No Stupid Questions

It didn't used to be, but I'm guessing this is how it'll be from now on. It used to be a pretty mundane activity, and people could even agree to disagree. When I was your age I remember asking friends who they voted for, and those conversations would go something like this

Friend 1: Who did you vote for?

Friend 2: So-and-so

Friend 3: haha, that guy is an idiot! You're so stupid

Friend 2: lol, yeah maybe

Friend 1: whatever, let's go find a party

And it wouldn't really change much. Now everything after friend 2 would be full of hatred, people disowning each other, and outright vitriol. If we can't even talk to our friends about this stuff, how the hell are we going to talk to people who we completely disagree with that we don't know? Of course it's been engineered to be like this now. This isn't people changing of their own accord. This is intentionally manufactured division and strife to keep people fighting amongst each other while the billionaires pick everyone's pockets, and the fascists consolidate power. It's not going to go back to the way it was without significant activism and hardship.

Not even close. This was a turning point election.

This election determined that we will live with an ultra conservative Supreme Court for the rest of our lives. In just the last couple years that court has removed women's federally protected right to bodily autonomy and determined that presidents are above the law and can't be held accountable for anything they do while in office. Decisions like that will continue for the remainder of our lives and chip away at our nation as we once knew it.

Trump's administration ran on making fundamental changes to our government, including deconstructing the department of education. He promised to make an anti-vaxxer the head of the department of health. Ukraine will cease to exist. Palestine will cease to exist. Russia will expand their borders and threaten Europe. America will lose allies. NATO will be weakened.

We made a criminal who failed his last term as president by every conceivable metric and illegally attempted to overturn an election the most powerful figure on the planet. He will fill all positions with unqualified toadies, just like he did last time when he had the highest White House turnover rate in US history.

What Americans just did was change the political order we will be living under for the foreseeable future. And no one will suffer more for that than your generation.

We categorically failed you and the decline we are about to experience could last a generation and the suffering is currently unquantifiable. The decision we just made will change the world we live in in a negative way we can't fully fathom yet.

The remainder of your life just got a whole lot harder and I'm sorry. I did not vote for it to be this way.

Annoying isn't it.

Not even a little bit.

And you're probably not gonna get a point of comparison, because it's looking likely to be one party rule by the absolute shittiest american embarrassments forever at this point. At least until America does some stupid shit globally and gets themselves invaded by a united band of good guys down the road.

Elections have strong outcomes, strong repercussions and sometimes strong benefits. Right now, this past election will have sharp and strong repercussions. Your vote is indirectly saying that you're OKAY with whatever party you chose, to do with as they wish. And what they do with whatever they wish, will affect millions, including you.

So right now, everyone who didn't vote for the Orange Fascist, are having solid reasons to be worried. They expect a lot of things to be ripped away or outright dismantled, setting the course to potentially have irreversible damages. All because of the collective voter's choices that wanted the opposing party in.

In an election, I would much people vote to have a voice than abstain and not vote, expecting outcomes to magically work. However, there is a personal responsibility to be had when it comes to voting. That is, whatever comes your way in how people react when they find out who you voted for.

I always seem to lose friends every election, long tenure or short tenure, because of my choices that complicate theirs. It's unfortunately a thing that's going to happen. And it may happen to you.

By the way, I've failed to mention that it is important to vote, based on what you feel is valuable for the party to focus on. If they ever.

No, they've been getting progressively crazier since 2016.

2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn't even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.

2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.

2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn't broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.

Then it starts getting spicy.

Yes, it was really crazy. In the past few decades our politicians had different goals, but generally still followed the same rules. Trump has shown he wants to dismantle any and all systems that don't serve him, and the Republican party is happy to let him do so, so this election seems like it might have far greater consequences than the ones in memorable past.

In former times if one candidate had promised to overthrow the entire system and abolish elections and democracy, then nobody would have voted for that clown.

If blue still has any branch of government then this might have been a nothing burger. Yeah, we'd be set back 10 years but nothing unfixable.

Trump has absolutely no checks on his whims. Even the supreme Court is in lockstep. He could make it illegal to not be orange on day one and actually enforce it. Not everywhere equally, since blue states still exist. But we'll see if trump doesn't use military force on them.

2012 was what felt like a more normal election where the candidates respected each other and it played out a lot more typically. (Same for 2008). Trump changed that up and it’ll possibly stay that way going forward.

2000 was bugfuck insane.

It's part of a trend of a significant portion of the electorate feeling ignored. It's a trend that's happening in large parts of the West, we're seeing it in Europe too in places like France and Germany.

Now you can argue about whether these people have a genuine grievance or not. But if we don't try and address the underlying causes of these people abandoning moderate parties, we're going to see more and more extreme candidates and parties being successful. And I don't think that's something any of us want.

No, they have been getting extra crazy lately.

It's usually between someone you kinda don't like and someone you kinda like, so the stakes are lower. This year we had to choose between The Antichrist and Some Boring Lady, but this country hates women 🤷‍♂️

No it just depends on the candidates. Most have been boring but Obama, Clinton, Trump, Harris were all controversial.

This election was special, cause the candidate who got the most votes actually won.

as a ~40 year old Canadian looking from the outside at the US election

this one was crazy for sure but the last couple have been kinda out there to say the least. before the internet we Canadians always knew when it coming, but it was never covered in a 24h news cycle like now. other than daily newspaper (that was a physical unit of paper that was like social media, where we could not really choose who to follow other than politically left or right and only updated every 24h) we'd get news at 6-7pm and 11pm. then the noon news showed up. while there have always been issues between right and left, there had never been violence on the scale we see now. like Reagan getting shot, happened just after i was born, so not like it was all sunshine and rainbows but nothing like the scale that's seen now.

this could be from the mass news reporting and social media, or people have just gone off the rails. I'm guessing option 2.

Nah don't worry this was your first and last election anyway

This election was crazier than the last election. On the other hand it will be less crazy than the next election.

Basically it just gets more and more ridiculous every 4 years.

US presidential elections have been approximately this way since at least 2016, actually I think this one may have been less crazy than the last two.