As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter input.
The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
The left won't be competitive in elections until they learn what it is, why it results in alienation of people who would otherwise support them, and find a way to escape it.
One could argue the right with its views on abortion and religion suffers the same problem, one they've largely tackled by voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering.
The difference I think, is that the purity spiral on the left encompasses the entire party. If your perspectives are too moderate you are shunned from the entire hemisphere of politics and often suffer a barage of name calling (e.g. bigot) from your own 'side'.
On the right, this is far less often the case. The right is significantly more tolerant of people who fall outside of purity definitions. For example, the majority of republicans are pro-life, but co-exist with roughly a third of republicans who are pro-choice.
In contrast, most Democrats will not tolerate a pro-life member under any circumstance.
I do think purity spirals exist on the right, but they are not as all emcompasssing as on the left.
You can be shunned from MAGA, while remaining republican. You can be shunned from the religious right, while remaining republican.
There is significantly more ideological diversity within the republican party than within the democratic party, and the result is democrats switching to republican at a rate 4 times higher than the republicans switch to democrats.
So ... 4 senators and 2 representatives are not MAGA. Everyone else has had to swear fealty to Trump or leave. And you say that's diversity of opinion?
The list is not an exhaustive list of non-MAGA republicans, it is a list of non-MAGA republicans who publically opposed Trump's election even after he won the primary.
Non-MAGA republicans overall are about half the republican party.
Bro I'm a gun owner and a big time first amendment proponent and all that. I've been called a socialist, communist, American hater, a racist and more by those on the right as soon as I contradict dear leader slightly.
The right is every bit as bad at this as the left because at the end of the day people are going to people.
Democrats for life of America disagrees with your assessment. The organization has existed since 1999. Henry Cuellar is a member of the democratic party and is very "pro-life".
The issue is that "pro-life" has morphed into anti-choice. What is happening in Texas and other states is not pro-life. Forcing women to die is not a pro-life stance.
In other words, the left needs to learn how to love the right (and many people within the left). But I don't know if that's the case. I think there are a lot of people on the right who want the left to love them but believe that the people on the left do not love them.
I believe the problem is that people need to learn how to feel loved. To realize that even our enemies are trying their best and most likely care about us a lot more than they would ever admit. Both sides struggle with this. People on the current left tend to just resign and give up on the relationships. People on the right tend to seek vengeance.
Purity spirals are a social dynamic where members of a group compete to demonstrate ever-increasing levels of ideological purity. Moderate perspectives are seen as dissenters and are shunned as the group becomes more radicalised.
It's a big problem for the left because numerically they are now the minority of voters, but are still trending away from the center, and shedding their more moderate members.
We know it's not as much of a problem on the right, because the rate of party switching is still far lower on the right than the left, by a factor of about 1:4.
On the right, you can be shunned by MAGA or shunned by the religious right, but still be welcome within the republican party.
On the left, you cannot challenge with any of the tent pole policies without being shunned entirely.
I think YMMV here based on who you're around. If you're right-leaning in an urban setting or a coastal city, you'll find a lot of heterodox views. If you live in the Rural South or Rural Midwest and do not almost literally worship Donald Trump, you are shunned.
The opposite is true for the left and the Democratic Party. Those circles tend to be very orthodox if you live in a lefty urban area. Disagree with one major platform issue and you're immediately suspected. If you're in the suburbs or a rural area you'll find that left-leaning people are much more heterodox.
Purity spirals are most intense in enclaves, which are echo chambers.
You'll find the same phenomenon online with regard to echo chambers. If you're in a left or right wing echo chamber, the purity spiral phenomenon is intense.
I am exactly who you are talking about, I live in a very purple city in the midwest. I grew up in a town of 3000 people, my family was Amish 4 generations ago. I'm also a 90s kid and grew up on south park. Turned into a redneck hippy.
It's a complete social poison pill in the city to have voted a certain way. Have had the same look of "how could you be that dumb" from people ranging from strippers to lawyers.
