I’m only 20 years old, I’ve never voted or even really bothered paying attention to any other election, and I dunno it kinda feels like I started on one that was really crazy? But I’m not sure maybe every election has been insane and I just didn’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.
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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.
Annoying isn’t it.
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.
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.
Would take China and/or India in that case. Europe and Canada don’t have the population, Mexico probably doesn’t the will.
Mexico probably doesn’t the will.
Yup, we do not. We have enough problems at home created or perpetuated by Americans like gun violence, organized crime and now gentrification on top of everything else. Good luck.
China definitely aren’t the good guys.
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.
“Obama was fine” ???
Did you not see his tan suit? The humanity…
Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there’s none to be found anywhere.
Are people forgetting his Dijon Mustard scandal? Unforgivable.
Dijon? Sounds like socialism to me!
Don’t forget his terrorist fist jab.
And it should be said - politics should not be spicy. It should be boring. Just like investing, if things are getting too exciting you are not investing in the future - you are gambling.
Unfortunately it’s the exciting politics that gets all the attention. Democrats likely lost because they’re just too boring.
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.
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.
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.
It just goes to show how little faith people have in the system. They’d rather destroy it all just to see if something better comes out. Morons don’t recognize that the game is rigged. Unless nuclear war breaks out, it will just keep getting worse.
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.
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.
This election has the same dreadful feeling as 2000.
Nevermind the crazyness, it’s the certainty that something worldwide bad is going to happen due to the incompetence of the American government.
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.
You might be younger or forgetting but before Obama it was George W., definitely not controversial… And before that there was more controversy. Americans have always had divisive elections, but there’s been a noticable uptick in the elections involving Trump.
Preferring Dijon mustard, or wearing a tan suit are hardly legitimate controversies. There are real complaints about some of Obama’s actions, but there wasn’t really any legitimate controversy surrounding his presidency outside of the pointless stuff manufactured by Limbaugh and Hannity. Those two guys were the canaries in the coal mine, and society and the government alike should pushed back on what they were starting a lot harder than they did. They ushered in this new era of hate and strife.
