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Comment by cal_dent | Hacker News Reader

The US drift into Adam Curtis' broad thesis in hypernormalisation(a) continues apace I see. Great to see J Pow putting up a fight but I fear this is all going one way.

(a) >We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing.

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> I fear this is all going one way

That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. They do it in Iran. The Republicans and MAGA movement have made changes that would have been unbelievable ten years ago.

Stated differently, if things really are so bad (and I would be the first to agree that things are pretty bad), then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day?

There are a lot of reasons for that, of course, but the bottom line is that when things get bad enough -- much worse than they are today -- then more people will take to the street, along with whatever sacrifice that entails. We're just not there yet, because for many, there is far too much to lose.

>then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day?

because a lot of people have a kind of built-in main character syndrome and believe they're the protagonists of the world and things can't really go bad. They haven't internalized that there isn't some god behind the curtain that saves them.

That's how it goes in every country that ends up in the dirt, they all thought they were special, they all thought "surely we're not there yet" and you can pick their remains out of the rubble.

relevant piece from a few years ago: https://indi.ca/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-...

Not sure being out in the street really does much. Gives the jack booted thugs an excuse for a little recreational violence.

A general strike might have an effect, but I'm not sure how you organize such a thing.

You can't, because everytime that happens, a group comes out of the woodworks that says X, Y, and Z need to be done before a general strike can even be considered.

X, Y, and Z usually involve community building, mutual aid, strike funds, housing security, and other precarity reducing actions.

> Not sure being out in the street really does much.

I agree; this phrase was just a stand in for doing something -- anything -- about the state of affairs I don't like. Other than things I can do from my couch like commenting on HN.

If protests worked better than the alternatives then that's what megacorps and multinational corporations would be doing instead of bribes and lobbying. 'The people' still dont understand they're playing an entirely different sport.

A general strike at the level required to change things requires roping in unwilling participants as well. Probably on the scale of breaking infrastructure like payment systems or over the road shipping. If nobody can ignore current events because it's not just impacting but impeding and quickly degrading their quality of life they'll get angry. However just so long as people can go home and play their videogames, or listen to their podcasts, or read their books, they'll be able to focus enough of their attention away from events and keep their stress below the critical threshold just enough that they won't do anything. Calhoun's Rat Utopia Experiment comes to mind in that the rats suffered any number of indignities, maladies, and stressors just so long as they had ample access to endorphin and melatonin sources in strong enough bursts to stave off the constant floods of cortisol and norepinephrine.

Political theory is that ten to fifteen percent of a given population needs to actively rebel in order to enact change in a nation. The U.S. is fragmented enough by distance that you would need at least thirty percent of the national population to reach this state in order to get the ten percent in each of the six regions. Currently the number of people protesting is thought to be around four to six percent nationally, meaning it's less than one percent regionally. Part of that is because it's January, and most large scale protests happen in late spring or in the summer because schools are out and the weather doesn't suck. But part of it is simply because not enough people are motivated to act. Either pessimism or lack of direct harm is keeping them from caring.

So no matter what you're going to have to piss some people off. But it'd be better to piss off the people who will share your goals and ask forgiveness, because the other group was pissed from the beginning and have no forgiveness to ask for.

The only option is to vote, if you block roads you will be labeled a domestic terrorist. Insurrection act? Things may get alot worse.

What are they going to do with all these holding cells when the immigrants are gone?

If you vote, the people you elect will ignore you. From your position as a private citizen there is nothing to hold your representatives responsible other than the possibility that their salaries and "campaign contributions" from lobbyists might stop. For many of these people they become incumbents because the voting population gives so little of a shit that they'll leave things as they are rather than spend the time and effort to research which candidate best aligns with their goals versus the incumbent. In actual use the only punishment mechanisms that exist have to be enacted by these representatives' direct peers rather than the people they represent, and as there are self levels of self interest that will dissuade them from doing so.

As for being labeled a domestic terrorist, the fools within this administration will use (and have used) any excuse to label someone as a domestic terrorist. In their view you are an enemy of the state regardless, because you are not the state. We are all in jeopardy no matter if we comply or not. If we will be labeled a threat because of any action we take, benign or malicious, then there is no practical fear of being labeled, only being captured and punished.

Shawn Fain, head of the UAW union, has already started calling for a general strike—in (IIRC) 2028.

Because that's how long it takes to organize one.

> Not sure being out in the street really does much. Gives the jack booted thugs an excuse for a little recreational violence.

"Let" them do the violence. And let the violence be filmed. And let the (currently) indifferent / apathetic folks see the violence being done.

This is one way to enact change: most folks have no interest in violence and abhor it. By showing that one side is 'pro-violence' in their policies and actions you give more power to the side(s) that are not violence.

People are taking to the streets. People are getting beaten, their property destroyed, their homes invaded and even murdered in Minneapolis as a result. The problem is that the US is massive; most people don't live in an active ICE zone where agents are going door to door kicking it in and pulling people out.

But even then, people are getting angrier. The injustices in Minneapolis triggered waves of protests here in Seattle. Eventually these things compound and more people become aware that we're living in the Great American Collapse.

People are, yes, but I'm not. I'm looking inward and trying to be honest about what it's going to take to get me on the street.

People are (and have been) taking to the streets. Americans tend to think that a protest must involve everyone otherwise it’s pointless. They don’t realize that protests typically involve a tiny fraction of the population. The more, the better of course, but stop sitting around waiting for it to get big. Either get out there now or find other ways to contribute. There’s plenty to be done.

There was a study a while ago, analyzing previous events to estimate which percentage of a population needs to become active to effect meaningful change. The number was surprisingly low, I think less than 5%.

It's about 3%, and the study had major flaws in its context; large westernized countries are out of scope. I don't remember paper, but I just lost this argument to a lawyer.

I was just talking to someone close to me about what to expect if (when?) Trump starts annexing Greenland. I truly believe a national strike is our best bet. But the reality is many (most?) people are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t risk that. But knowledge workers and especially software engineers can probably fare much better in the event of immediate job loss.

Now that’s not to downplay or minimize that risk, especially if you have a family, dependents, or some unique circumstance. But I’d hope for the majority of workers in our profession, it’s the difference between “I can’t buy food next week” vs “I have about 4-8 months before I’ve drained my liquid / emergency savings”

The sad thing is I don’t know what to do. Would this make headlines? Would they cover it? Would it get condensed into a single sound bite “big tech goes on strike”?

I’m conflicted but I feel like the choice should be obvious and simple. Just do it.

I will say upfront that I do not condone or support annexation of Greenland, but I have to ask why on earth you or anyone else think that would inspire any meaningful portion of the US population to organize a general strike?

Whatever happens in Greenland has no impact on at least 99.99% of the US population, and a general strike will have no impact on the small fraction of the US population that would support annexation.

A protest is meaningless without the implicit threat of violent revolution behind it. Trump et al can just ignore your protests, unless he thinks you might break in and start killing.

Today's protests have no teeth. Nobody is uncomfortable enough to risk prison or death. Seriously, if you turn off the TV and the Internet, what is wrong with your life? Is ousting Trump going to fix that? Is it worth dying for? Nope.

