It’s what happens when the US spends nearly a trillion a year on defence and only $120 billion on education (federally). Imagine what even 10% shift in funding would do? That’s $100 billion more dollars into education.
What fucking labour? The states have consistently farmed away those jobs to cheaper countries. The reason why America was so good in the mid 50s to late 90s was precisely because of factories. It allowed everyone to own a vehicle, home, and fund education. America's primary export is now consulting.
Yes, per Friedman, a company’s only social responsibility is to maximize profits for the company and maximize returns to shareholders. It’s obviously important to make a profit and to reward shareholders but who got the short end of the stick? Employees. Also because so many businesses only care about making money, they’re less interested in investing in their communities, a stark contrast from the 1950s-1970s. Before the Friedman Doctrine, a business took pride in donating to charities and looking to see what it could do to advance the health and well being of the community. The crash of 2008, unfortunately, did nothing to force companies to reassess their long-term goals other than making a profit.
What fucking labour? The states have consistently farmed away those jobs to cheaper countries.
EXACTLY!
The labour's jobs were exported; pay for those jobs has dropped (or not increased) in decades; and the workers of those jobs vote for the Conservatives because Billionaires need another permanent tax cut and Unions are evil.
Do you now see the link between defunding schools and labour costs?
The problem is that the bulk of the folks supporting Fat Basted - boomers and close - are the ones who had schooling when it was fully funded and at the end of legally mandated racial segregation and right before the - as they call it - women’s lib movements.
They’ve been biting their tongues since the 1960s and Trump finally gave them license to stop doing that.
They’re stupid, but they’re simultaneously not - they know how to weasel word well enough to get folks not from their era to buy into Jim Crow- and Patriarchy-Lite and make it seem like every person who isn’t a white male conservative is the one out of touch.
As with everything in America, it always comes down to race and gender, and MAGA is saying “bring back the days when we had no equal, our wives were submissive, and all these coloreds knew their place”.
And that appeals to a lot more white Americans than expected.
It’s a culture shift. Example: Baltimore school system has like $12,000-$15,000 per student. One of the most funded school systems in the country. Yet, they have like 40-60% fail rates due to multiple of reasons.
Mostly, community such as students not even being in class and parents are mad at teachers over it.
It’s hard to educate the masses if you have people not even in class.
They don't care about him. He just opened a door that allows them to be the shittiest version of who they really are. And so, they will vote for this piece of shit, simply bcuz it gives them free reign to be absolutely despicable. That's all they're really after
Im a complete fucking idiot, and even I would vote for Harris/Walz over the weirdos on the other side. Like you’d have to be one of the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet to do otherwise.
If you’re less intelligent than me you should be terrified. But that’s the whole point with Republicans, being scared and angry at everything under the fucking sun.
I beg to differ. I've seen the sentences people on Facebook write and you seem like a Rhodes scholar with your proper punctuation and grammar, in comparison.
Exactly my point. I didnt go to college but i know how to read good and fact check. Taught myself how to build my PC and all that jazz.
Given ive always trusted science over faith and other bullshit but still. Im a barely educated waste of space and i can clearly see rural republicans are voting against their own interests.
Its sheer insanity at this point. Truly terrifying. Im deep in red territory and people straight up claiming the covid vaccine was designed by aliens in coordination with the chinese government. Brothers im scared.
The saddest part is it would be easier if they were just stupid. I work with very intelligent, educated professionals that actively call themselves Trumpers because they watch “the real news” and have the inside track. This willful ignorance of truth under the guise of protecting their pocketbooks will be the downfall of the common good.
I have a friend that I went to school with since grade school. Best friends, except he was raised racist and I wasn't. If you want someone else to blame for your life, you are more likely to be a Trumper. I think it's as simple as that.
It's a bit too highbrow to be a lazy Sunday read but still accessible: William Bernstein's "The Delusions of Crowds - Why People Go Mad In Groups"
Studies suggest people respond more to narrative than to facts and data, and the more compelling the story, the more it erodes our critical thinking skills.
