I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.
Woke, Biden, DEI, Obama, trans, Hillary, Soros, gays, illegals, fluoride. Take your pick.
My biggest mystery is how these people have the energy to hate so many things so deeply. It sounds exhausting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
> The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy super-state of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's governance of Oceania and toward non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals.
The only thing it gets wrong is the variety of Goldsteins.
Now now, there's no need to choose, you can just blame all of them all at once!
I keep hearing stuff like this, but it doesn't seem to be widespread enough to seem to matter, at least in my circle. There's this whole topic of conversation where there's this voter regret thing. I'm in Michigan, so there's been a few of these I've seen proclaiming the Muslim community are having regrets voting for Trump (it was a big thing around the election due to the whole Gaza situation, because voting for Harris was apparently not going to be enough). But I am worried I'm just seeing bullshit propaganda and these types of things aren't actually what's happening because everyone I've talked to seem to be content with the way things are going. It's incredibly weird.
The real interesting voter regret is when the likely Trump voters start realizing that their guy isn’t who they thought. It’s not going to happen quickly because denial and rationalization can go on for a very long time.
I am starting to see it in some of the VCs and crypto people I know personally and follow on Twitter. The launch of the Trump memecoin went through a rationalization cycle where the crypto people tried to spin it as a good thing, but now nearly all of them have given up and agreed it was a bad move for crypto
One of the loudest pro-Trump VCs in my state has gone from being a cheerleader to asking questions about what DOGE is actually doing. The trigger for him was, strangely enough, Musk having public issues with the parents of two of his children. Something about realizing that he’s not a good family man and father finally broke his illusions of Musk as the perfect hero.
I think it’s little things like this that will start making people ask questions about their heroes. The more topics and agencies they get their hands on, the more people will be impacted and be forced to reconcile their reality with their imagined ideals of this administration.
We need to be building a platform that houses the left and right in order to have a chance at standing up to this. This will be a real litmus test for the US: do we favor our tribal affiliations more than the country that enables us to have those affiliations? Or are we willing to put them aside for the greater good?
It's not cool anymore when someone else is running the scam
We're seeing a moment now where the "pro-crypto" team is bifurcating (really this has always been true but it's more obvious now) into good crypto vs bad crypto. Or mission driven vs profit maximalising. Oversimplifications of a nuanced political, tribal landscape with many many sides but you get the idea.
Democrats being anti all crypto was clearly wrong, attacking the more legitimate parts MORE fiercely than the illegitimate parts. But the flip side is Trump's "crime season" as they call it in crypto twitter, which also sucks. Maybe some day we'll get crypto that is useful, profitable, and designed in a beneficial way. That day is not today.
It also hasn't fully hit yet. The layoffs are in progress, already awarded grant money is still paying salaries. 3-6 months is when the pain will really begin. Until then, I think a lot of people are still thinking that it either won't really happen to them, or that Trump will somehow make an exception just for their particular federal money pipeline.
On top of that, I am no expert top of the job market software engineer. If I lose this job I am going to be competing against people significantly better than me because so many others have (or will) be losing their jobs. Basically, this is the potential beginning of the end of my career.
Thankfully, I think I'm okay through this year, and probably next... but after that, completely a mystery. And that's only because we have agreements for funding through 2026. There are no guarantees beyond that.
Ah, straight from denial into that other stage, more denial
Just under 50% of the population voted for President Trump, so it's a given that "already" the popularity is below 50%.
I'm not just being pedantic, it's an important distinction.
156,302,318 voted (~63.9% of ~244 million eligible voters, extrapolated)
77.3 million voted for Trump (~49.8% of voters).
So that's ~31.6% of eligible voters or ~22.7% of the US population.
- I live in a deeply partisan state where the outcome was predetermined: a disproportionate amount of those who didn't vote would have to vote in the opposite of those who voted (if I lived in a different state the pressure to vote would have been greater)
- I lack an easy means to get to my polling location and my state makes absentee ballots difficult to get
- I would have probably also needed to do some ID stuff (my ID is currently expired, for reasons)
- Registering to vote puts my name/address/registered party/etc onto easily searchable public websites like https://voterrecords.com/
My reasons aren't great but they're reasons. If there was less friction to voting I would have voted, as I recognize it's an important civic duty.
People voted for tariff and massive day 1 changes and federal cuts.
People wanted a loud strong man president who makes deals.
These actions ARE what people (who voted) wanted… people just didn’t think about the outcome
I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.
The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all.
Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.
So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.
The 51% of voters that voted for him… (correction: 49.8%)
> I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.
This is wrong. There were more republican voters this time around than last time.
> The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all. Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.