I feel like you shouldn't get to criticize protests for not being violent enough if you're not already performing sufficiently-violent protests. "Firebombing a Walmart" meme really is evergreen.

If food keeps going up, it might get there but in the affluent west we run on our stomachs and as long as most of the middle class can still afford bread there won't be enough of a mass mobilization to affect any meaningful change.

> There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history.

This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. They certainly can't claim they didn't know what they would get, and they seem unconcerned by any of these actions that many of us find terrifying.

It is difficult to see how we can democracy our way out of this situation.

Frankly I don’t think Trump 1 vs Trump 2 admin wise are the same. Many people were duped. They’re idiots, but not malicious idiots.

Plenty of them are malicious idiots. See quotes of them saying "They're hurting the wrong people"

You mean Boehbert, a congresswoman? Yeah she’s pretty awful.

> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.

This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.

Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when we consider our own votes, but it feels cathartic to force the claim on to the other side.

This administration's net approval rating flipped net negative very quickly after his election and has been trending downward. It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.

>> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.

> This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false.

And it's used to condemn and justify. Most politicians, including Democrats, like to pretend that winning means the unpopular policies they happen to like are the will of the people. They will constantly gaslight you on it.

In reality, American politics gives people coarse choices that few are entirely happy with and many are very unhappy with. It's really hard to justify radical partisan action without denying that fact.

It's true that partisan politics provides only coarse choices. That's true of America's bipartisan system as well as multiparty parliamentary systems. But the parties are still dynamic coalitions that can change dramatically over time. Just look at the difference between the 1950s Democrats vs the 2000s Democrats, or the 2015 Republicans vs the 2020 Republicans.

The coarse options that are available at election time can be massively influenced in the years leading up to the election.

> It's true that partisan politics provides only coarse choices. That's true of America's bipartisan system as well as multiparty parliamentary systems. But the parties are still dynamic coalitions that can change dramatically over time. Just look at the difference between the 1950s Democrats vs the 2000s Democrats, or the 2015 Republicans vs the 2020 Republicans.

You're missing my only point, which is how (say) a coarse 51% victory for a coalition gets frequently and deliberately misrepresented as "the American people" wanting that coalition's unpopular policies.

American politics isn't really about representing the American people, it's about minority ideological factions jockeying for power to subject the American people to their vision. Hence the rise of campaigning that's mostly attacking the opponent. A recent example is the Democrats vis-a-vis Trump: despite all their rhetoric, their behavior over the last decade belies an attitude that they think they use the repulsion he generates to avoid moderating themselves and still win.

>which is how (say) a coarse 51% victory for a coalition gets frequently and deliberately misrepresented as "the American people" wanting that coalition's unpopular policies.

I think the larger point is "we have 2 bad choices, but we chose the worse one". Because "both sides are the same".

> it's about minority ideological factions jockeying for power to subject the American people to their vision.

Yeah, the current vision unfortunately sucks much worse than status quo neoliberalism, though. But we overall chose that. People ignoring the issues with Trump only reinforces how bad things have gotten.

No matter who u vote for u always get a Neocon. - George Carlin

...and a neoliberal.

This is not a fallacy, simply an opinion you disagree with. But one which I strongly agree with.

I'm not American, and though I may not agree completely with the politicians I voted for, I have not been blindsided yet. The second election of Trump is a symptom of Americans either unable or unwilling to look beyond single issues or sports team politics.

To then turn around and act surprised is just a way to conveniently absolve themselves of the responsibility of electing him to begin with. If this wasn't the case, Trump voters themselves would be calling for his impeachment, not Democrat voters.

Approval rating means nothing if it enforces nothing.

If you're not American, then you may not understand the way the American voting system works.

We only have two parties. (Technically, there are some third parties, but they're effectively worse than negligible—voting for them is guaranteed to either do nothing or harm the cause you're interested in, unless the candidate is already a member of a major party and merely cross-endorsed.)

This means that if you care about one thing that one of the two major parties ostensibly supports (or is ostensibly better at than the other), more than any of the things on the other side, you have no choice: you have to vote for that party's candidate.

We also have a mainstream media landscape that is fully captured by the wealthy on the right. It is hard to overstate the extent to which our media carries water for the Republican Party.

And finally, we have absolutely abysmal civics education. It has been steadily gutted over the course of decades. To some extent, this is a deliberate move to make it easier to use the aforementioned media capture to control the average voter.

So if you're a low-information voter, you think the economy is bad, and you want to fix that, you're going to vote for the candidate of the major party that media has been telling you for 50 years is the party that's good at the economy, despite the fact that every time they're in office the debt goes up, regular people's lives get worse, and more protections go out the window.

That is exactly the problem. The first past the post single representative systems all have this feature. It seems almost inevitable that they will just because of that. Some sort of representative system will reduce this disconnect between what voters want and what they get because it allows more parties to flourish. The downside is that you end up with coalition governments. These are seen as “weak” although I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

> If you're not American, then you may not understand the way the American voting system works.

This is incredibly unlikely, given how pervasive American politics is, and how much the results of the American elections affects the rest of the world. Additionally, having a two party system is unfortunately pretty common.

As a german, i can assure you, GPs comment was spot on and is very transferable to germany, no matter how many serious parties are listed on the ballots. Its is the elites, slowly undermining democracies and public/private institutions all over the western world in similar ways.

I've seen plenty of comments from people outside the US that clearly don't understand how the US system works. For that matter, that's not limited to people outside the US.

I've talked with a number of people online from Europe (particularly the UK) who came in with the assumption that a parliamentary system was the default. (I don't consider this a mark against them: everyone is likely to start out with the assumption that the first thing they learn about is the default. They were just part of that day's lucky 10,000.)

There are a great many reasons why people might misunderstand why so many people voted for Trump, and most of them start with assuming your own experience is universal, at least in certain realms. I suspect that, for people outside the US, not really understanding our voting/electoral system is one of the top ones, and it's a very understandable one. I prefer to go for it first, because the one I consider next most likely is a bit less charitable: assuming that everyone shares your privileges. (ie, "surely no one could possibly be so uneducated as to think that Trump was anything but a liar and a fascist." Buddy, you can't even imagine how bad the American education system can be, or how hard it is to care about anything other than the bare necessities when you're poor...)

… TBC

You're missing some history that pushed former Democratic vorers to vote Trump. Taxpayer funding of NGOs that were writing grants to organizations that were effectively censoring onlinespeech. This and the Disinformation Board, and the direct phone calls from US senators and Congressmen to takedown opposition ideas n social media was a direct attack on the First Amendment by the Democrats. Yes Trump's FCC threats over Jimmy Kimmel were also wrong, but he didn't have a government agency doing it to citizens. Trump ended that system. Also, DNC threw working class under the bus and chastise them for leaving the party that screwed them. If sports team politics is what you're hearing, you're being lied to.

This “both sides” bullshit is so tired. You’re exaggerating and misleading with most of this, but even if all of this was true, it represents about a week’s worth of what Trump has done. They just shot a woman in the face, immediately started calling her a terrorist, and show no intention of even investigating it. I don’t give a single fuck about the DNC “chastising” someone when held up against this kind of slide into fascism.

