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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

So I'm sitting here as a Canadian wondering what the American people are going to do? I understand a lot of what the President of The United States says - I even agree with some of it, the problem is I don't feel like we're engaging with the American people anymore. I really wonder where you guys are headed and what it means for the rest of us, I spent 15 years in the states, built a public company there, I really like the Americans, but I don't want annexation. I wonder where you guys are headed.

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> I wonder where you guys are headed.

You need to know only two facts about America to guess that:

* Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

* As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens.

Our future is to become a broken nation governed by middle-school student level thinking. The only way to build a better America is to build a better populace, and that would be contrary to the interests of the angry, spoiled, children who seem to hold all the power now.

I think it’s also important to talk about what it means to “read at a 6th grade level” when this is mentioned, because a lot of people (myself included) might assume that just means they could finish and understand a book intended for 6th graders.

But there’s actually meaningful criteria that sheds some light on the critical thinking capabilities of people who can or can’t read at certain levels, especially as it pertains to propaganda. Below a certain level, people are not well-educated enough to critically assess a text against the motivations of its authors (somewhere around 9th grade). Americans are prone to conspiratorial thinking so you might think that that’s alright because they’re often skeptical of any text, but it just seems like it causes them to dig even deeper into the propaganda that’s targeted to them.

It’s kind of like learning that some people don’t have an inner monologue, or that they aren’t capable of imagining shapes or objects abstractly in their mind. Except it’s a lot more serious as it deals with critical thinking directly: these people don’t understand that what they’re reading was written for a purpose.

This isn't accidental. Religious indoctrination literally teaches generations to make special loopholes in critical thinking and healthy skepticism to maintain their faith. And it has paid off in easy to manipulate masses for centuries.

The more religious people I know are some of the best critical thinkers. Especially those types who enroll their kids in the 'classical' education model. With the decline of religion in the USA, I don't think this is a very coherent scapegoat.

Religion isn't the only factor, nor did I claim it was.

But it's the only one I've seen convince PhDs to believe self contradictory "scriptures", cherry picked "evidence", appeals to authority, parrot useless platitudes, indoctrinate their kids, dismiss injustices, other people even for the most trivial differences in doctrine, and consistently vote against their own interests.

In what language? 78% of Americans have English as their first language.

I don't think that's right - it looks like the stat is that 78% of Americans speak *only* English at home.

I'm not American, but anecdotally, a supermajority (like 80-90%) of people I know who speak multiple languages at home speak English at native fluency. (e.g. in my semi-extended family - parents/siblings/nibblings/partner/parents-in-law, there are 9 of us, and only 2 are more comfortable in French than English, but none of us would qualify as speaking *only* English at home.)

Also, look into how the statistic is gathered vs other countries.

There is no exact definition on this statistic and how to measure. There is also reporting biases. Single person vs household for example.

I don't care what language they read, just that they're capable of reading (and thinking) like adults.

Why is literacy so important? Wasn’t literacy lower in the US at other points in time?

The Lippmann school of democracy sort of predisposed that people were too stupid and that through journalists would emerge a reasonable set of choices. For the most part that matches the way politics worked in the USA and most democracies until recently. Unfortunately the internet disrupted things such that suddenly everyone needs to actually be democratically adept in at least some form more akin to the Dewey school of thought.

The combination of literacy and the algorithmic propaganda machine is a pretty big stumbling block.

Interesting comment. I haven't heard this problem phrased this way nor have I heard of these schools, do you have a recommendation for learning more about this?

Adapt! (Barbara Stiegler)

She puts it all together relatively succinctly if dense. You can just read Dewey too if you want to be closer to the source. He's a bit more interesting because it is more of the road not taken out of the progressive era.

Cool, thanks for the rec!

See perhaps:

> At the turn of the 20th century, a crucial debate emerged between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey over the viability of democracy in an increasingly complex world. Lippmann critiqued democracy’s reliance on public opinion, arguing that citizens construct simplified “pseudo-environments” shaped by media and stereotypes, rendering them ill-equipped to make informed decisions on vast global issues. He warned that modern democracies are driven more by emotionally charged reactions than by accurate understanding, and that media, language, and time constraints further distort reality. Dewey responded not by dismissing Lippmann’s concerns, but by reframing democracy as more than a political system—it was, to him, an ethical ideal and a form of social cooperation. Viewing society as an interconnected organism, Dewey believed individuals flourish only through participation and education. He saw democracy as a continuous process of mutual growth, where every person contributes uniquely, and where the antidote to authoritarianism lies in cultivating thoughtful, empowered citizens—not in retreating from democratic ideals, but in deepening them.

* https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/dewey-lippman

Also maybe from The Atlantic (from 1919), "The Basic Problem of Democracy" by Walter Lippman:

https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...

