this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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I’m only 20 years old, I’ve never voted or even really bothered paying attention to any other election, and I dunno it kinda feels like I started on one that was really crazy? But I’m not sure maybe every election has been insane and I just didn’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Going forward? Maybe and I fear likely. Im over 50. voting for a republican when I was young was not completely crazy. Especially moderate ones in a liberal areas. Believe it or not there used to be institutional biases. Like senators were sorta snooty about the senate to the level they would be with a senator of the opposing party over a house rep from their own party. And party members in congress would be adversarial to their own parties president. A lot of this was a stay in your lane kind of thing. Like woa mr pres thats a congress thing and woa mr rep thats a senate thing. Also legitimately conern for the good of the country over party. If you have the patients read this wikipedia on ross perot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot# you can see he is a conservative rich bastard but then click on the presidential campaign. Higher taxes, investing in education, direct democracy. Granted he was third party stuff but it was a coming out of the conservative side. Back then drug, prostitution, and other victimless crimes legalization was a major part of the libertarian party. Over time the conservative side got worse and worse and voting for them became more and more unacceptable and also made voting third party a dangerous proposition. I was never really for the conservative party but I miss the days when they could be a legitimate option and individuals in the party could be decent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 31 minutes ago

Well luckily for you, it will never matter ever again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago

To me, what's different is that the modern republican party seems to think that I'm an enemy of the people. Bush was awful but I never felt like he personally wanted to harm me just for existing. I knew Bush would send emergency aid to a democratic Voting area, no question. The "enemy" was abroad. Now it's within.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It didn't used to be, but I'm guessing this is how it'll be from now on. It used to be a pretty mundane activity, and people could even agree to disagree. When I was your age I remember asking friends who they voted for, and those conversations would go something like this

Friend 1: Who did you vote for?

Friend 2: So-and-so

Friend 3: haha, that guy is an idiot! You're so stupid

Friend 2: lol, yeah maybe

Friend 1: whatever, let's go find a party

And it wouldn't really change much. Now everything after friend 2 would be full of hatred, people disowning each other, and outright vitriol. If we can't even talk to our friends about this stuff, how the hell are we going to talk to people who we completely disagree with that we don't know? Of course it's been engineered to be like this now. This isn't people changing of their own accord. This is intentionally manufactured division and strife to keep people fighting amongst each other while the billionaires pick everyone's pockets, and the fascists consolidate power. It's not going to go back to the way it was without significant activism and hardship.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

Yeah, now it's entirely reasonable to drop a human being from your friend pool for the rest of your life because of which person they voted for.

If I find out somebody has voted for Trump they are now persona non grata to me.

And before you say I shouldn't let politics rule my friendships, my dad is dead because of how Trump bungled the covid pandemic response, so any person who has voted for that person has said that my dad dying is less important to them than that guy being given the highest office in the land.

I cannot think of a graver insult, and it is one that cannot be apologized for short of bringing my father back to life.

So if you voted for Trump, fuck you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 minutes ago* (last edited 12 minutes ago)

I've also cut people out of my life because of it. It says more than I care to type right now about a person if they're voting for trump. Even discounting any possible statements it makes about their personal values, it tells me they don't live intentionally, don't think about their actions, don't read, and don't think critically. If they do those things, then it tells me a lot about where their other values lie. I'm too far along in my own personal journey to allocate time in my life for people like that.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 hours ago

Not even close. This was a turning point election.

This election determined that we will live with an ultra conservative Supreme Court for the rest of our lives. In just the last couple years that court has removed women's federally protected right to bodily autonomy and determined that presidents are above the law and can't be held accountable for anything they do while in office. Decisions like that will continue for the remainder of our lives and chip away at our nation as we once knew it.

Trump's administration ran on making fundamental changes to our government, including deconstructing the department of education. He promised to make an anti-vaxxer the head of the department of health. Ukraine will cease to exist. Palestine will cease to exist. Russia will expand their borders and threaten Europe. America will lose allies. NATO will be weakened.

We made a criminal who failed his last term as president by every conceivable metric and illegally attempted to overturn an election the most powerful figure on the planet. He will fill all positions with unqualified toadies, just like he did last time when he had the highest White House turnover rate in US history.

What Americans just did was change the political order we will be living under for the foreseeable future. And no one will suffer more for that than your generation.

We categorically failed you and the decline we are about to experience could last a generation and the suffering is currently unquantifiable. The decision we just made will change the world we live in in a negative way we can't fully fathom yet.

The remainder of your life just got a whole lot harder and I'm sorry. I did not vote for it to be this way.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Not even a little bit.

And you're probably not gonna get a point of comparison, because it's looking likely to be one party rule by the absolute shittiest american embarrassments forever at this point. At least until America does some stupid shit globally and gets themselves invaded by a united band of good guys down the road.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Would take China and/or India in that case. Europe and Canada don't have the population, Mexico probably doesn't the will.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Mexico probably doesn't the will.

Yup, we do not. We have enough problems at home created or perpetuated by Americans like gun violence, organized crime and now gentrification on top of everything else. Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 minutes ago

Well I doubt the orange cares about deporting people to the correct country so you might get more problems...sorry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

China definitely aren't the good guys.

[–] [email protected] 115 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

No, they've been getting progressively crazier since 2016.

2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn't even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.

2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.

2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn't broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.

Then it starts getting spicy.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

"Obama was fine" ???

