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Comment by sghiassy | Hacker News Reader

… and yet America voted for him a second time. I just don’t get why

Even now when things have gone so far off the rails, the average American knows basically nothing about what's going on. There's a ton of information but no reliable way to split it from misinformation, so people just glom on to whatever aligns with their worldview. Our future feels pretty hopeless to me.

Nothing is happening because you aren't doing anything and are even spreading hopelessness! Imagine someone at work or on a team who acted that way. It's psyops for the opposition. It is the behavior of losers (sorry).

The main obstacle for the opposition is itself.

There is no meaningful "opposition" at the national level. There's not even a pretense of it. The same Democratic Party that failed to hold Reagan and Bush responsible for Iran-Contra, that failed to hold Bush responsible for torture and domestic spying, that failed to hold Trump responsible for a coup and stealing secrets, that did nothing with the Epstein files, is not going to "oppose" anything. They'll slap on a fresh coat of paint, say calming things to the investors, and keep right on with business as usual.

I think the Democrats tried to hold Trump responsible for the coup attempt. They just botched the timing. They delayed the court cases until late 2023/early 2024, maybe for political reasons, to tar Trump with it closer to the 2024 election. That backfired spectacularly, as Trump was able to manufacture enough delay to drag the cases out to late 2024, where they were held to not cause election interference. And then, after that, he had immunity while in office.

Republicans hold all 3 levers of Gov’t.

The midterms are the first chance to get it back. Voting maters

but until then. Democracy has handed them all the power

Well I don't know _what_ to do! I think if people knew the truth it would help but anti-intellectualism has taken hold and backlash effects are real, and talking heads have spent decades poisoning the well. If we can't agree that Trump is a disaster and we need to protect the constitution from him and the SC then how are we going to accomplish anything? Genuinely don't know what I can do that would matter.

Steps:

1) Stop spreading powerlessness

2) Stop worrying about your own feeling of powerlessness

3) Get to work

Everyone facing a real challenge feels powerless and despair at times. 90% of the difference between success and failure is what you do next.

The biggest issue (having seen it first hand), is anyone trying to directly address the actual issues gets attacked by their ‘own side’, often in a lot of ways that are hard to address and everyone will deny are actually happening.

A lot of ‘if I can’t/won’t solve this problem, fuck you if you try to solve this problem’ going on, especially on the left.

Possibly the most famous poem ever begins,

  If you can keep your head when all about you   
      Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
      But make allowance for their doubting too; ...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

That's your big plan? Lol. Stop fucking lecturing me if you don't have any ideas. Sick of this kind of shit.

People need to come up with their own ideas or there's nothing anyone can do for them. They need to get in a different mode than powerlessness, victimhood ('I'm powerless so I am justified in being irresponsible'), and waiting for an answer, and attacking people who are moving forward.

Only then is a discussion of ideas, etc. useful. At work, facing a challenge, someone is no good on a team if they take a position of powerlessness and 'come up with ideas for me'.

See the comment sibling to your own.

What are you doing?

I've said it in a different thread, but I think we need to be more open to the ways that people can effect change. Maybe it's a new approach to politics, maybe it's something else. But the constant obsession about "we need to elect people to Congress and the White House to fix things for us" is crowding out whatever other potential solutions might be out there. We won't know until we try and stop thinking of the problem as only having one correct answer.

People will need to do both to win, and especially not shy away from crushing the other side in elections.

I think the Dems are satisfied with losing, and just tell each other they're powerless so they don't feel too bad.

> I just don’t get why

That behavior is the cause. The question must be answered, and if you haven't answered it after 8 (since 2016) or 26 (since 2000) or more years, you aren't trying.

How does the Republican party do these things without losing votes? The likely causes seem obvious to me, but the real problem is that people who oppose them need to believe again that they can do anything, that they are responsible, that they won't be stopped, and stop accepting helplessness.

Project 2025 ain't gonna implement itself.

Biden's debate performance, and the aftermath, are the well-recognized reasoning.

Yeah but Harris embarrassed him so badly he backed out of the third debate.

> and yet America voted for him a second time.

Well, a lot of them didn't vote for him. Roughly a third of eligible voters stayed home (actually the largest group) while Trump and Harris each got a bit under a third, with Trump narrowly ahead.

But yeah, I guess its still baffling about 31% voted for him.

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