Truthfully I’m not familiar with any of this. I’m just curious how we managed a functioning democracy through the 1800s when literacy was certainly lower. And, how other democratic nations with similar literacy rates are doing.

Standards for "functioning democracy" were much lower then.

Most people were ineligible to vote in the 18th and 19th centuries. [1] Not even 20% of the US population voted in presidential elections until the 20th century. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Vote_for_President_a...

> * As (ostensibly) a representative Democracy America's fate is dictated by the majority of it's citizens.

No, it's determined by the people who actually go out and vote.

Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low. It's beyond frustrating to work with large groups of young people who are seemingly always talking politics and angry about something political, then to watch as half of them either forget to vote or act like they're too apathetic to vote.

The craziest part was seeing this apathy play out in states with vote-by-mail systems that required as little effort as possible. I still don't get it.

There were millions of voters who refused to vote for Harris because of the Gaza situation -- oh, the irony.

https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

That's half the problem. Democrats aren't offering much.

What do you think would be "much"?

Because even just the boring sanity of Biden Harris was leagues better than what we all saw coming in 2024. (Putting aside that whole constitutional amendment about insurrections.)

Maybe they could promise to make the rent lower. Or to make abortion legal. Or to stop bombing 2 million brown children in the Middle East. Or literally anything people actually want, instead of running on the singular platform or "obviously they'll vote for us because we're not the Republicans". People are getting really tired of the latter. Notice every time a candidate comes out who actually promises things people want he wins by a landslide?

They actually have offered policies along this line but their messaging is weak at best.

It also competes with an opponent (the GOP) that is more than willing to outright lie to sway voters. This isn't to say that the DNC is beyond reproach but we're way past "both sides" at this point.

This is utterly delusional. I can’t comprehend of whatever mind virus made it so far into the American political discourse for this BS to still be parroted in 2026. I am blessed to be born in and to reside in a country with a comparatively much better-functioning government and voting system. You better believe that if I were American I’d be voting for the dems in a heartbeat. I’d be endlessly annoyed about it, especially compared to the vastly more palatable options where I live, but there’d be zero doubt about my decision. The culture of not voting is the biggest unforced self-own the American public has inflicted upon itself. You all get what you deserve with that one.

I think it’s reasonable not to vote for a candidate that supports genocide.

Maybe that’s not a line for you but surely you have a line that cannot be crossed somewhere

Neither candidate was ever going to push back against Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

While it was very disappointing the Democrats weren't exerting significant pressure against Israel, and Kamala gave no indication she'd act any different, it was delusional to believe Trump was going to be any different. He was very clear that he supported Israel as well, and he went as far as to claim he'd support Netanyahu even more strongly than Biden. Sure, he sabre-rattled a bit about wanting the war in Gaza to end before he took office, but he also indicated he'd support residual IDF actions (i.e., continued killings of Palestinians) within Gaza afterward.

There was never a candidate who was going to push back against Israel, no matter how much you or I would have liked for there to have been one.

AIPAC has a terrifyingly strong grip on American politics.

The only way to address this and other similar problems is through campaign finance reform, which the incumbents will never allow. It doesn't mean we shouldn't stop pushing the issue though.

It was determined by voters. Pretty sure that's over now too.

It's not too late. But it will be too late as soon as too many people think it's too late.

In defence of young people, it's "determined" by the people who actually go out and vote the same way a child "determines" what's for dinner when asked "would you like broccoli or brussels sprouts?"

American democracy is broken. Not in an abstract, hand-wavy feelings way but a hard, numerical, mathematical way. A two party system results in no real choice. First past the post results in a two party system. America uses first past the post. Therefore, Amercian democracy gives voters no real choice.

There was a real choice in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Trumps opponent was every single time very different to him.

Democrats continue to offer up horrible candidates, and their idiotic primary system confirms those horrible candidates every 4 years. A slice of cheese could have beaten Trump, but somehow the DNC managed to offer up the most boring, milquetoast, unlikable, uncharismatic, centrist candidates they could find and beat him once out of three times. They're just kicking own-goals over and over, and they're not learning which direction to run down the field.

Biden was not centrist he was left. He was a good president I do not understand why Americans complain as if the choice between the two was so hard.

His policies were tempered, image-wise and often in substance, by his affinity for Joe Manchin alongside his disdain for Bernie Sanders. Balanced alongside the middle eastern foreign policy, he comes across as centrist despite the BBB.

Look up the build back better act that Biden proposed and tell me if you think that was centrist. It originally proposed extending the child tax credit (basically basic income for people with kids).

The Inflation Reduction Act, the negotiated paired down version was still the biggest climate bill in history.

He also attempted to cancel 10 to 20k each of student debt, a progressive priority. That was blocked by the Supreme court.

The list goes on.

If the electorate had given Biden a bigger majority in Congress he would have passed much more progressive legislation.

The self reinforcing prophecy of “somebody else’s job”.