All I want is love and belonging, not sure how to feel love when I've heard the word "barbarian" to describe certain types of people. Not sure how to feel love when men's loneliness and suicide problems aren't being prioritized
Yeah, the hurt turns into anger sometimes, but yes, I need them too. For me to exist, my opposite has to exist, and I should love us both.
I appreciate you sharing this story. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit and while I voted for Kamala, I have a lot of friends and family who either openly voted for Trump or who I imagine secretly did. And while it can be so hard for me to not call them stupid (I tend to default to insulting people's intelligence sometimes because I feel so confident in mine), I try really hard to see how they're really just struggling/suffering.
And it can hurt me so much when I see people in my life attack people very hard for voting for Trump. The ones in my life who voted for him sometimes seem to be the ones who are craving the most social connection, the most interaction, and don't get it. They seem to want to engage with people and sometimes the best way to engage is to say something controversial. Like the kid who can't get the mom's attention and so starts hitting her in the leg.
People on the right are not a basket of deplorables, they're human beings who want love and attention, often from those who they fear think they're better than them. Often from those they admire the most, who keep ignoring them and running away from them.
So thank you for sharing this and helping me see this even more deeply and lovingly.
People have despaired of making common cause, because bipartisanship IS punished within the republican party, and by FOX.
I can apprecaite my fellow man, but I must also answer the question posed by the success of their tactics. I know that during the Bush era, the republicans would be AGHAST at someone like him. Someone who openly doubted McCain?? Good gravy, that would have been something to see.
But reality has drifted, and political success has dependend more and more on extremism and animosity. They can dispute the existence of evolution, and succeed in making it an issue!
Today, all that seems to matter is poltical efficiency. People have voted for Trump even KNOWING that he is going to be terrible, but because he is better for their goals.
I can feel for everyone, but as the right likes to say - who gives a frig about your feelings?
What matters is winning.
Make emapthy win. Make bipartisanship work again, then you have a chance. But why should the republicans ever do that? Their approach has given them everything they have ever desired.
Gaining voters from the right shouldn't be the Democrats primary focus.
Their primary focus should be retaining voters, by broadening the range of opinions which are acceptable within the party.
They are a decade down a purity spiral, which has resulted in the range of acceptable opinions within the party shrinking considerably, and the shunning of many individuals unnecessarily, who either stop voting altogether or find company on the right.
I gave the example above of how the republican party is able to accomodate a significant number of both pro-life and pro-choice members. The Democrats will similarly need to learn to expand their umbrella as well. Perhaps not with abortion rights, but maybe by shedding some of their zero-sum economic thinking, or race-centric thinking.
If they can fix this, they will grow, because their biggest source of new members is young adults becoming eligible to vote, not people they pull away from the right. The Democrats just need to stop churning so many people away.
> Perhaps not with abortion rights, but maybe by shedding some of their zero-sum economic thinking, or race-centric thinking.
I think this is the big one here. Race and gender, this seems to be the only thing Dems can even talk about. I just saw videos from the recent DNC winter meeting. Watch for just 75 seconds starting here: https://youtu.be/1pHvkq4ehkE?t=93
I guess this apparently plays well among the tiny base that the DNC still has, but when most independents and moderates look at this nonsense, this party is a caricature of itself.
And my point isn't that they need to pull the far right into their tent somehow. But rather that most people including the average first-time voters, are much more moderate than the current DNC has positioned itself now, and it seems like Dems mostly just want to shock them rather than win their hearts.
> I know that during the Bush era, the republicans would be AGHAST at someone like him.
The Bush era has been the worst disaster for the right wing this century in both the US and potentially globally. He was a warmonger, an economic vandal and an unprincipled man at the helm of a state that flubbed any chance at setting up for meaningful long term success in favour of the patriot act and slaughtering goat herders in the middle east. Under his eye the Republicans exiled the right from cultural relevance for around a decade. The party around him were cut from the same cloth.
There is a reason the modern Republican party went with Trump rather than another person who looked like Bush. The entire Trump story has been the Republicans - without too much recrimination - attempting to purge the remains of the Bush era because they were a gross embarrassment whos legacy has been little short of a disaster. If the US Democrats had undertaken the same purge instead of embracing the leadership of the same era then they wouldn't have tried to run Biden then Kamala.