Darwin's cousin Francis Galton went to a large fair in Plymouth in 1906. The goal was to pick the weight of an ox. The median guess (all individual silent guesses) was 1,207 lbs. The actual weight was 1,198 pounds. So as a group, acting as individuals, the accuracy was astonishing. Ditto, say, guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar.
As soon as the votes were susceptible to the voice of the crowd (think The Price is Right), the accuracy dropped by up to 50%.
You also have to figure the galvanization going on, Trump isn't a new voice and many people would have to question many held truths if they accept his incompetence now. I still have friends who refuse to believe the election was fair.
I once retold that joke and some guy jumped in and said “it’s worse man. There’s an entire class of stupid people who you never ever deal with. They don’t hold jobs that require them to interact with normal people, they might as well live in the wilderness and be feral.” I thought he was just a jaded asshole, but he was right.
I teach high school and so I get to see everybody and I was shocked when I first started. Before that I only hung out with the college crowd. I can't believe some of these kids find their way to school each day.
As a non-American watching all this unfold, and from personal experience, the less intelligent people are, the more intelligent they think they are, and the less open they are to being shown otherwise. In their mind, they are smarter than any qualified person could ever be.
A political campaign is all about saying what they think their voters want to hear. In this case, Trump is appealing to a particular type of voter, and in doing so, it's giving them all a unified echo chamber. The complete nonsense being spouted by this man makes them all feel smarter than everyone else, like they have inside info that the rest of us don't, so they will eat it up.
I'm an undecided voter. Puppies sound good on paper, but are they really feasible? I'd much rather take my chances with diarrhea forever. At least I would know what to expect. Oh, yeah that's right, I voted for diarrhea forever the last two elections. What, that doesn't make me an undecided voter?? Don't you tell me what I can or can't identify as, commie!
I'm a cat person so offering me a puppy is really problematic and unmindful and crossing my boundaries, so I'll vote for diarrhea forever to teach you a lesson!!!
you have to understand, there's a side that doesn't want other people they don't like to have puppies, and want them to have diarrhea forever. and they're willing to suffer, as long as they make others suffer too.
Propaganda is a real thing that really works and really exists.
Everything you don't understand about Republican voters can be explained by a long history of propaganda. It's the reason they love socialist policies up until the moment they hear the word socialism.
From what I’ve seen it’s because people auto-propagandize themselves by watching Fox and literally nothing else. It’s amazing how often you see screencaps on here of some breaking news headline covering the same topic between all these other outlets… Then Fox is like “Is water turning you gay?”
Yes he is. The far rights are taking over the world (if we don’t stop it). Germany just fell to them. The US is in serious contention and we’re (Canada) not far behind. The f*ck Trudeau crowd is massive and everyone seems to be turning toward PP. Why the Liberals haven’t tried to find a new leader is beyond me. Trudeau is covered in tons of accusations and whether they’re true or not he needs to go. He’s bringing his party down.
Germany just fell to them is a bit far, especially considering that there are still huge amounts of people here fighting against it. Yea they got 30% in two state elections which is genuinely sickening and worrying, especially when you live in one of them but they aren't as strong on a national platform
but it is not a good look on us that our governing parties - who should really take a strong stance against the far right - are starting to apply their ideas... so while the Far right maybe not has a governing platform unfortunatly they have the upper hand on setting the discourse right now...
Honestly most of them are old. Im going to list a few more common ones that come to mind with no extra research, and am not defending any of them just listing them. One was about a fed contract that went to a group he had connections to, another from his first run/election was a really old photo of him in costume that included black face makeup, most of the more recent ones that gain enough traction for me to notice are things like "He took a vacation" or things he doesnt really determine personally, like total food cost for an entire delegation on a trip overseas, or the cost of hotels at the queens funeral. There are plenty of others, with varying degrees of legitimacy, just because he has been the Pm for nearly a decade but these are what immediately come to mind when someone says "trudeau scandal"
Canada is falling for Russian Propaganda much like most of the democratic world ..Russia has found that people are not that smart so the best way to attack them is prey on the weak minded with online misinformation, divide them and watch them implode in anger and disdain for each other.