It’s the job of politicians to pander to us, the good voter. Since they didn’t offer us something good, we didn’t vote, and that results in this current situation.

Politics is not my job, being aware of how politics works is not my job. My job is just to let them know they aren’t good enough. It’s because they aren’t good enough, that we landed up in this situation.

Margins in recent elections have been thin enough that higher voter turnout among young generations could have easily changed the outcome.

Blaming broken democracy is just a cop out. Youth voter turnout for primary elections, where there are many candidates, is also low. More parties isn’t going to change anything.

You're missing the point. There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans. Both were bad and unappealing. Both are too dependent on the status quo to serve as vehicles for real change (so primaries are pointless too).

"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things. It allows you to vote for someone who truly represents you and your interests without "throwing away" your vote. That's impossible today.

Well we are getting some "real change" now, so I guess the monkey's paw works.

Dems didn't really get primaries in 2024, so that certainly didn't help.

>"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things.

Indeed. But that's the one single thing D's and R's can agree on not doing. It'll need to be done state by state to get any real leverage.

> There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans

This is the civic illiteracy a higher comment refers to. Beyond the primaries, there are numerous down-ballot initiatives that don't tend to cleanly sort along party lines.

I remember watching a clip from Jimmy Kimmel on YouTube where they asked people on the street in LA whether they planned to vote in the 2024 presidential election. The twist was that they were doing this one day AFTER the election. It was so disappointing to see that many young people had no idea that the election was over and yet they said they planned to vote. One guy even asked who was running.

I would envy the person who can live in the US and be unaware a presidential election was yesterday...

Like, they start running ads 18 months ahead of it... How do you miss all of those ads

This is likely because for many young people the only source of news is social media. And they are unlikely to be targeted to see the political ads.

Interestingly, occasionally I see political ads on Willow.tv which I use to watch Cricket. And most of these ads have Noem threatening to deport people ("if you are here illegally, we are coming after you..."). I am a US citizen.

on top of that, you need to register as a voter in many places and that process ends months before the actual ballots come. These aren't things they teach in most schools (nor their parents, apparently).

Yeah totally bonkers. In general, most people severely underestimate how long the government agencies take to process something.

Presidential ads run in swing states. Not in California, whose delegates are a foregone conclusion.

Californians are hassled for political donations, not votes.

There are more of them in swing states.

But the internet is full of them for quite some time, I would expect them to see some of those

Hoping this might help you find a way to reach to the young people you have to work with: I remember my young self being primarily concerned with being right about the world rather while also believing nothing I could do at my level could matter. Maybe it's just me but something about small incremental betterment was uncredibly unsexy to me. I would rationalize voting as "participating in the system" that was rigged anyways.

Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos

And those young people are manipulated by the older part of population.

Maybe ask the young people if they actually wanted to vote for the options they had, before jumping to them being apathetic or hypocritical. And yes, I know the adult-in-the-rooms will be quick to point out that its simply rational and responsible to hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil, and the kids should know that, etc etc. But while it may be a good prescription to people, it doesn't actually address the problem. Maybe we should, but still, if you just want to scold people into voting for you, then you probably don't have a good platform and you probably don't deserve the support you do get.

The fact is, it would of been already incredibly hard for someone to be enthusiastic voting for Dems last presidential election; frankly even without even considering the utter and pointed moral failure with Gaza.

You want young people to vote, you can try to tut-tut them to vote for literally whoever, or you can, you know, listen to what they are saying, what they feel passionate about, and try even just a little bit to address it or, heck, put it on the platform. Its supposed to be a political party, something that unites people under some shared vision.

You want every single young person in the US to vote? Just say: free healthcare.

I mean, they tried that in the primaries and young people still stayed home. If they actually came out in force for Bernie like you said they would, he would have won every primary. Young people simply don't vote because of a lot of different reasons. Probably some of the reasons are immaturity and a lack of belief that they have agency, which is understandable given how society works in the US. You have basically zero rights until you turn 18, at which point you are magically able to vote! Do you believe you have the ability to affect the world at that point? Of course not.

"Put up candidates that don't suck" in this context is basically "put up candidates who will cater to young voters at the expense of literally every other constituency", which is exactly the reason Bernie lost in 2016, and lost even harder in 2020. You can't focus only on one group of people, even if that's the only way to drive their turnout. It's just a losing game, clearly not one worth playing with a group of people who don't yet understand that other people exist, with other priorities.

I guess I just didn't realize that was the settled reason why Bernie lost!

I just think even granting this framing, what is the point or the lesson here? Is the idea that Clinton in 2016 was more well-rounded, had broader appeal as a candidate and young people were too immature to realize this?

The lesson is that making your sole priority driving youth turnout is a losing strategy, for reasons that are not that confusing. The Bernie lamenters would do well to learn lessons from his failures, rather than blaming everyone else.