This is what is annoying - you saw a noun, and talked about that noun.
Not about the conversation we were having which is about standards of decency expected from the Dems in speech.
And how those standards don’t matter on the right.
Bush was an idiot, does stating that satisfy you ? Would that allow you the peace to reconnect with the point ? (Also yeah. Warmongers suck. Surprisingly something everyone agrees on. The anti war position is the OG leftie position, so it’s great to see it on the right.)
Maybe make your point more directly next time. It seems that point was winning is the only thing that matters and that is driving change in the Republicans.
That isn't what is happening; if they were focused on winning at all costs they wouldn't ever nominate Trump. The man has some of the most dedicated enemies out there short of those found in a multi-generational religious war and he doesn't poll especially well. The female half of the population tend to be a bit lukewarm towards him and that doesn't help win elections either since there are a lot of them.
The Republicans are engaged in an ideological reform to clear out specifically the people who were active in the Bush years. That happens to be a broader election winner too.
You see the same desperation when a religion starts faltering/drying up. Loads of good folks start to break away. Those that remain tend to be beneficiaries from the system, or are sociopaths who don't know how to adapt, or are gullible folks who don't know how to discern lying, or are andbusy folks for whom inertia is less painful than change.
I see that in politics in a lot of ways. I'm still figuring out my concept model for it, but the experience of religious exit is showing similarities.
What I lost would not have been changed by ignoring reality. A too large share of people in the country support a traitor, amongst other deplorable qualities. The reason why informs me to how I should play the game.
In the short term, I am sure I will benefit greatly from Trump’s leadership, just like I did last time. In the long term, I need to plan for what is best for my family to live in a country (world?) with less and less societal trust/cohesion (including family members).
Maybe the reality of this level of tribalism was always there, temporarily hidden from me by my youth and economic momentum from previous decades.
It is funny, ironic, but moreso sad, to complain about the loss of societal trust and cohesion whilst actively engaging in an ideological purity spiral that merely worsens that loss.
Not really. Traitors are traitors, and people who oppose women’s rights are people who oppose women’s rights. It seems expected to not trust someone who attacks your country, much less one’s mother/daughter/sister/etc.
Sure, you can say I support killing babies. It is black and white that a woman (and her doctor) should have zero qualms about doing whatever they need to prioritize the woman’s health.
Literally no one is killing babies who can survive outside of their moms for fun. They are all medically necessary healthcare procedures.
Doubling-down on the dehumanization and simplification of your enemies is not how you convince others that you actually care about societal trust or cohesion.
I am not dehumanizing anyone. I know they are humans, which is why they are behaving as they are. Humans just don’t happen to be better than most other animals when change in relative status (and hence power) is happening.
I used to think we were a little better, though.
For the record, I actually like some of Trump’s ideas, like no (earned) income tax, about Gaza, and I would still buy a Tesla (although I would prefer if a different automaker that isn’t led by someone who makes Nazi salutes would make buying a car as easy as Tesla).
But he’s not the guy I want my kids to see as the leader of their country, both for his character and his support of other policies/traitors/racism/general chaotic nature.
Your black and white thinking is dehumanizing. By being so rigid in your stance you're being neglectful of other peoples view of the world. It comes across so invalidating and dismissive, the lack of curiosity as to why people have these world views makes it even worse. The flavor of neglect feels very much like the kind growing up in a devoted christian home. You don't get to have a personality or have a valid view of the word because "god".
Stop being so intolerant! You know the existence of vaccines is religious persecution as they make it so there are fewer lepers to be embraced. </s>
As a libertarian who voted conservative (democratic) nationally for the first time in 2020, this narrative is so upside down. The overriding dynamic is that of the wedge issue, where republicans dredge up things our society either took for granted or at least agreed to disagree on and reanimate the old arguments. They find or craft the worst hyperbolic instances that appeal to thirty second attention spans, and then harp on them until there are enough "independent thinkers" staking out a contrarian position to make it an "issue".
