Can someone please find a way to either confirm or debunk this. My working hypothesis was that people in power did actually take the time to read René Girard, and not just mention him to appear enlightened...
Anyway, never too late, at least one Stamford documentary on YouTube... Please check him out.
I'd never heard of René Girard and would be very surprised if Trump or Hegseth had read him, or probably even heard of him. His basic ideas from the top of his Wikipedia page seem interesting though:
>...that human desire is fundamentally imitative, leading to rivalry, violence and the scapegoat mechanism as foundations of religion and culture.
I guess applying that here Hegseth not having so many ideas of his own got the Armageddon and Jesus ideas from others and scapegoats the islam guys leading to violence etc.?
> Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth
I lived in Texas for 5 years and I have heard people saying this kind of things first and second hand during his first term and also after his defeat.
The irony is that it’s happening in Iran, the home of Zoroastarianism, which is the religion that Judaism and Christianity ripped off about the messiah, heaven, hell and the apocalyptic battle at the end of time (amongst other things)
>Xwedodah (Persian: خویدوده xidude; Avestan: xᵛaētuuadaθa) is a type of consanguine marriage historically practiced in Zoroastrianism before the Muslim conquest of Persia.[1] Such marriages are recorded as having been inspired by Zoroastrian cosmogony and considered pious. It was a high act of worship in Zoroastrianism, and there were punishments for not performing it.[2][3]
>This form of direct familial incest marriage allowed Zoroastrians to marry their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and their own mothers to take as wives.[4] Xwedodah was widely practiced by royalty and nobility, and possibly clergy, but it is not known if it was commonly practiced by families in other classes.[5] In modern Zoroastrianism it is near non-existent, having been noted to have disappeared as an extant practice by the 11th century.[5]
Context: This refers to a particular Evangelical quasi-cult called the "New Apostolic Reformation".
Obsession with the end times stems from a particular Biblical interpretation called "dispensationalism" that was introduced into America in the 1800s. If you're wondering why certain Christian sects became more obsessed from retreating from society than improving it, these are the head waters. It's a successful theme that took off on radio, then with televangelists, and now on social media.
The New Apostolic Reformation is kind of the ultimate culmination of these beliefs. It's one of the key components of what is being called Christian Nationalism.
It's not even clear what parts of the movement are earnestly held and which are purely opportunists trading on the fears of the naive. Many Christians may cross-pollinate in these circles without knowing it - but it takes a very specifically indoctrinated person to think Trump is divinely anointed
The source is complaints to the MRFF. Having served for a little while, this kind of rhetoric does not surprise me. Especially after the speeches Hegseth has given previously. This my wife and I anecdotal experiences but military leadership will sometimes surprise you with a bunch of deeply religious statements out of nowhere.
The strange part from my point of view is that it's so obviously heretical from inside the system.
They have Amos, which reasons out the problems of wishing for the Day of the Lord, and I don't understand how they can ignore it. Internalizing this idea should rather lead to a profound dislike for destabilizing the world, push the Day of the Lord as far into the future as it can be, to save all the people who can be born. I can understand how one can be a madman for a while, when one is full of grief. That's fine, but when one returns to normality one should realise that not destabilizing things is a moral duty.
The intersectionality of the American military industrial complex, the Republican Party and fundamentalist Christianity go back much further than Hegseth. When Bush talked about a "new crusade" after 9/11, who do you think he was signaling to? That wasn't just awkward phrasing.
The only real difference between then and now is that the current administration is run by groypers and trolls who don't care about kayfabe and aren't capable of subtlety.
They are a reflection of the electorate. If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it. If you get what you voted for, don’t be sad about it, it’s what you voted for. Regime change will come with time, but it’s going to suck for a while because of this governance failure mode.
> If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it
We have less of a problem with crazies voting for crazies than non-crazies not voting. Because if the crazies can find compromise with someone approximately as crazy as them while the non-crazies are either too lazy to turn out or unable to get out of stitches because the less-crazy candidate disagrees with them on two issues, the crazies win.
A fair position if the electoral system weren't a complete shambles. When gerrymandering is openly used as a weapon by the only two parties, it's pretty clearly not working.
Of course, change is impossible without a complete dissolution of governance in the US.
~89 million eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election. “Fuck around find out”, and we are at the “find out” stage. This was a collective choice.
So if you didn’t vote, or you voted for this, you voted for this. Enjoy the ride.
I can understand why someone would choose not to participate in an unrepresentative electoral process.
Here in the authoritarian hellhole that is the Commonwealth of Australia, showing up to the voting booth is mandatory. We also have preferential voting, and in a few jurisdictions we even have proportional representation.
What percentage of those eligible voters do you think would've mattered? For example I lived in WA and voted, how much do you think my vote mattered over an entire red county of 100 people voting for Trump?
Our electoral system is designed to disenfranchise the most populated areas.
More voters 55+ will have died in a year (~2M/year) since he was elected to office than was the margin of victory. High single digit percentage points of eligible voters who did not vote. Ahh, well, it is what it is. We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Trump got less than 50% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him.
The real issue is that the two parties have created a situation where you cannot vote for a viable candidate.
