Gen Z men voted for Trump to drain 'the swamp.' After Epstein, they feel duped.
My peers aren't country club conservatives. They're scrappy guys who thought Trump would take on the swamp and release the Epstein files.
Morons.
Well that explains why Gen Z women would rather use a vibrator than sleep with them.
If only there were signs 😞
I mean it's not like there was a concrete example of him promising to drain the swamp and shown concrete proof of his results before, how could they have known...
Were talking about people who made a political decision based on The Joe Rogan Effluence
Just something to hint that there might be more to the story than presented....
Not really an excuse but it’s pretty common to be politically naive when you’re young. When Obama was first elected I just figured we’d immediately solve climate change and all get free healthcare and community college. I didn’t really understand how the political system worked.
I imagine many of these people thought the same way. And they may have been too young to really follow things during Trump 1.
So yeah… I wish they had been more savvy but we all gotta learn somehow. I’m willing to forgive if they end up on the right side after this.
'member when we thought "grab em by the pussy" would definitely do the trick and open some eyes? I... Yeah I totally thought that at the time...
My peers are not your rich country club conservatives. They are scrappy guys who liked Trump because he wasn’t polished or predictable. To them, he was a rebel outsider who would fight “the swamp” with all he had. I remember heated lunchroom debates where they’d argue about whether or not he could truly upend our system and its backers.
What a bunch of fucking losers.
"Predictable" is quite literally the one quality you want the leader of the biggest military on the planet to have.
"Give the demented wildcard control of the nukes"
— MAGA
It's funny because trump is literally about as much as "the swamp" as you could be. Born with a golden spoon, socialized with only the elites, and personally fucked over working class people literally every chance he has.
It is weird because I have a similar scenario, but they voted for Trump because they're all playing entirely within framed, false choices.
Like, one coworker voted full R because that's what they'd always done like their parents and community always had and that was that. Always had, always will. Policy wasn't even on the board.
Another went for Trump because they genuine want to see government fail, even as a government worker, because they think the Federal Government is the Evil, and the States are the shining beacon of Freedom.
Platitudes and messaging strategies meant nothing to them. Or at least it didn't in 2016 or 2020. I don't know how they went 2024 since I'd left that job.
But since then every job site I go onto with active working class labor, its just MAGA hats and bumper stickers... and/or immigrant workers. Usually they're being set against each other by company owners who enjoy both groups lacking unions and legal protections.
The system that needs upending is the private company boss, not the government. The bosses are the 'backers' that need upending. Government is the last vestige where the public actually has a say.
I'm thinking if they saw Trump's record and still voted for him, this isn't gonna be the first time they get duped.
IMHO, people hyper fixated on the first couple years of Trump 1 where the economy was ok, he had experienced government officials putting up guardrails, and he coasting on what past administrations put in place.
They thought Trump’s was blowing bow air and they thought they were going to get 2017 again.
They are not getting 2017.
Weird, they were old enough to remember he didn’t live up to that campaign promise in his first term and just ended up swamping the drain even more. Did they think he was just going to do a total about face on his corruption in his second term?
This was all public knowledge before the election.
But I guess you didn’t hear about that on TikTok and YouTube shorts.
Well, depends on the almighty algorithm overlords. People were making Project 2025 PSAs left and right, and I definitely saw some YT shorts talking about the evil shit GOP and Trump would do. Cause I'm blue and YT knows (or at least thinks ) I want to see and agree with that stuff. A Gen-Z who watched Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate all day isn't gonna get that. I hate and have never used TikTok, but we can make a similar assumption for them. Anyway, I'm more pissed at my friends who sat on their ass and didn't vote (even after I told them that's upsetting), who have recently said "I wish I voted."
I guess we need to learn how to convince those around us to give a fuck. I wish I was more charasmatic...
Duped? Fucking shitbags.
Nobody was duped, bamboozled, tricked, or swindled into voted for Trump.
People knew what Trump was about and chose that.
For real. The photos and videos with and quotes about Epstein, the interviews with Stern talking about walking into changing rooms, grabbing 'em by the pussy, all this existed outside of the Epstein files.