Peek mind virus would be now, to dismiss your rebuttal as "extreme left censorship" or something and not think further about anything you brought up. I have seen this delusional behavior too many times, it is really tiring.

So your theory is that this thing that nobody has ever heard about is what pushed voters?

>>Yes Trump's FCC threats over Jimmy Kimmel were also wrong, but he didn't have a government agency doing it to citizens.

so in this sentence do you think the FCC isn't a government agency or that Jimmy Kimmel isn't a citizen?

He's clearly alluding the fact that the Biden admin did far worse.

The great sin of Trump's FCC was a single ill-advised tweet by FCC chair Brendan Carr... in which he threatened to enforce the law as written. For comparison, the Biden admin's FBI actively engaged in purely political media manipulation in service of the sitting president's campaign, such as when they lied to Facebook (and presumably others) to "prebunk" the Hunter's Laptop story, which directly lead to a near-total ban of a factual news story.

He wrote that the FCC wasn't a government agency. Hard to argue that is correct, or that their political pursuit of one of trump's "enemies" isn't actually political.

It was more that a tweet no, but an interview with Benny johnson, an avowed political figure paid by Russians at one point?

> He wrote that the FCC wasn't a government agency. Hard to argue that is correct

You're harping on a detail that hardly matters in order to avoid the broader point, which is rather silly. The FCC is a government agency. Brendan Carr made an ill-advised tweet, which doesn't hold a candle to Biden's use of the FBI to spread misinformation and induce censorship for political purposes.

> or that their political pursuit of one of trump's "enemies" isn't actually political.

Of course it's political. It's political when both sides do it.

> ...paid by Russians at one point

Ah, I see that I'm wasting my time here.

>Ah, I see that I'm wasting my time here.

When you're ignoring the comment talking about people arrested for criticizing a political pundit to argue about minutae and claiming "both sides are bad", yes.

You got me. I am avoiding the comment about the Perry County Police Department, as it's so incredibly damaging to my worldview. The cognitive dissonance is simply too great to bear.

I feel it bears repeating, Benny Johnson has been paid a lot of Russian money.

You're joking right? People got arrested and jailed for posting a Kirk meme https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...

Let's not even talk about all the other rhetoric of arresting and even killing people who voiced different opinions coming from the current regime.

> You're joking right? People got arrested and jailed for posting a Kirk meme https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail

How are the actions of the Perry County Police Department relevant to this conversation?

> Let's not even talk about all the other rhetoric of arresting and even killing people who voiced different opinions coming from the current regime.

Hysterical nonsense.

Someone would have have to be deeply ignorant to think that Donald Trump, notorious for his numerous lawsuits and public threats to silence any critique of himself in the press, and whose campaign was coordinating with Twitter to take down posts while he was sitting president (just as the Democrats were, but they weren't in office) would champion Free Speech in any, way, shape or form.

I'm convinced that abortion is the worst thing the Democratic party could have ever taken up. You simply cannot sway a vote of a person who believes you support murdering babies. (I am pro abortion, but a substantial amount of people think it is morally murder.) Those people have to vote R their whole life no matter what. Nothing is worse than murdering babies.

Democrats would probably never lose again if they publicly dropped support for abortion.

Throwing an awful lot of maternal lives away for that one.

Similar story for lots of other unpopular issues, like the Civil Rights act.

Well you can be right, or you can win. This thread is a consequence of being right.

Well, some people can win. Other people will simply die of massive blood loss. As long as it's not you, right?

If Roe v. Wade is gone now, what point are you trying to make?

Roe v. Wade isn't gone because of the will of the people. Nobody voted to overturn it. It's gone because of a unique scenario involving the balance of power in the SCOTUS.

Congressional Republicans simply refused to confirm a legally appointed justice, allowing a conservative justice to be appointed in their place after the next POTUS was elected. Then, another liberal justice passed away creating another vacancy which was again filled by a conservative. If either or both of those things hadn't happened, Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned.

And sure, you can say it was the will of the people that a conservative was in office at the time, and appointed the justices, but that's not the same as voting for or against federal abortion rights.

Appointing judges to overturn Roe v. Wade was a focal point in the 2016 election. Dangling that possibility was the entire point of the confirmation shenanigans.

"Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that ... will happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court" https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trumps-justices-dec...

So, we've seen large disproportionate electoral success from pro-life democrats? Referenda protecting abortion rights in red states were totally crushed?

Wait no. That's not what has happened.

Further, democratic voters are democrats because they support the policies that the democratic policy supports. Democrats suddenly being down with a federal ban on abortion isn't going to exactly get pro choice dems (the huge majority of their voting population) to run to the polls.

Dems tried the "actually we are right wing too" approach on immigration. Do people who hate illegal immigrants vote dem now? No.

So many people didn't vote for the Democrats in 2024 because they didn't support Palestine and they lost as a result. If the Democrats become identical to the Republicans then why would any non-Republican even bother voting?

You are so correct in your first statement yet imply something in your second I think is so incorrect in a wider context that it strikes me like whiplash.

Paying lip service but not addressing that friction was a significant part of what killed the Harris campaign, IMO.

well yes. That's the big issue. Trump didn't get more votes, Harris got drastically less than Biden. People didn't come out.

She had a bad hand needing to start out 6 months into an election cycle, and she played it poorly to boot. That's why this "we need to appeal to moderates/right wing" narrative is so frustrating. That's exactly what Harris did by trying to downplay Palestine/defend Israel and refusing to talk about the tensions in the job market. She established herself as "more of the same". That doesn't win votes in increasingly bad times.

Where "the same" meant "who knows who's actually running the country". Let's at least be honest about that part.

They were generally good at making sure whoever is "really running the country" stayed in the Lawful Evil alignment. If the trump regime was smarter we may have been truly cooked.

Instead we have cartoon supervillains trying to pick fights with our allies in the open, and police openly shooting citizens. Pretty hard to defend that.

Abortion is an emblematic example of how this kind of triangulation doesn't do what you're expecting. The Democratic party didn't take abortion up on the federal stage, repeatedly declining to create any new statutory protections and endorsing things like the Hyde amendment that acknowledge it's a contested issue. I think that was probably the right decision even in retrospect, but it didn't earn them even a modicum of goodwill from anti-abortion advocates.

You simply can't convince the public that your party doesn't stand for things your members care deeply about.

I mean, everyone knows that D widely supports abortion. It's been shouted from the rooftops for decades. It wouldn't be very believable in one cycle even if they tried, which they didn't; neglecting to bring up the topic is not close to publicly dropping support. Part of why it's so bad for them is because it will be very difficult to get disentangled from it.

From a pro-life perspective, "well they didn't make it easier to murder babies or bring it up much" is not compelling.

To me your phrase "publicly dropped support for abortion" sounds like "neglecting to bring up the topic". If you mean that Democratic leaders should somehow convince their members to support abortion restrictions that they oppose, I'm not sure why you would presume that's possible.