A lot of it yes. Unfortunately Trudeau has done enough sketchy shit that is a valid concern it just lends weight in Canadians minds to all the Cons BS claims, however ridiculous
Trudeau’s problem is that, like all Canadian Prime Ministers, they have a shelf life. The populace gets tired of them but they try to hang on too long. Then the opposite party wins an election and the cycle starts again.
My only problems with Trudeau is him immediately backpedaling on electoral reform, seemingly not doing anything about the housing crisis, and just not really doing anything about how bad ISPs are up here in Canada.
Honestly I’m following the US BS more right now because I feel it’s actually a bigger threat than our own politics but there’s a ton of them. Money laundering or something, using charities and others.
This reply exemplifies the problem with Canadian politics. "I'm not actually informed but I'm totally convinced that there's an issue. I've picked up a few keywords from Canadian media, of which (apart from the CBC) 90% are majority-owned by American conservative organizations. I'll smugly laugh at Americans who watch Fox News, while uncritically accepting as fact anything from the myriad publications I don't even realize are controlled by the same interests."
A lot of the “F**k Trudeau” crowd (there are stickers and flags everywhere) don’t like him because “he’s a liar” or “he ruined this country” or “durr durr durr” with no actual reasons on policy. Many will blame him for inflation and our housing shortage, some of which could be put on him, but a lot of it, in my opinion is that he’s a pretty classic politician - smooth and smarmy - and they don’t like people like that. It’s not all that different from why many Americans gravitated towards Trump, I.e “he’s not a politician and says what’s on his mind!”
You make it sound like the Reichstag was on fire again and it's 1933 all over. Don't worry, it's only 1931 yet.
We'll see if our conservative party will abandon their principles, or whatever is left of them, anyway, to form a coalition with the far-right extremists next election. Some eastern states were already in a dysmal state years ago, the general election will be the real test.
This is supposed to be reassuring? By the time it was 1933 it was too late. Are you just going to wait and see if it happens again, and if it does, go "Yep! It happened again!"? What's your big plan then?
His biggest fuckup was not making electoral reform happen and moving us past this stupid first past the post system.
Because now, as inevitably happens with any leader, he's alienated himself and his party from a ton of voters. And those of us on the left side of the political spectrum who've been plugging our noses and voting for liberal candidates ONLY because they have a better shot of beating the conservative in our ridings, have finally had enough of doing that.
Hopefully if the conservatives win, it's with a minority. This will force them to work with the other parties and better represent the majority of Canadians. The NDP were able to get a decent amount of their promises (such as dental care) passed because of the minority government this time around with the liberals.
They specifically want to defund the CBC because, as the public broadcaster, it can't be bought and then corrupted by rightwing interests like how most of our other media has been.
We get this all the time in the UK, constant calls to refund the BBC. Luckily, they never act as despite right wing hate of the BBC, it remains hugely popular, and would be politically bad to get rid of.
Same in germany with ard/zdf. It is an extremly popular right wing talking point almost everywhere to defund whatever media which tries to report factual news. (I am saying tries because 100% objective reporting isnt really possible and mistakes absolutly do happen)
That was fucking wild. I swear, rarely are any of those folks held accountable for the bullshit they spew.
Like, how is that man not relentlessly mocked for that claim? Seriously, from that moment on, anytime he starts to speak on anything, someone else should have been saying, "Oh, shut up, Mr. Trans-by-vote. The fuck do you know?"
This is starting to make sense about schools giving trans surgeries. The schools are giving tools to young men to vote for the better candidate which can be a female.
I used to work with two guys that watched Fox, Newsmax, Tucker Carlson all day at work. They would rant and rave over every blatantly fabricated story. It was hilarious pointing out how some stories were telling a completely different story depending on the time you watched. Jan 6 was a terrorist attack by Antifa but also they were patriots just touring the capitol peacefully
Years ago someone did a favor for me and I asked if/how I could repay them. They asked me to watch Tucker Carlson. So I actually did go find the previous nights episode and listen to the audio (Fox News used to put them up on their website like that). In the opening of the episode he went into some SERIOUS allegations about something Hunter Biden allegedly did. I thought to myself, "huh, if that's true that's a major bombshell". Bear in mind this is the previous night's episode so I go online to research what he's saying.
