#think how trump somehow got voted in here

[thelastplaceweleftoff]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again: this is a form of infantilization of other countries that have different cultures and speak languages you do not understand.

I'm so confused at the people who will either ignore or disdain Israeli leftists because they're Israeli. it's absolutely insane

"We want Netanyahu gone!" Who's gonna vote him out? You? You live in Ohio

"Prosecute Netanyahu for his war crimes!" Who do you think will be doing the prosecuting?

"End the occupation!" How? What are you going to do?

There are people in Israel who are communists, socialists, anarchists, anti-imperialists, anti-colonial activists. They want the exact same things you do, and dismissing them because they live in "the bad country" is just fucking insane. It's frankly childish

[seancurry1]

Remember, Thou Art Barnacle

A serenity prayer for election day.

Originally posted on my website.

The Ann Selzer Iowa poll, regarded as the gold standard in all of political polling, shows Harris is up +3 in a state that Trump won by +8 in 2016 and by +9 in 2020. 

And you are a barnacle. 

The election better markets have Trump up by +19 (as of noon EST, 11/5/24), and bettors don’t care if people are ashamed to admit who they’re voting for—they’re in it for the money and only the money.

And you are a barnacle. 

Mainstream pollsters have admitted to weighting their polls heavily in favor of Trump, to ensure they don’t end up with egg on their face like they did in 2016 and 2020 again. International whales are taking out huge bets in favor of Trump, swinging the markets, and right wing think tanks are flooding the zone with bullshit polls to artificially inflate Trump’s odds in the aggregate. And even if the popular vote is overwhelmingly for Harris, Trump’s team is already laying the narrative groundwork to support a Stop the Steal campaign that, by the time you read this, will likely already have started. 

All of that is true. 

And you are still a barnacle. 

You are not piloting the ship. You are not the captain of the ship. You are not laying out the potential courses the ship could take, you are not deciding which course the ship will take, you are not scouting ahead. 

You aren’t even a paying, ticket-holding passenger on the ship. You are a barnacle on the hull, deep underwater, and unfortunately, there isn’t really anything you can individually do to affect where this ship goes. Sorry! 

This isn’t an invitation to check out, or become apathetic, or (heaven forbid) embrace doomerism. Quite the opposite: this is a reminder of who you actually are in this entire scenario, of the power you do not have, and of the power you definitely do. 

After the 2016 election, some small part of myself was convinced I could change the outcome if I just posted hard enough. If I fought enough of my friends on Facebook, texted angrily, and tweeted from enough protests and rallies, somehow Trump would no longer be President-elect. 

All it did was, literally, give me a rash. I got so angry for so long that my skin started to break out in hives. A doctor friend more-than-half seriously prescribed that I “get the fuck off Facebook” until my skin returned to normal. Trump was still President-elect, the next 8 years happened the way they did, and here we are today. 

You’re going to hear a lot today: polls are tightening! Votes still aren’t in from this critical precinct! If these trends hold, then we can expect to know something by such-and-such a time! The race is as tight as can be! White supremacists are threatening violence to avenge a dead squirrel! 

(The squirrel thing is 100% real, and my god, I really wish I was joking.) 

Remember, through all of it, that you are not the captain of the ship. You are a barnacle on its hull, and there is very little you can personally do to change it at this point. You’ve already done all you can do—or maybe you haven’t, but even then, you’ve already done all you’re going to do. 

And as you stress, and consider how inebriated you’re going to get, and decide on which web pages you’ll be refreshing every thirty seconds, and stress out some more, remember too that Donald Trump hasn’t ever won the popular vote in his entire miserable life. He only won the electoral college, a racist system explicitly designed to empower slaveholders in southern states, one time, and ever since then, he has lost every election he’s declared for. 

More people did vote for the woman candidate the last time one ran for President, and more people have voted for the candidate of color than their opponent every single time a person of color has run for President on a major party ticket. 

And women have already made up a larger share of early voting than men in this, the first general election post-Dobbs, than ever before in American history. (53% women to 44% men.) 

So as you stress and consider your inebriates and say to yourself, “How can it possibly be this close?!” for the umpteenth time today, remember too that Donald Trump is a fascistic, deeply unpopular person (let alone President) backed by an even more deeply weird party, and that almost the entirety of your experience of this election is being filtered through the lens of a national, for-profit media that doesn’t care who wins, so long as you keep watching. 

Remember, you are not the captain of the ship, you are not the helmsman, you are not the map-maker. 

You are a barnacle. 

Vote for Harris, vote Democrat in your local and state races, and trust your other barnacles.

