needed to choose someone who at least did well in the primaries or could actually fucking win.

I voted for her but I knew she probably wouldn't win, they don't fucking learn and then they blame us.

Every interview where questions were asked about Kamala's positions, shed talk about trump. It was not all that different than trump shit talking kamala even.

Thats the 2020 platform. If you want to be a talking head you'll need some argument more cogent than that^

4B needs to become more popular in the US with ovulating people.

It won't guarantee safety from forced situations, but with the incoming total bans on abortion and contraceptives they're facing over there, flat out refusing to have sex, relationships, and marriages with men, is going to be the best way to stay safe and in control of their bodies and finances.

Maybe the grandparents shouldn't vote to directly harm their own grandchildren, and actively destroy their futures. Just a thought.

Sounds like gramma and grampa voted Trump, so maybe next time they'll make better choices. It's too late, of course, but that's the bed they made.

Yes the warped perscrptive informed from 50 years ago, when you had no choice but to trust the TV and newspapers, not like the world has changed since then.

What upset me the most is that Harris used Hilary's election plan verbatim.

She absolutely did not. Hillary leaned into the gender card hardcore. She had her supporters wearing t-shirts saying “I’m with her” with an arrow sign. She said “I’m not saying you should vote for me because I’m a woman, you should vote for me because of my qualifications. But one of my qualifications is…I’M A WOMAN!!!”

Kamala didn’t lean into any of this demographics, gender war trash. She (wisely) followed Barack Obama’s playbook of leaving the identify politics crap at the door. She lost for other reasons. Hillary alienated voters by leaning too hard into identity politics. Kamala ran a much better campaign than Hillary. They are not the same. Why Kamala lost will be debated for some time at least, but it will not be concluded reasonably that she lost for the same reasons Hillary lost in 2016. I know people want to conclude that women just can’t get elected, but we haven’t yet had a female candidate that ran a great campaign. As someone who wants our first female president, I have to reluctantly admit that we’ve been underserved by our female politicians thus far. I have high hopes for AOC in the future, but we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out. I don’t actually think Kamala did anything wrong in her campaign; I just think she was working against the legacy set by her predecessor, and it was too much. That, and too many American voters are stupid, ignorant, misguided voters. And, probably, some Pro-Palestinian voters had their heads up their asses.

I chose to vote for Harris despite this because Trump would be no better on this, so effectively the issue wasn't up for vote and I could only vote on the other issues that were different between them. But very bluntly, I don't blame Arabs and Muslims for not voting for Harris. They have one of the strongest grievances one could possibly have (i.e. second only to attacks directly on them personally, in the U.S.), and the dismissiveness from Biden (and Harris) was downright insulting.

A part of me does feel like Biden chose Israel over Americans. I don't know if changing course on this would have changed the election, and I guess it's impossible to truly know.

I would argue that he most definitely is a champion for radical change and that's why he won. "Drain the swamp", "Dictator on day one", " He says it like it is" are all things that deviate dramatically from the status quo of political etiquette. Trump is willing to break political norms to get what he wants and evidently voters think his interests align with their own.

Obviously, this isn't the kind of radical change you or I are hoping for but it certainly is radical. Meanwhile, the Dems are playing it safe in an attempt to appeal broadly and not upset too many people. And we've seen for the last decade that gets us at best legislation which has been gutted to the point where it does effectively nothing for the majority of Americans.

Host Thanksgiving and only invite your mom.

Yes

Anyone that brought up your points earlier this year was dog-piled and being called a tankie or Russian shill. God forbid a powerless user on this website brought up an ounce of criticism towards the party or else it was as if every loyalist was experiencing their own personal 9/11

I said this repeatedly. I told them I was voting for Kamala and I wanted her to win, which is why I was requesting they change their speech.

every time people blame the voters and nothing fucking change

I blame all the voters that were fine with voting for Trump first, because they looked at that shit stain and thought he would be acceptable as the leader of the country. The people that voted for him are the problem.

Harris still did a terrible job, sure. But a literal pile of dogshit should have been a preferable option to Trump.