Sure, but what does this mean? Like ok we know not to solely cater to the youth vote, great. That wouldn't imply to me then that the correct thing to do instead is alienate or anger that same vote, right? Shouldn't we see nominees that cater to all of them, or a lot of them at least? Or, what's wrong with wanting that?

We do not need to start from the point of view that each given interest or group is totally opposed, that we are locked in some zero-sum death spiral where "the youth vote" shares absolutely no overlap with anybody else. Politics is possible at all because we believe in something else. You could decompose everything down into a list of people to blame with stuff like this, but it won't tell you what to actually do!

That's the thing - we already know that each given interest group has common interests. That's how you build coalitions, by finding those common interests and tamping down on the differences. The problem with the youth vote that we know, is that if we cater to anyone other than them, or god forbid have any opinion they disagree with, they get disillusioned or even outright hostile (very much to their own detriment), for reasons I speculated on above.

So it's better to treat them as a totally unreliable voting bloc that is nice to have, but in no way should be treated special. They are fickle, impossible to corral, and make particularly awful coalition partners.

Bernie, for one, would have done well to use their energy to launch, as he did, but then switch to broadening his coalition, rather than doubling down on catering to their every whim and attempted browbeating. That rigidity and tunnel vision is what sunk him, and is what would have led to total electoral collapse if he had somehow made it to the nomination.

Ok well then I guess there really is no hope here for this. I guess it's just a shame it's such a helpless case with the kids here!

But really, if you have a democracy where there seems to be one uncompromising bloc that no one can really satisfy, that too is democracy in action in a way! Or rather, it maybe says something about the state and the parties that this is the case with regard to the youth. Given all of history, we can't just say in general "kids are intrinsically uncompromising, short term idealists fundamentally incompatible with democracy." Right?

> Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low

I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.

In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.

Now to show my political biases:

In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.

So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.

[0] https://rimgo.privacyredirect.com/ZUiVLyz

> Young people put in effort showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.

It is certainly wise to give up after one failed effort. Never try again. /s

Oh I agree and I vote. More people need to vote. But I understand why people feel little motivation to.

>Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low.

in the grand scheme of history, it's not odd. Voter turnout correlates decently with age. It's an anamoly when they do get out and vote, like in 2008.

That's partially an effect of

1. not having compulsory voting

2. needing to actively register in order to be viable to vote, as opposed to simply being delivered a ballot like many other countries

3. the decades of "no politics at the table" policies to help expose the civic duties to the youth. And since it's not a flashy topic to talk about, they won't really bring it up themselves, or simply have non-informed views.

4. careful strategies to try and disenfranchise voters who may otherwise oppose a party. This is what "both sides are the same" does in a system without #1.

Not to mention the proliferation of social targeted media ads changing the landscape and active loopholes used to try and de-register voters. These all hit youth the most to vote a certain way (or not at all).

    > Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

I don't know what to think when I see these quotes. Are you writing a local newspaper opinion piece about the "decline of America"? How is it meaningful to this discussion? It's like a poison blowdart shot from behind the stage curtain that kills the messenger.

By the way, I Googled for the equivalent stat about Canada: "48-49% having skills below a high school level". I'm not here to bad mouth the Canadian education system, but I think you will find fairly similar stats in most highly developed nations.

This talking point never contains international comparison nor historical comparison. Most people using it do not even know what "sixth grade level" actually is. They just know it means "a little".

Who cares how they're doing it in Albania? It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it.*

I DO know exactly what sixth grade level is. It means they can read simple paragraphs, but not critically. These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.

You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.

* To clarify - Reading levels in the United States have been declining at an alarming rate for a long time. They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since. You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato. Imagine applying those standards to a modern politician.

> Who cares how they're doing it in Albania?

It would be interesting comparison, actually. As interesting as French, Germany or whatever.

> It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it. [...] They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since.

I checked out tests and it is not true. Reading scores in 2022 were still higher then those in 1992. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

So, yeah, this would be an interesting historical comparison. It was worst most of the time.

> These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.

You are confusing two different things here. First off, highly educated people are in fact vulnerable to scammers ... frequently because of their own confidence.

> You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.

But issue in modern world are not people just dont make good decisions. It is people who make immoral decisions. Vance have good reading skills, but he is still a fascist.

> You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato.

This is not an example of mass of people using critical thinking and acting rationally. This is an example of blown up reaction ala Twitter mob latching on something trivial and making a big deal out of it. This is example of what happen when soundbite wins over substance.

I've been reading this topic for years. It is very common with a certain party that the other side votes against their interest, or is too dumb to vote (literacy).

You can also see it in race voting, where people will say a certain race is voting against their interest just to vote for someone with the same skin color.

It's actually a talking point that actively pushes people away from their cause.