If you like this, consider signing up for my newsletter to get more writing from me right in your inbox the second it posts: sean-curry.com/signup

[fromorigintofinality]

i dont post on here a ton but i gotta say the growing attitude on tumblr that voting in the US is somehow useless is really concerning.

just recently i saw this post that was basically making fun of people saying that voting was the way to change the system, and that's just.. wrong? like seriously, how do you think roe v. wade got overturned? its because despite everything, republicans are smart voters and know how to play the long game.

but leftists as of late have lost that quality i feel. instead of advocating for people to vote, they advocate for some "revolution" they think will solve everything. among the people in the post mentioned earlier being glorified as revolutionaries were mao zedong and stalin, and when asked why the poster was glorifying these horrific figures, they said, "yes. Mao freed my family and stalin defeated the fascists. Get with the program sugar"

do you notice anything about that? do you notice how it sounds like the way a child describes the world? "stalin defeated the fascists" like he's some hero who defeated the evil horde of thieves? the way things like the red guard, struggle sessions, all of that, are completely ignored on the side of Mao? how this person, despite having a trans flag in their pfp, is ignoring how the utterly homophobic state of the Chinese government at present is the fault of Mao? how they ignore horrific things such as the Gulag on side of Stalin? this person cannot think, and the only way they believe that the world can move forward is a revolution, and revolution's don't work when the people advocating for them do nothing.

maybe one could argue that this was just a one off type of thing, and that all of the thousands of people liking and reblogging this post are just weirdos. but whether or not thats true, this growing sentiment of praying to a revolution that will never come is indeed growing. and its not just like these people stay in their lane, they actively encourage and probably will cause people to not vote.

so i want to remind everybody. elections are not a moral choice. joe biden is complicit and actively funding a genocide, but not voting for him, third party or not (if you still think third parties are viable please look into the history behind them), will make it more likely that trump will win, and that things in palestine and other things that joe biden has failed in will get 1000x worse. candidates in elections are a bus stop to the real goal, and treating them as such is smart voting, republicans proved this with the overturning of roe v. wade.

please do not be selfish. this last bit may seem out of nowhere, but i need to say this. this type of thinking is selfish. it is selfish and almost impossible to detect as such for the people who believe in it. if you are the type of person who believes in this style of thinking, you have created a completely arbitrary moral code, and care more about your conscience than real political change. you believe yourself to have completely good morals that are universally good, and for the consequences of following these morals, you don't consider the real change that will occur, just your conscience and peace of mind. as for what happens because of that moral code, you will always find a way around looking inwards to how you contributed.

this election season may be the most important yet, please learn to take the practical route instead of the "pure" route.

[qqueenofhades]

I can't tell if part of the reason people don't recognize Biden's accomplishments is because society is so shallow and easily swayed by loudness over depth, or because Biden is just too quiet and prone to focusing on the idea that his actions speak louder than his words.

Like yeah, the latter thing is important, but we live in a REALLY shallow society; maybe a bit more bragging about your substantial achievements would be helpful here.

I get what you're saying here, but this kind of thing always seems to hinge on "the Democrats need to be doing more/Biden needs to be saying more/the Democrats are not doing it right/etc," and I just don't think that's the actual problem. Yes, in the past the Democrats have relied on the tactic of just doing good things and hoping that people will notice enough to vote for them, but that TORPEDOED them in 2010 (they didn't aggressively defend/market the Affordable Care Act, the Tea Party crazies got to set the narrative about GOVERNMENT OVERREACH, and they got shellacked so badly that they didn't control the House again for the rest of Obama's time in office). Fortunately, they have awoken to the fact that we live in a corporate noise machine owned and operated by cartoonishly villainous billionaire oligarchs who don't care if the country is pushed into fascism as long as they get their tax breaks, and where the average voter is well conditioned by said media to accept the BOTH SIDES BAD narrative without question.

Whether it's true or not is beside the point; if you flood the zone with enough BS, people act as if it is. See all those polls about how people think the Democrats are "too liberal" more than they think the GOP is "too conservative," even though only one of those parties is actively trying to end democracy. See the people who think Trump and Biden are equally ethically compromised. Etc. etc. Biden has already been considerably vocal about his accomplishments, has given several major speeches about the danger to democracy (which he did just the other day), but it is already so filtered and twisted in a radioactively toxic media atmosphere that just talking more or trying to trumpet more isn't going to help.