This is a constant issue in the US. Low voter turnout causes seemingly unpopular candidates to win.
Go out and vote, people. Please.
> So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.
Never said it did. But if you don’t voice your opinion when it matters, then your opinion literally doesn’t count.
So, the American people voted for trump and this administration. Either through their vote or their inaction.
Nitpick: 49.8%
The Democrats offered a really bad alternative (Biden) for most of the campaign season. Even if you liked his politics, there was (IMHO) legitimate reason to question his mental competence.
My guess is that Trump would have lost if the Democrats had fielded a less-bad alternative.
Kamala really ran a campaign like someone trying to lose.
Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatsoever, they are just the distractions being fed to gather support, there's something else much deeper and darker broken in American society that became so obfuscated by these distractions to the point where I have absolutely no fucking idea why half of the country seems to hate everything that brought the USA to the position it had on the global stage.
Perhaps it's just hubris after a very long period of quasi-absolute power, seems like power corrupts not only individuals but whole nations.
That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this is much starker.
You're in a war, even here.
It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.
That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.
I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.
What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.
I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.
Yes! I know apparently smart people who voted for Trump because they thought that his more extreme rhetoric was merely intended to wind up the left. Like the first time he got elected. Except that this time he had a plan.
This time he (illegally) fired a bunch of them right out of the gate. The Heritage Foundation wasn't caught off guard (and a bit out in the cold) by his success this time, and backed him with a plan. They did it out in the open, the recruiting and a whole lot of specifics about what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it. It wasn't even close to a secret, you could literally go download and read documents, watch interviews of key figures in front of friendly audiences, that kind of thing.
With the Vance pick, you could also easily spot the Yarvin influence & connections and make some guesses about some things. When Elon started worming his way in, it was clear that side of it wasn't just going to be in the head of a VP who can't personally do much, but was going to have traction.
His voters who are now like "WTF?" need to sit down and have a serious think about how they got conned by someone who was standing under a neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing down at him that read "I am conning you! Signed: Donald Trump". Like I'm not sure it even counts as a con, it was so transparent.
Everyone else… yeah.
Meanwhile Trump isn't even able to keep phrases like "rare earth minerals" correct in his head (repeatedly calling them "raw earth"). To be honest 90% of the meeting was him waffling on about how this news organisation was brilliant (because they give him a softball question) and this one was going bankrupt because their rating suck (because they asked a difficult question). You could see Zelensky trying to keep himself from rolling his eyes.
His "charm" is that he won't do 3/4 of what he says, the difficulty is figuring out which quarter he is going to enact.
voters are very very dumb for believing him, but he did lie.
Again, I don't think people are stupid. I do think they'll say one some things in mixed company to hide their racism.
This continued labeling of all fiscal conservatives as racists is a key reason Democrats keep losing to an obviously crazy person. Nobody’s going to vote for the party which calls them a racist.
A lot of fiscal conservatives are “middle class” undecided voters who have mortgages and kids to worry about. Unsurprisingly they voted for the party who promised lower taxes over the one which did nothing but accuse them of racism.
It will be far too late. That's why they're going so fast. The damage comes with a huge latency. Perhaps America can be saved and this is nothing but a bump in the ride, I'm no Nostradamus, but this could very well be the end of the Free West.
Europe seems to be realising it must get its act together. Europe + Canada + the Americas have a hope in hell of containing America if it goes off the rails internationally. (When Trump & Musk tip the economy into recession it will be tempting to drum up a stupid war. My guess would have been Iran. But who the hell knows.)
It honestly hasn't existed for decades.
If I was a governor of a blue state, I’d be strongly encouraging laid off government workers to work for my state. I’d also be working to eliminate the trade deficit (including federal taxes and spending) with rest of the US.
Why subsidize this crap if it’s not going to lead to economic prosperity, security, or even pretending the constitution still exists?
Also, Ontario supplies half the US’s nickel, and is threatening an embargo. That’d shut down a bunch of our factories in short order. They could also cut off electricity supplies to the north, but I get the impression the US grid would mostly absorb that (probably thanks to investment in smart grids for renewables, ironically).
I’m not sure “they could have known, but didn’t bother to learn, and instead voted based on Fox News and talk radio and podcast and Facebook post bullshit” is enough to say they didn’t vote for this. If it is, that’s… kinda usually the case.
…and that reversing lasts until the next time they turn on their TV and get reset by Fox News. I used to see it all the time with my parents. Now I just don’t talk to them much.
On a related note, I find it interesting that your comment is being downvoted while contributing to the dialogue productively.
Inference is left as an exercise to the reader.
Or is brigading considered a kind of astroturfing?
"If only the Tsar knew"
It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll).
Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good.
When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low.
Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.