Does this type of voting happen? Sure, but not enough to push elections. IMO it's people who are confused on why others don't think the same way as they do and try to justify why anyway they can, usually through derogatory remarks.

datsci_est_2015 explains it better than I would just a few comments down, but this isn't what I mean. I mean that people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in and are CONSTANTLY taken advantage of.

Bad thinkers make bad decisions, and are vulnerable to being manipulated in ways that good thinkers aren't. Try getting a mortgage or a car loan when you can't read complete paragraphs. Try investing your retirement properly. Try doing just about anything that modern adults are required to do. You're definitely going to pay a "stupid tax" throughout your entire adult life if you lack the ability to read critically.

People bemoan the death of journalism, but it's not the journalists fault. Did you know that USA Today was intentionally invented to be an alternative news source for people who couldn't read well? At the time it was bemoaned as the end of western civilization. Now it requires more of it's reader than the places people actually get their news from (Tik-Tok and Bathroom wall graffiti presumably).

FWIW - One side is objectively worse than the other, but it's not by a wide margin (a few basis points if I remember correctly) and it's probably just because one side lives in states that love to take the education budget and blow it on "more important" things.

> people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in

It is always funny to me that the people making this argument are usually also the people who would view a voting literacy test as abhorrent (not you, necessarily). To me, if we're assuming a large amount of people are too stupid to understand information or know what is good, then it follows that we oughtn't let them decide the direction of the country.

I am genuinely in favor of a brief standardized test in the voting booth, but I think most aren't, especially those who are the most vocal about voter illiteracy/ignorance/stupidity. Follow through with your beliefs, readers. Pick one: are they too stupid to vote, or aren't they? If they are, support a literacy test. If they aren't, stop the ugly rhetoric.

The problem with a test is whoever writes/grades the test can ensure people they don't like fail. Elections are often close enough that they only need to fail a few borderline (and pass on their sides) to control an election.

as such I'm forced to oppose all tests even though the idea isn't bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

The problem (like with voter ID laws in the US) is that it's a very slippery slope to voter suppression, and in the US we have a very creative history when it comes to voter suppression. You'd have poll workers who would present incredibly hard passages to read to voters based on a personal judgement call (read: black voters).

I (not OP) agree that dumb people voting is a problem but the alternative is to have arbitrary suppression of votes, which IMO is worse.

I don't know why objections to voting tests usually pretend we're in 1850. We have standardized tests, already, nationwide. It's a solvable problem. We wouldn't contingent a vote on a random poll worker's choice of passage to read.

A solvable problem, but someone chooses and implements the solution. Now imagine that person is from a party that you disagree with, and is highly motivated to find a way to tilt the playing field.

>We have standardized tests, already, nationwide.

And voting is legislated by individual states, that would theoretically implement their own standards though this may be intervened upon by the federal government). Heck, even standardized testing for students is done at a state level. The SATs/ACTs are privately administered. What example of a nationwide standardized test for literacy do you have?

Ironic misuse of apostrophe's.

> It's so simple: everyone is stupider than me. These are facts dontcha know. The science is on my side.

> Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.

I thought this was a joke. Like, holy shit I regret looking this up and finding out it's not BS

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/

America has enough power to help someone else. No one has the power to save America from itself.

The cavalry is not coming, and this fire is going to take its course.

One day, maybe we will rebuild from scratch.

> No one has the power to save America from itself.

Wrong!! Please don’t say that! We all have power inside the US. Congress had the opportunity in 2021 to correct the wrong, but Republicans kowtowed and they are still doing so. That was the easy way. Now for the hard way, American people will have to do something about it.

Edit: Grammar

We don't disagree. It is going to be us and only us.

> One day, maybe we will rebuild from scratch

The current situation is bad, but this is just doomerism.

The current administration will end. Trump can't live forever. His approval rating is already low and falling.

We're in for a bumpy ride, but then it's going to start reverting toward the mean. Not necessarily back to the way things were, but periods of extreme like this are followed by a reversion to the mean more often than not.

Always amusing. So sure. I like to imagine the conversations at the begining of the late bronze age collapse, or perhaps aristocrats of the western roman empire living in Gaul.

"To say anything that challenges the current trajectory is doomerism. We're in for a bumpy ride for sure, but this will all correct itself. _it has to_."

Trump is not the problem, he’s a symptom. The problem is the roughly one third of Americans who think he’s great, and to a lesser extent the roughly one third who don’t care.

After all that’s happened, his approval rating is still above 40%. Those people aren’t going away or changing their minds any time soon.

That is the truly scary thing.

And from what I've seen, the rest of 'the west' has similarly sized undercurrents of similar sentiment.

Strangely, that 40% will be made up of, largely, people whose grandparents lived through WWII.

'Oh gramps, for once, stop talking about the war'.

