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The true colours of much of the US is revealed.
As much as some pay lip service to gender equality, ignoring race and ethnicity and taking care of the environment in public, once they’re in a private voting booth, the mask comes off to reveal an awful lot of racist, sexist, bully boys who only care about themselves.
“who only care about themselves.”
To be fair, this is true of 99% (or whatever high percentage) of people.
I have a lot of thoughts on it, mostly unhappy thoughts.
Two things stand out:
First, I’m having a hard time with the voting turnout numbers. More people showed up to boot Trump out of office (voting for Biden), than every before. If you look at the numbers, the Republicans have gone up and up in vote count, albeit, not by a lot. While the Democratic vote count varies wildly year over year. It tells me that if people, specifically democratic voting people, show up, they win. When they don’t, then the GOP wins. It is clear to me that they didn’t show up.
Clearly, more people believed he was a threat to the country in 2020 and turned up in droves to drive him out, but in 2024 when we needed all of those people to turn up again, and keep him out, they just, didn’t bother. I’m sure, a nontrivial amount of the voters flipped between Dem and Rep… Or vice versa… But the total votes when Biden won, were simply a lot more.
So I’m having trouble reconciling that fewer people turned up to vote and keep the orange one out of office, than the number that showed up to kick him out of office to begin with. I don’t understand why they thought they needed to show up in 2020, but felt that they didn’t need to in 2024. I just don’t get it.
The second thing is centered around project 2025. Holy shit that entire plan is cursed. I feel bad for every American that isn’t a straight white male right now. You’re all going to get fucked over in some way, shape, or form. Even if you are a straight white male, you’re probably still fucked because of all the fucked up things that Trump is going to do to the economy that will benefit his billionaire friends (at your expense). You’ll get fucked slightly less than everyone else, but you’ll still get fucked.
The only solace I have in this, is that Trump is done. He cannot run for a third term. Assuming that he isn’t successful in dismantling the democracy at the heart of what the US is, it will only be four years and they can start the very long journey to repairing all the damage that this clown is about to do.
I have no illusions, that even if America survives his second term, they will be fucked for decades to come.
In a word…
FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!
The outcome is not good for Canada and is deeply bad for several issues I care deeply about.
I do hope this drives introspection here about how our working class feels and has been struggling, and that it drives political change before we see a sweeping conservative majority in the next election.
The turnout in the states says a lot. no one is happy. Even trump lost total votes; the Dems failed the mobilize their vote… which screams of people not thinking anything will change no matter what vote they place. It is a mirror for what is going on up here… In all likelihood the libs are out and its the cost of living and scarce jobs to blame for it. If they actually wanted to win the next election, they have already shown they could change things with a stroke of a pen and DON’T.
I’m a dual citizen from the UK/Canada.
I feel the same way after Brexit. I felt a huge sense of dread and my coworker said to me, “we work in a high paying position and we’re men, we’re mostly going to be okay. The people that voted for Brexit have just f*cked themselves and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
I do feel a lot of animosity to any Trump supporter and I feel that’s warranted. I don’t care to elaborate further. I’m thinking of dropping social media for the next six months because there’s a lot of shit going on that I have no control over and I can’t change.
I feel like we’re going to see an increase in this hate-filled, scapegoating rhetoric that the Republican party won votes with. All we can do now though is try to fight this kind of stuff here in Canada and try to avoid becoming the atates
A lot has been said about how shocking and awful the results are, and I do agree with them. I definitely do not condone any of the far-right parties, their representatives, or their policies.
But what hasn’t been said (and might be a bit controversial) is the fact that liberal parties are the biggest problem that the world is facing right now. It’s the parties that pretend to be an opposition force, but in reality they just keep shitting on voters, making broken promises, and saying “it’ll be better next time, just one more term!” They keep trying to convince people that the system works and that iterative changes will make things better. But in reality, things have actually been getting worse for 10, 15, maybe even 20 years… (the exact number depends on where you live and what you do for a living).
After a while, people stop believing in those broken promises. And the longer they refuse to put up any real opposition, the more and more they empower the far right.
In Canada, Trudeau needs to implement proportional representation NOW. If he doesn’t want to do that, he might as well just come out and endorse Poilievre, because he damn well knows what will happen if he doesn’t give people a real alternative (even he can’t pretend it’s any other way at this point). And no, ranked choice voting is not the answer here.