The democratic party has its problems and is still fundamentally working to serve the corporate status quo. But contrast the soul searching that's been going on even since November, to the unapologetic doubling down of "stop the steal" in response to an objectively disastrous first Trump term.
The real answer is that people are squeezed, angry, don't know how good they actually have it, don't want to listen to reason, and just want to fuck shit up. Well, now we're all going to get it good and hard.
(edit: added /s tag to mitigate Poe's law, as it's 2025)
Well we can sit and hope that the other side solves the problem, while they sit and hope we solve it, and remain stuck in a never-ending cycle of blame and waiting.
Or someone can have the courage to change the situation. The nice benefit is that by ridding the hate in ourselves, we feel better even if the other side doesn't.
Not sure if this was to me (I hate that HN anonymizes so much, it doesn't understand the importance of personal context in communication), but I just looked up purity cycle and didn't find anything but found purity spiral, is that what you meant?
> A purity spiral is a theory which argues for the existence of a form of groupthink in which it becomes more beneficial to hold certain views than to not hold them, and more extreme views are rewarded while expressing doubt, nuance, or moderation is punished (a process sometimes called "moral outbidding").[1] It is argued that this feedback loop leads to members competing to demonstrate the zealotry or purity of their views.[2][3]
Free and fair elections are likely a thing of the past in the United States after this administration has completed its term, so it doesn't really matter if the left is competitive. They'll be a placeholder opposition party without any change of taking power for the foreseeable future. Trump and Johnson were already colluding to refuse certification of the 2024 election if Trump lost. They'll have a far more robust plan prepared next time.
A simple mental exercise using analogies, might help explain why the current branch of the simulation should be backtracked asap...
- Imagine if the president allowed Jeff Bezos to reprogram the Treasury’s payment system as if it were an online shopping cart.
- Picture the president authorizing Sam Altman to treat the federal payment system maybe as a live AI experiment.
- Envision the president allowing Larry Page to run the Treasury system.
- Imagine Mark Zuckerberg not only with the power to update federal payment rules, with access to all U.S. taxpayer data. Incredible coincidence Musk runs, privately, a social networking site...
I dont include an example with Palantir...Because some of the 19 years old bros working with the Musk team, were interns at Palantir. So I am just going to assume Thiel has all the info on all US citizens now...
No concerns with conflicts of interest, no vetting, no official role because...People voted for the current president? When did voting become a
blank check?
Exactly. Voting for someone, even if they say they will break the law, doesn't mean they're allowed to break the law. AFAIK, that's not how representative, constitutional democracies work.
Trump said so many things, so many outlandish things that I think a sizeable percentage of the people who voted for him didn't quite believe he would do. I don't have hard data on that but I did speak with several repubblican voters who dismissed the worries saying that he was just joking to provoke the libs.
He did. I only hope next time that the people who voted for him because of the truthiness of what he said (vs the actual truth) will think twice the next time they vote.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 years ago.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~
The last years have made it very clear that's exactly how you win. You seem to be under the impression that the democrats, not MAGAs, are unhinged in their rhetoric.
The only elected members of the executive branch are the President and VP. The president is employing Musk. Your claims of him being unelected is irrelevant.
You could have just condensed this down to: democrats bad and only their fault.
Because if people in the middle can be so damn gullible to vote for a criminal who said:
"I don't care about you, I only want your votes",
like Trump because he promised good economy I don't know how anyone can conclude that the issue here is with democrats and not the people's lack of critical thinking.
It's a bit late to correctly point out that focusing on demographics as you voter base is stupid and that it's interest groups you should focus on (as this should've been done in 2008 after Obama's victory), because this isn't a race between two sane candidates.
The left don't have to any soul searching to do when again the so called middle literally voted for a man who to their face told them that he doesn't care about them he just wants their votes, who yes is a criminal that has swindled, lied and now rug pulled.
Well if the left wants to lead, it should never stop doing soul searching. Why not ask ourselves, "What have we done that may have contributed to people in our lives wanting to support such vengeful behaviors? How might have we and other people like us hurt these people over the years?"