People really don't want to hear those stories because it makes them uncomfortable. I'm in an absolute minority in that I wanted to hear the stories even if they made me uncomfortable. But the vast majority of the people would love to get through life without learning history's lessons and as a result are much more likely to repeat them.

Probably the mantra Chuck Schumer recites before sleep every night.

> periods of extreme like this are followed by a reversion to the mean more often than not.

Cite evidence please.

> The current administration will end

They way the current administration act, I start to think that their plan A is to stay for a long long time. There is so much open corruption that half of them would land in prison really quickly and they don't seem particularly bothered by that fact.

You're thinking about it with the wrong basis. They will not land in prison because they broke enough enforcement mechanisms to escape punishment. The administration will end, but the regime will not. Even if Trump died tomorrow, enough people have followed him through the holes he created that things will continue. You will of course have factions form and have those factions fight amongst eachother as they head off in their own directions, but the factions will exist in the first place. There is no way to stop them from forming and pursuing their goals without building new enforcement mechanisms, which they will obviously and vehemently impede the construction of. These people will likely die of age before they spend even a second getting a burning hot de-lousing shower and an orange one piece. This has happened every two decades in the U.S. since Reconstruction was sabotaged and prematurely ended.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-house-republicans-if-...

They know, and they will do everything in their power to stop the next presidential election from being a fair one.

I have no problem building from scratch.

Happy to show everyone how to do that.

> Trump can't live forever.

Trump is a symptom of the problem, not the actual problem.

Five people are voting on what to have for dinner. Three people vote for pizza. Two people vote for "You three." Pizza has won, but there is still a massive problem in that room.

Gonna have to force-feed them enough pizza, maybe tricking them that it's causing the other three great pains to give it to them. Fortunately, it's been shown that these people are very easily tricked.

I don't think you can really state that right now as certainty, it's becoming part of the illusion of continuity, this administration has shown how fragile the institutions holding American democracy together are.

The Pandora's box has been opened, it's not doomerism to see how unprecedented actions have been taken by this administration and not be sure of what's come next, you've never lived through something like that.

I had much more trust in your institutions a year ago, after 2025 I really do not believe the USA will be able to revert toward the mean anytime soon. The ultimate test for it will be the midterms, if the election this year goes well without a hiccup it might signal there is some institutional power still left in American democracy; on the other hand if there are hiccups, meddling by the federal government, and its allies (including the rich elite behind a lot of these people), it will just cement my opinion that the USA's democracy is in a death spiral.

But don't be so trusting, the cracks are obviously showing and are being exploited, just wishful thinking won't help at all your society at this moment, it's better to be a bit more doomerist and act against these actions rather than just "trusting the process" because if you end up losing the process the bottom will fall out.

I hope the OC said that in good faith, but I have my doubts. I think it's just a gentle way to accuse people like you and I of having Trump Derangement Syndrome.

We're still fixing the problems from Reagan. The USA and the world will be feeling the aftershocks 100 years from now.

And the planet is still feeling the after affects of British colonialism. That's how the future works, it's affected by the past.

The problem is that a lot of what is happening is within the executive branch's power and/or democratic. A nontrivial number of Americans support everything that has been happening. The expectation at a time like this would be that you have checks and balances working, but all other branches have yielded their power. I find that jaw dropping personally, but it's where we are. Midterms are happening soon and are the right place to disrupt congress.

There's basically nothing the American people can do short term.

The US government is entirely non-responsive and only nominally representative.

Barring a wave of Republican retirements in the House, the absolute soonest there are any guardrails are after the 2026 midterms when a new congress is seated in 2027.

Gerrymandering, infinite lobbying corruption, and manufactured consent are supposed to keep the populace doing and thinking what the 1% want, and cheating to help them. They can't even do those properly anymore with vast resources. Perhaps billionaires and failed celebrity reality stars don't make the best public administrators.

Of course there’s, it’s just that anti-Trump people don’t care as much and are not as brave as the pro-Trump people. MAGA people stormed the capitol, anti-Trump people just write well thought concerns on the internet. MAGA people for years endured deplatforming and being outcasts but developed methods to deal with it, the anti-Trump people are scared to lose what they have and are too concerned about their differences within and they are unable to build anything. It’s people with nothing to lose and everything to gain vs people with everything to lose and nothing to gain from having a fight.

Those who stormed the Capitol did it because they were against the current course of affairs. Are the anti-Trump people ever going to do something like that if they are against the current course of events? I don’t think so.

Consequently, Trump will win. That’s why people who control the capital are aligned with MAGA.

The pro-Trump group don't think about consequences is the thing. The anti-Trump group do, and that's a big reason why they're slow to respond. Performing a siege on the Capitol was a stupid, angry, and impulsive reaction with no thought of the consequences afterwards. That's the way the entire pro-Trump group tends to act. Meanwhile the anti-Trump group think about knock-on effects and long term consequences because they understand that nothing is an island and that everything is connected to everything else, even through degrees of separation. It makes them hesitant to do anything right away because they first have to consider what the ripples are going to affect outside of the area of their immediate focus. One group is reactive and the other is proactive, and being proactive is always going to be slower.