He bankrupted business after business but stayed afloat by being a con-man, and red-state suckers flooded his rallies to juice up on his low IQ rhetoric.
Now he's filling his vault with cryptoscam cash from his idiot base buying memecoins and third-rate junk watches, so that his insipid sons can continue the family business of groping, scamming and conning. Trump has replaced Reagan as the new face of the GOP and they LOVE it, because they get to say how much they hate immigrants out loud.
They're shirking responsibility. It's typical. They gloated the whole way about knowing exactly what they're vote for.
Gen Z "men" voted for Trump because they're racist sexist homophobic pieces of shit like their fathers are.
Their fathers were absent. Andrew Tate raised them.
Elder millennial parents pioneered unparenting. They are insufferable and have the shittiest kids. The iPad generation is how I know them.
Hopefully young men in this country wake up before the wars Republicans always start turn them into casualty statistics.
Edit: I'm a younger parent than the people I'm removed about.
Dumb fucks.
Kids are fucking stupid, and everyone under 25 is a kid, cmv
What???
They feel duped? We been knew Trump was in kahoots with him. He's a sexual predator, a liar, and a shitty business man. I feel like saying you've been "duped" shifts blame. You were not duped, you just didn't realize you'd have to suffer with the rest of us, LIKE WE FUCKING TOLD YOU. Admit you made a selfish, shitty decision and do better.
If their only source of media was manosphere podcasts or FOX News, I can absolutely believe they were duped. It still doesn't absolve them of being regessive dumbasses that lack critical thinking skills, though.
Stupid fucking people. You got what you voted for, and your fucked us all over in the process.
Trump is "the swamp," you morons.
As one of my former coworkers said to me a long time ago: he's the big orange swamp monster.
And his fucking cronies.
There's no reason to believe trump would do anything good. The republican party is just full of bad ideas. What kind of false reality are these people living in?
This is their after the fact justification. You are entirely correct. Anyone with functioning eyeballs and the ability to put two brain cells together knew he wasn't going to drain any fucking swamp or be making any fucking thing better.
2016 Trump voters I will give benefit of the doubt to. If you voted Trump in 2020 you knew what you were getting, and if you voted Trump in 2024 you even had a road map.
There is nothing I want to hear from these apologetic Trump voters besides "Yes, I was some combination of racist, hateful, and ignorant, and now the entire nation is suffering for my bullshit." There is no way they didn't know what they were subjecting the nation to, and I will not pretend that somehow they didn't. Don't want a Trump voter as a friend, and wish I could boot them out of my family. I sure as hell am not going to entertain their fucking platitudes.
Trump declined to release the Epstein files because he said it would falsely incriminate innocent people. But that has left them wondering: Is Trump just the swamp?
YES, FUCKING YES. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE SWAMP. And the fact that this is the moment where you are wondering this proves my point above. Everything up to now was all good.
This whole turnabout is a personal one for my friends. They didn’t like Trump because he was a Republican; they liked him because he would be a “disrupter in chief.”
TURNABOUT??!! He has been the same person literally the entire time.
OMFG I think I have just realized. The only way out of this is if we all pretend we swallow this bullshit from bashful Trump voters, isn't it?
Look at this shit:
They wonder: Is Trump just a showman who lied to us and deceived us this whole time?
Entirely too credible, too wide eyed. This article and articles like it are just another kind of ruse. One where we all pretend we haven't learned something dark and horrible about 77 million of our fellow citizens, so we can throw them a bone after what they have voted in for all the rest of us. 🤮
Where do they go now? One obvious possibility is to the Democratic Party. But Democratic leaders would need to do more than act like they care about people like my friends. They need to offer a clear, transparent alternative that can successfully brand Democrats as more honest and authentic.
So the problem isn't Trump folks, and it's not Trump voters, either. Republicans? Nah. It's actually Democrats. Huh.
Eli Thompson is an 18-year-old
Oh Jesus. The author thinks all this is normal.
42 year old millennial here…
My peers are not your rich country club conservatives. They are scrappy guys who liked Trump because he wasn’t polished or predictable. To them, he was a rebel outsider who would fight “the swamp” with all he had. I remember heated lunchroom debates where they’d argue about whether or not he could truly upend our system and its backers.