Case in point: approximately a dozen democratic senators have come out in support of the war. Like, if you don’t want to intentionally bring about the apocalypse/nuclear holocaust, and you live in those states, the only way to avoid voting for those things is to not vote.
You can try getting your incumbent kicked out in the primaries, but that’s a dangerous game in swing states. In your case (WA) you absolutely should vote in the primary for the farthest left democrat possible.
We probably should switch to multi-party proportional representation at some point.
I wouldn't say it's a reflection of the electorate. There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat.
Unfortunately Christian nationalists happen to be extremely wealthy and extremely stupid.
Calling people stupid who are voting for what they want feels counter-productive.
I don't know them, and I don't see a reason to call anyone stupid. Turkeys voting for thanksgiving is not "stupid" it's normal. Turkeys do what turkeys do.
I would have said "Unfortunately Christian Nationalists want what is being offered them by this administration, are extremely wealthy and fund PAC accordingly." but even "unfortunately" is argumentative. Of course to ME it's unfortunate, but thats me.
It’s not just gerrymandering (though that is indeed pervasive and pernicious. It’s structural. The apportionment between states gives small right-leaning states outsized representation in both the house and senate relative to their proportion of the national population.
> The apportionment between states gives small right-leaning states outsized representation in both the house and senate relative to their proportion of the national population.
That's not a bad thing. The bad thing happened when the Democrats decided to alienate those areas and lost them. You may forget, but a lot of those "small right-leaning states" were solid blue until relatively recently. For instance 100% of North Dakota's congressional delegation was Democratic until ~2010, Iowa was the quintessential purple state, the Senate majority leader was from South Dakota (but unlike today he was a Democrat), and I could go on.
If Americans didn't like their system then they would change it. Isn’t that their whole founding mythos?
I don’t think hundreds of millions of Americans are continually being duped. I think they actually like the system they’ve built, and the outcomes that system produces.
So much easier said than done. We have to get our elected representatives to make the change, but it is against their self interest. If this was the only thing people considered when voting _maybe_ it would stand a chance. And honestly, I suspect less than 20% understand how other voting systems could lead to better out comes. Heck, we can’t even use the metric system!
>There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat.
We the public should be rejecting it, but we're idiots and keep falling for 'but they're doing it!' and then undermine our own political power to 'own' the other side. We're being played for fools.
That's a ridiculous comparison. The California special redistricting was done via a voter initiative that was approved by a majority of California voters, and imposes a temporary change on the rules for drawing districts that reverts to the neutral rules when after the next census.
It was specifically proposed to counter the Texas special redistricting which was done by the Texas legislature and government with no concern over whether or not Texas voters approved (and polls show that more Texas voters disapprove than approve).
It's happening on both sides now because the Supreme Court has signed off on it for years and given all the power to gerrymandering efforts from the right. The public can't reject what is unaccountable to said public.
And the sad truth is that democrats will continue to nominate candidates that are so appalling they'll still be rejected in favor of this lunatic or someone like him. Pathetic options on both sides. The two party system is failing the country. If there was literally anything in the middle, I feel like we'd be better off than lurching from one extreme to the other.
What kinds of middle policies would you like to see?
Genuine question. This is a surprising opinion to me because I see the democrats as a center left largely moderate party. Agreed that the democrat candidates are appalling and generally show no conviction.
I'll get downvoted by both sides but this is what a winning political party policies look like for most of Americans not in NYC or in SF Bay Area, LA, SD, Seattle, Portland:
-Medicare for all
-Lower income taxes (federal and state) cut all the useless bloat like the $20B in homeless spending we can't even account for in California
-Free state college tuition for local residents (we need to significantly decrease cost of college)
-Universal background checks on guns
-Ban abortion after 20 weeks
-America first and only (stop being Israel's bitch)
-Strong on crime laws (none of this bullshit we deal with in blue states where we catch and release violent offenders constantly and let people run over and kill entire families with ZERO consequences)
-Having no stance on DEI, LGBTQ, or other cultural issues that serve only to divide and distract
Medicare for all doesn't seem to be a winning strategy, judging by the way it gets turned into euthanasia for all by our neighbors to the north.
Lowering the cost of necessary education is important, though in many cases the methods attempted just serve to make matters worse (much like how corporate average fleet economy regulations, in attempting to improve fuel efficiency, just made vehicles bigger). The structure of college itself (and schooling up until that point) is something I think we could stand to seriously reconsider, given how much of it really formed amid the industrial revolution and was modeled off of the ubiquitous factory models. I don't have some ready made model to address this, but do think there's room for an open conversation.
I don't care THAT much about abortion so much as the system that incentivizes it -- that is, the one that makes it particularly unaffordable to have children, and drives debaucherous, nihilistic behavior. In other words, the monetary system. Fix that, and see if a lot of this other stuff even needs to be fixed or resolves on its own.
Background checks, not licensing, I don't see a strong reason to oppose. I don't have a strong reason to back it, but not a total non-starter.
America first doesn't just mean cutting Israel's influence -- more importantly, it means cutting the influence of international bankers who bought our nation out from under us by printing OUR currency through the Eurodollar system. We've started to address this by leaving LIBOR for SOFR, but it's not a done deal, and there are decades of damage to undo.