I think it is much simpler than that: creation takes time, destruction is fast.

I don't think that's it. It has more to do with something to lose or not.

"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose"

Liberals are generally more empathetic towards others and have good intentions when protesting. However if they have a comfortable life they will back down very quickly when faced with force. Just my opinion, could be wrong.

People are out there protesting right now even though ICE and the police have a history of shooting unarmed protestors. Leftists protestors are and always have been more harshly treated by this government than the other side.

> People are out there protesting right now even though ICE and the police have a history of shooting unarmed protestors

I never understand what's the point of those protests. They should be taking over power by force or GTFO. Notice that successful revolutions storm the HQ, destroy some building of iconic significance or kill/capture the leader, not just enduring the atrocities of the foot-soldiers of the people who they are against.

The peaceful protest thing works when the people in the HQ care about what you think about them, which means it only works if those protesting are their people and not the opposition.

The lefties should start taking notes on what works and what the far right did to gain so much power and start stealing their methods. Display of dissatisfaction isn't going to work, if anything that dissatisfaction is satisfaction to the right wingers. They feel giddy when see the people they hate protesting, their only complain can be that the protests are not big enough.

> destroy some building of iconic significance

I think you have the parties confused there.

> I never understand what's the point of those protests.

For one, it's about showing politicians just how unpopular these policies are. If you can convince a large enough swath of Republican congressmen their seats aren't so secure, they may start to break with the administration.

On the more extreme end: I doubt many of the protesters are familiar with it, but there is a 3.5% rule[1] in political science that states when nonviolent protestors grow to about 3.5% of the population, authoritarian regimes become likely to fall from power.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule

If anyone is doubting this, look at how the police treat "ecoterrorists" versus mass shooters. Ecoterrorists in quotes because the real ecoterrorists are those polluting and destroying the planet for money, not a group of people that stop a machine from raping the land.

A big difference is that if anti-Trump protesters tried to storm the Capitol like MAGA did, they would be shot dead.

There are still some things. A handful of court cases have gone against the trump admin and they have (in many cases) respected them. For example, the suits against national guard deployments in chicago. Donating to organizations using the courts to leverage the law against the trump administration does have material effects.

The senate can also still hold some things up. If you have a senator who keeps voting for trump's judicial appointments or you have a senator who is in leadership then yelling at them to stop letting trump's judicial appointments sail through is important. The fact that the dems are not using every procedural step to slow down the process is ridiculous.

> There's basically nothing the American people can do short term.

If there are ICE agents in your area follow and film them. Create evidence of their jackboot tactics.

Most folks do not like force/violence, and the more people see the jackboot policies and actions of one side, the more folks will lean towards the side(s) that are against those policies.

58% of Americans were okay with goverment shooting at protesting students at Kent State shooting.

The source for this [1] is more nuanced (someone can be both "not okay" with it while also blaming the victims), but it's true that survey respondents were five times more likely to blame the students than the National Guard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings#cite_note...

53% of Americans say that the ICE agent for shooting the woman in Minneapolis:

* https://xcancel.com/YouGovAmerica/status/2010853750618063016

In a different poll 53% say Trump is doing "too much" to deport illegal immigrants (up from 44% in March):

* https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/15/growing-s...

Not doing much. Playing PC games and watching the world burn. Not much I can do.

Just bought a new 5080 this week. Hoping I can hunker down in my cave for the next couple years and see what's left of the world in 2030.

Oh yea, beer, lots of beer.

We vote. That’s all we can do. 50.5% of the people voted for this insanity in 2024. We can only hope they see how this is going and vote differently in 2026 and beyond.

Was it not 49.9%?

It was a larger majority of electoral votes though, which is how we elect presidents

The comment was clearly about popularity, not electoral college votes.

You know what you are right. I think I was basing my numbers on old data during the election. The world, science, and reason was destroyed due to 49.8% vs. 48.3% in the popular vote.

39% of the country still approves of him and his fractal waterfall of disaster. So many people, and so many now gifted power and immunity to swing it at dissenting voices. That's a lot of inertia.

In the "First They Came" poem, we're already at white Christian mothers, and it's not moving the needle. I'm not sure why there isn't more talk of succession on the coasts but at this pace, it feels inevitable.

How many people have sat down and "war gamed" this out? e.g.

Let's say that opposition to... Trump's unilateral rule, disregard for the constitution, interference with free and fair elections, building a private army and using it increasingly against immigrants and citizens alike, as long as they are "opposition" to Trump, etc... decides to get as organized and impactful as possible? What does that look like?

Some kind of public, open communication portal? A closed sign-up portal where you have to put in your information?

