Hard to blame them. It's exhausting to keep up and fight with the crazy and stupid. Because to them it's no effort.
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
277 points (99.3% liked)
politics
19158 readers
2603 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Of course people are tuning out. Please keep in mind I am saying the following as a mostly liberal slightly libertarian.
What has passed for liberal culture over the last decade has included an awful lot of outrage over every injustice but not an awful lot of solid action to correct those injustices. The Democratic party has tried to harness that with a lot of identity politics that avoid the real issues. And so the result is you have a ton of people who are always upset but things never get better.
So of course people burn out. Or they get cynical and decide nothing is going to change so it's not worth getting worked up over. You see a lot of that in this very thread.
To anyone angry at me, downvote me if you want, but if you want change actually fucking do something. Stop consuming short form content like Twitter and TikTok, start consuming long form things that make you think and expose you to different viewpoints. Lex Friedman interviews are a good place to start.
Understand that not everybody who disagrees with you is bad or evil or malicious.
Very few issues are simple. There is rarely an absolute obvious right and wrong. And if somebody adopts a viewpoint you think is wrong, consider that maybe they have reasons they think it's right and use those reasons to challenge your own beliefs. You may conclude that they are still wrong, but you must be open to the possibility that you might be wrong. If you aren't open to being wrong, why should they be?
And in the world where nobody can admit they are wrong, nothing productive happens. You just have two sides shouting at each other.
Then take a step back from your own personal outrage and think about what is actually important. If you had to choose between ensuring every American has good health care, and ensuring every American has their pronouns recognized, which do you think is more important? So which one are you focusing your advocacy and speech on?
The simple fact is, if you (and I am addressing everybody on all sides here) stop getting riled up over wedge issues and start focusing on the things that The majority of the country can agree on, you might find there's an awfully big agenda of problems we all agree should be fixed that aren't even being discussed.
Rules for us not for them
Based take, also great comment
It's a shit take and here's why:
At no point in the past 30 years have the Democrats been able to do anything because of the filibuster even when they controlled both houses of Congress. The only thing that's held us back from moving any policy to even remotely the left is the Republican obstructionism and that's it plain and simple
I’m 41. I’ve been involved with activism since I was 20. Things keep getting worse. Time to try something different.
I’m also trying to shift my views to be more like Carlin, where I stop caring about what happens.
Carlin cared a great deal. His whole career was about bringing things to light. He was just cynical and vulgar in his presentation.
"Scratch any cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist."
Why did you scratch me, bro?
I like that
It's a Carlin quote. Cynics are cynics because they cared and society let them down.
What things have been getting worse?
All things
are showing a more subdued response
...That's because, if you're smart, you keep your responses off public channels. Didn't anyone learn anything from January 6? Don't fucking plan in public.
A few of my friends went full-on lockdown mode the second he won and I heard a rumor or two of people buying up hard drives.
I think a few people are going to spend four years offline.
Scratch a liberal and they abandon you to the fascists I guess
How dense are you? People are just tired from decades worth of having corporations and wealthy elites push the middle and lower class into the ground.
Me too. Rolling over won't help
He's not even fucking in office yet. I think what's really irritating the media is we aren't all resubscribing to papers again. Sorry guys, this ain't 2016 and we're not going to handle it the same way we handled 2016.
Personally, I'm buying electronics and appliances now so that I don't have to face his dumb tariff price hikes, and I've renewed my passport.
It's honestly the Democrats that make me feel drained. They're the party that ostensibly represents my political leanings, but they've spent the last year funding a genocide, cozying up to Republicans like Liz Cheney, and abandoning the economic populism that got them elected in 2020. If they were at least winning, ignoring progressives like me would be justified, but nope! They made an 80-year-old man their candidate without holding a primary, replaced him at the last minute with a candidate who didn't even make it to Iowa in 2020, and the walked into their largest electoral defeat since...what, 2004?
Trump is vile, and petty, and cruel, and I'm genuinely scared of the damage he'll do to our country, but that's what I expect from him. The fact that the only opposition party to the fascists is this group of cowardly, selfish failures is so demoralizing. If we can't wrestle control of the party away from these incompetent geriatrics, I honestly don't know if there's any hope for American democracy.
Yeah, this exactly. I voted for Harris and I'm furious at the party for being allergic to victory. By becoming so centrist they are completely crippled. They've done absolutely jack shit for the average man and just sweep it under the rug. The Democratic party completely ignores us. It is utterly stagnant, with status-quo nominees like Hillary, Biden and Harris. I think without true progressives nominated in the future, dems will keep losing, and it doesn't even feel like they care.
This is exactly what I think. I really want to be positive, but the more time passes, the more I'm convinced that the message they'll take from this isn't, "we need to return to our New Deal roots," but, "we got too into, 'identity politics,' let's not talk about trans issues anymore."