Strong on crime needs to come with it sanity of enforcement. Another area I suspect fixing money can help, because I'm not convinced there isn't a fair bit of funded agitation to disrupt the social fabric that has law enforcement at its wit's end. That said, police killing people in the street is not a good look.
This comes off as a grab bag of non-issues and non-national issues mixed in with a couple of attractive seeming ideas. For example: Crime is down why bang on that issue instead of the 2000 Americans killed every year by cops? The young voters who will dominate in coming elections see, on their video feeds, how cops behave. The time for Clintonesque pandering on law and order has passed. It's not that Trump is different this time, it's that a lot of of his voters have died, and RFK Jr. is Charon at the Styx for more of them.
> I'll get downvoted by both sides but this is what a winning political party policies look like for most of Americans not in NYC or in SF Bay Area, LA, SD, Seattle, Portland:
I don't agree on all the specifics, but I think that's the absolute right way to be thinking about this. If you actually want to make things better, you need to have empathy for people who aren't like you. Despite their self-image, I don't think liberals are actually any better at empathy than anyone else.
> -Having no stance on DEI, LGBTQ, or other cultural issues that serve only to divide and distract
This is a key point. The focus on those issues is probably the only reason the plutocrat/big business Republicans even have a chance.
What focus on these issues? Harris did everything she could to run from trans rights issues and the most we got from Biden was reinterpreting Title IX based on the finding in Bostock.
>Despite their self-image, I don't think liberals are actually any better at empathy than anyone else.
I can see how you think this, since othering and dehumanizing responses rise to the top when people ask how Republicans can support this administration.
In other words, it is largely a moral panic manufactured by the right. If democrats give in, the right will concoct a new one, ad infinitum, until democrats and republicans are indistinguishable.
> In other words, it is largely a propaganda push by the right.
Who cares? It works, and why does it work?
I tell you why: it works because the Democrats give them the ammunition.
Edit: I see you edited the line I quoted to:
> In other words, it is largely a moral panic manufactured by the right. If democrats give in, the right will concoct a new one, ad infinitum, until democrats and republicans are indistinguishable.
I don't think that's true, it's just a story to discourage effective change to keep some faction happy.
Democrats used to be able to win in so-called red states, because they used to be able to adapt to local conditions. Following your line of thinking just means they'll keep losing.
Abortion used to be a Catholic issue until a Republican strategist saw an opportunity.
The point is to get citizens fighting each other on things that are personally important so we're too busy to fight for things that are nationally important, like corruption or the decay of democracy.
Both parties suck because the system is broken, and both parties benefit from perpetuating it -- along with those who fund them.
Well, I'll just say this: I was a "vote blue no matter who" voter following Trump 1, but after seeing the complete limpness of democratic leadership in Trump's proto-fascist America, I'm not sure I could actually stomach voting for a politician like Newsom, who basically quacks like a republican circa 10 years ago. What would be the point? When ICE is pulling my neighbors from their homes, will he step in to protect them? When the executive order gets signed to federalize polling stations, will he bother to do anything about it? I am far from the only person who feels this way.
If democrats acquiesce to republicans, they will likely lose even more people than they already have while gaining absolutely no one from the maga camp. I think the real strat is to go full Mamdani across the board. Unapologetic, compassionate leftism focused on the economy and quality of life; no one thrown under the bus as a cynical ploy to scrap together a few undecided votes.
> Well, I'll just say this: I was a "vote blue no matter who" voter following Trump 1, but after seeing the complete limpness of democratic leadership in Trump's proto-fascist America, I'm not sure I could actually stomach voting for a someone like Newsom, who is basically a republican circa 10 years ago. I am far from the only person who feels this way.
It's not about who you would vote for.
> If the democrats acquiesce to the republicans, they will likely lose even more people than they already have, while gaining absolutely no one from the maga camp. I think the real strat is to go full Mamdani across the board. Unapologetic, compassionate leftism.
To be perfectly honest: I don't think you have the strategic sense to productively participate on a topic this. I kinda get the impression you're going for wish fulfillment.
You're not going to get it all. If you try to get it all, you'll lose. Your wish fulfillment candidate could win parts of California and New York, but those aren't the places you need to think about. Think about not crashing and burning in a Nebraska Senate race.
Why do you think you have the strategic sense to productively participate on a topic like this? Who even are you? What are your sources?
As for me, I look at polling results almost every day. My sense is that nothing I said is extraordinarily controversial among the voters who actually matter. People care about the economy, period. Outside of hardcore MAGA enclaves -- which will never change their vote -- the culture war bullshit is massively unpopular.
'Compromise' is strictly just code for becoming Republican, and I'm not going to vote for a Republican.
A great example of this is abortion, where for years Democrats did have 'moderate' positions on abortion. The end result has been taking away people's rights and stomping on any notion of any abortion.
Compromise is how we got to here in the first place, with feckless politicians unable to have any sort of spine and gradually shrinking the amount of constituents they'll fight for.
Talking about the "middle" is the wrong way of framing it. The problem is that the Democratic party sandbags any meaningful reforms, as they're still beholden to that same Epstein class when it comes time to campaign. For example the Democrats' grand attempt at healthcare reform included making it mandatory to patronize the "insurance" cartel! Is it possible for regulatory capture to be any more brazen?
