Aceticon

There aren't 2 major sides in the US, there are 3.

The 3rd side never does any formal campaigning (though there is some grassroots self-organised spreading of its message), often wins as it did this time and yet never controls any power because of how the electoral system works.

One might call the 3rd side the Not Voting Party.

The entire Democrats campaign was negative campaigning against the Republican Party, something which did nothing to take "votes" from the Not Voting Party and then specifically on Palestine, their actions, whilst if one judges them relative to the Republican Party were neutral, very strongly helped the Not Voting Party whose appeal on this was that a "vote" for Not Voting is a vote that doesn't support mass murder of children.

So if you look at it as a 3-sided contest, suddently the Democrat result is easilly explainable: they didn't as much lost to the Republicans as they lost to the Not Voting Party, and in that loss Palestine probably weighed heavilly, both because the Democrats broke some pretty strong principles for a lot of people (there aren't much strongers principles than being against the mass murder of children) thus convincing them to go "Not Voting" and because they, while raging about how Trump was a Fascist, were activelly supporting ethno-Fascists in Israel (the worst kind of Fascism there is) in the middle of a Genocide, they looked like evil hypocrites and weakened their only message trying to capture votes from Not Voting - the whole "Not voting at all is like voting for a Fascist" thing: calling the other guy evil and dangerous hardly helps convince the unconvinced when the people saying it are active supporters of an extremelly violent ethno-Fascism that has already killed thousands of babies and tens of thousands of children.

You're participating in the same circle jerk.

You've concluded that Trump is a huge Fascist and a danger beyond all other considerations (but not the Democrats, even though they're giving weapons to an ethno-Fascist regime committing Genocide which is literally "supporting Fascism") and you reached that conclusion from consuming Democrat propaganda in places like Lemmy with no actual use of skepticism, so now you repeat it.

Meanwhile all those people who don't think like you and all the posters whose posts you read here, had very different levels in the like-hate Trump scale, and the like-dislike Democrats one, and the trust-distrust what the Democrats/Republicans say scales, the politically engaged scale, the thinking that my vote makes a difference to my life scale, the what matters to me most in life scale and other such scales in human belief and behaviour that together add up to make them or not go vote and for whom they vote, which in this election also included things like the flexibility or inflexibility of one's principles thanks to the Democrats activelly breaking a really strong set of principle for lots of people when they supported with weapons the commiting of a Genocide in first Gaza and now also Lebanon.

The "incompetence" was the Democrats with their words and actions targetting a point in all those scales that turned off a lot more people that it turned on. The 14 million less Democrat votes make it undeniable that it wasn't Trump that conviced those votes to flip, it was the Democrats that failed at convincing enough people to vote for them, so clearly their words and actions turned off from voting a lot of people.

The "entitlement" is the idea that everybody is equally politically aware as you, trusting about what the Democrats say of Trump as you, fearful of Trump as you, trusting that voting maters as you and so on. I've been a member of two different political parties over the years (in two different countries) and this blindness is incredibly common amongst party members: such strongly politically active and highly tribalist people just don't get it that most of voters don't think like them, not even close and it gets worse when they end up in circle jerks like the one here in Lemmy during the US Presidentials - they basically just strengthen each other's beliefs in that what's right or wrong, what will work or not work to help their side and what people think or don't think, all with no actual proof being involved just the say so of like minded people, a pretty straighforward "groupthink" situation.

(In fact it was my experience with canvassing and leafletting in those two parties and countries that opened my eyes to the reality that in terms of engagement and trust in politics most people are nowhere like you and me.)

Even more "entitlement" is the idea that your values, forecasts and interpretation of the world are the right ones and those of the ones who didn't vote are wrong, then compounded with the idea that others should just do as you think they should and if they don't they're wrong (all of which on display in this meme and all the type of posts here blaming the 14 millions) - this a pretty straightforward "I know best and others should follow my lead", pure entitlement.

The "stupidity" is that the kind of people that have been engaging in this sort of thinking and posture are unable to, now that it has been shown beyond doubt that is complete total bollocks, review their own beliefs, behaviour and ideas in light of it. Instead they just blame everybody else like self-deluded simpletons.

I'm truly, totally, completely shocked ... that Windows is still being used on the server side.

The only "The Onion" rather than "Not The Onion" part of this is the idea that they would announce it.

For a non-American this thread and other like this are hilarious: the people who spent the last year campaigning "Vote Not Trump" now blame everybody else but themselves for how their strategy of having a candidate who did nothing to appeal to voters and sold fear of the other instead, failed miserably.

So they post tons of such "it's the fault of everybody else" memes as topics were they and other members of the tribe make posts with wild ass reasons for why it really is everybody else's faults and responding to such posts from others by basically saying "yeah, you're so right", like one gigantic circle jerk, pretty much a continuation of what they were doing for a whole fucking year - a big fat circle jerk whilst not paying attention to anybody else - only now they're doing it with sad faces.

Sure, it's the 14 millions who stayed home that are to blame, not the massive incompetence of the DNC and the mindless tribalist muppets trading dumb Trump and Vance memes whilst thinking that their "leaders" deserved a win merelly for wearing the right pin on their jacket and not being Trump, without needing to actually have policies that appealed to their natural voters.