The DC media is full of a bunch of narcissists who like to make false equivalences and also openly hanker for Trump to be back in office because it makes them more relevant; they get to break juicy exposes and shocking headlines and whatever else, that gets more clicks, they get more exposure, etc. Biden is (as noted) boring, as in he's not on Twitter every day saying something ludicrous (and if he said even ONE ludicrous thing, far less the nonstop stream of BS that Trump constantly spews and which somehow still makes the media yell about how BIDEN should be the one to step aside, he'd be toast), and just does the job. That's not very Sexy and Marketable. When he talks about how he's doing the job and what he plans to do next, the media is too busy commissioning a dozen bullshit Horserace!!! polls and talking about how, in case we haven't noticed, he is 80 and that is somehow, implicitly, a more disqualifying fact than Trump's 91 goddamn serious treason-level felonies, including for literally trying to overthrow the government. Our politics and civic society have been so irreparably poisoned that actual competence is completely beside the point and makes a normal president less appealing than one who's just insane all the time. Everything's just a game show! Everyone's opinions are equal! Live in all the alternate universes you want! Who cares if we accidentally end democracy? Just another headline!

This is likewise not helped by the fact that in this relentlessly commodified social-media universe, Republicans are constantly on message and united behind their candidates, no matter how openly fucking awful they are, while leftists/liberals/Democrats (and people who claim to be) are constantly tearing into and criticizing their candidates in a way that makes Joe and Jane Low Information Voter even more susceptible to believing the "Both Sides" narrative -- after all, if the Democrats are attacking the Democrats, they really must be bad! Yes, we are not in a cult and therefore are able to have an actual discussion about things, but this falls into the "We're Just Holding Them Accountable!!" line that is just an excuse for ripping the Democrats even more than any of those people ever criticize or actively oppose the Republicans.

Hence all these braindead takes about how Biden should step aside, Biden should drop Harris, Biden should do X Y and Z and this is all his fault, instead of anyone remotely trying to come to grips with the extreme polarization and fascism of the other side. I keep yelling about it, and a lot of other people I respect keep yelling about it, because yet again, we've learned fucking nothing from 2016 and we're teetering on a repeat of it. See how all these Online Leftists want to scream and yell about Biden ending the train strike, and then somehow never seem to have heard that he kept working with the unions for months afterward and got their sick days. Even the people who, in a remotely more functional political landscape and/or if they possessed one (1) working brain cell, would vote for the Democrats get their endless jollies and moral holier-than-thous by absolutely incinerating them. Who needs the Republicans, when these guys will do it for you?

Anyway. Because America is a land of morons manipulated by billionaire corporate interests, just doing the right thing and hoping people notice enough to vote for you is not enough. That's why, indeed, the Democrats have learned that you have to talk about it and push back and argue for what you've done. But when it still exists in this environment that will twist and taint and misrepresent and grind it into tiny pieces, because said billionaire corporate interests are genuinely afraid that the Democrats' current policy plans could dismantle their hegemony if allowed to continue, that's only a very small part of the problem, and we have to recognize that.

[carlosoliveiramybeloved]

who I think supa strikas characters would vote for to cope with the fact trump won pt 2

The rest of the coaches:

Coach Edwin - I believe Brazilians learned A LOT after the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro who was basically a worse version of trump (im pretty sure they’re friends)

Also judging by his personality and the fact he has a daughter I strongly believe he’d vote blue

Coach golare (the miserable fat coach from season 1 ep 7) - he looks like a trump supporter… idk I’m not analyzing this random ass npc

Rich American coach that literally owns Las Vegas idk how to write his name - Red. I don’t think I need to elaborate

PLAYERS!!!🗣️🗣️💥💥

SHAKES - Blue

I he’d either be absolutely fissured on the election or wouldn’t gaf at all + if asked he’d try to stay neutral about it to not cause any rumors on media (wouldn’t work and he’d end up admitting he supports Kamala)

North - I can’t see him actually caring and/or showing support for any side

Big bo - at first I was thinking maybe Trump…but after all those videos I watched from middle aged white men voting for Kamala, I could just think of Bo

But if he actually voted red and was questioned about it i feel like he’d say “IM NOT RACIST. I even have black friends”

El Matador - He’s like those immigrants that got their papers and started judging other immigrants that don’t have theirs yet

like those 60%+ of Latinos that voted red like mf he doesn’t like u

This or he wouldn’t care, maybe would say Kamala/Trump out of the pressure caused by the media

Twisting Tiger - Kamala, he’s part of the few characters that have common sense

Cool Joe - BIG KAMALA SUPPORTER

Would be super open about it too

And I totally can see him dissing trump out of nowhere

On a random interview: “Yeah 34 assistances are pretty impressive…but 34 felonies is just insane”

(assistances as in football assistances and yes ik 34 is a little too exaggerated)

Block - idk u decide

Klaus - would be really lost and confused about everything

Rasta - another family man, democrat for sure

Other players

Skarra - Seriously wouldn’t care

Would insist on is “idc statement” and yell at journalists if they try to ask anything related to the election