I'm imagining a candidate saying something like, "I want to help America with x y z [blue team related] issues. I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters. To that end, I vow to not support any measures for the expansion of abortion. I believe that right now it's more important to help Americans in other ways. This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z."

Maybe Democrats would never vote for this, but that's kind of the problem.

Again, Democratic politicians routinely made such statements in the era before Roe was overturned. The longstanding Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from being used in any way to expand, promote, or perform abortions. There was just no way to get around the fundamental problem that, to a critical mass of Republican voters, "I'd like to maintain the status quo so we can focus on other issues" was an unacceptable pro-abortion stance.

Please link to one such statement.

The official Democratic platform for every cycle from 1976 to 2000 (except 1984-88 when abortion was not mentioned at all) explicitly acknowledged that abortion was controversial, that abortion opponents were welcome in the party, and that decreasing the number of abortions that are necessary is a worthy goal. The issue got more polarized when it became clear that no compromise or detente less than overturning Roe v. Wade would ever be accepted. I don't know of any specific pledges not to expand abortion access, again because the Hyde amendment prevented any proposals to expand abortion access.

>I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters.

Anyone saying this in 2026-2028 is going to be eviscerated by democrats. The bridge was long burned and now they are throwing citizens into the burning wreck. You don't "bridge the aisle" with people who threaten your life.

Also, anyone who wants to protect kids but isn't pushing the Epstein files to be released spoke wide and loud on what they really care about. So many motte and baileys out there.

> This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z

I'm curious: Where does your line of thought actually end? Do you agree that they should perhaps meet Republicans in the center around vaccine issues and dismantle vaccine requirements? What about issues of climate change? Corruption?

It ends when they can win powerful majorities in elections again. What I said is only controversial because the topic is relatively well supported. But if you look at it as a party supporting a topic that is preventing them from winning elections, it doesn't really matter what that topic is, they need to rethink their platform until they can win elections again.

It might sound unsavory to say that they should drop <issue you think is important>, like climate change, but if that were genuinely the reason they're losing then of course they should drop it. The alternative is you just have a party of ideologues with no power. They can still do good things without doing <important thing>.

I just don't think any issue is as contentious as abortion, or having as much of an effect, because you can hold your nose about a lot of things, but not about 'murdering babies'. Again, this is a moral hard line that a lot of people have. They seriously think that Democrats are ontologically evil because of this; it's far beyond the political. I don't think they need to drop those things you listed from the platform because I don't think it would help them win.

From talking with Republican or centrist or ex-democrat peers and family, some of them would vote Democrat "if they stop killing babies", and others would "if they stopped the racial shit". I've never heard anyone say such a thing about anything you listed.

I asked you, specifically, where your line was at. If the dems were losing because they thought people getting shot in the street by government agents were bad, should they instead say 'actually, a little murder is alright'? What about gay marriage? First amendment rights?

The notion that they should compromise with people whose ideals align with literally killing people or taking away rights is a notion I reject. I will never, ever vote for a democrat that compromises in the way you suggest so they can choose which side they want to try and get votes from.

Well I typically vote Republican, so I can only speculate. But let's imagine that 70% of people support ICE, and those people would never ever vote against ICE, because they think that is evil; everything else is the same.

In such a world, the Dems have no power, because they get 30% of the vote at most. They should stop fighting ICE so that they can at least do something on their agenda. The choice is between passing some good legislation unrelated to ICE, or never being able to pass any legislation. Obviously the former is better.

At the end of the day it's a democracy. The people vote for what they want, and then get it. The people originate the ideas that are available to be implemented. The notion of a democratic representative refusing to do what is needed to get votes is meaningless. It's the notion of a political idea that is refusing to be believed in, so must become irrelevant.

Anyway, your whole train of thought presupposes correctness and righteousness and that change to certain things is not on the table. If somehow the Democrats shrunk to the size of the Libertarian party because they held onto all that, you could keep voting for them, but real politics continues without you. I am suggesting they change before that shrinkage occurs, not after or never.

But your whole train of thought presupposes that activism can't change people's support and votes. The hypothetical you're describing played out with gay marriage over the past few decades, and the folks on the 30% side of the issue won completely - gay marriage is now completely legal, supported by a majority in every state, and so well-established that opposing it would be electoral poison.

True and good point, however I do not believe that activism can change anyone's support for abortion, for reasons I've stated. That specifically is a special case. Maybe it can implant ideas into the youth so they don't need their minds changed, but that's a long game.

I don't know that opinion numbers really back that up: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...

i.e. Abortion is generally supported by 63% of the overall population, 85% of Democrats and 67% of moderate/liberal Republicans. I don't see how you'd ever convince Democrats to drop it to cater primarily to conservative republicans.

being against abortion is equivalent to condemning women to death when their pregnancy is going wrong.

you see how moral absolutes (don't) work?

That was the point. democrats often point out those rare cases where the womens life is in danger and then use that as the absolute we must allow all abotions. Nobody will argue for the compromise and so you lose a lot who won't acpept the absolute.

any bill to ban abortions (because "muh sacred life") should include funding for childcare, medical coverage, and school lunches. Pro-lifers are unfortunately only pro births when it comes to voting.

That does not follow. That you think it does shows how little you understand the complexity of what people think.

Oh yeah, the people of "my God says it's murder, therefore you can't do it" are well known for subtlety and complexity of thought.

It isn't just God says so. There are moral arguements against murder other than God.

it's not murder. it's a ball of cells. they only call it murder because their god allegedly grants a soul upon masturbation or something.

We had a working compromise for decades.

>rare cases where the womens life is in danger

well you saying this shows just how ignorant people are on pregnancy. I guess that's by design to pitch to people that "Abortion kills babies".

This has the same energy as "Democrats would fair better if they let slavery be legal again". Aren't democrats critisized by their actual voter base by trying to continually appeal to a party that will never vote for them? It really just shows that the major parties are either center right or far right.

In this case the candidate they voted for was a convicted criminal and pathological liar.

Dishonesty is the through line of Trump’s entire life. There was no reasonable expectation his second term would bring anything else. Anyone expressing buyer’s remorse at this point is impossibly naive.

If there was ever a quintessential American quality, "impossibly naive" would be it.

Yes, Trump is now unpopular. But.

> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?

If we are talking about past culpability, this one does not works at all. Trump is being exactly who he was and what he campaigned on. This is not the case of someone switching up after being elected. This is case of who openly or tacitly supported Trump, because they thought they will personally benefit on top of having fun of watching liberals suffer.

By tacitly I mean all those bad faith "both sides" and "Trump is dove, Harris is aggressive". As an example, Latino Trump voting men were attracted by the misogynistic and male dominance content. They thought they wont be personally affected. Rural people still cheer to occupation and terrorization of cities ... and still think they are the only true Americans. They though they will be able to keep their farms like the last time. And so on and so forth.

People knew full well what is going on when they were hiding behind euphemisms about conservatives and blamed liberals when those said the truth. They just liked the project and thought they will be affected only a little.

The most compelling and resounding message of his campaign was that he promised to grief MAGA's perceived enemies.

