This isn't even one of the worst incidents, that one time when he tried to blackmail foreign countries into giving him dirt on his political rival.
Or that other time when he attempted to overthrow American democracy.
Im honestly not sure what the hell is going on over there in America, are you guys just accepting now that Republicans will be the death of your country?
Why aren't you throwing this traitor in jail? Do Americans just not care about being a republic anymore?
We were constantly flabbergasted and amazed that his supporters would allow him to say the stupid crap he did without thinking twice about it. It became impossible to convince his supporters that he was an idiot, because you can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.
We kept saying, "Surely this idiotic event will open peoples' eyes" and so rarely was that the case that we felt lost in how to fix the problem. Even now it feels bad. How do you fight these insane conspiracy theories? How do you deal with insane leaders like MTG or DeSantis who spread hate and ignorance? It's like a fever dream.
you can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.
Not true. You just have to get them to say exactly the wrong thing and then hit them with exactly the right counterargument. case in point: https://i.imgur.com/V8M1Y2t.png
That only works if the person has still a rational part of their brain kicking around but some of these people lack that and/or are too invested in their edgy persona to admit defeat.
Case in point. My brother used to be a normal dude but since he got married, his wife’s family have transformed him into a MAGA-fied, anti-vax/anti-science, q conspiracy douchebag and nothing I say, or any evidence I show him, will change his mind because he LIKES being this person because he fits in with a group.
He was spouting that HIPAA nonsense a few weeks back and I begged him to take a few minutes to actually read about it but he refused because someone he respects told him something different and he wants that to be true so he doesn’t want facts (almost a verbatim quote actually) because then he couldn’t be right and that might mean the rest of his beliefs were wrong and then he doesn’t have an identity anymore.
then use this question liberally: "What makes you say that?" I've used it on trolls who said things for no other reason than to try to make me mad, I've used in on flat earthers who pulled stuff out of their ass, and I once used it on a transtrender who claimed that chromosomes don't exist.
By doing this, I forced each of them to actually ask themselves why they believe the things they do, and upon realizing that they didn't have an answer for my question, they left the conversation, presumably to go self-reflect.
r/thathappened this didn’t happen. I know bc you can’t reason with these people, they’ll just spin it again to fit their narrative. And it sounds lame anyway tbh
Also, the fact that you’re bragging about something like this enough to screen shot it, post it up and link to it is a bit weird.
I wasn't the guy who did that. I saw that on a "people of reddit" video asking actual former flat-earthers what finally got through to them. One of the comments that actually was from a former flat-earther was someone saying "Someone asked me 'why would NASA lie to you?'"
Also, I know of at least two prominent flat-earth youtubers who seem to have left the flat earth scene for good. One was a guy who livestreamed himself trying to make international flight schedules and pathways work on a flat disc and found in the process that it couldn't be done, another was this one-trick-pony who was under the impression that colliding cars would behave differently on a motionless Earth compared to a moving one, and went back and forth with GreaterSapien until he finally understood the math behind Newton's third law.
Most of us are very aware and equally horrified, but 30-45% of the country (constituting a significant majority of our conservative party) are brainwashed and believe he is some sort of mesiah and 90% of his political party either drank the kool-aid or are too afraid of losing a primary to speak against him. Also because of the last 30-80 years of shady political manuevering that same party which represents a minority of our population but a majority of the landmass holds a disproportionately large amount of power in our government.
Also because of the last 30-80 years of shady political manuevering that same party which represents a minority of our population but a majority of the landmass holds a disproportionately large amount of power in our government.
To be fair, it's a lot more than 80 years of political maneuvering. There were nearly empty "southern" states created explicitly to maintain the balance of power of the slaveholding states in the Senate. The power of the minority to control the majority has been baked in since nearly the start.
Im just scared that Bidens DOJs apathy towards jan 6th and lack of moves to curtail treason from Republicans will be the downfall of the US as a whole. Please dont leave us to China, you're our only hope.