Maybe would irritate Invincible United supporters…I just feel like most of them are republicans

Like, remember that episode where Vince contracts 3 IU fans to pretend they’re ss supporters? They look so much like republicans somehow; probably because of how aggressive they were

Diggan - Like Klaus, also clueless

Douma - Would also try to stay neutral about it, and like Skarra, would be rude to journalists if they try to pressure him into saying anything related to the election

Riano - AGAIN, like other professionals, he would try to stay neutral about it

But deep inside, he’d vote blue for sure

Miko Chen - Kamala sorry I’m too tired to elaborate

“Where is-“ Not here ❤️

[cherienymphe]

As a Hispanic from Tx, I think a lot of people seem to have forgotten just how conservative Latino culture is even amongst the younger generations. The core values of so many Latinos are church, work, and family and they (somehow) found those values in Trump as well. I also think so many voted for Trump because they are afraid to be grouped in with the “violent illegals”

I personally voted for Kamala, but it was really disheartening to see some of my family vote for a man and party that obviously thinks so little of them

I'm used to it from certain Latinos (CUBANS) but I guess it's true when they said nobody hates undocumented immigrants more than Latinos who got here "the right way"

[mavcancees]

what do you mean by feminist will have to do a lot of thinking?

be pissed off at me all you want this is a worse repeat of 2016 men are yucky social campaign. we're here again somehow

democrats did no campaigning towards a voter base that is chronically online and insanely succeptible to right wing propaganda and all they have ingested in the last 4 years is how men inherently suck

and then republicans ran a campaign that directly went against that and made them feel like they "belonged" ( hitler youth yippee ) and that no it's women that suck and deserve less rights

when trump won last night there were a lot of conversations about this. how he got voted in in large by a "meme encouraged" young base clinging at the last strings of gamergate. and how while yes the reality of misogyny and sexism and men's behaviour is what it is, the political message behind it has to be done really carefully, because hatred is the easiest way to radicalise young people. and american boys love their radicalism

somehow no one learned nothing from it. matter of fact it got worse. trump flipped blue counties to red because of young voters voting red. which again, are an extremely online base. and the latest political trend of of the last 2 years is a conjunction of "i hate men men suck and it's a purely genetic thing we should kill them all" from the general public, and "see how crazy these females are they want you dead this is why they should have less rights" from an ACTUAL POLITICAL PARTY THEY COULD VOTE FOR

and then what did the democrats do. run on less taxes and the greatest military in the world ? great. nothing of note there

so who did the messaging here

[prismatoxic]

i just kind of think if you're not worried about trump taking office again because he and biden are "the same", you're very willfully forgetting the people most heavily impacted by trump's policies here, in our country. i think you're willfully ignoring the good things the biden administration has done (and there have been a few) and i think it, for some reason, doesn't scare you that trump and everyone under him hates queer people, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, poor people, and women with a burning passion. or that trump has openly said he wants to be a dictator. like he plans to do that.

i get the frustration! i do. biden still isn't good, especially when it comes to things outside of our country, like the genocide in palestine. it's fucking abhorrent that he and his administration have been gleefully playing into that. and trump won't meaningfully change that part unless he actively makes it worse (which... is still worse, i do hope you understand that), but we can't only look at the things that are the most fucked up right in this moment. we have to think about the past (trump's last term) and we have to think about the future (what will happen if he wins again).

trump WILL be worse. he will be worse for the most vulnerable people in america. and america's leadership actively affects other parts of the world because this stupid shithole country is a world power, so he'll make things worse for other people, too. he did last time and he will again. and you've been told, and for some reason don't seem to care, that this same apathy you show towards voting now is what got him elected in 2016.

it just... scares me? it scares me that people i actively pay attention to are refusing to acknowledge the worst parts of trump's plans or the few good things the biden administration has done. it scares me that people are so willing to toss vulnerable americans under the bus because they've somehow convinced themselves trump will be exactly the same as biden is now.

and i don't... want people reblogging this post, because it's not a call to action for the whole website. there are enough of those. it's a plea to my mutuals and followers who also live in america. please stop dismissing this all as pointless. please start prioritizing harm reduction, because it's the only thing we can meaningfully do with our broken two party system. abstaining from the system isn't meaningful protest; it's worthless virtue signalling. instead of helping some people, you're choosing instead to help no one.

i hope you understand how that's worse.