Did you not see his tan suit? The humanity...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 hours ago

Yes, he took all our guns, too. Look, there's none to be found anywhere.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Are people forgetting his Dijon Mustard scandal? Unforgivable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Dijon? Sounds like socialism to me!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

Don't forget his terrorist fist jab.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

And it should be said - politics should not be spicy. It should be boring. Just like investing, if things are getting too exciting you are not investing in the future - you are gambling.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago

Unfortunately it’s the exciting politics that gets all the attention. Democrats likely lost because they’re just too boring.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 hours ago

Elections have strong outcomes, strong repercussions and sometimes strong benefits. Right now, this past election will have sharp and strong repercussions. Your vote is indirectly saying that you're OKAY with whatever party you chose, to do with as they wish. And what they do with whatever they wish, will affect millions, including you.

So right now, everyone who didn't vote for the Orange Fascist, are having solid reasons to be worried. They expect a lot of things to be ripped away or outright dismantled, setting the course to potentially have irreversible damages. All because of the collective voter's choices that wanted the opposing party in.

In an election, I would much people vote to have a voice than abstain and not vote, expecting outcomes to magically work. However, there is a personal responsibility to be had when it comes to voting. That is, whatever comes your way in how people react when they find out who you voted for.

I always seem to lose friends every election, long tenure or short tenure, because of my choices that complicate theirs. It's unfortunately a thing that's going to happen. And it may happen to you.

By the way, I've failed to mention that it is important to vote, based on what you feel is valuable for the party to focus on. If they ever.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Yes, it was really crazy. In the past few decades our politicians had different goals, but generally still followed the same rules. Trump has shown he wants to dismantle any and all systems that don't serve him, and the Republican party is happy to let him do so, so this election seems like it might have far greater consequences than the ones in memorable past.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Annoying isn't it.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

In former times if one candidate had promised to overthrow the entire system and abolish elections and democracy, then nobody would have voted for that clown.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

It just goes to show how little faith people have in the system. They'd rather destroy it all just to see if something better comes out. Morons don't recognize that the game is rigged. Unless nuclear war breaks out, it will just keep getting worse.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

It's part of a trend of a significant portion of the electorate feeling ignored. It's a trend that's happening in large parts of the West, we're seeing it in Europe too in places like France and Germany.

Now you can argue about whether these people have a genuine grievance or not. But if we don't try and address the underlying causes of these people abandoning moderate parties, we're going to see more and more extreme candidates and parties being successful. And I don't think that's something any of us want.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

If blue still has any branch of government then this might have been a nothing burger. Yeah, we'd be set back 10 years but nothing unfixable.

Trump has absolutely no checks on his whims. Even the supreme Court is in lockstep. He could make it illegal to not be orange on day one and actually enforce it. Not everywhere equally, since blue states still exist. But we'll see if trump doesn't use military force on them.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 hours ago

2012 was what felt like a more normal election where the candidates respected each other and it played out a lot more typically. (Same for 2008). Trump changed that up and it’ll possibly stay that way going forward.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago

This election has the same dreadful feeling as 2000.

Nevermind the crazyness, it's the certainty that something worldwide bad is going to happen due to the incompetence of the American government.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 hours ago

No, they have been getting extra crazy lately.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It's usually between someone you kinda don't like and someone you kinda like, so the stakes are lower. This year we had to choose between The Antichrist and Some Boring Lady, but this country hates women 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago

Nah don't worry this was your first and last election anyway

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

as a ~40 year old Canadian looking from the outside at the US election

this one was crazy for sure but the last couple have been kinda out there to say the least. before the internet we Canadians always knew when it coming, but it was never covered in a 24h news cycle like now. other than daily newspaper (that was a physical unit of paper that was like social media, where we could not really choose who to follow other than politically left or right and only updated every 24h) we'd get news at 6-7pm and 11pm. then the noon news showed up. while there have always been issues between right and left, there had never been violence on the scale we see now. like Reagan getting shot, happened just after i was born, so not like it was all sunshine and rainbows but nothing like the scale that's seen now.

this could be from the mass news reporting and social media, or people have just gone off the rails. I'm guessing option 2.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 hours ago

This election was special, cause the candidate who got the most votes actually won.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

No it just depends on the candidates. Most have been boring but Obama, Clinton, Trump, Harris were all controversial.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You might be younger or forgetting but before Obama it was George W., definitely not controversial.... And before that there was more controversy. Americans have always had divisive elections, but there's been a noticable uptick in the elections involving Trump.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Preferring Dijon mustard, or wearing a tan suit are hardly legitimate controversies. There are real complaints about some of Obama's actions, but there wasn't really any legitimate controversy surrounding his presidency outside of the pointless stuff manufactured by Limbaugh and Hannity. Those two guys were the canaries in the coal mine, and society and the government alike should pushed back on what they were starting a lot harder than they did. They ushered in this new era of hate and strife.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

US presidential elections have been approximately this way since at least 2016, actually I think this one may have been less crazy than the last two.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The hanging chad would like a word with you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I wrote "at least".

I am older than OP, but not old enough to remember the 2000 election very much.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 hours ago

Basically it just gets more and more ridiculous every 4 years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This election was crazier than the last election. On the other hand it will be less crazy than the next election.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That's cute that you think there'll be another election... If you think for a second these Nazis are going to let the chance that they could be voted out of power ever occur You're a fool

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

There will probably still be elections, but the outcome will be predetermined. Honestly that's just doomerism. It might happen, it might not. There's a lot up in the air right now.