So people get frustrated with the hamfisted top-down plans tailored for those deeply wed to the system, tire of the hypocrisy, and then either stay home or vote for the alternative that doesn't even bother promising to try and constructively fix anything. It's a game of bad cop worse cop. We desperately need ranked pairs voting.
Several countries with universal healthcare use the "you have to buy private insurance" model, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland. There doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with that system.
ACA has survived 12 years and enabled a lot of people to obtain health insurance that would not have been able to otherwise, with Republicans wanting to kill it that entire time but failing to do so. Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
Switzerland has a “public option”, price controls, and IIRC private insurers have to be non-profits (and possibly that designation means more in their system than the US, I dunno about that).
> Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
You're buying into the paradigm wherein sandbagging it was necessary for pragmatic reasons, and justifying within that. While this is true to an extent, it doesn't really change my overall point.
I do get that the ACA was a significant piece of legislation that has helped many people. And if you want to talk system design, such a mandate might make sense in a system with much much more regulatory bandwidth than ours, where it's not just forcing people into a corrupt system. But as it stands, they didn't even address the antitrust issues of bundling healthcare plans with employment or price fixing between insurers and providers. So I stand by my characterization of the dynamic as brazen regulatory capture.
>ACA has survived 12 years and enabled a lot of people to obtain health insurance that would not have been able to otherwise, with Republicans wanting to kill it that entire time but failing to do so.
My insurance is more expensive than ever and quality of care lower quality than ever.
>Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
Medicare for all. Or lower the age gradually (cover kids and elderly first). They should have voted on it during the pandemic but Pelosi blocked it and AOC wouldn't do anything. They're all fakes.
Exactly this. They went the entire pandemic without even bringing a vote on Medicare for All. The democrats are not left wing at all. They are complete corporate sell outs. They don't actually do what their voters want, they represent only their donors.
This is complete nonsense. Moderate Democrats loudly and vigorously support all these things. Either you’re ignorant or you’re trolling from your actual far-right position.
> The problem isn’t that the candidates are appalling. They’re not. It’s that the left is shit at messaging.
The "the left is shit at messaging" is an excuse to distract from having a bad message (or at least a message with bad parts), so that message doesn't get revised into something better. Basically: "we don't want to change so we can win, so lets hope all we have to do is say stuff better."
Here's something to think about:
> And the stakes of politics are almost always incredibly high. I think they happen to be higher now. And I do think a lot of what is happening in terms of the structure of the system itself is dangerous. I think that the hour is late in many ways. My view is that a lot of people who embrace alarm don’t embrace what I think obviously follows from that alarm, which is the willingness to make strategic and political decisions you find personally discomfiting, even though they are obviously more likely to help you win.
> Taking political positions that’ll make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri. Trying to open your coalition to people you didn’t want it open to before. Running pro-life Democrats.
> And one of my biggest frustrations with many people whose politics I otherwise share is the unwillingness to match the seriousness of your politics to the seriousness of your alarm. I see a Democratic Party that often just wants to do nothing differently, even though it is failing — failing in the most obvious and consequential ways it can possibly fail. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/opinion/interesting-times...)
I mean yes, the "impression" you get is bar for bar that of the standard right-wing Trump voter, down to the bad-faith interpretation. People who think the way you do in the US were always going to vote for Trump and were never going to vote for a Democrat, regardless of their platform.
If you're pointing out that the left's message didn't appeal to to the right, that seems tautological.
Can someone please find a way to either confirm or debunk this. My working hypothesis was that people in power did actually take the time to read René Girard, and not just mention him to appear enlightened... Anyway, never too late, at least one Stamford documentary on YouTube... Please check him out.
> Anyway, never too late, at least one Stamford documentary on YouTube... Please check him out.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, surely you can share the link with us.
https://googlethatforyou.com?q=rene%20girard%20stanford%20do...
Sorry I thought the Girard Thiel Vance timeline courtesy of Yeats https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi... was common knowledge here. I will see myself out now.
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I'd never heard of René Girard and would be very surprised if Trump or Hegseth had read him, or probably even heard of him. His basic ideas from the top of his Wikipedia page seem interesting though:
>...that human desire is fundamentally imitative, leading to rivalry, violence and the scapegoat mechanism as foundations of religion and culture.
I guess applying that here Hegseth not having so many ideas of his own got the Armageddon and Jesus ideas from others and scapegoats the islam guys leading to violence etc.?
> Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth
I lived in Texas for 5 years and I have heard people saying this kind of things first and second hand during his first term and also after his defeat.
Why would anyone downvote this?
The irony is that it’s happening in Iran, the home of Zoroastarianism, which is the religion that Judaism and Christianity ripped off about the messiah, heaven, hell and the apocalyptic battle at the end of time (amongst other things)
One of my favorites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xwedodah
>Xwedodah (Persian: خویدوده xidude; Avestan: xᵛaētuuadaθa) is a type of consanguine marriage historically practiced in Zoroastrianism before the Muslim conquest of Persia.[1] Such marriages are recorded as having been inspired by Zoroastrian cosmogony and considered pious. It was a high act of worship in Zoroastrianism, and there were punishments for not performing it.[2][3]
>This form of direct familial incest marriage allowed Zoroastrians to marry their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and their own mothers to take as wives.[4] Xwedodah was widely practiced by royalty and nobility, and possibly clergy, but it is not known if it was commonly practiced by families in other classes.[5] In modern Zoroastrianism it is near non-existent, having been noted to have disappeared as an extant practice by the 11th century.[5]
It seems Judaism also took from Aten, weirdly, because the cult died under Tutankhamun, at least in lower Egypt.