You're more than welcome citing where I stated the left should never do any soul searching, I specifically said that when it comes to people being so gullible to vote for Trump despite his character is no argument for democrats having to do any soul searching because there is nothing to be reflecting about that.
Yes and im saying if we have people we love in our lives who were gullible to that, should we give up on them or fight harder to love them? I choose the latter and that requires me to do soul searching, of mine and theirs.
Please actually read what I wrote because you say that, but at the same time you've now twice projected assumed positions of mine that only would make sense in your mind if I was some progressive liberal stereotype.
Because no, I have never said that I would ignore those gullible people.
Ontop of this I fail to see what supposed soul searching we need to do, for example if I believe in free speech and the gullible voter voted for a president because they promised to flattered them while also promising to remove free speech and jail anyone who speak unfavorablely about them.
Or how about a real example, what soul searching did the republicans have to do when the south seceed? Or how about the social democrats, liberals and the few conservatives who were executed by the nazis, they should've have been more antisemitic? While Hitler took control via technicality rules?
What I'm saying is that it sounds like you're saying there's nothing people can do, that it's other people's behaviors that need to change, that nothing we can do will change their behaviors regarding this specific instance. Is that what you're saying? That it is the other people's responsibility to fix this, not ours?
Okay, well my brother voted for Trump because he believes ~affirmative action~ I mean DEI is ruining the world and hurting him specifically.
He gets extremely angry when NFL players do "N*** behavior", like get in a bar fight, and has never once talked about a white football player doing things like, IDK, stealing from charities.
Any time he drinks whiskey at all, he uses it as an excuse to get very very very aggressive and attack strangers in bars.
He thinks the solution to school shootings is for teachers to be armed. My mother, a teacher of 35 years who has had to literally break up two large teenage boys trying to kill each other, explained that she doesn't get paid enough to learn how to operate a firearm safely around kids, and that's asking for more trouble than it would help. She also used to make daily jokes about running over the bad kids in the school parking lot, so I think it's not a great idea either.
He used to fly a confederate flag as "honoring his heritage". He is french canadian from northern maine, so his heritage is: Marrying native americans princesses because you left the wife at home, murdering those slaving bastards from the south for the glory of the union, and being oppressed by the KKK restarting in our state because we are french catholic
He insists he has never been sicker than since he has gotten the COVID vaccine. In high school he spent a month shitting blood due to a rare medical defect and didn't go to the hospital because he thought he was dying from being an alcoholic. Before COVID existed, he was infamous in our family for exhibiting the worst "man colds" we have ever known of periodically.
He insists that education is liberal brainwashing despite never setting foot in an education institution past high school, which he spent failing biology and learning how to repair cars instead in the vocational wing, and his own mom being a college adjunct professor for decades.
He TAUGHT my nephew to hate Biden. He didn't tell my nephew "here's some things biden and democrats have done that make life worse for people", he just says, multiple times a day in front of the child, "democrats are evil". For reference, our mother did not tell us basically any political opinion for our entire life. He was allowed to go listen to absurd AM radio without anyone telling him what was right or wrong. I thought she DID teach us empathy though.
He thinks Unions are evil.
My sister runs one of the most successful childcare program businesses in the southern part of the state, and has been successfully running businesses involving childcare since 2006. My brother has run zero business other than buying stuff off Facebook marketplace and flipping it to a dumber buyer for a profit. He tried to give her business advice, and became extremely hostile to her when she told him that his advice didn't make sense and was wrong.
He believes we need to strengthen the US border with Mexico to keep out immigrants for our national safety and that immigrants are taking our jobs. His lifelong best friend, who has the same opinion and voting history, is the heir and operator of one of the largest farms in northern maine. Every year they bus in hundreds of people who don't speak english, sleep 50 to a shack, and get paid under the table to pick crops. They've never committed crime while in town.
During the BLM protests, he informed my mother that there were violent protests in my city. The protest was 12 young adults silently laying on the ground in front the entrance to the police station. Our state has high requirements for being a police officer, and even progressives around here have faith in the police, possibly without reason as the shooting with Robert Card showed.