In summary, the first news source I found basically said the accusation was bullshit. Complete bullshit, no truth to it whatsoever. Now you might be thinking, what was the source I found? NYT? Huff Post? No... it was FoxNews.com
Right but it was less than 5 minutes into his show and he was already making an absolutely BS accusation. An accusation that could easily be debunked BY HIS OWN EMPLOYER.
This was back during Trumps first term and when I realized that I should start cutting conservatives out of my personal life.
Guy who used to work for me would always have some new kind of crazy right wing fear-mongering shit. I didn't ignore it, necessarily, but i didn't hold it against him or anything either. Overall a good worker, got along with the other guys, etc.
But he'd say shit like "George Soros is paying the protesters at the DNC who are pro Palestine."
"What? Why? Two seconds ago you just said he was supporting Kamala Harris. How does it help his candidate to pay protesters outside her convention?"
"Well i don't know"
My FAVORITE thing was when he and the other guys spent the afternoon collectively bitching about:
Grocery stores ripping us off
Corporate investors collectively buying up homes so they could drive up rent and mortgages
Literally later that day Kamala Harris made her announcement about anti-gouging laws and pushing a foundering law through Congress about limiting corporate home ownership and his response is: "yeah, well, she's not gonna get it passed so it's just bullshit."
"Dude, part of her platform is literally what you described, but you're going to vote against her (if he even ever votes) because she won't be able to pass it? Instead you're going to spout nonsense about her and Democrats, when they want to actually do what you think politicians should do?"
And to think, the FCC used to require news to report both sides fairly as a term of leasing the airways. How far we have fallen. Hooray First Amendment.
There was a survey done a while ago and it found that people who don't watch the news are more informed about current affairs than people who watch fox news. Truly bonkers.
Also don’t underestimate the amount of sexism and misogyny. There are a depressing amount of clips of even women saying a woman can’t be president. Plus good old fashioned racism. I mean we elected Obama twice and it broke their brains. It’s how we ended up with the “tea party” and Ted baby eater Cruz in the senate. I’m sure they all just wanted to wear their klansman robes but the Koch brothers thought it’d be too on the nose.
They are beyond Fox now. Social media misinformation. Epoch Times. Newsmax. Right Side Broadcast Network. Truth Social. QAnon. AM Talk Radio (if you ever want to know what Trump is going to complain about TOMORROW, listen to what they say on talk radio today).
I think its ridiculous too how high the bar is set for kalmala that this is a close race and how low it is for trump. One wrong move and they would tear her up. She has to work 4x as hard where he is just like i better economy and people think he may be right there.
It's worse than that though. He'll say something objectively false and rather and be called out on it and his supporters rather than accepting he may have taken an L, will start bending reality to fit whatever he says is happening.
So are his followers. My dad posted that video of the woman getting arrested for eating the cat on his FB. I commented that she's a natural born American, raised in Ohio, actually in Canton not Springfield, and she's not Haitian.
He blocked me and left the video up. This is what we're dealing with.
same discussion with my uncle. provided factual information and it was just the common MSM is lying. then went on a rant about how illegal immigrants are all criminals but he literally is a convicted felon that sat in prison.
A large part of Trump’s support hinges on the notion that he is better for the economy. I am no economic expert, but I have little reason to believe Trump is responsible for bettering the economy. He is a man who does not even listen to his own experts that climate change is real and caused by humans. He lacks intelligence and sense
Kamala came out in the debate saying Goldman Sachs and a dozen Nobel prize winning economists reviewed her plan for the economy and it's better, but no one cares. The lack of respect for experts is unbelievable to me. I guess it comes from a culture that devalues them
debate mod: "mr. trump, americans think its bidens fault that private businesses are raking in record profits by raising prices, what yould you do to help combat high prices"
trump: "uhhh i shit my self"
debate mod: "thank you mr. trump"
debate mod: "mrs. vice president, the american people think it is 100% your fault that trump shit himself, what specific policy would you support to make sure that nobody publicly acknowledges that trump shits himself"
How does anyone think a guy who reckons applying 20% tariffs to consumer goods will not put prices up. Business are just like oh I guess my profit margins are 20% smaller now???