Armageddon is the old name for what is now called Megiddo. It's a Kibbutz in northern Israel.
But hey, if the goal is to bring war to the doorstep of the occupiers,there are probably worse goals to have.
Context: This refers to a particular Evangelical quasi-cult called the "New Apostolic Reformation".
Obsession with the end times stems from a particular Biblical interpretation called "dispensationalism" that was introduced into America in the 1800s. If you're wondering why certain Christian sects became more obsessed from retreating from society than improving it, these are the head waters. It's a successful theme that took off on radio, then with televangelists, and now on social media.
The New Apostolic Reformation is kind of the ultimate culmination of these beliefs. It's one of the key components of what is being called Christian Nationalism.
It's not even clear what parts of the movement are earnestly held and which are purely opportunists trading on the fears of the naive. Many Christians may cross-pollinate in these circles without knowing it - but it takes a very specifically indoctrinated person to think Trump is divinely anointed
the power of Christ compels you … to bomb schools, apparently
I think that one was a screw up - it was next to an IRGC barracks.
Ah, that’s alright then.
is this real life
is this just fanta sea
Is there any effing source or is everybody inventing shit just for the fun of it?
The source is complaints to the MRFF. Having served for a little while, this kind of rhetoric does not surprise me. Especially after the speeches Hegseth has given previously. This my wife and I anecdotal experiences but military leadership will sometimes surprise you with a bunch of deeply religious statements out of nowhere.
I mean people voted for Trump so I'd bet there are people falling for this too
The people running the country are fucking insane.
The strange part from my point of view is that it's so obviously heretical from inside the system.
They have Amos, which reasons out the problems of wishing for the Day of the Lord, and I don't understand how they can ignore it. Internalizing this idea should rather lead to a profound dislike for destabilizing the world, push the Day of the Lord as far into the future as it can be, to save all the people who can be born. I can understand how one can be a madman for a while, when one is full of grief. That's fine, but when one returns to normality one should realise that not destabilizing things is a moral duty.
The way they ignore everything else that doesn't validate their own sinning?
A possible good point of Trump is he seems pretty non religious. The Armageddon bit seems to be Hegseth and his preacher.
The intersectionality of the American military industrial complex, the Republican Party and fundamentalist Christianity go back much further than Hegseth. When Bush talked about a "new crusade" after 9/11, who do you think he was signaling to? That wasn't just awkward phrasing.
The only real difference between then and now is that the current administration is run by groypers and trolls who don't care about kayfabe and aren't capable of subtlety.
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The bigger challenge is the people who vote for them are also fucking insane and there are tens of millions more of them.
They are a reflection of the electorate. If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it. If you get what you voted for, don’t be sad about it, it’s what you voted for. Regime change will come with time, but it’s going to suck for a while because of this governance failure mode.
> If you don’t want crazy and incompetent, don’t vote for it
We have less of a problem with crazies voting for crazies than non-crazies not voting. Because if the crazies can find compromise with someone approximately as crazy as them while the non-crazies are either too lazy to turn out or unable to get out of stitches because the less-crazy candidate disagrees with them on two issues, the crazies win.
A fair position if the electoral system weren't a complete shambles. When gerrymandering is openly used as a weapon by the only two parties, it's pretty clearly not working.
Of course, change is impossible without a complete dissolution of governance in the US.
~89 million eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election. “Fuck around find out”, and we are at the “find out” stage. This was a collective choice.
So if you didn’t vote, or you voted for this, you voted for this. Enjoy the ride.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-1...
I can understand why someone would choose not to participate in an unrepresentative electoral process.
Here in the authoritarian hellhole that is the Commonwealth of Australia, showing up to the voting booth is mandatory. We also have preferential voting, and in a few jurisdictions we even have proportional representation.
"authoritarian hellhole" as in Jon Kudelka's "Tasmania is awful don't come here" hellhole.
In these times, I think humour does not work well in written communications without a flag.
It's not a hellhole, and it's no more authoritarian now, than it was when I came here in 1988.
Yea...forgive me for doubting that Genocide Joe's MK-Ultra'd lieutenant would not have us similarly murderous.
What percentage of those eligible voters do you think would've mattered? For example I lived in WA and voted, how much do you think my vote mattered over an entire red county of 100 people voting for Trump?
Our electoral system is designed to disenfranchise the most populated areas.
More voters 55+ will have died in a year (~2M/year) since he was elected to office than was the margin of victory. High single digit percentage points of eligible voters who did not vote. Ahh, well, it is what it is. We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Trump got less than 50% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him. The real issue is that the two parties have created a situation where you cannot vote for a viable candidate. Case in point: approximately a dozen democratic senators have come out in support of the war. Like, if you don’t want to intentionally bring about the apocalypse/nuclear holocaust, and you live in those states, the only way to avoid voting for those things is to not vote.
