What on Earth have I lied about?

Yet the memes, jokes and everything that gets through to the non politics junkies was about Elon’s salute.

Almost like it was a perfect distraction for people to get enraged by while ignoring the serious issues.

I’m waiting for JJ Abrams to wow us all with Babylon 6.

And that alarm was listened to by the same people who already believe he’s a nazi, convinces and mobilizes zero people and makes the majority of voters who voted for trump even less likely to listen to us when someone isn’t just making a stupid salute but actually doing dangerous shit that actually harms people.

I get that for spoiled mostly white kids online, life will pretty much go on and nothing that bad will happen. But to those of us who actually understand the potential harm, we also underground that how we react matters more than what feels good or is easy, like screaming nazi.

It’s not normalizing a damn thing to point out that the Dems and their policies are so impressively unpopular with a broad swathe of voting Americans that they looked at what we were offering, looked back at crazy trump rambling about Haitians eating pets and decided that that was preferable to another Democratic president.

Holding onto this fantasy of “oh the swathes of non voters will one day turn out for us!” is goddamn nonsense that has never come through and is just so much cheap hopium so we don’t do any of the difficult soul searching to figure out how to win elections. Far easier to pretend people secretly wanted the Dems or that everyone else is a secret nazi or whatever stupidity we’re onto.

If you are representing most Americans, then presumably you voted trump?

Musk is playing us apparently beautifully.

What literally made trump President is people didn’t believe the warnings on the Left, presumably because we screamed FASCIST for oh, the last 8 years and even the trump presidency we feared didn’t bring about a fascist revolution. But hey, now that there are hand waves it is clearly important to get outraged and be taken even less seriously! Otherwise trump might not dominate the mid terms I guess.

Fuck I wish my side wasn’t so goddamn easy to bait.

A few things.

I’m not going to correct their beliefs or point out cruelty/hypocrisy, may feel good but that’s not the point of the question. Especially now, it’s important to understand where folks are coming from.

Broadly speaking, people vote on emotion and how they view their circumstances. Most Americans, in real purchasing terms are less well off than they were during trump’s first presidency. They expect and hope a “businessman” in the office will mean more wealth for them as Americans, financially, did pretty well under trump 1.0

The big policy one is immigration. Wrongly or rightly, they associate stagnant wages with immigration and are also concerned about crime.

An end to federal action on climate change. Among conservatives, these actions are often seen as wage/job killers or at the very least increasing the costs of products or taking away things people like (say, giant gas guzzling trucks/SUVs. Fox occasionally also conspiracy stuff about forced veganism etc.)

Removal of DEI stuff. Any white conservative parent whose kid doesn’t get the job/school spot etc wonders if it was because minority applicants were given more consideration. (Even among Liberals you’ll hear strains of this. As an animator buddy put it to me while applying for grants “sure, I’ll apply but I’m a straight white male, what studio gives a fuck about my story?”)

For the cultural conservatives (think heavily religious) they expect/hope sex education will be limited, avoid talk of gender identities etc. Similar changes, somehow stopping trans female athletes playing in university women’s leagues or some such.

They also seem to expect the deficit to be reduced because “businessmen will run the government like a business, get rid of bloat and get the country not paying more on the interest on its debts than on the military.”

Finally, apparently world leaders respect trump so no more wars etc.

Again, I’m not correcting or advocating for these beliefs. These are just what I understand Conservatives to want/expect.

He won the popular vote.

We can quibble about “okay but that doesn’t include those who didn’t vote!” Which is a pretty dumb argument.

But I could rephrase “of the people who cared enough about politics to be relevant to this discussion, more than half the country…”

In the same way I didn’t say I was only counting living people, some things seem pretty obvious.

It’s not important, it just makes us look like we’re in hystrionics about Musk etc.

To most Americans, they’re not worried about a handful of idiots in swastikas. When we take this sort of bait it just makes real criticisms look like more Lefty whining.

Please can we not take the bait?

The goal of this is to get us flipping out while the Right and casual voters go “jesus, he just waved weirdly.”

Now more than ever we have to pick our fights well. More than half the country voted trump in part because they think The Left is overreacting, please don’t feed that narrative.

The delightful irony is that late last year, Chinese students started doing a big bicycle ride from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng for dumplings. Too many young folks together gets Chinese officials nervous so the authorities shut it down.

So, master of your own time if the party approves of how you spend said time.

Therapy might obviate the need for an escape and is likely free in your area! And you know folks would happily look up resources for you with nothing more than a region.

Whether you want to escape, well that’s up to you.

Oh you lucky duck.

I’m not you, I try.

What do you dislike about the concept of free mental health to help the things that clearly bother you?

Not just not open to feedback, but not open to the feedback that he himself solicited!

Except most people aren’t buying second hand, so you’re complaining about a non-existent problem.

Edit: As an amazing proof of concept, I’m in a dive bar, saw a pair of gloves in a wicker basket of lost and found and asked about them. The bartender gave them to me, notinf they’d been here for more than a year. These are easily several hundred dollar gloves.

But if things really got to the point where many people were willing to buy second hand, there are in fact ethical brands as well for those who need new. Myself, I buy few things but as much as I can ethical either 2nd hand or from happy factories. (Though, goddamn I cannot find ethical boxers for a semi reasonable price. If you got tips…)

How is offering to help you find a licensed mental health professional for free trying to piss you off?

And, more importantly, you keep asking “how do you do X, Y Z?” And people keep taking time to help you out!

Oh, neat! I didn’t realize that much like clothes there are ethical internet alternatives. Which do you use?

I don’t think “yeah sure, that’d be great but if we all started doing good things it wouldn’t work!” is a particularly valid critique. We are nowhere near the point of too many people buying second hand clothes.

Yes, cheap stores are common.

But the most valuable brands in America are not at the cheap level, they are things like Nike, Levi’s and The Gap. Hell, even in progressive bastions so many people are rocking Arcteryx, REI etc, none of which are cheap.

Again, go to any downtown, look at the outfits and consider how much they cost. Just the same as people wearing hundreds of dollars in jewelry (yes, there’s costume jewelry but that’s not what most folks are wearing downtown.)

I mean, I guess misery at least is easy?

It just seems so wild. This person seems so unhappy but has zero desire to do anything, even when we try to find them free fucking therapy! “Oh no, I might talk to someone who could maybe help me!”