I mean, you're 100% right, but that's how hard it is for women of color to do anything. We're all getting to see what it's like for a lot of people in our country all the time. I'd always heard about it, but seeing it play out now has been very eye-opening.
Yeah, but Kamala Harris also immediately had more support than her white male predecessor, who was down in the polls, as soon as she was announced as the candidate, before even doing anything. Even in 2020 when Biden was coherent, it's not like he even had a huge lead. Unfortunately 40% of America is just going to support Trump no matter who he is running against. Honestly I think after the old white man vs old white man situation, Democrats are actually stoked to have a woman of color on the ticket and it helps with the momentum
Worse than that she has to win by four points because slavery and gerrymandering . Imagine the riots in the streets if every Super Bowl champion scored 6 points less than the other team. Fk this shit
No, you're not crazy....but they want to convince you that you're crazy for not wanting things to suck ass. Makes it easier to just accept the status quo (or make it even shittier)
"I feel validated". Kamala just took him to task for everything I've been thinking and worrying about. It was just damned good to see him get called out like that.
If you read up on history, you’ll see even more parallels to Mussolini’s Italy in the 1920s and ‘30s. But the idea (and propaganda) are very much the same (think “Jews kills your children” and “Illegal immigrants get gender surgery and eat your pets”).
He's trying to go Nazi-lite and it's really not working because his goons are not bitter and resentful off the back of WW1 and war reparations. We're not as hesitant towards conflict in the same ways Germany post-WW1, so more people are willing to talk tough. However, without conflict experience, they lack the trauma to push them over the edge easily. Only after 4 years did they cross the line and it resulted in a lot less conflict than expected, but a single death spooked the shit out of them.
It's a good thing Trump was 20-30 years younger or we'd be so fucked.
I'm old enough to remember general online discussions before Trump. I distinctly remember posters, also people from the US, saying they don't understand how people could let dictators like Hitler rise - If a dictator started to rise today people would just stop them? How could people not? I remember discussions about how dictatorships in the us/west couldn't happen today.
Haven't heard people talk like that in maybe 8 years now. These last years have really showed how "easy" it can be.
Also remember a kind of disdain directed at countries where "the population had let dictatorships happen", totally missing how powerless the population in general can be to insane powergrabs by psychopaths and corrupt institutions. And underestimating how powerful propaganda can be.
I spoke to an old lady who told me they didn’t know about concentration camps. She said they noticed that Jewish neighbours somehow disappeared slowly but steadily but they didn’t know where they’d go or be taken. They were told propaganda and believed it.
So there’s that.
But today with almost everyone having access to the internet to verify facts by using a variety of sources, there’s no excuse to be this stupid.
Honestly disaster movies gave people TOO much credit. I genuinely used to be frustrated thinking “people can’t be that stupid.” I was correct, they are even more stupid than that.
Christian Nationalists have been chipping away at secular freedoms for decades. They are laser focused on their goals. They are willing to ally with whoever is willing to push their theocratic agenda. Corporations are willing to ally with whatever gets them their profits. They are serving their oligarch owners. MAGA Republicans are willing to ally with whoever lets them hold onto power. Pushing down women and minorities has strengthened their hold on the worst of their party.
Trump somehow embodies the values of these seemingly disparate groups. Greed, lust, hate, ignorance, misogyny, control, abuse, he's got it all.
These forces coming together are an absolute nightmare to the average secular American citizen who just wanted to live life undisturbed. Hopefully enough people are paying attention and will keep our governance from driving off a cliff.
Say what you will, but he and his team knew exactly which demographics in this country to rile up at the perfect time to make sure he got in, let alone gain traction.