[snekdood]

ppl who larp about the Revolution™ almost seem to expect someone *else* to take the leading role in it all so they can sit inside on their asses and do jack shit, they know they have no meaningful skills to offer and would only slow people down, but expect to *somehow* magically radicalize most americans into doing all the work for them because awww dey're just such a weak wittle babu that needs to be pwotected and defwended awlways uwu

like. come on. get a grip. if everything went your way and someone actually stronger than you came along to take the lead, you're likely not being invited, and you'll likely be left behind... which means left to the alt right, who will no doubt come to your house to see if you're perpetuating anything "woke", and you gotta know they wont just ask, they'll barge in and look through everything even your computer.

though, you should really focus on your plan. your first step: get along with people enough to even actually convince them its a good idea, and we all know you'll never dare to try that shit. you cant even be on here w/o blocking someone like me for even suggesting you are approaching this like a child playing war and you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

you think you want a second holocaust (which is essentially letting trump win, i mean hitler got the majority vote in germany. thats how he rose to power. didn't just materialize out of thin air), but you dont seem to grasp the gravity of what that entails, or even that you'd be thrown in the camps with everyone else, all to stick it to jewish ppl and "the libs", even if it means you and all the ones you love die along with them. you are a net negative to humanity and quite frankly should be on a fucking watch list.

[queervegancryptid]

I really can't believe this happened. I worked so hard just to survive this long, and I really let myself hope. Under the cut just because this got long.

I don't mean to say I'm mad that my preferred candidate didn't win, although I am mad about that because of what the guy who won has done and promises to do in the coming years.

I'm disgusted and disappointed in my country in a way I never thought I would be. To me, that's been the real gut-punch. I was prepared to be angry and frustrated and worried. I was prepared for the electoral college to give it to him, or for SCOTUS or Congress to hand it to him, or for there to be shenanigans after the election like there were last time he was in office.

I was not prepared to confront the fact that he might win and that we'd know in less than 24 hours. That he would win the popular vote in addition to the electoral college. That's what really gets me about all this. I thought we were better than this. I feel like he cheated, but we'll probably never know.

And I think believing he cheated is my brain's way of grasping at straws, trying to rationalize or explain things somehow. Because that makes more sense than trying to wrap my head around the idea that he won legitimately. That a majority of voters hate women and Black women in particular so much they'd rather have a fascist windbag who admires Hitler and has a boner for Putin. Fuck out of here with that bullshit.

But that does seem to be reality. So I have no choice but to figure out a plan to handle it. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I'm probably not going to be safe in the state of Florida anymore.

And I'm done pulling punches on social media. Anybody on my feed posting shit like "we can disagree and still be friends because I'm a mature adult," implying that anybody who's upset about the situation is just being a whiny pissbaby and needs to stop being dramatic, is getting told about themselves.

I'm not framing it as a personal attack. I'm just going, "look, you may not realize how you sound." Tactfully, I mean. And it worked in at least one case; a girl I went to high school with posted something like that, and I let her have it. But I made it clear that I wasn't attacking her, just illustrating how things like this make people feel right now.

Turns out, one of her sons is bi and trans, a teenager, and she's getting herself educated on gender-affirming care and doing her best to support him. What I said got her attention, so she decided to take the post down because "if it makes [me] uncomfortable, it probably would make [her] son feel uncomfortable, too." She didn't vote for Trump, and I didn't assume anything one way or the other, and I made that clear, too.

Basically, I was confrontational without being a dick or assuming she had malicious intentions or anything else about her. And it started a conversation. Maybe I can give her some advice or suggestions for how she can help her son. She's my age, and we grew up in the same rural town, but I got out and went to college. I got lucky. And I learned a lot about myself and had to educate myself on being trans, among many other things. She might have questions I could answer. This is good. I'm not responding today, because I just can't right now, but the point is, sometimes people really don't know how they're coming across right now. So don't just assume anything. But don't take any shit, either.

Now I'm making myself sad wondering if he'll ever get to go to pride. I never was able to. Now maybe neither of us ever will.

This is fucking hard. I've never been scared like this before. I don't know what to do.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

“It’s like the people have spoken and this is what America looks like,” said Smith, the Los Angeles-based founder of the advocacy social media agency, Get Social. “And there’s not too much more fighting that you’re going to be able to do without losing your own sanity.” [*screaming* WTF? YOU ARE AMERICA!]

This is it, huh? We're gonna roll all our identities into Harris's candidacy like a fucked-up burrito and consider ourselves rejected? Oh well, we lost. Good game. Sit down. You probably won't get imprisoned or killed by the new administration, but if you do - eh. What're you gonna do, am I right? What else IS there to do? *silence, the sound of several hundred million human imaginations rotting away in a vacuum*

And I agree with some of the sentiments expressed in this article. Of fucking COURSE you shouldn't martyr yourself if your country invites you to do so. Stay safe, stay alive, but what's the point of being alive if you're gonna roll over and let your country KILL you? It's trying! It's BEEN trying! It's not gonna stop!