His explicit opinion is that spending $25 to give a junkie a second chance with Narcan is wrong because "it's your choice to ruin your life with drugs". He has had a nicotine addiction since 14 that his wife has begged him to stop for a decade and he has promised he doesn't have anymore.
My brother does not believe women and black people are his equal, full stop. He admits he doesn't like Trump and admits that Trump did not win the 2020 election and people saying he did are nuts. He genuinely believes himself to be "centrist", not republican, and claims he only votes for republicans because of Gun Rights.
He has firsthand experience, multiple times of getting stuff stolen from him and the police basically giving him a shrug because they don't feel like doing their job. He is FRIENDS with most of the police that do this. He believes that crime is going up and not being reported because of democratic scheming. Our state had a republican governor at the time the cops didn't want to do their jobs.
He's "NEVER wrong", and he believes that 100%. I don't know any other way to say this, but that statement is incredibly incorrect.
He is wrong, or lying. The story is identical with 80% of my family. They believe themselves the best thing since sliced bread, and believe that a few diversity programs trying to get black people and women into jobs they have never wanted have irreparably damaged the country and their lives. They have, not an exaggeration, never ever ever been in competition with black people or women for any position, any job, any task, etc.
The only difference between my fairly empathetic liberal reality and his "Democrats should be shot" (exact quote) one is that I grew up reading books and having my open minded friend asking me how gay marriage ACTUALLY hurts me and admiring my single mom for being such a powerful force despite the deck stacked against her and learning how science actually works, and he grew up hanging out with people who told N-word jokes and meant it and insisted the civil war was "the war of northern aggression", and claimed science doesn't work, without evidence mind you.
I won't pretend your brother is great and reasonable, but just want to point out a couple things that again, point to why your favorite side lost.
> DEI is [...] hurting him specifically.
He's not wrong on this, since DEI promotes hiring based on skin color and not on merit. There isn't much room to dispute this. Considering race when making your hiring decisions may in some people's value systems be justifiable to right wrongs perpetrated hundreds of years ago (I disagree) but the effect on the people now factually is: to harm people below some arbitrary level of melanin by pushing everyone else to the front of the line. It assumes that everyone making hiring decisions would otherwise hire racistly, which is absurd and offensive to anyone not stupid enough to judge people based on color.
> My brother does not believe women and black people are his equal, full stop
With that, he agrees with the DNC too, since they believe women and black people are automatically better than him. The only difference between their flavors of racism is which color is fantasized to be inherently morally superior at birth.
> He's not wrong on this, since DEI promotes hiring based on skin color and not on merit.
DEI does not promote hiring based on skin color and not on merit, DEI promotes tracking hiring demographics, and identifying and rectifying/mitigating issues that result in perpetuating existing underrepresentation, such as inadequate exposure of traditionally underrepresented communities in the hiring funnel.
Hiring based on “skin color” (or race, which is not the same thing, though some races have names that come from color words, or ethnicity, or sex, or many of the other axes of concern for DEI) remains explicitly and blatantly illegal, and DEI proponents do not oppose such laws, and in fact tend to prefer extending them to additional axes of concern (DEI opponents, OTOH, are more likely top both expose such extensions and to oppose existing anti-discrimination laws.)
But name calling works goddamit! Why shouldnt everyone do that??
Trump is 100% about names, holy shit.
I think the left needs to get better at name calling, and match the winning strategy. Maybe it needs to keep coming up with new funny names.
TO be serious - nthing the left does will likely work, because they have to somehow appeal to everyone. Be polite and strong, firm and flexible, forgiving and retributive.
When the left called the right "weird" that had more effect at driving liberal enthusiasm than any PDF of a policy ever has. Because it worked pretty well.
One problem is that the "left" has NO media at all. Republicans opt in to a completely controlled media platform, on Truth Social which is owned by Trump, on Fox News which multiple times has had to argue in court that nobody would take anything they say seriously, and also was knowingly lying to their audience, on AM radio which is used to yell at you 24/7 about how the dems are going to destroy you ANY DAY NOW, on Joe Rogan the podcast viewed by a hundred million people as it talks about how oppressed and cancelled it is and also if Biden said that it's evidence of brain damage but if Trump said that he didn't mean it, on our local news which is bought and paid for by a conglomerate that contractually obligates it's stations to pretend they came up with a story on their own and run identical pieces all across the country about how "damaging to our democracy" democrats are".