I'm Korean. A lot of Korean people are voting for him. The child rape stuff does not bother them because powerful men are allowed to do what they want because God anointed them or something insane. One Christian Korean woman told me to get gang r@ped by Muslims when I brought up his grab them by the pussy phase. So lovely.
It's crazy that they leave their country to come to the US and vote conservative when voting conservative in SK is what ruined that country.
It was ... 9-ish(?) years ago when he mocked a disabled reporter that I thought to myself wow he's done for. But nope people saw him mocking that dude and said yep that's our man!
My ex (who claimed he was libertarian because Ron Swanson is cool I guess?) thought it was really funny to watch Idiocracy the night t rump got elected.
This dude is just a caricature of a real president.
They don’t think he a rapist. You are assuming they accept the same facts that we do. They don’t, it’s all a witch hunt or media manipulation or some other conspiracy.
I follow Michael Cohen through Meidas Touch and he is incredibly staunchly anti Trump and is working his damndest to atone for his part in Trump's success. I accept that he flipped because Trump ruined his life but his adamant hatred, expletive laden rebukes and valuable knowledge of how Trump functions and his motives is well received.
I like his explanation in his book about how the glitz and glamor and fame of being associated with trump was like a drug to him. Even though his family saw through trump and begged him to quit, he just couldn't. It really seems like in hindsight he is incredibly ashamed of his actions and wants to atone for them. Plus every time he calls trump VonShitsinpants it makes me laugh haha
Italian here. The electoral college is the most insane concept I've tried to wrap my brain around. What do you mean that the one with the most votes doesn't necessarily win? Wtf is up with that? Why isn't modern America rioting against that bullshit?
It takes a lot of votes in Congress to overturn the Electoral College thing. But the problem is you need Republican support and they are never going to support something that will never put them in power again.
This is the correct answer. Trump lost by 2 million in 2016 and by 7 million in 2020. He will certainly lose the popular vote again in 2024.
Our system gives outsized power to voters in 6 states. The Presidency can be won or lost by the whims of 40,000 people out 158 million (0.03%).
Republicans currently love the system because it’s helped them twice in the last 24 years. However, if Texas ever flips Blue the Republicans will not win again for decades. I guarantee they will then move to support the popular vote selection of Presidents.
Trump and his inner circle are only in it for the opportunity and the grift, and their voters don't realise that they're a part of their con, not part of the opportunity or the grift.
Don keeps wanting to play the table with their voter's money, and points the blame at the game, the dealer, the casino, and everyone else every time he loses.
I don’t recall if it was a post or a comment that I read on Reddit the other day, but it answered your question in the best way possible. Someone said “In November we find out if America is too stupid to live.”
As an American it really just takes the wind outta your sails when you read that. You try to tell yourself “come on, people aren’t THAT stupid.”
Then you switch to Facebook as a palette cleanser, and the first post you see is an in-law claiming Google is censoring the “actual” truth about flat Earth, and you really just can’t come back from that. You die on the inside and turn off your phone, pour a drink. Then, you just stare into the middle distance hoping it’s all just a fever dream and you’ll wake up in the hospital bed soon.
I remember the times when we (Europeans) made fun of you guys for the "do not stick peanuts up your nose" labels and "freedom fries". Feeling nostalgic for a Bush sure feels horrible.
Education doesn’t explain this. I have family who are rural, older members who didn’t finish high school. More of them think Trump is a piece of shit than don’t. The ones who don’t are all under the sway of Fox News. Propaganda is the problem.
Canadian here. It's supposed to be a 'close thing' whether Pierre Poilievre gets into power, so I'm scratching my head here at home as well as staring at the States in dismay.
A few random late night thoughts...
There is an international movement, funded by oligarchs, dedicated to eroding democracy, boosting nationalism and racism, enforcing "traditional" gender roles, imposing religious rules on civil society, cutting taxes and privileging capital and commerce over civil and human rights. It's waging a determined war against modernity and democracy in many countries at the same time. In the US it's MAGA and Trump and the Federalist Society and Project 2025 and Leonard Leo and various white supremacist factions... in Canada it's not quite as big but you can see the same game plan playing out in Danielle Smith's bizarre antics in Alberta, PP's shady connections and corporate-shill track record, the whole "trucker convoy" tantrum (Canada's version of the Americans' January 6th attempted coup)...