In the US, I have to be honest: it’s not a country anymore. It’s several countries, all jammed into one, and half of whom hate each other with no limit. And to be honest, this is how it’s supposed to work!!! This is how the constitution is framed! Federal government is supposed to be weak and state governments are supposed to fill that void, but the States refuse to actually work that way and keep looking to control a Federal government in a way that they’ll never be able to.
The USA really ought to break into constituent countries. The West Coast is a country. The Northeast is at least one country, maybe 3-4. And you can slice up the red states however you like - I honestly don’t care. Maybe this way, they can finally actually get shit done in a way that starts making people happy, because there’s far too much animosity between different and disparate parts of the “country” in its current form. It’s definitely not going to come from the Federal government.
I know that none of these things are going to happen, so things will just continue getting worse and worse over the next decade or two. Fair warning to everyone: we’re not even close to rock bottom yet.
I think it’s a total propaganda line to say nothing is getting better under liberals.
Better medical coverage, forgiving student loans, improvements to education, just few examples that benefit everyday Americans rather than billionaires. There’s so much more to making society better for everyone than just a bit more money at the end of the day. Besides if china tariffs come in big time count on everything getting far more expensive almost overnight.
You better bet none of that will happen with the current republicans at the helm.
They’ll happily screw over everyone to line their pockets and weaken the working class while selling them lies about how much better off they are with a minor raise to minimum wage or something insignificant.
I actually agree (more or less) with everything you’re saying. But the problem is, I don’t think it really matters to anyone. I think there’s still one point that people still don’t seem to be understanding:
Inflation and economic issues trump (pun not intended) all of the things you listed. We have to eat every day. And when you’re living on the edge, every meal, every time you eat, you’re constantly reminded of how precarious your life is. All the things you mentioned are great, but frankly they don’t matter when you’re just worried about whether you’re still going to be able to afford food at the end of the week.
Revolutions are not started by people who don’t have healthcare or education, or any of those other abstract things that may affect them in the future. They come from people who are hungry. And stressed. Stress and hunger really start eating your brain after a while, and people experiencing that start doing very nasty, desperate things like resorting to the kinds of demagoguery that the far-right is pushing. And this is what I mean when I say nothing is getting better under liberals - more and more people are falling into the cracks day by day, and if you don’t address this, then none of the other things don’t matter. Yes, in theory, all the economic policies that liberals propose should help with that, but if the effect is not immediate, then it’s not happening fast enough and people will continue to revolt.
I really think people who keep bringing up how this will ultimately hurt their voters need to understand this better. They’re not wrong, but I do think they’re missing the point. The standard of living in the west has been declining for a long time as I alluded above, and that’s why people are starting to do desperate things - because they’ve run out of patience and have seen the status quo for long enough, they’ll take any alternative and have no choice left but to overlook all of the criminal things these despots say and do. Maybe they do care about all those criminal things, or maybe they don’t, but what really matters is that they want drastic action to take place. They don’t want policies - they want results and they want it fast.
And I don’t think liberals understand or care to understand this. That’s what I mean when I say that liberals are making things worse. Until you stop the tide of more and more people falling behind economically, none of the things you pointed out are ever going to matter to people. You’re not going to win elections that way - even against the likes of Donald Trump.
I think liberals understand this, at some level, but they know they are powerless to do anything about it within the system they’ve built for themselves. They can’t outright say this, or they would never be re-elected.
They have completely embraced neoliberal economic policies, and thus depend on corporate money and support. The only thing they can do is toss people a bone here and there, and implement slow policies that might help over time, but won’t rock the boat now. Business do not like sudden changes, they want predictable stability as that’s what their investments and forcasting is built on.
Conservatives are also in the pocket of corporations, but they simply have no problem lying to their voters. They will point the finger, blame the other, make outlandish claims, and purposefully mislead the public while having no intention of helping them. They just want to solidify their power and line their pockets. People fall for these lies because they’re tired of the status quoe and any kind of major change sounds like a benifit. They’re shooting themselves in the foot, but they don’t know it yet.