Some kind of plan to put a lot of bodies in one place? Peaceful protest? Armed and violent protest? (Literally insurrection against the authoritarian regime.)

Even the peaceful protest option which is scattered across 50 states, hundreds of cities, has resulted in some violent reaction by Trump's army, National Guard, even local law enforcement.

What are next steps for the American people?

I think those that are protesting by trying to keep it peaceful are holding onto hope that power is still somewhat distributed, and that elections still function enough to displace Trump loyalists (MAGA / Republicans) with Democrats that have at least paid lip service to being opposed to Trump. And maybe given a majority in Congress, they could at least enact impeachment.

But what else are the American people meant to do?

I fear we are headed towards world war, something bigger than America.

Time to get your PAL buddy

Complain to our representatives who will do absolutely nothing because the system is ripe for abuse and we’ve put people who actively want to abuse and exploit it into office.

I keep telling everyone and have been for a year, it’s not just our problem, due to global US positioning it’s now a world problem. Just ask Venezuela. Regardless of what you think about the end result the ends did not justify the means.

I for one will be collecting my (completely legal) hunting rifles and weapons I’ve had in storage since I was a kid, have them professionally serviced and grab some ammunition, on the terrible case I need to defend myself which I thought I’d never ever have to consider and I’d just sell them some day. But alas we have a lot of really really stupid as well as downright toxic voters in this country.

You’re all tooling up to defend against your neighbours instead of the people causing the political instability.

The outcome of this is all too predictable.

Nothing? Trump is playing freeway chicken with Powell, he's driving a Pontiac Fiero and Powell is driving a bulldozer. The Supreme Court has already signaled that they're not on board fucking with the Fed. This will potentially cost Trump his next Fed nomination for awhile, because GOP Senators are putting a hold on his nominations until the legal stuff resolves.

It's nothing. In a sane country Trump would have been impeached many months (or even years) ago and would have never managed to get a second chance at this.

If the continuation of the USA hinges on Powell the man should be given a spot on mt. Rushmore, but I don't think that it is going to happen. Congress and the senate are for the most part filled with people that are too afraid to act. And in the meantime a lot of other crazy stuff will happen (just look at the last 30 days) to push this out of the public eye.

He was impeached years ago…

When a sentence has two clauses connected by “and” both of them must be true for the whole sentence to be true.

> He was impeached years ago…

"was impeached" means different things in context.

Sometimes it means "articles of impeachment were brought against an official". (1) i.e. that the process starts.

Sometimes it means a later stage in the process, such as those article not being voted down, and a trial proceeding.

In the strictest sense, it means that the process completes - "the official is found guilty, removed from office, and may never hold office again".

Parent comment seems to be using the strictest sense, due to "and would have never managed to get a second chance". You're not helping by using a confusing different meaning.

https://www.usa.gov/impeachment

If you're going to be nitpicky about definitions it helps to be correct. In this case, the person you're replying to is absolutely correct.

The government site you linked says the same thing:

> If the House adopts the articles by a simple majority vote, the official has been impeached.

Trump has been impeached twice. I think the confusion comes in when people misuse these terms, often when they want to say things like "Trump was never impeached!". He definitely was by the only definition that actually matters, which is that the House passed articles of impeachment. He was not found guilty.

Call me old fashioned, but I think these confusions are intentional and should be met with correcting the definitions - not making up new meanings of words - especially in this case where it's formally defined in the law.

OK, though I refer you to the sibling comment about the use of "and" in sentences.

I was just nitpicking the nitpicking, especially the implication that using a word correctly is confusing the issue. The sentiment in the original sentence is straightforward to understand, even if the sentence is a bit ambiguous.

impeached and acquitted at trial

They are headed for complete fascist take over. Going through a phase that Europeans went through a century ago, end up destroying themselves.

It’s very concerning that they have nukes. JD Vance said something about the risks UK and France owning nukes, I think he just wanted to start the conversation because I think he believes that it’s actually US that is the risk. We know that the guy is not actually a Trump ideology zealot from his pre-Trump alignment.

I think it'd be a mistake to assume that JD Vance is not exactly what he portrays himself as at this point. He certainly seems onboard with everything thats happening and is happy to defend it and push the boundaries for more lawlessness.

I agree but IMHO he is not in for the ideology of it, therefore he might prefer not to destroy the world for ideological gains.

I'm not sure...

My read is that Vance may be a pure opportunist. He may be doing what he has to in order to stay in Trump's good graces, because that's where power is right now. But I've seen him put out very quiet "yeah, that's the administration's position, but I don't actually agree with it" messages once or twice.

I don't think he's someone who is under sway of the Trump cult of personality. I suspect that Vance's agenda is Vance.

> Going through a phase that Europeans went through a century ago, end up destroying themselves.

That's not history as I've been taught it since grade school.

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