Whatever stuff he said in his stump speeches about foreign policy, domestic policy, economic policy, whatever, was largely ignored by his base. The real reason they voted for him (and the reason they still support him) was his promise of cruelty and to hurt people they didn't like, and that's the one promise he is delivering on and boasting about every day.

When brown immigrants' doors are kicked in, people are black-bagged and dragged away in an unmarked van, when families are torn apart, when "city people" get shot and are crying on TV, that's what really gets MAGA motivated and that's what keeps them excited about politics.

> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future.

You can look back on everything Trump said and campaigned on. He's a liar, a cheat, and a fraud but he openly campaigned on making people suffer, hurting specific groups and demolishing the government. The people either voted for him assuming he was blustering about his claims or liked what he was going to do. There's countless examples of people who when asked why they regret voting for Trump, they say because he's 'hurting the wrong people', while also saying that they would gladly vote for him again.

Trump still has plenty of support from large swathes of Americans despite his increasingly more overt actions.

For many, he _is_ doing what he was elected to do. This _is_ what the American voter wants. The American voter wants illegal immigrants out, does not care how it happens. They also want cheap oil and are willing to overlook the implications of international military action if it means they get it. They also don't care about the environment enough to curb their consumption or invest in alternative energy sources.

These preferences are all aligned with Trump's actions.

All true but what about his proposal to increase defense spending by a Whopping $500 Billion?

Are his supporters 'down' with that?

Is Congress down with that? Down enough to actually pass a budget that contains it?

Immigration, no. Oil, maybe. I don't think any of congress wants to risk escalation to a war on top of all the situations stacked up today.

As long as it hurts "those people" more than it hurts them... hell, yeah!

MAGA is not about policy, it's about stigginit. To borrow a line from Anthony Burgess, it's old age having a go at youth.

His supporters are down with whatever he says needs to be done. It's about him--there's no ideological consistency at all. As long as he's for it today, his supporters are for it today. If he's against it tomorrow, they will immediately fall in line and be against it tomorrow.

This is why he's a Republican. He said it in his book (who knows if he actually wrote it) that if he ever ran, he'd run as a Republican because they don't think, they just fall in line.

... and many just post-hoc rationalize their already irrational decision to vote for him. If you would ask them, illegal farm workers are still very welcome in red states, i guess.

Minnesota occupation is not about illegal immigration. It is about terrorizing a blue city. It is about terrorizing non whites regardless of citizenship.

I agree that Trump voters want that. But, we should not lie about them caring about illegal immigration or "not caring about the method".

They care. If Trumps thugs murder, beat or kidnap people, if non whites and suspect liberals suffer, they actually prefer it. Trump voters prefer it when an agent throws a tear gas into a car or on the crowd just as a goodbye package.

> They also want cheap oil

Oil is so cheap, oil companies are slightly at loss when producing it.

> It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval

Then how is it being reflected in Congress? Where are the Republicans speaking loudly on behalf of their dissatisfied constituents and voting on bills accordingly? We shouldn't have to wait every two years for a midterms or general election for the negative approval rating to make itself known, politicians can choose any time to act in a way that shows they're listening to their constituents.

He just explained how it works for the presidency, why is it so hard to extend that logic to other elected officials?

they're basically fucked. they can't turn against Leader, because their base would abandon them immediately. But they desperately wish they could hold him back, because they are well aware they are going to get creamed in November.

as far as "bills", there's no bills because that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).

> their base would abandon them immediately...they are going to get creamed in November.

These seem contradictory. So they risk losing their voters if they oppose Trump, but also know voters will vote them out?

>that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).

That's part of why we've had so many forced votes around Johnson.

And I guess we'll see in Novemeber which branch is true. Either the R's are safe and the voter base is strong/popular enough to keep them in, or they are actually unpopular and at best scared of Trump (and at worst, super loyalist) and they will go down with the ship.

their base alone is not big enough to give them electoral victory. they always need more. but they need the base too. Because of Trump's lawlessness, they can't have both, hence you see a lot of retirements etc. this year.

> Then how is it being reflected in Congress?

“What people support” and “what politicians do” isn’t as strongly correlated as one might hope.

He is the most popular Republican president, among other Republicans, we have had in our lifetime. Anecdotal: I live in a red state with red friends and red family. They might not like this or that but they are unwavering in their support for Trump the man. It is still very uncomfortable to say even the most superficially negative thing about him or his policies. So, maybe there is some internal dialog going on there that I'm not privy to, but outwardly the support is 100% there, and that is all that really matters.

How does downvoting this person's statement of fact help? Trump owns the Republican Party now. He's gone well beyond mere approval.

What you observe is cognitive dissonance resolved by ignorance. I dont have any advice for you, since i dont know your close ones, but a warning. When these conflicts dont get resolved in a constructive way, this behavioral conditioning might lead to repulsion targeting you. I have lost a long time childhood friend, even though my approach to him was always calm but persistent for over a decade.

Yes. The hardest thing about all of this is watching people I've known for years defend the indefensible. It is really difficult to stomach hearing your grandma call for the insurrection act.

What do you feel makes their support so unwavering? Are they fine with anything as long as they feel the "bad people" are hurt? Do they genuinely see themselves getting richer? Do they simply only watch Fox News and other conservative media and never consider what's happening in their neighborhood?

There are as many answers to that are there are Trump supporters I know. These aren't stupid or evil people, and I don't think its as nefarious the things you are suggesting, at least in most cases. On the other hand, as I sit here and try to answer your question, I can't come up with anything that paints anyone in a very good light and I just end up with more questions.

Ultimately I think there is a common personality trait that allows a person to rationalize pretty much anything. And I think most people have that personality trait. Maybe I do for all I know.

The exchange in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls always comes to mind:

    “But are there not many fascists in your country?"
    "There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes.”

I agree with your sentimen. I'll use a favorite quote of mine as well

        Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

    Robert A. Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity

Whether they know the evil or not, they will go out of their way to to find a way to justify it. That's why those scare news on networks works so well. It gives them "permission" to accept something they wanted to believe,and now they have "proof".

Moreover, it's part of a core issue many in this society fall into (all across political spectrums) : it is shameful to be wrong. And apologizing makes you "weak". Even if you do change your mind, you can never admit it. And some people will be on their deathbed spouting a belief they changed on rather than "showing weakness".

I don't know how and if we can change that cultural element. That seems deeper than any billionaire regime.

We have to teach kids about cognitive biases, best by example or demonstration, and how you keep your sceptic guard up for life. We needed this even before the internet started to actively target these cognitive biases.

They built an entire identity around it. They're in too deep to just back off and admit to being wrong. It's the same reason why doomsday cults are stronger and more united the day after the predicted end of the world: It's too late to back off, the only solution is to dig deeper.

When you say "our lifetime" you must be talking about people who were born after 2004? Reagan was certainly more popular among Republicans, and I think W was at the end of his first term (he definitely was right after 9/11 when approval ratings for anything American were approximately 100% within America).

Your intuition about this is wrong. Reagan's approval among Republicans averaged about 83%, Trump's numbers are typically over 90%, although currently he's down to an all-time low of around 85%.