When your body is 30-45% cancer you have no hope of recovery. That's sort of how I see the u.s. We're too broken to fix at this point. The best we can hope for is an amicable split and something like the eu after it's all over.
Not necessarily. It’s a tiny fraction of the country that actually thinks he’s the next coming. just like it’s a tiny fraction of the country that believes in far far left ideologies that the right is whining about. They’re both extremely loud, tiny groups, that the mainstream media amplifies.
Also, coming from someone around a lot of trump supporters- they’re angry. Trump was a symptom of these stupid fucking culture wars that each side (and the media) decided to ramp up years ago. Honestly I don’t blame them for being angry, everyone’s angry, left, right, center- doesn’t matter. The media is more at blame for this than nearly anyone. Now that’s not to say each political side has done nothing wrong, they both have, but when you’re at war you can’t back down and let the other side win….
Another thing for anyone interested- look up the latest poll news for the 2020 election. Polls skewed waaaay in favor of Biden, by around 4 points actually, which I thought was quite interesting.
"There was serious gerrymandering in only one Democratic state: Illinois, for a total advantage of 1.7 seats. But there was serious gerrymandering in six Republican states, for a total advantage of 13.2 seats."
"The sum of Democratic and Republican gerrymandering is a net Republican advantage of 11.5 seats."
This post could literally be a republican talking about democrats. As someone who doesn’t care for either party, it’s crazy how similar you both sound. When the hot take on your opponent is just that they are brainwashed, there’s no hope for finding common ground.
When one party is doing their damndest to usurp democracy at every turn, there's no hope to find common ground with them. Your "both sides" false equivalence is utter horseshit.
There’s not a Democratic Party version of the My Pillow Guy. There’s “both sides” and then there’s 80 feet of crap. And then there is the majority of actual republicans.
The actual solution to these problems is understanding politics and being civil. But most members of Reddit don’t actually understand politics and they have no desire to be civil.
I always get blasted on here for pointing this out. People don’t understand how I can be a Democrat if I’m not completely partisan like them. I like reasonable people.
What’s crazy is that 90% of us see the same problems, we just disagree on solutions. That’s actually a good place to be in and should produce positive change. The 10% who don’t see the same problems are either psychopaths or the people in power…and that sucks…
The thing is, there are tens of millions of people who are just as backwards and crazy as the publicly known politicians. They’re right in my backyard. It’s honestly scary.
C) You guys only have 2 parties.
So everything is us VS them. There's no option to vote for a different party the next election when you're unhappy with the results of your government, unless you switch up completely. Things wouldn't be so black and white and divided in 2 camps if you guys had some more options.
'Preferable' doesn't mean good. Both are kinda crap and rather corrupt, one just more than the other. In the current situation the agenda is determined by lobbying, not by voters.
That aside, more parties are better for a few reasons:
You can choose between more than two options, which is better for democracy (thought you guys were kinda big on that one). Right now, you've got the 'freedom' to choose between typhoid and cholera, as they say in the Netherlands.
It prevents the emergence of a dictator better than a two-party system. No single party will (theoretically) be big enough to encourage the emergence of a dictator. Trump almost succeeded, and he's getting away with it as we speak.
It allows for more shades of opinion. You'll have more than the two extremes that are currently being put forward in order for each party to appease their (most extreme) voter base. When options are less extreme, there's a larger middle ground and thus more room for compromise.
A direct consequence of said division of opinions over multiple parties is that it cools down the debate. Extreme opinions cause extreme reactions. Instead of two gorillas trying to outscream each other with the most far-out opinion you'll have two bonobo's screaming these and the rest of the bonobos debating more or less civilized over the alternatives.
You’re falling back on a discredited notion (about this being backlash from Obama)
The truth is that when an actual black guy was up for election he won easily. And when the next election came he easily won again. So there was no substantial opposition or backlash against Obama- he was a popular candidate when he was on the ballot.