The AP just levelled the playing field and made all methods and motivations for stepping back equal, including voting for Trump because you think he'll lower your grocery bills. The point is, Black women aren't going to be doing activism anymore, and if you happen to be a Black woman reading this article, you might consider performing your identity by joining them. Or, you know, if you were equally invested in Harris winning, or Trump losing. Same thing! Humans are pack animals, after all, we don't like to be out there all by ourselves. That's scary.

Fuck the pink hats. Nobody followed up on the pink hats with meaningful action; we just watched in horror as multiple systems failed over four years, then elected the only other option hoping he'd fix things, and watched again, in compounding horror and disbelief, as nothing got fixed for real and many things got MUCH WORSE.

We are parsing voting as prayer, aren't we? God, wearing the guise of the majority vote, said no. Whatever you imagined Harris was gonna do for you, nobody wants any of it. Don't you feel foolish? Ignore everything else about how every election and this one in particular have been utterly fucked. This process is still, somehow, legitimate enough to deserve authority over you. Hey, they asked who you wanted to continue the genocide and all associated abuses with new dictator-level immunity, and "you" ["America"] picked the bad guy. You could've had someone who told you to shut up about the genocide nicely, while smiling and saying she doesn't like it either. But that wasn't good enough!

There are ways of resisting other than spending all your energy supporting a candidate from a fake opposition party. I can't be out here issuing marching orders because you need to listen to your own community - and nobody fucking listens to me anyway. (I'm small and sick. Staying alive meant fleeing, and losing some of what little ability I had to stand up and be counted.)

Grieve, go ahead and grieve, get it out of the way, but this is not a dead human being who will never come back. This is a broken system that insists we must be willing to die to perpetuate it. Don't do that. You can't help fix anything if you're dead. Don't roll over and play dead for the next four years either! And then don't spring back to life solely for the purpose of perpetuating the system some more - don't you see what that gets you?

[cordycepsfem]

Okay, listen... I know this is gonna make me sound like an absolute nutjob, but I refuse to believe that 18 million registered voters simply didn't show up.

And I know it'd make sense, with Kamala Harris being a biracial woman, but I remember the 2020 elections. The chaos lasted for days, Trump kept tweeting and at some point started screeching for the counting of the votes to be stopped despite both him and Biden being at about 100, and then there were the recounts that counties did simply to be sure.

But this year there was an absolute and perfect calm. I don't live in the US anymore, and I went to bed knowing that there would still be people voting when I woke up but by the time I did not only everybody had already supposedly voted but Trump had already been declared the winner. In literally a handful of hours. There were still people lined up at the polls.

And, I'm sorry, but do we not remember the interviews he did? He kept smiling and saying that he had tricks, that he doesn't need votes, that everything's already set. He then went through those hours of voting without posting anything on social medias, and even now that he's been declared the winner, he's not goading yet.

I feel like I'm going crazy, because I know I'm not the only one who noticed these things, and yet the majority of leftists are simply sitting down and accepting it? No one dares mention a recount even when there's plenty of people whose vote hasn't been counted yet??

I sat on this ask because I feel like I am way too easily led into conspiracy theories - we all are - simply because of how they're structured. They're meant for us to want to believe.

And also I agreed with a lot of it.

I don't know what the deal is, Anon. I don't know how long lines for voting and lots of early voting and mail-in activity somehow resulted in more votes for the dumpster clown. I feel like there are definite issues that got us here, and I don't think what's going to happen is going to be pretty.

But you're right, it is awfully suspicious.

[theholidayslingerlikebadperfume]

i saw an image going around that was like "what voting for the lesser of two evils does to the party system" clearly implying that the voters who show up every election are the issue and the ignorance in that image is bordering on political propaganda. so i wanted to talk about it because i dont want y'all to see a scary image like that and think it's true without all the facts.

1. the image ignores what american politics looked like before the mid 1900s.

the most clear example of this is the united states had a 90% tax rate on the richest individuals between 1940-1960s. the us government has had really fantastic policies on the books before. i know its also the most corrupt government in the world, but to ignore that it got things right occasionally is wild to me.

2. here is a graph that shows what voter turn out looks like throughout american history. keep in mind that this is just the national elections okay i dont even wanna discuss local election stats because they are abysmal.

the black line in particular is fucking fascinating because mid term elections are the most important elections to vote in for the federal government since it controls the LEGISLATIVE branch of the government aka the laws being written to be passed.

do you see how it was REALLY high at the beginning of US history and drops off significantly by the early 1900s. do you see how at the start of the governing history, midterm turn out was the most important thing for people BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTOOD THE CONGRESS IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. people didnt care as much for the president because they understood him to be the figurehead, because they were recently under monarch rule in england ya doofs.