That international antidemocratic movement -- ironically one of its torch-carriers is the so-called International Democratic Union where our very own Stephen Harper has found a well-paid position -- commands a lot of money and can buy a lot of media. Several of the world's largest press barons are on board with it (lookin' at you Murdoch). Fox News in particular has become the sole source of information for millions of Americans and some Canadians as well. If you carefully engineer your poll so that it preferentially includes older white people and Fox News viewers you can get quite a pro-Trump result.
Polling is fascinating stuff (watch House of Cards, the original UK version, sometime) and when reading poll results there are several questions we should always ask. 1) who conducted the poll and who paid for it; 2) what was the sample size; 3) what was the demogrphic profile of the sample; 4) what was the medium or channel of contact (land line, mailer, email, web site, text message, etc); 5) what actually were the questions and how were they phrased.
If a polling outfit still uses landline cold-calls, for example, they are liable to reach a far older demographic than is representative of the country at large. There are many younger people who have never had a "home phone".
Newsmax recently presented (with no backing data or methodology) a "poll" that suggested 93 percent of respondents felt that Trump "won" the debate. Trump and his cult members have since reposted that result repeatedly. But with no backing data or methodology a poll like this is meaningless. Newsmax could have polled 15 people in their studio. Or 100 viewers of their strongly pro-Trump coverage of the debate. Or 500 landline numbers in a notoriously conservative retirement community. You get my drift. WIthout answers to the above questions, you can't interpret a poll.
Now-- having (I hope) increased everyone's skepticism of touted poll results by a percentage point or two -- let's admit that voting results in 2020 also suggested that the split between Trump voters and Biden voters was frighteningly close to 50/50. Does that mean that half the country supported Trump? Still nope, because though voter turnout was higher in 2020 than in some other years, still only about 66% of eligible voters actually bothered. What the other 34 percent would have done in the voting booth if they had only been arsed to show up is anyone's guess.
Lastly, though you can't trust polls without full disclosure of methodology and raw data, it is true that there's a surprisingly large percentage of undereducated and even illiterate people in the US (more than in more secular countries with better public education and less inequity) who can vote; also a large percentage of crackpot religious fanatics. Some 19 percent (or maybe more, this is from memory) of US adults can only read at a 5th grade level, about 30 percent believe in spirits, angelic intervention, demons, etc; 34 percent don't accept human evolution; about 30 pct believe some combination of "climate change is not real" and "the dangers of climate change are grossly exaggerated and it's no big deal"; about 25 pct think that the coronavirus epidemic was wilfully caused by some kind of conspiracy; about 30 percent believe that the earth is only 6000 years old...
So you're getting the picture. There's a solid 30-ish percent of Americans who have limited reading comprehension skills, limited media literacy, and are underinformed and gullible -- easy marks for various charismatic con artists (religious or political). Like Trump, and his backers and enablers within various fringey Far White milieux.
And then there's (sigh) race and gender. Some White Americans will never vote for a President who's other than WASP, or at least Anglo/Euro in appearance. Some American men of various colours will never vote for a female presidential candidate. So they also tip the polls and the electoral results...
My mom called me and asked if I watched the debates. I confirmed I did and asked her what she thought. She said " I don't know I think we're screwed either way." I understand if you don't like Kamala or her policies but I don't get how you could possibly think her and trump are the same level of bad. I would think you would atleast want a coherent functional adult as president of the United States
Because millions and millions and millions of fragile Americans are terrified of being irrelevant after decades of being called the “golden generation” when really they are about to be “boom and bust”
OK: I've voted Democratic pretty much up and down the ballot since 2000. (yes, I'm old). But I was raised in a religious conservative household, and my parents moved to a rural area where Trump is popular. I regularly talk to people with political views really different from my own.