"Bloody natural Democrat voters, not going to polls and doing what they're supposed to do!"

What a heady, heady mix of stupidity and sense of entitlement.

Reminds me of the whole saying: "Only two things are infinite - the Universe and Human Stupidity - and we're not sure about the first"

Mate, every single politician who supports "hands off regulation" and other forms of the State (which is the thing that voters control by electing people to lead and manage it) not interfering in those things controlled by the other Power, Money, would have to be hauled before such courts.

The pro-Oligarchs (commonly known as Neoliberals) are just as much against voters controlling how Society gets managed (i.e. against Democracy) as the Fascists.

It's just that Neoliberals want Money to be the Prime power, abover a State whose hands are tied but whose leaders are elected (thou often and as seen in the US, the only choices that voters have are a carefully preselect pool of candidates), whilst the Fascists want unelected leaders controlling the State as a Prime power, above even Money, which is indeed quite a different situation for those people with enough Money for it to amount to Power, but it's not that much of a difference for the plebes like you and me who would are at the bottom of the pile and de facto powerless under both systems.

Ultimatelly "no voting" or "votes only control a secondary power which is not the top power of the land" are both anti-Democratic and the current problem of lack of Democracy (which I believe is the biggest problem in most of the West) predates the recent Trump & The Trumpettes' version of anti-Democracy by at least 3 decades.

This discussion right here on "whose candidate is best for The Market" at a time when most people have less than $1000 in savings is peak Capitalism.

Yeah, I know that in the US many if not most people have their retirement funds tied to Markets, and having worked in Investment Finance let me tell you that you were and are being swindled (but, hey, your savings for old age really make a LOT of money for a small number of people, not least because of occupying the niche of being the suckers in most markets), but that itself is peak Capitalism.

The Markets mater very little for most people - except for the unfortunates forced by governments to bet their old age prosperity on them - but they're really important for the largest Asset Owners, or in other words, the Very Rich.

I would get two of the local small (about 50g each) cured cheeses made out of goat and sheep milk a week and eat them, and was having trouble cutting down on blood sugar until I stopped doing it and that one change with all else being roughly the same consistently reduced the blood sugar level increases - since I have Type II Diabetes - between my "running days" (I run 10km twice a week, which by itself has a huge positive impact on it).

Around here there's also what we call "fresh cheese" (basically cheese that hasn't been cured) and I usually get a couple of those made of goat cheese and they don't seem to be a problem.

Of course, this is all a bit so-so and anecdotcal since its pretty hard to control all other variables plus blood sugar seems to also be affected what you consumed days before (I've seen blood sugar go up long after the last meal and during a fasting period - so supposedly not because of sugar intake or digestion - which I suspect is due to the sugar stored in the liver or maybe yet another unexpected methabolic pathway).

In my experience of trying to control blood sugar levels with food and exercise, it is exactly as you said: metabolism is crazy, crazy complicated :/

I definitelly need to try that.

Thank you.

Yeah, but they have a lot of calories via fat (especially cheese) and what I've seen in my own diet (which includes regular checking of blood sugar levels), if I eat more of it (again, especially cheese) the sugar levels in the blood go up all else being the same.

Don't ask me the exact details of how the human body does that, I'm not a specialist and this is just what I observe happens if start eating more cheese.

Which is a shame, 'cause I love cheese :(

Yeah, it it makes a massive difference the GI index of the sugars in the food one eats, so for example it's a lot better to consume pulses (like chickpeas) than it is pasta, since the latter is pretty much just starch and (after cooked) water whilst the former is a far more complex food with also lots of protein and fiber (only talking about macronutrients here).

Mind you, this diet of mine is not because of overweight, it's to keep Type II Diabetes under control with as little insulin as possible and to get it into remission (so far, it has worked very well having reduced the need of insuline by about 80%), so it's based on studies that have been done on this and is much more tightly controlled with regular checking of blood sugar levels.

But yeah, a lot of it is to reduce the intake of low GI sugars (I used to be a big consumer of bread, for example, since I live in a country with really good bread, and that stuff is for special occasions only nowadays), which means quite a lot of cuting down on carbohydrates consumption but also means replacing some with better sugars (so, say, pulse or peas instead of potatoes or pasta)

Mind you, part of the problem is that my work is sitting down in front of a computer, so even with regular exercise I simply need a lot less sugars than I used to eat - if was naturally more physically active in most days beyond the whole walk to work and back thing and two 10km runs a week, cutting down so much on carbohydrate-rich foods would've been a bad thing.

Still, its pretty amazing by comparison just how much excess of sugars there was in my diet previously and that was even with some care with what I ate and quite a lot of sweets avoidance.

Fruit yoghurt is pretty much yoghurt with fruit jam added, so it ends up with quite a lot more sugar than the natural stuff which has no added sugar, so ever since I've had to start watching out for my sugar intake I've started only eating the natural one and adding cinnamon or vanilla extract for flavour.

It's amazing how after a while of cutting sugars from your food you get used to it, don't feel the need for it anymore and even start finding the most sugary stuff (like certain kinds of sweets) unpleasantly sweet.