My in-laws are staying with us this week. Fortunately they both are reasonable and voted Kamala but I have heard nothing but Medicare advantage commercials every 5 minutes as they watch live tv (something we never do).
Medicare advantage is a huge scam that takes all your Medicare money and gives it to private insurance companies. It is shocking that we allow people to be bombarded with this day in and day out. It doesn’t surprise me this same group was bombarded with lies from the right for the past year. Lies that don’t match reality. And as those lies come to light, they will feel duped. But either it will be too late or they are too stubborn to admit it.
Wait until trump's admin actually starts up and all those people start supporting concentration camps for the migrants, LGBTQ+ members, and "political dissidents". Wait until a democratic/progressive congressperson gets assassinated and watch how they will give zero fucks about it and support doing more of that. Wait until they start actually getting hyper-violent in the streets, shooting people they think are the "enemy", and getting away with it scott free.
We have so much further to fall over the next 4 years. And all those people you distrust now, will be on the frontlines defending every one of those actions.
My apathy for anyone outside of my nuclear family is significantly higher than it was a few weeks ago. I'm just stocking up on masks, purell, and stuff for the coming year+ when a bird flu kills the yuckyucks and I can't buy tuna anymore because captain brain worms and the orange don't believe in science and will actively punish anyone who does for trying to get medicine. They saw their own covid response and went "hmm we did too much. Let's take more away" it's just mind boggling.
Is this like Kevin in the first Home Alone thinking he's not really alone and just doing "bad" stuff and announcing it? Did they think their parents were going to come in and stop them and are surprised now?
I have no doubt Trump made every effort to cheat. There were attempts to keep people from voting, bomb threats, purging of voter rolls, and questionable access to voting machines.
But in the end, Trump won the election. He got more votes in more states, and he will be the President again.
That's who we are as a country. We elected Trump again. We need to stare at that in the mirror and acknowledge the uncomfortable truth about who we are if we're going to make it better.
America is not the bastion of freedom and justice for all anymore. We really haven't been for a very long time, and denial has allowed fascism to infect our collective subconscious.
We, the reasonable people, the ones who believe in freedom, equality, and the rule of law, we are the insurgency. The fox is in charge of the henhouse, and if we're going to survive it, we will have to fight for our country again. Our forefathers did it, and I believe we can, too.
I have no doubt Trump made every effort to cheat. There were attempts to keep people from voting, bomb threats, purging of voter rolls, and questionable access to voting machines.
Let's not forget Elon collecting signatures from demographics least likely to vote, or starlink being used in many districts as the network uplink for insecure machines, or the switch to computerized poll register systems using digital signature on a tablet (rather than a paper poll register) at many of these same polling places.
If you really wanted to juice your guy's vote numbers it wouldn't be all that hard to take the signatures you paid for and link them to people unlikely to vote, then get into vulnerable polling place systems and add bullet ballots for your guy ostensibly cast by people who are unlikely to actually show up.
Yea, even if they did cheat, I don't really care. Because it shouldn't have been close enough for that stuff to even matter. People keep calling him charismatic and all I can think is "have you actually heard the guy talk? He couldn't talk his way out of a paper bag." Seriously, if a guy on the street corner said the same things he's said you'd think he was an idiot, and you'd be right.
Voters’ perceptions of the economy are starting to flip along partisan lines
I mean, no shit. People act like partisanship is arbitrary, but it isn't. We fundamentally disagree about what economic policies, or even which economic systems are best. If you think unregulated, free-market capitalism is best, you're going to be happiest when the free-market capitalist party is in power. If you're a neoliberal, you're going to be happiest when the neoliberals are in power, if you're a social democrat, you're going to be happiest when the social democrats are in power. If you're a socialist, you're going to be happiest when the socialists are in power.
They also disagree on basic reality and thinks things are good because of Trump when Trump isn't even in power yet and things are exactly the same as yesterday. It's not just policy preference, or even regular politics, it's cult behavior.
they perceive things as better because right wing propaganda pumps people full of negative emotions so they'll vote right, and now that the election is over, they don't need to be made to feel scared all the time
Or you get even more nuanced and say unregulated free market is best only on the frontier of emerging new market sectors, and that areas we depend on should be heavily regulated, socialized, and run at cost for the public for free supported by tax dollars.
Have different systems for different things depending on which works best for what.
Nuance is important, but it's also difficult for laypeople. Not because they're unintelligent, necessarily, but because they haven't studied and trained like experts have. That's why we have to be able to rely on experts. But, deferring to the authority of experts means giving up at least some power. I think that can work when there's trust between the experts and the laypeople, but when trust is lost, laypeople will no longer respect the authority of experts. That's what the experts, the "elites" have to understand: their expertise gives them authority, and with authority comes power, and, well, as uncle Ben would say, with power comes responsibility, and accountability. I don't think the experts of today take their responsibility seriously enough, nor do I think they take proper accountability.
I wonder how much they would howl if investigation(s) into the integrity of the vote were to be carried out (by serious people, I mean, not qanon qrazies like pillow guy).