You are quite wrong about GW as well. While he had a mandate, at first, for Iraq, he was deeply polarizing in pretty much every other regard.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/699221/trump-approval-rating-dr...

seeing Dem numbers be in the single didgits and republican numbers in the high 80's really exemplifies how utterly divided the "United" States has become. I don't think any other president in the last century has been so divisive.

There's basically no more room for Dem's to disapprove, so I guess it's up to "Independents" to wake up.

My intuition is not wrong, and I am absolutely not wrong about GW Bush's approval ratings right after 9/11 (a peak of 99% approval among Republicans) and his approval ratings afterwards through the rest of his first term: https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ra...

Concerning Reagan, I was looking at his 93% approval rating when he left office, and comparing it to Trump's approval rating at the end of his first term, but I am aware there are metrics where Trump would be seen as more popular than Reagan among Republicans, such as minimum approval rating): https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/ronald-reaga...

Trump's militant support among Republicans is irritating to say the least, but there's no need to rewrite history or double down on incorrect statements on your part.

Your own sources show that Trump is more popular than Reagan among Republicans. Just because there was a moment in history where his numbers were better than Trump's doesn't undo the fact that over the long term, on average, Trump is more popular with Republicans than Reagan was. Demonstrably. Is there a conservative left in America willing to have an honest conversation?

I explained why I mentioned Reagan and acknowledged that Trump is more popular by some metrics, but he doesn't matter ultimately because GW Bush was more popular than Trump with Republicans more recently by absolute highest level of support, an average over basically any time period over his first term, or the lowest level of support, which is why I said you must only be talking about people born after 2004.

You're just as bad as the conservatives you dislike, because the issue is that you're all ideologues, not the specific ideology.

All I have anymore is an undoubtedly flawed moral compass, but I know these things are wrong and, up until the last few years, they were not at all partisan. And this is just to name a few:

    * Law enforcement should not wear masks.
    * The military should not be used to police US citizens.
    * The US should not threaten to invade peaceful allies. Canada. Greenland.

Anyone who violated any of these, regardless of party, would immediately lose my support forever. These aren't "mistakes", they are evil deeds. So, tell me who is an ideologue.

9/11 doesn't count, for the perfectly-obvious reason that Trump has had no 9/11-scale event to compare to.

Yet.

If it's obviously false, can you show research that proves it?

Because from what I see most of this was part and parcel of a published plan. [1] People on both sides either bragged about executing Project 2025 or tried to warn their base about it. People still voted for this, and those who didn't vote at all, by staying home, also voted for it.

This move slots in well with the overall exploration of eliminating the fed completely. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

[2] https://blog.uwsp.edu/cps/2024/09/12/the-project-2025-moneta...

Isn’t their approval rating 40% or something?

As much as I hate what’s happening, that’s how democracy works. Sometimes the majority chooses to burn the house down and all you can do is sit and watch

That's not how parliamentary democracies work; they have a thing called a "vote of no confidence".

Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?

I'm having a hard time thinking of things this admin and their party has done but hasn't directly campaigned on, directly praised someone else doing, etc. On the flip side of that, which empty promise, if fulfilled, would be worth the situation we're otherwise in?

well they had quite a few contradictions. They campaigned on "No new wars" and meanwhile the US hit Venezuela and might be trying to do the same on Greenland and Mexico. Campaigned on jobs but manufacturing has been plummeting all year. Campaigned on cheaper groceries but things are more expensive.

It's a big maybe, but maybe if Trump actually managed to end the Ukraine War and push out Russia the chaos would have been a net benefit (from a utilitarian POV). Instead, he berated Zelensky on camera.

Trump campaigned on "No new wars", but given Trump's history in his first term, his party's history in general, you'd have to have be a rube to believe this. Also why does this earn Trump a vote when his opposition was also running on the status quo in this regard, especially the considering the historical US uniparty approach to foreign affairs?

But, go ahead, set that aside. You think that is a worthwhile tradeoff for Trump sending federal agents to gun down his political enemies (US citizens who hurt their feelings)?

I think we can both admit there's a lot of rubes in this country.

>why does this earn Trump a vote when his opposition was also running on the status quo in this regard, especially the considering the historical US uniparty approach to foreign affairs?

To be frank, because we're applying logic to irrational actors. It shouldn't change anything, but Trump yelled it louder, looked more like the people who voted for him, and it's just one of the many ways they rationalize what they already wanted deep down (but need the not say out loud).

>You think that is a worthwhile tradeoff for Trump sending federal agents to gun down his political enemies (US citizens who hurt their feelings)?

Hard to say, I'm not a utilitarian. But I can see it from that lens. You'd save hundreds of thousands of lives, further constrain Russia on the global level if Ukraine can get into NATO, and even curb off other tensions like China vs Taiwan and Israel v. Palestine. That's a lot of good.

These aren't good directly reflected in the US economy nor jobs, though. That's the issue with utilitarianism in that it ignores the micro socio-economic situations, and those can build up into even worse timelines.

> It shouldn't change anything, but Trump yelled it louder,

No, he did not. This is simply not true. The thing about Trump being pro peace was just one more pure bad faith lie. And people who voted for Trump did not believed in Trump for peace thing.

Maybe we should stop projecting positive motivations on people who were about something else entirely

>The thing about Trump being pro peace was just one more pure bad faith lie.

Okay, the reverse logic works as well. People didn't trust either candidate so it came down to all the above, superficial factors or much deeper, unspoken motivations.

My main point is more on "people already knew who they wanted" more than whatever their outward facing words say.

> People didn't trust either candidate so it came down to all the above, superficial factors or much deeper, unspoken motivations.

They liked trump, because he promissed to harm trans, liberals, dominate women, dominate international politocs and because he is proper masculine per conservative outlook.

Nothing unspoken about that.

> Okay, the reverse logic works as well.

It does not. You need to ignore what candidates said, what people supporting them said, what poloticians said and what people wrote on social media.

You need to literally ignore what republicans, conservatives and were saying praising and doing, just so you can whitewhash and sanewash their choices and opinions.

> My main point is more on "people already knew who they wanted" more than whatever their outward facing words say.

They wanted to cause harm to people they dislike. They want to liberals others suffer as they watch how "proper manly men" mistreat people.

> It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.

Will these people vote for the opposition party? Or will they just say they don't like it and continue to vote GOP?

> Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with?

I personally haven’t, no. And I definitely have never voted for a candidate who claimed they’d do horrible things if elected. There is no one who voted for Trump the second time around who has the excuse of him “doing things I don’t agree with”. He told everyone what he was going to do, and people still voted for him. Either they agree with his actions or they’re stupid. If the former, they’re irredeemable; if the latter, they need to take responsibility and act. This was not an “oopsie” you can simply regret and vote better next time, irreparable damage is being caused to the world. Negative approval ratings mean nothing to a despot.

This is disingenuous and a way to rationalise your feelings by blaming trump voters.

Firstly, it’s a two party state and choice is limited. People vote for the least worst option, or for a candidate that shares at least some of their values.

Second, many people did not vote.

Third, approval ratings show that many trump voters do not approve of his actions.