It wasn’t until he completed his term and Hillary (a white woman) ran did things go wrong. She was historically unpopular in her own right- the 2nd most disliked presidential candidate of all time.
Trump should have been easy to beat considering that he was the most disliked candidate in history. There was no way Democrats could have lost to him if they didn’t decide to run the 2nd most disliked candidate in history. Why even make it close? It was idiotic running her. She captured hardly any demographics. She, a white woman, couldn’t even manage to win the white woman demographic after it came out that Trump sexually assaults white women. Admit it- she was just not a strong candidate.
Obama would have absolutely crushed Trump in an election. He was likable, he spoke well on stage, and he had stage presence.
Really the only person even capable of losing to Trump was Hillary.
The 2022 elections will be very telling. I anticipate dems winning seats overall (but not by as wide a margin as we all would hope) and from there what the dems do with that majority determines the future of the US.
If they blow it then I could seriously see the US beginning a collapse as reps and GQP slide even further toward being unabashed traitors.
The GOP will win more seats in the mid terms. There is no Boogeyman Trump to make the democrats turn out to vote. This will result in another two years of gridlock. More importantly, voting districts for the next decade are being drawn up by local state legislators. Can you guess which party controls most of them? Republicans. Gerrymandering will ensue, which will guarantee Republican dominance in the house for the next 6-8 years. That's why people need to turn up for every election locally. If they did, there would be no republican majority. They don't, and this is why we deserve the fate we get.
You brought up how most voting districts are controlled by Republicans. Do you know why this is? It’s because most of the country area-wise is Republican. It’s really as simple as that.
Highly populated areas tend to be Democrat, but they’re much smaller in area.
You’re either arguing dishonestly here, or you don’t even know how our election system works.
You were talking about voting districts, and I explained to you that Democrats obviously weren’t going to win a heavily Republican voting district due to democracy.
But now you’re bringing up completely unrelated concepts, such as how Democrats outnumber Republicans in the overall USA. This is true, but those voters aren’t in that particular voting district, so they’re completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Can you not see the basic mistake that you’re making?
What I'm saying is republicans are blocking democracy by gerrymandering so heavily. Democrats are the majority. 5 of the last 6 presidential elections have proven that. It's the flaw in the electoral college and voting districts that allows the minority to be so overly represented in this democracy. Albeit an intentional flaw.
That’s actually a different concept. Gerrymandering doesn’t directly affect presidential elections.
In a general presidential election the votes are tallied at the state level and awarded based on who wins the state. State lines aren’t being redrawn, so you can’t really gerrymander that.
Gerrymandering primarily affects things at the local level, such as state and federal representatives.
Which brings me back to the original point that republicans are gerrymandering heavily to keep control of the house. Those gerrymandered districts are your house of representatives.
Is this an infinity loop conversation?
The one that gets me to say "I can't believe he fucking did that" was the sharpie on the hurricane map. It was harmless, he clearly got caught, and he tried to lie his way out of it worse than a 4 year old.
Or that time when he attempted to overthrow American democracy
Wait, which time are we talking about? The time he colluded with Russians to rig an election, or the time he did a little mob action to prevent opposing votes, the time he rigged the justice department with a bunch of mobsters, or the time he incited a violent, attempted coup? Or one of the other times?
And the time he tried to mob boss strongarm the Georgia secretary of state into "finding" votes for him.
Remember, he'd be in a lot more trouble if the Republican party had enough of a spine to condemn their own for openly, egregiously deplorable behavior. But the Republican party has evolved to exist without spines.
It's treason and deserves more than just a slap on the wrist. But republicans are pussies and complicit, they are all treasonous scum. And I'd happily see all of them on death row to be honest, they have shown hatred and contempt for democracy; so democracy needs to stamp them out of existence.