It is very clear from this graph alone that as americans started only caring about the presidential election, american politics got worse.

the truth of the matter is that people stopped caring who governed them in america and so the extremists who showed up for midterms every time were able to gain control of the government.

3. I want you to look careful at the years of 1970-1990s and notice how those were the LOWEST turn out rates for the american populus. this in my opinion reflects the white attitude of "black people and women can vote we did it we solved everything" that so many of us complain about online re low voter turnouts.

understand that the republicans that are in congress right now are not a result of the remaining american population "voting for the lesser of two evils" it is the result of american white people not wanting to vote in their local and state elections anymore. so the bad white people who want to change america to the old ways are able to gain political power because you don't show up to vote.

4. this is the last point i want to make is that trump supporters are not half the country. the turn out in 2016 was 60.1% and he only got 45.9% of the vote. This makes trump supporters at the height of their power only 28% of the american population, rounding up.

if you look at the statistics of third party voting in 2016 and how they led to trump being in power, you will see that third party votes made up like 6% of the vote and that was all trump needed to win the electoral college despite being only 45.9% of the popular vote.

please do not allow people to convince you that the reason we are in this mess is because people vote???? somehow when the data does not back that up AT ALL.

[snarky-wallflower]

This is definitely a vent post. I try not to make these. And honestly, please skip over this. I just need to talk into empty air.

I can’t sleep.

it’s four am, I have a class at 8:30 in the morning, and I can’t sleep.

Getting Threads was a mistake. I’ve just been scrolling it for the last hour and a half, and…god, the amount of people I’ve seen who are just as sick as I am, if not more so, the amount of people I’ve seen terrified for the future—people are going to keep fighting, I know, but it’s terrifying seeing what effects have already happened. It’s terrifying seeing the logic of those who voted for Trump, the logic of those who voted third-party—I can’t claim to understand the American electoral system, can’t claim to be an expert…but…god.

I am so, so scared for my friends. My American friends, who all deserve so much better than this bullshit. Who shouldn’t have to fear their rights being taken away. I hope every initiative from Project 2025 is blocked. It’s sickening, it’s horrifying—and I know Canada’s problems will only be increased by the fact of who’s in power right now.

my mom called me yesterday, maybe an hour after I found out. She asked if I seemed sick. Somehow, despite being able to talk about it here, I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it with her. I just said I was tired, yeah, and didn’t bring anything else up. I’ve never been much good at communication, maybe that’s why.

…it’s really fucking sad I don’t feel comfortable enough to talk about this with her. I genuinely do think part of that is on me. They do want me to communicate with them. I just got so used to hiding—both fandom and otherwise—that it’s…hard, for me, to talk about a lot of real things with them.

(Like, I remember accidentally putting a TGOA poster in frame when I was on a call with my dad and my little sister. They almost seemed amused by it, and I just dismissed it by telling them it was a show I liked. Maybe I was being over sensitive. I was probably being over sensitive. I kind of get panicky when they start showing any form of interest in stuff I like. Shoutout to when they put on Wolf 359 in the car and I was convinced they were doing it to make fun of me, while they told me they really weren’t. That was months ago. It’s something I need to work on.)

I’m so, so fucking terrified that if I bring up the election with my family, they won’t take it seriously. My dad is an American citizen. I never asked if he voted. I think he voted for Biden last time around, but I’ve never asked if he planned to vote in this one. He’s made jokes about Trump before. I swear, my family seems to think it’s a joke, that I hate him. I should explain things better—but why is it my job to do that? Why is it my job to explain why I stopped supporting people like JKR, why I don’t like to make jokes about Trump—my parents are adults who can educate themselves. I just never bring up politics if I can help it. I’m a coward for it, I know. But I just…don’t.

Maybe they would support me. But I’m so scared that I would tell them how scared I am of Trump being elected, and they wouldn’t listen. I’d rather be scared than be proven right, even if I don’t know the odds.

an aunt I don’t really text…ever from America asked how university was going for me yesterday. When I asked how she was in response, she said great!! Maybe it’s just because we’re not close, and I’m not brave enough to ask how she feels great on that day.

(god, I hope she didn’t vote for Trump. But I still remember when my grandfather on that side said Jim’s here, and Cassie’s a queer! And I think I saw FOX News on their radio. I just…I don’t know. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Fuck if I know, I’m not going to text them out of the blue and ask! I don’t want to be right.)