OMG this. The worst thing too is that liberal parties block actual left parties (helped by our first-past-the-post voting system) that want to do more than incremental change while empowering the far right. Ultimately a lot of elite liberals would rather the far right win than a genuine left party. One of the MSNBC talking heads accidentally let that slip when he said he’d sooner vote for Trump than Bernie Sanders before being forced to retract by one of the other hosts.
OH SHIT OH FUCK
Tired. Numb.
Ukraine is fucked. Palenstine is fucked. Taiwan is fucked.
Climate is turbo fucked.
And the brain rot heads north
Bracing for impact on Canadian elections.
Upon hearing the news, I felt despondent and a pit in my stomach… I went to do a bit of karaoke and my mood has recovered from that at least.
Clearly political con-artistry is effective. Ford, Smith, Moe, Poilievre and any wannabe dictators of Canada who may emerge in the future, are all taking down notes.
Empathy at what my American friends are going through, and dread about our own incoming conservative wave.
You know, I work a pretty stressful job, and I think a lot of that stress and anger came from, in some twisted way, a misguided faith of sorts. I did believe that people were, at the very least, capable of making the most sensible decision when given overwhelming evidence of good vs. bad choices; that they intentionally make bad choices either because they weren’t given enough information or were acting intentionally selfish or duplicitous in some way. So whenever I had to deal with someone trying to exploit a loophole or arguing about how they swear they are going to x and such place and will pay at a later time (when you know they won’t do so), it would frustrate me, because I did believe that they were capable of making better choices.
This election is proof that people are just genuinely dumb and hopeless, to a far and large extent. Choosing to omit your own vote, or willingly voting for him, is beyond imagination. We have seen so much of what he has done in the past 8 years now, at minimum. They know what he will likely do in the next 4 years. And they still chose him. Or chose not to participate.
So I’m choosing not to feel angry at people anymore, to not give a shit if they break the rules for whatever reason they justify. Because why be angry at something if you have lost faith in it being better?
This election is proof that people are just genuinely dumb and hopeless
Or that trump really does represent their ideals, and they’re just horrible people.
I was quite put off myself, and was feeling sad for
youthem guys. To all that voted Harris, I’m sorry. To all who didn’t vote, voted 3rd party, or for the orange himself, I am now looking forward to the popcorn party.spoiler
Yes, my name checks out
Shocked, saddened here.
I can’t believe Trump did so well. He’ll be the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. He’s a racist, sexist, transphobic, fascist, anti-science rapist, convicted felon, climate change-denier, and champion of the uber wealthy.
I guess there are many more deeply racist and sexist people than I wish to believe. It’s BS how first-past-the-post and the electoral college systems work - it’s so very easy to manipulate the system when you know the precious few key areas in advance to try to influence. Control of mainstream news and social media by the billionaire gives dis-, misinformation, and other bias so much reach to undermine democracy and voters’ rational self-interest.
I guess there are many more deeply racist and sexist people than I wish to believe.
This. I knew that there was a great deal of racism and misogyny in the USA but the extent of it is horrifying. Having lived almost my whole life there in various states, it still took me by surprise. I dont understand it and never will. Nor do I understand how people can fall for simplistic rhetoric and scapegoating. But clearly it works.
Is it crazy that he’d be better if he was a five-time ultimate smackdown champion and porn superstar? Camacho actually tried to put the smartest guy on the problem.
One thing that has helped me the teensiest bit is that even though he got the popular vote, he still got less votes than he did in 2020. It doesn’t help me to know that so many people were blatantly apathetic or misogynistic or whatever we’re blaming the lack of democratic votes on, but at least he got less votes than before.
I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would. I’ve been an NDP voter all my life, so like most lefties I was shocked by Trump’s win in 2016, horrified by his COVID bullshit, and appalled by his conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric in the 2024 campaign. Trump is so obviously horrible that I kept asking the same question: how could HALF of the US electorate support him? I just can’t believe that HALF of America are fascist misogynistic white supremacists.
So, I started listening to alternative media. For example, I listened to Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan (yes, the whole three+ hours). I listened to Bari Weiss’s Honestly podcast, where she talks to disaffected progressives, and had a great debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. And many others.