Fourth, where did “annex Greenland, abduct Maduro, remove independence of the reserve” appear on his manifesto?

It is totally ok to blame Trump voters. They literally wanted this to happen and it happened. OK, they did not wanted the "bad thing A" to happen, they only wanted the "evil things B and C" to happen. Usually based on what affects them personally.

> People vote for the least worst option, or for a candidate that shares at least some of their values.

Voting for Trump because you share his values is not exactly defense, something positive or even respect worthy. Yes, equally people voted for Hitler because they shared values. This commonality of values is why they are culpable and we can blame them.

These are all before the 2024 election:

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-could-try-buy-greenlan...

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-cia-venezuela-maduro-regim...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-trumps-wish-for-more-f...

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/end-f...

Trump voters are either willfully ignorant or gleefully supportive. Maybe not the first time, but definitely the second and third time. There no longer exists other excuses.

Are those links to a manifesto?

You haven't answered my other points.

It's just post-hoc rationalisation because you're angry.

It's not post-hoc if it was telegraphed before the election. I knew it then, as did everyone with a modicum of interest in current events.

Regarding your other points, I'm not sure I have to, but here goes:

1) I'd be keen to hear how they voted for the least worst option, on specifics.

2) Not voting is voting for whoever wins in the described two party system. At least that's how I see the trolley problem.

3) Then they weren't paying attention, but at least they can be honest when they're affected personally.

> Are those links to a manifesto?

Statements about policy goals can only debated if... they appear in a "manifesto"?

With all respect: WTactualF? Trump didn't even have a manifesto! This is just a license to excuse whatever vote you want.

The obvious truth is that the guy is an intemperate loon, has always been an intemperate loon, and is behaving like an intemperate loon in office, and along policy axes that you could absolutely see ahead of time.

Here's the manifesto:

https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...

Propagandized to by targeted media.

> This is the political will of a plurality of American voters.

Trump has (amongst?) the lowest approval of any president at this point in his tenure, even lower than his first term.

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/699221/trump-approval-rating-dr...

* https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...

> It is difficult to see how we can democracy our way out of this situation.

Assuming there is no martial law later in 2026, vote to give the other party more power in Congress so the Legislative branch can actually grow a spine and push back against Executive actions.

I'd love it if the other party would show evidence of being willing to elect vertebrates. Of course I'll still vote for whoever is most likely to win against the authoritarians, but at the moment that seems to be a bunch of worms.

There are two reasons to doubt that. One is that people's opinions change after they have voted. The other is that there is enough evidence of 2024 election "anomalies" to consider the vote itself suspect.

The political will of a plurality of American voters elected this administration a little over a year ago. We don't have direct evidence of what the current political will of a plurality of American voters is. We have some indirect evidence via polls and off-cycle elections that this is not the political will of most Americans. We'll have stronger evidence after the vote for the full House and third of the Senate later this year.

Personally, I don't think we have evidence yet that the democratic process in the US is broken. I have concerns as many people do, but the recent off-cycle elections went off just fine.

This is what has been repeated again, again, again, again, and again since the election. Those other commoners did it. They wanted it.

So much effort spent talking about how democracy was so powerful—all the wrong commoners got what they wanted—right up until Trump and now it’s too late, no one cares about this one comment box.

I’m not an American. I just have a vested interest in the commoners of America getting their stuff together.

Divide and conquer...

> That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history.

True. But it’s very overwhelming since we are so democratically inept right now.

> They do it in Iran.

We know this because the local elites underlined it for us.

Most people, myself include, believe Powell has been a DNC puppet for his entire tenure. This has pretty much nothing to do with our republic.

For most of this countries history you would have been laughed at if you used the D-word, and that's when the quality of voters meant something.

Curtis's HyperNormalisation, a BBC documentary, for those unfamiliar:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation>

Video, at BBC Online: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c>

HyperNormalisation (2016) 2h:46m for those outside the UK https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM

HyperNormalisation is one of many great documentaries by Adam Curtis, many of which are available on archive.org [1]. Specifically, I can recommend The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. No need for YouTube :) FWIW, these used to be able on Google Video back when that still existed. And via torrents.

[1] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22

And for anyone who is nervous about clicking that video link at work: BBC in this context stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a fairly well respected news group.

No one was nervous. That might be just you. You might want to spend a little less time online.

When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things.

Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.

For me, the key lies in the "We know they lie. They know we know they lie.". I'd argue that the transparency of lies is a fairly immature theme, relative to the long arc of history. Probably post-Iraq WMD is where I think it really started to ramp up and the emergence of virality/segmentation aspect of social media has really revved it up.

I would view that kind of lying as show of force: "Everybody knows it, but nobody can do anything about it, we are above even these rules."

Worse still is when it's an "affirm the falsehood to show you have been dominated by our threat of punishment" scenario:

> 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'

> Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

> 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.'

-- 1984 by George Orwell

Perhaps post-Iraq in the west. It was that way behind the Iron Curtain long before then.

Curtis tried to make these statements on the downside of neoliberalism + postmodernism but I don't think he did a very good job based on the discussion on these films.

I think his work is just too stylized. He has such an interesting style that it overwhelms the message. I barely remember what his messaging is in films. Just the interesting visuals and ominous music.

If you read Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition together you will understand exactly what he is going for. As a film it doesn't really work that well though beyond a kind of depressing entertainment. The themes are too subtle and philosophical along with most people don't have the background knowledge to really make sense of his points.

I have to say, I'd never heard of Adam Curtis or the HyperNormalisation documentary.

I just watched the first ~30 min and I'm not seeing the "bit picture". Hopefully, it won't take me another 10 years to achieve enlightenment.

Hasn't this always been the case, what is different right now is that the tech enables to do this at scale, at much higher frequency that makes them more audacious, since no regular person can keep up with it. The over saturation of lies/fake news has lead to numbness and the hyper-normalisation. So, unless something directly is affecting us currently, we won't care

No. The modern Republicans want you to believe that because it’s an easy path to despair and inaction, which means they win, but the magnitude and degree have varied significantly in the past. Where we are now is something living Americans don’t have experience with unless they escaped somewhere like the Balkans in the 90s.

People do nothing because they believe others are doing nothing and it's a suppressive feedback loop that's exploited. Repeating that people know and do nothing reinforces it and falls into the broad category of criticism for the the sake of social flagging and not towards actual growth.

This is clearly a fraudulent criminal investigation. Classic dictator strategy of charging opponents with trivial crimes to achieve political power grabs. US futures in stock market are way down.

But I bet a third of the country will blindly support it. They will see it as a just investigation into a crime. And they won’t care about the consequences. Or connect cause and effect. And with that much support the administration can get away with anything.

As for their various unconstitutional and illegal acts - what method is there to hold the executive branch accountable? It’s not like there’s a police force to arrest them right?

Who is "we"? I'm not doing nothing. Why are you doing nothing?

Nothing that effects real change.

Evidence, the lack of change.

Nothing that has worked yet. to say it hasn't worked yet is very different than saying nobody is doing anything. All we can do is try to figure it out. If you aren't doing something, look for something to do. Everyone I know is doing something. How are you going to figure out what will work except for trying things and seeing what you learn from that?