I’m not even going to tag this one, I think. I just need to get it out somewhere. I’ll probably delete this in the morning. It’s a 4 am vent post, it doesn’t need to be coherent. Or even reasonable.

[firecrackerhh]

We aaaaaallll deseeeeeerve to diiiiieeeee!!

The lives of the wicked at the very least. God knows we have far too many of those wretched vermin insisting they stamp their boot all over us for their own gain. Too many blubbering idiots so unbearably fucking retarded they barely should count as human fucking beings to begin with think this country is only for them. Anyone outside of their view may as well be considered persona non grata.

These people legit believe that Donald fucking trump is the next Jesus Christ or some shit dude, these people think that a fascist piece of shit fucking spoiled brat of an absolute wretch is somehow going to make things better for them because these idiots don’t think that Trump despises them too.

Oh yeah, sure, the rich billionaire will totally help you out, he totally doesn’t think you’re a retard. Not like trump has any right to claim he’s smarter than anyone.

When Hillary called those wretched fucks deplorables she was fucking correct. I don’t like Hillary but she got one thing right at least.

I can’t respect any of these ‘people’ I’m supposed to respect ‘people’ who would have very little issue in fucking killing me for the crime of existing? Nah, fuck that civility politics bullshit, respect is earned. If anyone’s persona non grata here, it’s them. it sure as fuck isn’t me! I’m not retarded enough to fall for a F-rate salesman who shouldn’t have even been allowed to run the second time given how January 6th fucking played out! He’s, yknow, a felon?

Felon, the same class of people who aren’t even allowed to vote? Felons can’t vote but Donald trump can run for office and somehow fucking win and no one who actually matters gives a fuck!? It’s not like he really suffered any consequences for all this shit!

Like yeah yeah he has to spend a lot of money, oh whatever, man could sell one of his golden toilets or some shit, I’m sure it would be enough to last him a while. Frankly I think Donald trump should suffer for the rest of his life, I say we put him in a Saw trap but we can’t always get what we want. Tragic.

It’s funny I mention that at all cuz I’m a lil bitch who hates super gory stuff (Sweeney Todd is like nothing compared to the real bad gorey media out there) but man, if anyone deserves Jigsaw’s wrath…

I’m not gonna act all doom and gloom over this shit, that ain’t helpful, but goddamn I’m not gonna pretend that shit is all kittens and rainbows either.

And if you think I think his voters are shit you don’t wanna know what I think of the people they vote in.

Have a lot of nerve to claim immigrants, democrats and whatnot are poisoning the blood of this country when the only poisonous beings I see are them. I have to wonder if these people are just constantly projecting (however unintentionally)

Of course, that would assume they’re capable of understanding irony.

Sigh…I’m lucky to live in a safe enough state, but the federal supersedes the state governments, who knows how long that’ll last. Fuck me. I swear to god I keep imagining fucking mad max style apocalyptic scenarios and I can only fucking hope that it’s just my anxiety making shit worse and not eventual reality.

Fuck God, is there a demon we can summon to make things better?

Goddamnit.

Other countries are gonna be affected by this too.

Oh we will all go together when we go

What a comforting fact that is to know…

It really isn’t tbh but man what else do we got?

[sixty-silver-wishes]

I'm watching the news for the first time in 6 years and I legit can't tell if my understanding of how America works was somehow worse than I though or if its that bad

I honestly can't tell if I need to get my meds on a lower dose again or if Biden is that fucking bad

yeah it’s. it’s pretty bad.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with US politics, but essentially, how we got here this year is the primaries. Each party votes for a candidate in the primary election, and then the entire country votes in the general election for whoever won the primaries. Trump won the Republican primary (which was initially crowded with other candidates) because he’s popular with them, but Biden is less popular with Democrats than Trump is with Republicans. During the Democratic primary, not a lot of prominent candidates ran against Biden, since it’s generally frowned upon in politics to run against the incumbent presidential candidate of your own party. He had a few challengers, the most prominent one being Representative Dean Phillips, but he won the nomination because nobody popular or well-known ran against him. I think if a Democrat with more name recognition ran, like California governor Gavin Newsom or a senator like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, maybe the race would be tighter, although Biden would likely still win due to being an incumbent.

Overall, I think all this could have been avoided if Biden chose not to run for a second term. While Trump is currently beating him in the polls, he’s still widely unpopular, and I think a younger moderate Democrat would probably beat Trump easily. It’s hard to say with Kamala Harris because she’s about as unpopular as Biden (although if she were the nominee, she’d have the advantage of being younger than him), but names like Gretchen Whitmer and Anthony Beshear have been floated. But because Republicans are rapidly going full-on fascist and Democrats trust the establishment too much, that’s why we’re in this mess right now.