This is what I can tell you.
The US has two different economies. There's a city economy where things are tough. In these urban economies people work hard, and there haven't been real wage increases since the 1970s. Things are getting more expensive all the time, and it's not easy. Many young people work side gigs, "hustle" and still have a lower standard of living than their parents did at the same age. People ten years younger than me don't expect to ever retire or own a home.
Then, there's a rural economy.
As tough as the city economy is, rural economies are MUCH WORSE. There are frankly no family-wage jobs unless you're employed in a family business that performs a service (contractors, house painting, electricians or similar trades, septic pumping, you get the idea).
In most families, kids leave for "the city" for advanced education or job opportunities and don't come back.
It's also true that farming families have been increasingly squeezed by huge conglomerates like Kraft, Archer Daniel Midlands, and Monsanto, as food was commodified and more and more profits from our agriculture sector went to these companies instead of small farmers.
And then... there is a perception, fair or unfair, that urban "bureaucrats" and elites will come in and tell rural people how to manage their land (with environmental laws), how to handle their property (with fire-proofing regs, at least in western states), with gun laws, etc, etc, etc. They get frustrated that people from 'outside' come in with a measure of arrogance and tell them what to do.
They have felt squeezed, disadvantaged as cities have prospered and they have not, and increasingly frustrated that no one in power was listening to them. And now, increasingly many are insulted as the only Liberal explanation is that they feel this way only because they are racist, sexist, or a cultist.
I'd be frustrated too, if it were me.
I think the root is back in the Nixon era, with his farm bill that ended up gutting small time farmers over time, and gave huge advantages to massive Ag companies. That had knock-on effects that shut down a lot of rural small businesses. When a Target or Walmart comes into town, it's the same story - local businesses and local jobs suffer.
And then comes along this clown, who everyone else is calling a clown, but HE AT LEAST SEEMS TO LISTEN, and understand their anger. I think they began to identify with the clown, because they felt like people were calling them dumb too... and the message of going back to a better time, with jobs etc, really resonates.
He won't actually help them, but they also have completely lost faith that anyone in the Democratic party will care about their situation either. Fairly or unfairly.
IMHO, the only way out of the fractiousness we have is by listening, and treating other people with respect. And yes, I get it. It's really hard for me to listen to a Trump supporter too. But you'll never change anyone's mind by calling them names, or positioning yourself as better than them.
edit to add: I think that's how it started when Trump was first elected. Conservative media has got on the bandwagon and is entrenching all of this.
Republican policies are making it worse. Here’s one simple example. Regulations on businesses.
Republicans want to roll back all kinds of regulations. They argue this will bring prices down. But that has never happened. What does this mean for rural folks?
-your forests and national parks could be destroyed
-your water will be undrinkable
-your wages will not increase
-john Deere will be allowed to make tractors that you cannot fix yourself. You’ll have to buy a subscription to their maintenance plan.
-you will have fewer and fewer options of seeds you’re allowed to plant as Monsanto becomes an even bigger monopoly and trademarks more seeds
-housing will become even more unaffordable because nobody will stop Chinese corporations from buying up residential homes in the US
Basically, pure, unregulated capitalism is a free-for-all and those with the most
Money can cut the most corners and buy the politicians to write the rules in their favor. Without regulations, Nestle, Monsanto, Cargill, Pfizer, Berkshire Hathaway, and Exxon mobile will effectively rule the country.
That’s not good for rural folks. It’s not good for anyone.
Well, you see, my parents hate Trumpet, so they won't vote for him, and they felt Kamila dodged too many questions about her policies, so they decided they just won't vote. Im not being sarcastic, the bar is so low for how we view the republican party and so astronomically high for the Dems that many are willing to just not vote cause they were taught that that was the correct response.
Because Republicans would rather die than vote for somebody who might help other people. I never thought the party of "family values" would also be the party that says "kids don't deserve free lunch" but here we are
Stupidity. US education is horrifically undersupported and underfunded. There’s also an incredibly toxic sense of entitlement and lack of empathy that’s been slowly baked into the culture.
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