So far, this is what I’ve come up with:
- The Democratic Party has abandoned the traditional working class, or at least the working class feels abandoned by the Democratic Party. The Dems have become “cultural elites” that too many average people just can’t identify with at all. Trump may not be good for the working class, but at least he speaks to them and their concerns. This of course leads to a discussion about how the Dems would have a better relationship with labour if they hadn’t fucked over Bernie Sanders.
- The Democratic Party has become obsessed with identity politics, at the expense of real issues that matter to most people. Identity politics is pure poison that has become the leftist version of McCarthyism to a lot of people.
- The Dems foreign policy is seen as weak by both the left and right. They fucked around on the Ukraine war to the point where Russia is now winning. And they lifted the sanctions on Iran that allowed it to fund Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis and blow up the Middle East. And the left is pissed off that they don’t speak out against Israel’s aggressive policy toward the Palestinians. So, the Dems aren’t pleasing anyone when it comes to foreign policy.
- The Dems had a good issue with reproductive rights, but a lot of states are moving to protect reproductive rights on theor own (including ballot measures), which may have relieved some of the pressure on Trump.
- People talk a lot about Trump being better for the economy. I’m not sure economists would agree, but that is a large part of the sentiment favouringTrump. Edit: 6. Immigration. How could I forget immigration. Illegal immigration really pisses off Americans, including and perhaps especially among legal immigrants. I’m not sure that immigrants love Trump’s immigration position, but most of the country see the Dems as too ideologically compromised by identity politics to be able to do anything constructive on immigration.
You don’t have to agree with those positions and I don’t plan on defending them. This is just what I’ve picked up in trying to understand why so many people vote for Trump.
There are some important parallels and lessons here for the next Canadian election. Trudeau and the Liberals parallel the cultural elitism of the establishment Democrats. Singh appeals more to the identity politics culture warriors than he does to the working class. This is a big departure from the NDP’s traditional roots in the labour movement. And Poilievre is Trump’s mini-me. So, what can we do in Canada to avoid a repeat of the left’s failure in the US election? Doubling down on identity politics and cultural elitism isn’t going to go well.
You’re doing amazing work here. Not enough people are trying to make an effort to understand far right voters. You don’t have to agree with the policies, but you do still have to make an effort to understand why they appeal to people and makes them want to vote that way.
Liberal parties (Democrats, LPC, etc.) have been ignoring this for far too long and in my opinion, that’s why they keep losing. They lose and blame the voters for not seeing the world the way they do, but they don’t have any understanding or perspective of what the world looks like through the eyes of these voters. That’s why they don’t have any appeal and things are just going to continue getting worse as long as they continue ignoring the real issues that affects voters.
(Unless a real alternative party emerges, I suppose…)
I’m listening to the CBC right now and the prevailing opinion I’m hearing is that the Democrats lost because Biden waited too long to step aside. Talk about learning all the wrong lessons.
Watch how the Liberal narrative will emphasize that. They want Trudeau to step aside, and if (when) they lose to the Cons they’ll say it’s because Trudeau wouldn’t step aside. Or if he does step aside, he didn’t step aside early enough.
Of all the things they learned from this election, it’s how to make excuses when they lose. Somehow, my opinion of the Liberal party continues to sink even lower. I didn’t even think that was possible…
I think a lot of people think trump is good for economy for reasons like stripping away environmental regulations. Sure it might make a company cheaper to operate without regulations but often times it is exponentially more expensive to deal with the damages.
That’s way more complex thinking that what people actually do around this. They think he’s good for the econony because he’s rich, or at least plays rich on TV.
CEOs may see him as good for business because rhey believe he’ll make running their businesses cheaper, but the average Trump voter just sees “rich = good with money”, because most people ultimately believe that the world is on some level fair, and if he’s rich it must mean he got there fairly.
Before the EPA the Cuyahoga River was at times more fire than water.
The other thing that I’d add to this is that, post-pandemic, a lot of people have felt the pinch of shifting economic realities. A lot of decisions from years and decades past that have masked the costs neoliberal policies and corporate cost cutting have come home to roost, and it has left people feeli g stressed out and resentful.
They feel their quality of life and standard of living starting to slip, and they see the injustice of the system supporting their bosses, their landlords, and their banks, but not them. And they see who’s currently at the wheel.