You can try getting your incumbent kicked out in the primaries, but that’s a dangerous game in swing states. In your case (WA) you absolutely should vote in the primary for the farthest left democrat possible.
We probably should switch to multi-party proportional representation at some point.
But only around a quarter of Americans support the war?
*special Judeo-Christian operation
I wouldn't say it's a reflection of the electorate. There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat.
Unfortunately Christian nationalists happen to be extremely wealthy and extremely stupid.
Calling people stupid who are voting for what they want feels counter-productive.
I don't know them, and I don't see a reason to call anyone stupid. Turkeys voting for thanksgiving is not "stupid" it's normal. Turkeys do what turkeys do.
I would have said "Unfortunately Christian Nationalists want what is being offered them by this administration, are extremely wealthy and fund PAC accordingly." but even "unfortunately" is argumentative. Of course to ME it's unfortunate, but thats me.
It’s not just gerrymandering (though that is indeed pervasive and pernicious. It’s structural. The apportionment between states gives small right-leaning states outsized representation in both the house and senate relative to their proportion of the national population.
> The apportionment between states gives small right-leaning states outsized representation in both the house and senate relative to their proportion of the national population.
That's not a bad thing. The bad thing happened when the Democrats decided to alienate those areas and lost them. You may forget, but a lot of those "small right-leaning states" were solid blue until relatively recently. For instance 100% of North Dakota's congressional delegation was Democratic until ~2010, Iowa was the quintessential purple state, the Senate majority leader was from South Dakota (but unlike today he was a Democrat), and I could go on.
If Americans didn't like their system then they would change it. Isn’t that their whole founding mythos?
I don’t think hundreds of millions of Americans are continually being duped. I think they actually like the system they’ve built, and the outcomes that system produces.
So much easier said than done. We have to get our elected representatives to make the change, but it is against their self interest. If this was the only thing people considered when voting _maybe_ it would stand a chance. And honestly, I suspect less than 20% understand how other voting systems could lead to better out comes. Heck, we can’t even use the metric system!
>There's a lot of states that have been gerrymandered for years and Christians in extremely red areas have outsized voting power compared to everywhere else. Combined with the complete media capture by billionaires, the dumbest rule by fiat.
It's happening on both sides. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5647442/midterm-electio...
We the public should be rejecting it, but we're idiots and keep falling for 'but they're doing it!' and then undermine our own political power to 'own' the other side. We're being played for fools.
That's a ridiculous comparison. The California special redistricting was done via a voter initiative that was approved by a majority of California voters, and imposes a temporary change on the rules for drawing districts that reverts to the neutral rules when after the next census.
It was specifically proposed to counter the Texas special redistricting which was done by the Texas legislature and government with no concern over whether or not Texas voters approved (and polls show that more Texas voters disapprove than approve).
It's happening on both sides now because the Supreme Court has signed off on it for years and given all the power to gerrymandering efforts from the right. The public can't reject what is unaccountable to said public.
And the sad truth is that democrats will continue to nominate candidates that are so appalling they'll still be rejected in favor of this lunatic or someone like him. Pathetic options on both sides. The two party system is failing the country. If there was literally anything in the middle, I feel like we'd be better off than lurching from one extreme to the other.
What kinds of middle policies would you like to see?
Genuine question. This is a surprising opinion to me because I see the democrats as a center left largely moderate party. Agreed that the democrat candidates are appalling and generally show no conviction.
I'll get downvoted by both sides but this is what a winning political party policies look like for most of Americans not in NYC or in SF Bay Area, LA, SD, Seattle, Portland:
-Medicare for all
-Lower income taxes (federal and state) cut all the useless bloat like the $20B in homeless spending we can't even account for in California
-Free state college tuition for local residents (we need to significantly decrease cost of college)
-Universal background checks on guns
-Ban abortion after 20 weeks
-America first and only (stop being Israel's bitch)
-Strong on crime laws (none of this bullshit we deal with in blue states where we catch and release violent offenders constantly and let people run over and kill entire families with ZERO consequences)
-Having no stance on DEI, LGBTQ, or other cultural issues that serve only to divide and distract
Medicare for all doesn't seem to be a winning strategy, judging by the way it gets turned into euthanasia for all by our neighbors to the north.
Lowering the cost of necessary education is important, though in many cases the methods attempted just serve to make matters worse (much like how corporate average fleet economy regulations, in attempting to improve fuel efficiency, just made vehicles bigger). The structure of college itself (and schooling up until that point) is something I think we could stand to seriously reconsider, given how much of it really formed amid the industrial revolution and was modeled off of the ubiquitous factory models. I don't have some ready made model to address this, but do think there's room for an open conversation.
I don't care THAT much about abortion so much as the system that incentivizes it -- that is, the one that makes it particularly unaffordable to have children, and drives debaucherous, nihilistic behavior. In other words, the monetary system. Fix that, and see if a lot of this other stuff even needs to be fixed or resolves on its own.
Background checks, not licensing, I don't see a strong reason to oppose. I don't have a strong reason to back it, but not a total non-starter.