The danger of neoliberals is they took money from trump and many just like him, and in return turned the Dem party into a pile of dog shit that didn't actually help anyone that wasn't wealthy
That inevitably ends with the neoliberals middlemen getting cut out, and depressing Dem turnout so much Republicans win.
The voting members of the DNC learned their lesson, they elected a chair with a proven track record of fair primaries and not standing in the way of the party's own voters.
That's why billionaire owned media keeps telling Dem voters to give up on the DNC.
The billionaires are scared of what happens when Dem voters get to pick their own politicians
That’s why billionaire owned media keeps telling Dem voters to give up on the DNC.
You know what the DNC could do that would undermine this message?
Bullshit.
They are trying to save face, however they'll still vote for the dregs of humanity next time.
Gen Z was born 1996-2009, the oldest were 19 years old in 2016 when Trump campaigned to drain the swamp, which famously didnt work.
Only racists and fascists voted for him after 2016. He was surprisingly open about all the terrible things that have happened so far in his second term while on the campaign trail. Although I never listened to his campaign ramblings (nor did a large chunk of his crowd), I didn't see reports about the drain the swamp slogan after the first term.
How did it take them 9 years to feel duped?
Only racists and fascists voted for him after 2016
Not only. I know people who don't fall into either of those groups. They were just gullible and stupid. Sure they were perhaps pressured by someone that falls into the first group (the bigots). Never underestimate peoples proclivity for stupidity.
If we were having this conversation in 2017, I'd agree with you. However Trump announced his run over 10 years ago and has been spewing more of the same shit since then. The excuse about not knowing isn't really valid anymore. The morons who voted for Hitler are called fascist, just as were the bigots who fervently supporter him.
How did it take them 9 years to feel duped?
These idiots live in sewer-like information ecosystems.
Most recent election had zero Drain the Swamp bullshit. Trump is the swamp.
Am Gen Z male and I want nothing to do with this fascist treacherous dipshit.
Maybe its a good thing I didn't make any friends, at least I won't have any of my peers stab me in the back.
Alternate take. Make friends, educate them, turn them into comrades.
Human nature is a fucking removed. You can scream till your face turns blue and your average milquetoast American will cognitive dissonance their way back to comfort. That's why the conservatives don't care about violating tne constituton. People aren't a hyper evolved species. We were just apes who learned to drive and do taxes. Of course the population is full of monkey brains wired to make decisions on vibes, that's how we got here. Empathy is just an evolutionary trait your brain decided was convenient for survival in a group, and some people literally just aren't capable of giving a shit.
My point is that no amount of education can force someone to empathize and it's so god damn frustrating.
Gen Z. Too young to have experienced or lived through the Reagan era lies and the Bush lies along with the courting of right-wing fringe politics, from the religious wingnuts to the Tea Partiers. Let’s give conservatism another go! Surely it’ll work this time.
Can't wait to hear about people too young to remember Trump voting against their interests in 20 years or so.
Then again, maybe voting won't be a thing in the USA at that point.
You’ll get the token candidate and Barron will get 98.5% of the vote. Occasional beatings and investigations into the precincts that get too high of an opposition vote %.
Gen-Z men have bad judgment
I mean, they complain about a "male loneliness epidemic" that they themselves have created by being deplorable pieces of ahitm to women and minorities. They can get fucked.
As a gen z man who did not vote for Trump, supports the rights of people, and generally is a good person to those around me - generalist arguments like this are poison to your goal. Blaming every man from 14 to 29 (depending on who you ask) is only going to succeed in alienating those men who are not going to be unreceptive of your actual point.
Age, skin color, gender, sex, sexuality, whatever the combination - blame people for what they do, not the circumstances of their birth.
The Trump voting neo-nazi chuds can get fucked. Don't lump young liberals like me in with those cult of personality dicks with lazy generalizations, please.
Their idea of swamp was just democrats/city folk. They would just never believe that putting in their people would be just as swampy if not worse.
They might not like the Epstein shit but they’re not asking for all those bureaucrats and judges he placed to be removed. They’d still vote for Rubio, or whatever racist corpse gets the next nomination.
Glad they’re free of this particular blindness but they’ve got a long way to go.