Throwing Trump in jail would accelerate the conflict with his crazy supporters. Trump isn’t the first populist in the US and the hope is that the old lardass will have a massive heart attack or stroke soon anyway, so it just doesn’t make sense to basically initiate a hot war with his supporters at this point.
Well you better stop prosecuting all crimes then, otherwise some criminals might get upset.
It's this kind of thinking that lead to the downfall of Germany to the Nazis. Just bending over backwards not to offend his brainwashed delusional traitors that are already radicalised the point of being a literal death cult.
"But we cant upset them otherwise the death cult might attempt to overthrow democracy again!"
It's fucking infuriating, my friend, to live here and have basically no way to stop the rising tide of fascism/jingoism/populism/anti-intellectualism/whatever it is.
Democrats aren't flawless angels, but at least they generally try to help the average person.
Republicans no longer work in good faith and are doing every single dirty trick in the book to try to win, and then try to change the rules (gerrymandering, voting rights restrictions) to basically install themselves as eternal rulers.
If DeathSantis (or trump again) manages to win in 2024, the rest of the western world might need to invade and rescue us.
Unless you're rich or famous there is only so much you can do. I vote in every election and frankly that's about as far as I'll go to stop America from sliding further into this madness. I'd rather just move to another country where someone like Trump would not gain power in the first place.
You don’t understand the American blue collar culture at all. They don’t want to take over, they want to watch everything burn. Decades of politics ineptness, empty promises, and corruption have left them deeply bitter.
All social media ever does is incourage this. For everyone, everywhere, from any age. Quit an 'extreme' opinion you've got there, mate. What's the weather like upthere, on that high horse?
I just find it funny how we’re talking about trump being a dumbass during this bleach thing and you act like we all forgot about January 6th. We didn’t, and it’s all anyone ha talked about since then. Relax.
It's a combination of low information voters and a currently very skewed senate seat selection which leaves the current Republican party with enough power than they can stop any serious reprecussions for any members of their own. Their voters watch Fox News and don't actually know what's happening (a lot of people who still think BLM caused cities to burn down, etc, or think the vaccine isn't effective and COVID isn't a real threat to anyone), so they vote against their economic interests because GOP propoganda has convinced them to become a single voter issue on NO GUN CONTROL EVER or ABORTION IS MURDER. The capital party really does have a good propoganda engine, and shit's fucked yo. The kinda labor kinda capital party isn't cohesive, so even when they get a slight majority they can't do shit with it.
We've been trying to figure out a way to jail a former sitting fake prez of the u.s.
This (drumpf) has never "happened" to us before. There is no precedent.
Why aren't you throwing this traitor in jail? Do Americans just not care about being a republic anymore?
Trump is a piece of shit, so let’s set expectations there.
That said, it doesn’t matter what country you’re from, I know that right now YOU can’t just walk in to your government and decide who the new leader should be, so maybe back of people in other countries in the same boat.
Here is the reality: life is fucking complicated, it’s never going to be fair, and justice isn’t an invisible hand more powerful than people. Shit takes time, effort, and resources. There are competing interests with deep pockets and their hands on the levers of power. And millions of people all think they are the ones that should be able to walk in the room and change out the guy at top. Just like your country, no matter where it is.
Because he needs to be convicted of a crime before he can be thrown in jail. But he’s got so many investigations up his ass and will be/is so far in debt it’ll come crashing down soon.
The whole TV show jumped the shark when he held a press conference with Putin and some reporter asked Trump if he agreed with US intelligence summary that Russia maliciously interfered with the election. Trump went on to say that he believed his friend, Putin, over the entire US intelligence and defense apparatus because ole' Vladimir promised he would never do something like that. Everything after that became to surreal to believe.
Or the one time when the orange turd, while campaigning, gets caught doing "locker room talk" with himself while a reporter just sits there, uncomfortably and awkwardly laughing at trumps degeneracy and the end result is the reporter gets fired.