America first doesn't just mean cutting Israel's influence -- more importantly, it means cutting the influence of international bankers who bought our nation out from under us by printing OUR currency through the Eurodollar system. We've started to address this by leaving LIBOR for SOFR, but it's not a done deal, and there are decades of damage to undo.
Strong on crime needs to come with it sanity of enforcement. Another area I suspect fixing money can help, because I'm not convinced there isn't a fair bit of funded agitation to disrupt the social fabric that has law enforcement at its wit's end. That said, police killing people in the street is not a good look.
As for DEI, no argument.
This comes off as a grab bag of non-issues and non-national issues mixed in with a couple of attractive seeming ideas. For example: Crime is down why bang on that issue instead of the 2000 Americans killed every year by cops? The young voters who will dominate in coming elections see, on their video feeds, how cops behave. The time for Clintonesque pandering on law and order has passed. It's not that Trump is different this time, it's that a lot of of his voters have died, and RFK Jr. is Charon at the Styx for more of them.
> I'll get downvoted by both sides but this is what a winning political party policies look like for most of Americans not in NYC or in SF Bay Area, LA, SD, Seattle, Portland:
I don't agree on all the specifics, but I think that's the absolute right way to be thinking about this. If you actually want to make things better, you need to have empathy for people who aren't like you. Despite their self-image, I don't think liberals are actually any better at empathy than anyone else.
> -Having no stance on DEI, LGBTQ, or other cultural issues that serve only to divide and distract
This is a key point. The focus on those issues is probably the only reason the plutocrat/big business Republicans even have a chance.
What focus on these issues? Harris did everything she could to run from trans rights issues and the most we got from Biden was reinterpreting Title IX based on the finding in Bostock.
>Despite their self-image, I don't think liberals are actually any better at empathy than anyone else.
I can see how you think this, since othering and dehumanizing responses rise to the top when people ask how Republicans can support this administration.
Who benefits from amplifying those voices?
"This is a key point. The focus on those issues is probably the only reason the plutocrat/big business Republicans even have a chance."
The right spends *far* more money and airtime on these issues than democrats actually do: https://abcnews.com/US/trump-spends-millions-anti-trans-ads-...
In other words, it is largely a moral panic manufactured by the right. If democrats give in, the right will concoct a new one, ad infinitum, until democrats and republicans are indistinguishable.
> In other words, it is largely a propaganda push by the right.
Who cares? It works, and why does it work?
I tell you why: it works because the Democrats give them the ammunition.
Edit: I see you edited the line I quoted to:
> In other words, it is largely a moral panic manufactured by the right. If democrats give in, the right will concoct a new one, ad infinitum, until democrats and republicans are indistinguishable.
I don't think that's true, it's just a story to discourage effective change to keep some faction happy.
Democrats used to be able to win in so-called red states, because they used to be able to adapt to local conditions. Following your line of thinking just means they'll keep losing.
When North Carolina passed the first bathroom bill in 2016, what should have happened in your mind?
Abortion used to be a Catholic issue until a Republican strategist saw an opportunity.
The point is to get citizens fighting each other on things that are personally important so we're too busy to fight for things that are nationally important, like corruption or the decay of democracy.
Both parties suck because the system is broken, and both parties benefit from perpetuating it -- along with those who fund them.
Well, I'll just say this: I was a "vote blue no matter who" voter following Trump 1, but after seeing the complete limpness of democratic leadership in Trump's proto-fascist America, I'm not sure I could actually stomach voting for a politician like Newsom, who basically quacks like a republican circa 10 years ago. What would be the point? When ICE is pulling my neighbors from their homes, will he step in to protect them? When the executive order gets signed to federalize polling stations, will he bother to do anything about it? I am far from the only person who feels this way.
If democrats acquiesce to republicans, they will likely lose even more people than they already have while gaining absolutely no one from the maga camp. I think the real strat is to go full Mamdani across the board. Unapologetic, compassionate leftism focused on the economy and quality of life; no one thrown under the bus as a cynical ploy to scrap together a few undecided votes.
> Well, I'll just say this: I was a "vote blue no matter who" voter following Trump 1, but after seeing the complete limpness of democratic leadership in Trump's proto-fascist America, I'm not sure I could actually stomach voting for a someone like Newsom, who is basically a republican circa 10 years ago. I am far from the only person who feels this way.
It's not about who you would vote for.
> If the democrats acquiesce to the republicans, they will likely lose even more people than they already have, while gaining absolutely no one from the maga camp. I think the real strat is to go full Mamdani across the board. Unapologetic, compassionate leftism.
To be perfectly honest: I don't think you have the strategic sense to productively participate on a topic this. I kinda get the impression you're going for wish fulfillment.
You're not going to get it all. If you try to get it all, you'll lose. Your wish fulfillment candidate could win parts of California and New York, but those aren't the places you need to think about. Think about not crashing and burning in a Nebraska Senate race.
Why do you think you have the strategic sense to productively participate on a topic like this? Who even are you? What are your sources?
As for me, I look at polling results almost every day. My sense is that nothing I said is extraordinarily controversial among the voters who actually matter. People care about the economy, period. Outside of hardcore MAGA enclaves -- which will never change their vote -- the culture war bullshit is massively unpopular.