I think the final test as to whether there is any hope left for the party is if they select Rahm Emanuel for the DNC chair. If they do, then progressives just need to move on; this party has nothing left to offer, even as a method of countering fascism. We'd be better off trying our luck with third parties than these perennial losers.
And honestly the worst part is: where is the dem leadership right now? Where has Harris been since her defeat? People should have accepted blame for this historic loss and stepped down, but instead - nothing. What the hell is this?
They lost, what do you expect them to do? Foment an insurrection? The American people have spoken and they chose 4 years of a fascist, rapist, lying criminal for a president.
The very very low bar that everyone should have for the Democrats right now is to expect them to be furiously working to win the House and the Senate in the next midterm election. Like balls to the wall, all out. Anything less is completely acquiescing to trumpism.
You want more? They should be strategizing how to flip state legislatures. They should be working on lower levers of government from the bottom up, to fight gerrymandering and electoral shenanigans.
And these are just the normie political stuff. I'm not even going to get into the grassroots organizing, movement building, leadership development, labour organizing etc.
Franklin did tell you, from the very start: "a republic if you can keep it". Do you want to keep it?
My two Canadian cents, take it or leave it.
I expect them to still show leadership, to try and bring hope to their constituents - and to take responsibility for the election loss.
What kind of leader just up and leaves after a loss like this? Did Bernie just fuck off after everything that happened to him? No, he's still there, still trying to build support and help younger politicians follow in his footsteps. Harris should be doing that or should resign, not whatever she's doing now.
Bernie is in a position where he actually does something. Vice President is a bench-warming position with no real power.
Harris isn't just the vice president, she was the presidential candidate. For fucks sake, she wanted to be the Democrats leader for the next couple of years! She has way more power and influence compared to Bernie.
She has way more power and influence compared to Bernie.
I don't see how, since she's a failed candidate and the VP of a lame duck president. You're not wrong that she could at least make an attempt to have some sort of message of resistance, but even if she did it wouldn't have any practical effect. Milquetoast centrist is milquetoast.
Doctors are just fake jobs, everyone knows it's the nurses who do all the work that's why my surgeon didn't even show up to my appendectomy.
If everyone treated their job like Democrats do theirs, the world wouldn't work.
I wish I had a party that even paid lip service to representing my political leanings, but left-libertarians apparently don't exist in the US. I voted for my district's Democrat as that was the closest I was going to get this time around, but even that was a protest vote as I am in a conservative bastion. Even if the Democrat party is wrested away from the corporatists, it will be temporary and the problem will repeat
We need to pass graduated voting nation-wide so we can get some viable alternative parties in here. I would love to have viable candidates ranging the gamut from conservative to communist, as that promotes a healthy political ecosystem instead of the current monoculture two party system. Makes a blight like the Christian nationalists or the Trump cult or the "leftist" oligarchs capable of infecting large swaths of the system.
Temptation? I've already gone to "fuck it - burn it to the ground". There's not fuck-all I'm going to do at this point that is going to make any difference.
The fuck am I supposed to do? I've been organizing, I've been to protests, I've done everything I can to head this disaster off. I'll be fine throughout this and I'll do what I can to take care of the innocents who're going to suffer, but what the fuck else is there to do? Clearly people either want this, or don't care enough to try and stop it. So, fuck it. They can reap what they sow. Maybe this will wake some of them up, or they'll all fucking die of the next big pandemic and then they won't be a problem any more.
It's not even about the general populace and what they want. We the people do all the groundwork for progressive politics and in the end it's our own party that ignores us and does us in. That's why I'm demoralized personally. I don't think I'll ever get fired up again for this party unless there's radical shift to the left.
Yep. Right there with you, dude. I did my part for over 15 years. The second I heard he won, I started locking down everything I use and run online.
Come January, a lot of us are going dark, homies. Stay safe, lock up those banned books.
History is about to repeat its boots all over your faces.
i see the new administration as a threat to governance of all kinds in the US so maybe it would be useful to preserve the work of those institutions if they are shutdown or damaged so that they can be rebooted when the administration changes
just an idea, i totally agree with your point of view
load more comments
(6 replies)
I’m sick of hearing about the asshole, and sick of hearing about him getting “slammed” by some celebrity or politician, and sick of hearing how he’s a huge threat so we need to send a sternly worded letter.
Getting upset over this is so draining, especially because there’s nothing we can do to stop him in the short term.
Getting upset over this is so draining, especially because there’s nothing we can do to stop him in the short term.
For me personally, I think the most draining part of the whole thing is that nothing was done to stop him in the 4 years he was out of power.
1,461 days, all of them spent listening to people talk about how horrible it would be if he got back into power, and yet absolutely fucking nothing was done in that time to prevent the horrible things we were warned about from happening.
load more comments
(3 replies)
view more: next ›