The limbic system won.
The limbic system always wins.
"The mind is always the dupe of the heart." (La Rochefoucauld)
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H. P. Lovecraft)
You argue on the basis that from "If A then B" it follows that "If B then A" and that's fallacious, of course.
When enough people are hurting from the status quo voting for "sensible" policies of soft reform isn't going to cut it. At some point you need to blow up the existing system so you clear out the rot.
This immune response might be costly to the nation in the near-term but the hope is when it's over it will have also have destroyed the infection.
When it's put in these terms I can begin to relate more with the appeal of Trump, and while I'm not personally convinced he is a fascist, I do get why people say that. I can be nervous and unhappy with the result, but also acknowledge that the US needs significant change and voting in Biden or Harris was never realistically going to bring that.
There's clearly something wrong with democratic party. They're no longer appealing to the working class they claim to speak for and instead their primary supports now seem to be suburban white-women and the college educated metropolitan class. Today they're also supported by the media establishment, war-mongers like Dick Cheney, most billionaires, Hollywood celebs and pop-stars. Given this it's really no surprised we smart well off people on HN don't like Trump and quite like the sensible status-quo Harris promised.
I hope this immune response doesn't kill the host and I hope something positive comes out of all of this. We should take comfort in the fact that the US is the most resilient democratic nation on Earth and Trump probably won't be alive in another decade. Those who worry about an actual fascist up rising probably need to relax a little. The great risk over the next few years is probably just geopolitical stupidity and we've seen plenty of that in the last 4 anyway.
This is some really low-tier fascist apologia, in my opinion. Fascism isn't an immune response, it's a cancer. Once active in the host, it tries to sap it of whatever resources it can to enrich itself. Rooting out fascism has, historically, come at great personal and political cost to the countries that manage it.
https://external-preview.redd.it/bgOMQfMeKo_CF5XXqX485aPKRvwVc_P5ue0EW5S_9dk.jpg?auto=webp&s=49296031d016df4f5380c78d7b41981b03ba035dI'm from Spain and even to this day we hear old people saying that "life was better with Franco". I think it's more about a need to have a homogenous society with very clear rules and boundaries.
This made talking politics with my social circle difficult. Don’t shoot the messenger. This was not the time to run a risky candidate. I actually think Harris ran a decent campaign, much better than I thought she would, but I don’t think she had much of a chance. I remember when Biden dropped out several groups came out saying that if the DNC didn’t give Harris the nomination, that they would consider than to be a betrayal and that they’d lose their support. It was frustrating to see them so focused on what was “right” or “fair” when the stakes were so high.
The crazy thing is that we already went through this in 2016. We had people protest voting against Clinton. It didn’t work. And yet we seem to have been ok letting unyielding idealism sabotage important elections.
That said, I think a huge problem was Biden’s ego and his inability to stick to his campaign promise of being a one-term president. With him dropping with only a few months left, democrats didn’t have many options.
Part of the problem is that they didn't explain anything. Even in friendly interviews, the best kamala can answer when asked for specific is a big word salad that can be summarized as "Trump is evil and a danger to democracy, vote for us". Saying you have a plan and shitting on the other party for not having one is not the same as having a real plan and communicating it properly.
I think Harris 2024 is the worst campaign I've ever seen in modern American history.
1 - Other countries in the world have taken advantage of the US
2 - Illegal immigrants have changed the country for the worse and are taking jobs
#2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.
None other than Bernie Sanders said as much about the subject right around 2007. His stance at that time was that we needed to do something about illegal immigration specifically to protect the jobs of American workers, but then later he changed his tune to fit in with the rest of the party.
If you address the majority of people's concerns and worries, they'll vote for you.
When I order food delivery, get in an Uber, and drop off my laundry at the wash and fold I want an under-educated American!
There are tens of thousands of Americans who are forced to live in Trailer trucks or from their car who often do those sorts of jobs.
They just want an honest living and do not have the opportunities to get higher college education to land well paid white collar formal jobs.
That uber job is often their way to save up for their truck driving license so that they can move to a decent wage to get his/her kids a nice christmas gift, nutritious daily meals for their kids and other emotional needs.
To them, seeing their jobs being taken up by illegal immigrants for lower wages, no payroll taxes to pay, etc. is a very very very real issue to them and a zero sum game being played against their life.
That uber driving might be living in their car but at least they are employed right??
It's called living in a city, I don't own a car or have a laundry machine.
Why aren't people talking about this and doing something about it?