> Why do you think you have the strategic sense to productively participate on a topic like this?
In short: I'm talking about compromises, not fantasies of partisan purity.
> Who even are you? What are your sources?
Someone who has lived in places where Democrats used to win, but no longer do.
'Compromise' is strictly just code for becoming Republican, and I'm not going to vote for a Republican.
A great example of this is abortion, where for years Democrats did have 'moderate' positions on abortion. The end result has been taking away people's rights and stomping on any notion of any abortion.
Compromise is how we got to here in the first place, with feckless politicians unable to have any sort of spine and gradually shrinking the amount of constituents they'll fight for.
> The end result has been taking away people's rights and stomping on any notion of any abortion.
Abortion is allowed just like in the EU, some member states in both do ban it but USA and EU doesn't.
Talking about the "middle" is the wrong way of framing it. The problem is that the Democratic party sandbags any meaningful reforms, as they're still beholden to that same Epstein class when it comes time to campaign. For example the Democrats' grand attempt at healthcare reform included making it mandatory to patronize the "insurance" cartel! Is it possible for regulatory capture to be any more brazen?
So people get frustrated with the hamfisted top-down plans tailored for those deeply wed to the system, tire of the hypocrisy, and then either stay home or vote for the alternative that doesn't even bother promising to try and constructively fix anything. It's a game of bad cop worse cop. We desperately need ranked pairs voting.
Several countries with universal healthcare use the "you have to buy private insurance" model, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland. There doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with that system.
ACA has survived 12 years and enabled a lot of people to obtain health insurance that would not have been able to otherwise, with Republicans wanting to kill it that entire time but failing to do so. Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
Switzerland has a “public option”, price controls, and IIRC private insurers have to be non-profits (and possibly that designation means more in their system than the US, I dunno about that).
> Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
You're buying into the paradigm wherein sandbagging it was necessary for pragmatic reasons, and justifying within that. While this is true to an extent, it doesn't really change my overall point.
I do get that the ACA was a significant piece of legislation that has helped many people. And if you want to talk system design, such a mandate might make sense in a system with much much more regulatory bandwidth than ours, where it's not just forcing people into a corrupt system. But as it stands, they didn't even address the antitrust issues of bundling healthcare plans with employment or price fixing between insurers and providers. So I stand by my characterization of the dynamic as brazen regulatory capture.
>ACA has survived 12 years and enabled a lot of people to obtain health insurance that would not have been able to otherwise, with Republicans wanting to kill it that entire time but failing to do so.
My insurance is more expensive than ever and quality of care lower quality than ever.
>Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?
Medicare for all. Or lower the age gradually (cover kids and elderly first). They should have voted on it during the pandemic but Pelosi blocked it and AOC wouldn't do anything. They're all fakes.
Exactly this. They went the entire pandemic without even bringing a vote on Medicare for All. The democrats are not left wing at all. They are complete corporate sell outs. They don't actually do what their voters want, they represent only their donors.
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This is complete nonsense. Moderate Democrats loudly and vigorously support all these things. Either you’re ignorant or you’re trolling from your actual far-right position.
The problem isn’t that the candidates are appalling. They’re not. It’s that the left is shit at messaging.
> The problem isn’t that the candidates are appalling. They’re not. It’s that the left is shit at messaging.
The "the left is shit at messaging" is an excuse to distract from having a bad message (or at least a message with bad parts), so that message doesn't get revised into something better. Basically: "we don't want to change so we can win, so lets hope all we have to do is say stuff better."
Here's something to think about:
> And the stakes of politics are almost always incredibly high. I think they happen to be higher now. And I do think a lot of what is happening in terms of the structure of the system itself is dangerous. I think that the hour is late in many ways. My view is that a lot of people who embrace alarm don’t embrace what I think obviously follows from that alarm, which is the willingness to make strategic and political decisions you find personally discomfiting, even though they are obviously more likely to help you win.
> Taking political positions that’ll make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri. Trying to open your coalition to people you didn’t want it open to before. Running pro-life Democrats.
> And one of my biggest frustrations with many people whose politics I otherwise share is the unwillingness to match the seriousness of your politics to the seriousness of your alarm. I see a Democratic Party that often just wants to do nothing differently, even though it is failing — failing in the most obvious and consequential ways it can possibly fail. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/opinion/interesting-times...)
I got the impression from the last election that the messaging included:
If you think millions of unvetted illegal immigrants turning up is an issue, you are a racist.
If you think some bloke who thinks he's a chick is still a bloke you are a bigot.
If a black guy and white guy go for a job, the black should get it because judging by the color of skin there in not racist if it's DEI.
Thus Trump.
(I'm not American or Republican, that's just the impression I got watching the news)
I mean yes, the "impression" you get is bar for bar that of the standard right-wing Trump voter, down to the bad-faith interpretation. People who think the way you do in the US were always going to vote for Trump and were never going to vote for a Democrat, regardless of their platform.
If you're pointing out that the left's message didn't appeal to to the right, that seems tautological.
But a candidate could still be a democrat / somewhat left while having decent border control, meritocracy and thinking trans is a bit weird.
I cannot even imagine how someone can be more appalling than Trump.
Is being black and a woman that bad?
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