2024 Election POST MORTEM

Doja Cat is the best rapper of all time

2 Likes

I wish I had your optimism, but we are heading toward Altered Carbon future, not StartTrek.

1 Like

3 Likes

I donā€™t disagree with this, but I think it maybe understates the signficance of social media. Part of the broken culture of America is that they have 100+ million spoiled people with no critical thinking skills that want everything that they want, right now, and if they donā€™t get it they want someone to blame. The pandemic showed us what happens when a group of people like that are hit by a tsunami of social media. Everthing takes the form of vaxxers vs. anti-vaxxers now. There is a reality where technocrats use sound methods to understand real problems and possible solutions, and there is an alternative misinformation universe that only exists on social media and in peoplesā€™ heads. This election was about reality vs. delusional fantasies, and delusional fantasies won. The delusional fantasies are also winning in other places around the world (including Canada) and I think it has more to do with the destruction of the monoculture by social media than with the flaws of American culture.

14 Likes

Well, at least Melkerson didnā€™t get it right.

2 Likes

The US is a quarter of global GDP. Other countries will do their best to navigate the chaos, but they wonā€™t sever ties. Thereā€™s no way that a Canada or France or Japan can ā€œteach the US a lessonā€ by disengaging.

2 Likes

This is a contributing factor not the source. The rest of world doesnā€™t have hundreds of millions of guns, a corrupt court, a cult on the right, a pathological hatred of social safety, the cancerous ā€œAmerican dreamā€, assimilation, rabid patriotism, the largest military industrial complex on earth ect.

Sure Canada and other parts of the world are facing a rightward shift as well, and social media is a contributing factor for sure, but America is uniquely vulnerable due to its broken culture which doesnā€™t inoculate it but is in fact symbiotic.

2 Likes

You might be right. I am definitely biased by living in a rural Ontario community. Getting tailgated all the time by F150s covered in Canada flags and Fuck Trudeau stickers, etc., has made if feel really personal to me that this is not just a US issue. Although you might justifiably say that is just America exporting itā€™s bad culture to us.

1 Like

Iā€™m not suggesting disengaging to teach them a lesson. Itā€™s not some geopolitical move. Itā€™s a recognition that we donā€™t have a good faith partner is any global progress going forward. There is not a single issue where America will be a force for progress now. Of course we canā€™t totally disengage but we are drawing live to a world 10 years from now when Don Jr is the most recent dictator, US human rights no longer exist, and the world is forced to treat them like North Korea.

1 Like

I live in Alberta. I see it too. Our moron premier just tabled a ton of anti trans legislation. It just seems like our culture has some built in inoculation that is missing in the US.

1 Like

all that content is based on racism and paranoia. there is no shortage of left content, its just not entertaining to the low iq people.

this is just denying that we are idiocracy

Well we should have picked Pete or Shapiro then. Someone who is competent and can go on the offensive.

Instead Kamala picked someone she was not intimidated by.

Pete will go in any hostile environment and hold his own. That shit matters to people.

1 Like

One problem is that the harms that Trump/Republican governance more generally inflict are not obvious and immediate. Undermining the administrative state and appointing heads of agencies who are simply going to make it easier for their friends to do what they want doesnā€™t really have an immediate effect. It builds up over time as all the decent civil servants leave through attrition and not attention is paid to actually making the administrative state work better. So you have more wetlands filled in, more emissions, more discharges of pollutants into the water and soil and by the time the problems manifest, we are years down the road and the causal link cannot be traced back to the ideology that enabled it. People just hear ā€œgovernment ducks everythjngnup, we need to get it out of our livesā€ and they nod along because their local DMV is shitty and the government programs that are supposed to help them are a giant pain in the ass to use.

8 Likes

Unless someone makes this into a meme with his name in it to keep him interested, thereā€™s a zero percent chance he will know what this is.

1 Like

Iā€™ve been looking into taking one of these classes but donā€™t really want to because I know, especially now, that it will be hours of torture having to listen to Republican small talk. Also guns seem so damn expensive, I donā€™t understand how gun nuts have massive collections.

Basically all our lives we were taught we were on a one-way track

Hundreds of years ago ppl accepted things easier maybe? Forced to?

Yeah, I think a much more natural thing for other countries to do is to pay lip service to the role of the US and just go about trying to design solutions without them. In my mind, the ā€œNorth Korea treatmentā€ is a much more explicit thing with sanctions and stuff, and probably rallying around China as the new global super power.

1 Like

We saw what works - calling them weirdos and laughing at them. That kind of says everything.

2 Likes

Back then the left could win the votes of working class people by improving their material circumstances. Biden got burned because he adopted economic policies that favored lower-income people at the expense of the wealthy, but only the rich people noticed.

Who knows exactly whatā€™s going to happen, but the one thing you can basically guarantee is that no political party will ever, ever, try to promote the economic interests of the working class ever again. Lip service, sure, but taking risks on inflation to achieve full employment? Not gonna happen. Generous stimulus and unemployment benefits in times of crisis? So sorry, time for some belt-tightening. Tax increases to save Social Security? Thatā€™s not practical, but letā€™s compromise by raising the retirement age.

3 Likes

Iā€™m not sure about this. I donā€™t think a message of ā€œYes inflation is bad but we made it not worseā€, no matter how you spin it, is ever going to break through. The way is to make the campaign about other issues, but any competent opponent is going to bring it back. If you have a functional democracy, and peopleā€™s lives got measurably worse under your rule, you are starting from a disadvantaged position. Even if itā€™s not your fault. Even if you actually did a lot to help it from being worse. Peopleā€™s lives got worse, and you will pay an electoral price for that.

On immigration, the fascist playbook of otherizing an out group and playing to peopleā€™s most basic fears, is undefeated. The Simpsons parodied this 30 years ago. Trump basically ran the cartoon version of this for 3 campaigns now and heā€™s 2/3. The main reason he lost in 2020 is because, as mentioned above, peopleā€™s lives got worse under his tenure. But Americans have the memories of goldfish. Always have. We swing back and forth wildly every 2 to 4 years. Iā€™ve come to accept it.

1 Like