People rent out DoorDash and Uber accounts for 20% of the income from people that can't sign up themselves.
> #2 in particular has been framed as being racist. There IS a good deal of racism mixed in there, but the truth is that low skilled illegal immigrants DO compete for many of the same jobs as lower-skilled Americans.
There is only one group for which that is true -- men without a high school diploma. Otherwise, immigrants are generally taking jobs that Americans won't do.
Case in point, picking produce at farms. The last time they cracked down on immigration, a lot of those farms had to spoil a lot of crops because no one would pick them.
Because the pay is terrible. Start paying well and plenty of Americans will want the jobs.
Working a low skilled job like fast food should be enough to pay for college so that it is possible to lift yourself up out of poverty.
We have created a two tier system and the educated class just makes excuses about why the system has to work the way it does today.
Trump is a known quantity - people know what they are getting with him and have made their peace with him being how he is.
People expect more from Democrats. Harris would get dinged for saying things that Trump says, by the same people who are fine with Trump saying those things.
If that seems irrational and hypocritical, well, that's how people are, regardless of their politics.
Another model of how to think about the candidates is that human beings make decisions based on how the person or thing in front of them makes them feel - and afterward they come up with post-hoc rationalizations as to why. Even smart people do this. To some extent, we're all lying to ourselves about this.
So it makes sense that this time around both candidates ran campaigns focused on emotions, instead of policy specifics.
Isn't this what people said after Clinton lost in 2016? Hindsight is 20/20
They did that with VP Walz, but it did not help. Their policies are the problem.
Especially since we had 3 assasination plots on Trump. It's quite possible he won't live the end of his term and not because of his age.
Biden came after Trump.
> All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright
What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.
Exactly, Yeah! He was the white man not in mental decline that said that everything is going to be alright.
> What motivated people is inflation and border crossings.
Yes, these are some of the issues that needed to be addressed instead of gender politics and foreign policy.
What is the disagreement?
I guess congrats to Fox, because focusing on it all day every day worked. The average joe thinks that's all the Democrats care about. It's extremely transparent when someone says "gender politics" what media they're consuming.
- Kamala is not only black, but she is ALSO a woman! Please vote for her otherwise you won't only be a racist but a misogynist too.
- If you are a woman your rights are in jeopardy and Trump will put you back in chains or something. If you are a woman and not voting for Kamala you are doing what your husband is telling you to do obviously.
I did however hear some gender politics from the Trump campaign, whether it was accusing boxers of being men or railing against childless cat ladies.
Why did Trump then get votes?
Nobody is confused as to why people SAY they support Trump, people are confused that you can show someone who supports Trump objective evidence that he hurts them, works against his wishes, etc, and they will support him harder.
The "backfire effect" doesn't replicate, but boy IDK if we can call two elections anything more than an adequate sample size.
If Gender politics is such a nothing-burger that the president shouldn't care about it, why did they vote in the party who is enthusiastic about hetero-normativity? Why did so many republicans devote airtime and debate time to talking about the double digit number of trans people in sports?
The Democrats would rather lose with a neoliberal+unpopular candidate than win with a popular candidate. Because they serve similar corporate interests as the Reps. Only with a completely different Culture War shtick than the Reps.
That you frame this as being “factually, morally, academically” correct is funny—what justice does the Dems fight for? Not Palestinians. Not the average American. Just well-off women (now white or Jamaican) having “their turn” as the commander in chief.
As a "white" man (no more white than native Americans are "red", Chinese are "yellow", or Africans are "black"), I take offence at the suggestion that skin color or gender should be a defining characteristic to determine who should be the US president (or anyone else in power).
Charisma is a different story, but boy, if Trump is the benchmark for what counts as having charisma, we're in even bigger trouble than I thought.
> You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is.
The majority of the country was telling them "We are having change anxiety after Obama and we are having distrust in institutions after Covid". So what did they do? Cling to the same power structures with a dead man walking, doubled down on gender politics, devolved internally into morality based foreign policy shout match and the cherry on top put an uncharismatic non white woman as the candidate. At every step of the way they very eloquently and academically explained why they have the right solutions while completely ignoring the emotional state of the nation.
All they had to do was bring a calming white man that is not in cognitive decline that would reassure the nation that everything was going to be alright. That the America they know and love is here to stay.
You may don't like that this was reality, that your progressive views are more "right" than that, but it is. So now enjoy being factually, morally, academically correct with trump as the president with control on the congress. What a joke.