"Blaming" people for not being successful yet is very different than blaming them for not doing anything at all.

I think the real test will be, not whatever this administration does, but how much of that survives into the next one - how much is the new normal versus how much is a temporary aberration.

That’s true even if the next administration is Republican (Vance or whoever), but especially true if the next administration ends up being Democratic instead-which while not certain, has decent odds-the more Trump defies norms, the more voters who will wish to go back to a “normal” Presidency

I think the test beyond that is how willing the next government will be to codify meaningful changes into law. After Trump’s first time it’s as if there was a big sigh of relief and a notion of “well, we just won’t do that again”.

It’s very clear now that we need a lot more regulation of what presidents can and cannot do. Not to mention judicial reform. But if you’re a democrat theoretically getting power in 2028 you’re going to have immense pressure to move forwards, focus on kitchen table issues, yadda yadda.

And extremely severe punishment as a deterrent against future efforts. Instead of a bunch of slow-rolled court cases and deferral back to the political process.

Not sure how regulation helps when you have a Congress and/or Supreme Court willing to ignore it, alas.

Both institutions, and those who've failed them, must of course be addressed directly.

What's the point of law if no one is willing to enforce it?

I'm not sure?

Some things, it just doesn't matter what the next administration does. The people of the US may, at any time, elect an administration that continues the course of breaking norms. The fact is that businesses, industries, banks, and nations have to guard against that possibility more than they need to cooperate with the next administration.

I think it's a bit fanciful to think you can take all the policies back to normal and have, Europe for instance, say "Oh good! Everything's back to normal!" I could be wrong, but I think that ship has sailed. Europe will work towards a new normal that looks to their own interests. And no action the next administration can take will change Europe's determination in this regard.

I think this will be as true of actors in the financial and industrial spheres as it will be of Europe in the security sphere.

>Europe will work towards a new normal that looks to their own interests. And no action the next administration can take will change Europe's determination in this regard.

1) Europe will do whatever is easiest at the time relative to the comfort of the people. Meaning they will have very short memories if enacting some change makes people worse off.

2) If the EU does make change with regard to increasing military spending, that is good either way for the US. Less US involvement in conflicts on a different continent.

> I think the real test will be, not whatever this administration does, but how much of that survives into the next one - how much is the new normal versus how much is a temporary aberration.

A reminder that this is the second time that Trump has been elected.

(People were saying what you're now saying after he was kicked out—an event that he says was rigged—the first time.)

Exactly: there was a brief moment when it looked like Republicans were willing to hold him accountable after the January 6th insurrection but that faltered and they circled ranks, especially when Roberts signaled that Trump had the support of the Supreme Court to the extent that they were willing to concoct a new constitutional doctrine to shield him.

A lot of people were hoping he’d just go away without them having to do anything difficult, but it’s clear that the next government has to reestablish the United States as a constitutional republic with the rule of law, even if it means hard things like trials for officials who abused their power. This kind of slide into authoritarianism isn’t an accident, and without consequences the people pushing it will keep trying.

What makes you think he is not going to pardon every single person in his administration, every single loyal Republican?

The presidential pardon is clearly something that needs to either be heavily reined in or removed. How you do that I don't know, but turns out the US Constitution is something you can ignore, so...

The entire system of checks and balances needs some rethinking because it's clearly not as "perfect" as we've been told over and over again.

ex post facto can be ignored, and a new law of the land passed voiding pardons during 47s term. Because repealing pardons isn't weaponizing the person pardoned's behavior after the fact, it's against Presidential authority, so isn't ex post facto when it comes to the person who's behavior was legally determined to be criminal. Voiding a commutation for cause would be tougher and potential ex post facto, but not a pardon. We can void those without violating our ex post facto standards.

What are the odds the current Supreme Court majority are going to uphold voiding Trump's pardons? Pretty to close to zero.

The only way you could do this would be if you changed the SCOTUS composition through court packing or impeachment or constitutional amendment.

If you wait for the conservative justices to retire and be replaced through death/resignation – by the time that happens, the issue of voiding pardons will likely be mostly irrelevant, because most of the pardonees will be already dead. And that's assuming the political fortune to be able to replace them with justices of a different persuasion, as opposed to just more of the same.

We will see what comes out of this. Might be relevant

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-pipe-bomb-suspect-voted-trump...

A lot of us are really, really hoping that there is something unique about Trump that cannot be easily reproduced by the next MAGA leader. That the movement will fragment into irrelevancy as the usual elites regain control.

This is what Wolff, who has written 3-4 biographical books on Trump, thinks:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wolff_(journalist)

He used the term suis generic in a (PBS?) interview to describe Trump:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sui_generis

It may be that I'm a naive optimist, but I agree with him. When I look at who the hard core believers envision as the next torch-bearer, none of them have what it takes. Not Vance, not Rubio (Rubio! Suddenly he is 'strong'?? When was that ever a widely held opinion??), not the Trump kids. Trump has a way of defying political gravity and repeatedly escaping the consequences that take down every other politician. In this case the liberal consensus that it's a cult may not be that far from the truth -- maybe that's a loaded term, but how else do you describe a group of supporters whose faith is so strong that their ideology changes by the day to match whatever their leader currently says, even if it is diametrically opposed to what they said last week?

> > not the Trump kids. Trump has a way of defying political gravity and repeatedly escaping the consequences that take down every other politician

Look at Trump's interviews from the 80s and 90s.

He was not always like this.

If he learned his ways, others also can

In what way was he not like this?

One thing I think is sometimes forgotten about shifting the overton window is that it sort of doesnt matter what political leaning has their hands on the lever. When it serves a purpose, which is not always a public first purpose, people in power will leverage any lever possible. Shifts in the overton window, just add more levers and it comes down to benevolence or luck that those levers aren't used incorrectly

> We say we care but do nothing.

Historically this is always the case until it absolutely isn't. And things just boil over.

Rupture -- often revolutions -- are entirely unpredictable, and cascading. They often occur after several failed attempts make it seem like the discontent has been at least partially contained (e.g. Russia in 1905 vs Russia in 1917). Maybe we're seeing this in Iran right now.

The kind of governance that Trumpism is attempting is inherently unstable. My guess is its higher level adherents know this. They just want to get theirs while they still can. Should be obviously the case as its very figurehead is obviously not thinking long term as he only has a few years left to live.

If I might add a couple of quotes:

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses looks like a suicidal escape from this reality."

"Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by ‘a world of enemies,’ ‘one against all,’ that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man."

"Society is always prone to accept a person offhand for what he pretends to be, so that a crackpot posing as a genius always has a certain chance to be believed. In modern society, with its characteristic lack of discerning judgment, this tendency is strengthened, so that someone who not only holds opinions but also presents them in a tone of unshakable conviction will not so easily forfeit his prestige, no matter how many times he has been demonstrably wrong."

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist."

-- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Also Arendt: "The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world — and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end — is being destroyed."

At least some selection mechanisms are still working. Every time he does something like this, the world dumps a bunch more US currency.

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