This will never sink in properly to me, that reporter... who i can't even name without looking it up, that works for some.... media.... station? Tv? Radio? Cant name that either. Was held to a higher standard.... than a presidential candidate.........................
...the fuck?
Till this day i don't understand why the clown parade didn't end right there.
We don't really have much of a choice on an individual level, those of us who don't actively support him like he's the next coming of christ. I don't really have the capacity to explain to you how deeply rooted this kind of... really strange religious ties to the republican party go for our evangelicals and christians, generally, but it's significant. They think of the republican party as god's party and don't quite think for themselves, so anything the party does they support, regardless. And living in a red state, my vote doesn't really count farther than the local level
1) There's action being taken against Trump and his cronies/enablers, it just takes awhile over here.
2) There's also old stick in the mud politicians that still want to "work" and "reconcile" with the Republicans as well, who are roadblocks as far as removing political mechanisms that prevent true change (like the filibuster).
3) There's two major parties in the USA, but in reality the Democratic Party is really like 4 parties lumped into one, and if the Republicans didn't exist the Dems would likely just split. The Repubs fall in line, at least, but getting Dems to work together on anything is like herding cats. This compounds the previous issue.
My friend, you do not even know the half of it. The worst is yet to come. Due to the last census, Republicans control redistricting in several states, and as a result, in addition to voter suppression laws passed in those states, the odds are that that they will handily win the midterms and kevin fucking mccarthy will become the next Speaker of the House.
Unless the “moderate” Democrats like chickenshit joe manchin and mouthbreather kyrsten sinema stand for the rights of their fellow citizens to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass the extremely popular “For the People Act” to eliminate unfair voter restriction state laws and partisan congressional redistricting, expect Biden to become a lame duck in the final two years of his first term.
The republican party is in its death throws, literally. They lost the last election, badly (despite the fake election claims), all that despite extreme fervor from the right. Now add the the fact that unmasked and unvaccinated which are predominantly Republican are literally being killed off en masse at a much higher rate from corona virus. Half of Republicans see they need a major brand shift but half of them are still stuck to Trump like a barnacle. Im not too worried. Dumb people tend to be their own end.
Why aren't you throwing this traitor in jail? Do Americans just not care about being a republic anymore?
Apparently the US system of government completely fails if even a minority of the party representing a minority of the nation is in cahoots with the president and his crimes.
The problem in America is the electoral college and gerrymandering tend to skew the elections towards republican. So despite being a significant minority, they still hold a significant amount of seats.
It’s become a religion driven by the sermons and preachings of 3 mega media houses all aligned to promote fear, lie and divide the country for its monetary gain. The leader is worshipped like a god and his base is the cult. This simply isn’t a problem that will go away with an arrest.
Of course we care man. It's insane what our neighbors have been brainwashed into believing. I can't speak for everyone, but personally I'm exhausted. There is no avenue for reasoning with these people. They do not respond to logical argument. They live in an alternate reality. It doesn't help that the democratic party is practically vestigial and exists to support corporate profits before the wellbeing of the American people. I'm at a loss for how to proceed truthfully.
Bro, sharpiegate was underrated. Guy just thought he could extend the graphic a little with a black sharpie in front of the whole world. I mean the stupidity to think it would work and the balls to try it.
American media has a massive impact on Western media as a whole. We've got our own shitstorm brewing in Europe and should probably stop trying to pretend it doesn't exist because the US is worse.
This shit looks like comedy but it's superficial. Like some washed up showman who only shows up and dances for the crowd because they're so easily amused and pay well.
In one of his debates with Biden, he claimed he was joking when he said this. The dude was obviously not fucking joking. It's like a 4th grader who realizes he said something fucking moronic and then says "uh.. uh.. I was ugh.. I was joking guys! Jeez! You are so stupid to not know I was joking!...."
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u/peroxidase2 15d ago
If it was a TV show it would had been funny. The problem is, it was real shit.