I can't believe what a bunch of bollocks this administration is. I couldn't believe it the first time, and this time I thought "Well at least I'm ready, it will be a lot like last time" and it's so much worse
A lot of people seemed to have had this theory, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
It was all opinion. Trump said a lot of stuff before this election, but he said a lot of stuff before his first one too.
When people disagreed on what he might do, it was all guesses. There was no evidence to base anything on. Would his second term be restrained by people around him like in his first? That would be an evidence-based extrapolation. Would tariffs be all talk and little action, like in his first term? Extrapolating from evidence, they would be. But 2025 isn't 2017. Things would be different, but how? It's all guesses.
It's only hindsight that is 20/20.
Saying "there wasn't any evidence" is borderline bot-speak. Anybody who thought Trump 2.0 was going to be like the first round was simply not paying attention at all and anybody telling others it wasn't going to be like the first admin is either a Russian troll, the mainstream media, or just plain irresponsibly ignorant.
"Nobody could have foreseen this" is about the dumbest take I think I've seen so far.
Even the premise of their argument is silly -- "evidence-based extrapolation" lmao that's not how politics work at all.
Hopefully these 4 years energize people to vote. I know protesting and direct action and so on are also important, but the gradient is not negative for voting for every office you can vote for in every election.
The unfortunate part is that education is often also part of propaganda and spinning history for said propaganda. These days I wish education had a bigger emphasis on history and history should be looked at from different angles, like how the same thing is being taught from different angles.
It does. In higher education.
You cannot force someone to learn something. The mean-spirited bully not paying attention in high school history class and barely getting a C- to graduate didn't exactly learn anything about nuanced topics like "The Nazis didn't start the holocaust right away" and "Fascism is inherently incompetent, and that makes it so much worse"
If parents raise their kids to not consider education important (and millions of parents in the US have always done just so, we have an insane level of anti-intellectualism in this country), you won't get educated kids.
Every time someone says "I wish school taught <X>", plenty of schools EXPLICITLY DO THAT, and it doesn't work, because the person complaining was one of the kids crying "When will I ever use this" instead of paying attention.
The same adults who complain that school didn't teach them "critical thinking" are upset that school didn't walk them through the process step by step, as if you can't balance a check book with fucking basic algebra you learn by 4th grade. Meanwhile, 90% of the uproar about "new math" ends up being parents who can't even manage to understand basic word problems, you know, things which take critical thinking to work through?
I've had people complain that school should teach them how to calculate a mortgage, which is funny, because those people sat next to me in Precalculus as we literally did mortgage calculation problems.
The USA is struggling with multiple generations of people who have insisted that education is not only useless, but a liberal agenda, or even a devil-run plot to distract you from god. It's insane.
This euphemism has to end. I think you mean: "Hopefully these 4 years energize people to vote Democrat".
Why not just say it plainly instead of using supposedly non-partisan language? This neutral phrasing seems to be an appeal to a "silent majority" that agrees with you and disagrees with Republican leadership. What if that silent majority doesn't exist?
But personally, the reason I believe it does exist is two-fold:
1. The "My vote won't change anything" rhetoric only ever gets expressed by left-leaning people.
2. Only left-leaning people require endless purity tests for their political candidates and will refuse to vote for anybody that they don't think is the perfect candidate. These are the ones that talk about being fed up for having to choose between the lesser of two evils, then look like a Surprised Pikachu when Trump wins.
Then we are on course to lose our spot on top of the world, and I should probably plan to get laid off. Idk, I get what you mean, but not agreeing with Democrats (I don't really agree with them much) and wanting a stable country with a good economy are way different things. I can hold my nose and vote for someone who doesn't actively try to tank the economy, the same way many conservatives (especially religious ones), held their nose and voted for Trump
You are assuming there will be next elections that are free, fair, and matter.
Trump says a lot of things that ultimately doesn't matter, but he has also said, and is the type of brute to believe it, that he intends to stay in power. He and his cronies have successfully dismantled the checks and balances that should have prevented him from doing they, legally. IMO the only way he leaves the White House without stirring trouble is in a casket.
For example, a lot of people have forgotten, but the phrase "fake news" originally came about in the wake of the 2016 election about all the (actually false) misinformation that was spread on social media in the run up to the election. Trump adeptly then co-opted the term, so any news he didn't like he could just call it "fake news", and who was to say any news he called fake was any less fake than what people were calling fake before?
My guess is the 2028 elections will be marked by fraud, and then when people protest or object, Trump and the Republicans will just say "Hey, you called all those Jan 6 protesters traitors and said the election was secure, how is now any different? Now you're all the traitors."
The only belief that gives me hope these days is "History will judge the complicit."