Because of this, they also grow increasingly resentful towards discussions of people who need help. They feel like no one is there to help them as the world shifts around them, and yet they have smug culture warriors telling them that they’re worse than Hiitler for not thinking of people they’ll never meet, half a world away.
Trump and Milhouse will not help them, but at least they will not tell them that they are not deserving. And that’s more than what they perceive Democrats, the Liberals, or the NDP doing for them.
Thank you very much for this summary. Sadly I do feel some sort of understanding to a lot of Trump voters that genuinely thought they were making a good decision, and I think your summary reflects why people would feel that way. I 100% disagree with them, but I can understand their frustration and do see a lot of that reflected in Canadian politics as well.
I’m curious about the comment on Singh. As long as I’ve been following/supporting the NDP, I’ve always felt like they were more working class and really haven’t seen a whole lot of identity politics in their expressions. With the exception of maybe racism stuff, but I feel like given Jagmeet’s own (obvious) identity, this would be a central issue to him as a leader and to them as a party. I have seen them express in interviews about concerns for the working class many times otherwise.
You’re absolutely correct in your conclusions. I’ve been trying to spread the same message and get my close friends to see this situation for what it is, and all I get for my efforts is called a libertarian (which I’m not), or be told I’m racist (I live in a blended family and friends group).
The leftist elitists in the USA love to scoff at the close-minded bigotry from the right, and pat themselves on the back about how open minded they are, while being completely closed off to anyone who tries to tell them how they’re alienating people, and causing strife with their identity politics.
Identity politics are poison. They seem purposefully engineered to sow division, instead of their stated goal of inclusion. I’ve tried to talk about this online a few times and gave up after being eviscerated by people parroting agenda points rather than actually engaging in a conversation.
The left, or the Democrats, or whatever you want to call them, have continually alienated huge portions of the population, portions required to win elections and actually change policies, with issues that affect miniscule portions of the population.
I want everyone to be treated equally. I want equality and inclusion. You don’t obtain that by telling 60% of the people in the country that their voices don’t matter, their opinions don’t matter, and their only job is to shut up and listen. Yes, it’s wise to listen more than you talk when someone who has experienced something you haven’t is sharing their experiences with you. But the overtly hostile fashion in which that message has been spread is offensive, and damaging, and alienating, and we saw the outcome of that last night.
I would warrant caution and nuance when considering the effect of IdPol on these things. It’s a term that’s been abused and bastardized to high heaven, and it’s a concept that the right has made ample, productive (for them) use of.
The politics of whiteness, the politics of masculinity, the politics of white masculinity, the politics of Christian conservatism, the politics of white nationalism, of Christian nationalism, of white-Christian nationalism, etc., are all IdPol. These are identity groups that the right has very successfully leaned on and groomed.
If you actually look at the Democrats, the Liberals, or even the NDP, what Identity Politics do they actually spout? What do they say that’s such a turn off, with respect to IdPol? It’s very little. Instead, what you actually see is them focusing on issues that matter to women, immigrants, and people of colour, but not to the exclusion of others.
But the right has used the fact that they speak of non-white, non-male, non-Christians at all and used it to reinforce the Identity Politics of the blue collar voter.
The aggrivated teenage sitting at the dinner table whining at you about how racist and imperialist the country is is not engaging in IdPol. They’re engaging in the process of coming to terms with the fact that the world is not how it has been portrayed to them. But the rural Canadian or American voting against their interest because the party that is going to fuck them or their community over the most has done the work to sure up their identity as white, rural, and working class.
Their politics and support follows their identity, not their interests or policy preferences.
That is Identity Politics. And you’re right, it’s toxic.
It’s just not what you were using the word to mean.
Great insights!
Yeah, I think a lot of the parallels in Canada is that the failure here is with the NDP, not the Liberals or Conservatives. Overall, those two parties haven’t changed, but at some point - post Layton - the NDP apparently decided to go down that same identity politics road, while similarly abandoning the general working class. Maybe they felt they just weren’t getting enough votes with the latter and there were enough who felt strongly about such social issues, but FFS they could have at least tried harder to support BOTH.
I’m honestly starting to wonder if the reason they’ve continued to support the Liberals is not so much a fear of z Conservative government, but rather if there’s some dirt the Liberals have on NDP leadership to keep them on a leash. Nothing else really explains why they’ve continued down this path of political suicide.