Also, I don't know why so many dickheads talk about "upending" things. It takes a lot to have large complicated working systems.
Any old asshole (or even something as simple as a virus) can "upend" a system. Why is that a value in itself I will just never understand.
Tired of hearing "Demographic Group X did Y" when these analyses fall apart at the state line.
There's no chromosome that explains your vote.
Speak for yourself. I got more chromosomes than any of you motherfuckers.
Yeah, no they ain't. They wanted this and they are happy they got this. Everyone is fucking miserable except those pieces of shit.
Hey, if you support a syphilitic pedophile rapist lying grifter, you deserve all the shit he unleashes on you.
I don’t believe that. Anyone dumb enough to vote for trump thinking he would drain the swamp is way too dumb to ever realize he’s been duped.
Yeah but the pod cast Bros are waffling a bit and that's where they get their cues from.
Gawd, what fucking dumbasses. LOL, "scrappy guys".
JFC.
In Local News: Farmer shocked to find himself bitten after taking in a viper.
I mean...they were 19, at the oldest, when the first Trump term began. Now they're between 13 and 28. So I understand being ignorant of what came before.
But seriously...if you don't know what came before, don't vote.
I'm pretty sure I had learned about 1930s-40s Germany before I was old enough to vote.
Our public education system has been purposely broken. The fascists have sabotaged our own future and ability to innovate and compete on the world stage in any way... But hey, they don't know about Nazis anymore, so it's a lot easier for them to take power. That's what matters.
Vanishingly small percentage of fucking idiots later realize they've been conned. Film at 11.
And I highly doubt they even realise it. They are fucking idiots after all.
USA today is a rightwing propaganda rag and this is rightwing propaganda
"my peers aren't country club conservatives" shut the fuck up you are literally writing for the largest syndicated colonial newspaper network
If only there had been a sign that it wasn't a good idea to put these clowns in office. Just one more sign, on top of the million-or-so that I thought were common knowledge.
To be fair, thats only because those voters are deeply stupid.
Dumbasses
Yup Gen Z men are kinda naive.
fellforitagainaward.png
Gen Z 🤣🤣🤣
Stupidity is a very costly liability.
Oh noez, are a lot of our voting public stupid fucking idiots? What a shocker.
Wot?
from reading this poem, if you don't immediately conceive "the swamp" is filled by children's blood in this admin's imagination, i don't know what to tell you.
we cannot all be anything to everybody about anything.
well, they're learning. that's a good thing
I'll believe it when I see it.
Have you met a Trumper that learned their lesson? They are cooked.
A slumlord not wanting to drain the swamp but become Lord Swampington. Who could've seen that coming. 🙄
It's not just a "feeling", they absolutely were duped.
They duped themselves because they couldn't be bothered to have any empathy for others other than their own.
They did have help from the very best con man.
This is an opportunity for organizers. Trump is teaching them a valuable lesson and we should be there to help them take it further.
Seriously. For all the removedinv about boomers, it was gen z and millenials that gave us Trump. Xers didn't want him and the boomers aren't as large a population slice as they once were
But y'know.. Old....
So fucking stupid.
Hey America, from over here it’s kind of obvious you have no real options for ruling parties. Red or Blue: they’ll fuck you for a buck.
"Both sides" bullshit.
Both sides are not the same. The Right is far worse; more corrupt, more authoritarian, more dangerous. But the Left is not without fault. What we have now is a “ratchet effect,” where the Right cranks the system further & further right, and the Left does little to nothing to crank it back to the left (or in many cases, outright stops leftward momentum).
We have no major left-wing political representation. We either need an “Antitrump” in the Democratic Party, who will take it over and warp it to become the polar opposite of trump’s new GOP. I’m talking a full-on progressive paragon. Or we need a third major party to lure progressives and moderates who are fed up with the status quo.
Personally I would rather have the former. It seems more likely. Though still not very likely.
One might be worse than the other (superficially) but you’re seeing the R’s do whatever they want without a whole lot of friction from the D’s.
So yes: both sides couldn’t give a fuck about you. There are good people on both sides too, but the two organisms can only be judged by their respective actions. And neither fares well.