What do liberals have to push whatever message they want pushed?
Reddit? Nah, it's half dead, most activity is literally bots reposting year old threads comment for comment to build up karma, it has the cultural pull of HN if HN didn't have YC behind it.
Facebook? You can call people mentally disabled on there now for the crime of being born with genitals that don't match your brain.
CNN? Give me a break. Nobody has trusted CNN since at least the original gulf wars. After that Malaysian airlines plane vanished they asked a aviation expert if it could have been a black hole that swallowed up the plane. They were bought recently by new people, who want to be more pro Trump, mostly because it's just outright more profitable. People watched more CNN during Trump's first term because shit was always being broken, while nobody watched during Biden's term, because nobody expected biden to do anything.
MSNBC? Weirdly popular with "liberal" celebrities and hollywood, but nobody on the east coast cares about it. Even on a good day it has HALF the viewership of Fox News. It's also more like "Laugh at republicans doing stupid things" than actually about liberal policy. MSNBC will tell you that what Trump is doing is illegal, but they wont comprehensively explain why
Liberals and progressives don't seem to be even remotely as willing to opt in to a purposely ideological media stream. I guess AOC does well when she goes on twitch, but even on that platform, the big """leftist""" streamer is a bad person and Noam Chomksy style "america bad" concern troll, and there are multiple much more popular streamers who teach literal children that if video games don't have hyper exaggerated overly sexualized anime women in them, they're "woke". The "I'm a child who likes video games, I'm going to watch video game content" to "I hate women" pipeline is truly insane. Even the people who are part of it don't seem to understand the part they are playing. A group of 12 year old boys met one of their favorite streamers from the Fresh and Fit podcast, and after getting a selfie with him, chanted "I hate women, kill all women", as the podcaster went "what, no no don't hate women!"
90% of the Fresh and Fit podcast is the hosts, men, complaining about how women are inherently less rational than men, complaining that women overreact, complaining that women are shallow on a podcast ostensibly about "gains", bringing very very drunk women on to argue with them about, anything, and shouting them down if the women try to make a point, and threatening them with legal action if they argue too much by claiming the women (who have been invited onto the show) are "trespassing", complaining that women are less accepting of outright facts than men like the fact "women are inherently less rational than men", complaining that women are whores and use sex as a weapon...
But he had a shocked pikachu face when his 12 year old fan said he hates women.
I agree. Both sides need to stop calling names, but more deeply, need to see the goodness in the other side (and in ourselves).
The problem can be, someone can feel attacked even if the other person is treating them in a very kind and loving way, because they think it's fake.
On the contrary, someone could receive verbal and physical abuse and still not feel attacked because they maintain faith in their and the other person's good intentions.
So I think it's more about changing the behaviors of the person on the receiving end than on the giving end.
I agree in principle but how could you work together when republicans they follow the newt gingerich doctrine which to literally demonize the democrats for political brownie points?
I think it's a very valid strategy. First, it can help me a lot. Second, it can help them. Going around thinking I'm surrounded by people who don't care about me is probably the fastest way to misery and loneliness. On the contrary, if I think most people are dealing with many conflicts at the same time and trying their best, I feel so much connected to life itself.
Also, most conflict is back-and-forth attacks and counterattacks. You reject me, I ignore you, you call me names, I block you, etc. Instead, if you reject me, then I tell you it hurts you said that to me, and yet I imagine you've had a long day and are trying your best, it breaks the cycle.
It's not about caring it's about being aware of the ones who will abuse and exploit you with malice.
Life is not some break and forgive world, it's neutral if you bring a child in this world through rape and destruction, that is innately equal to consentual, kind and forgiving child rearing.
I agree with you in spirit. Everyone is equally responsible on "how" they communicate. When the giving side is coming from a place of contempt and disgust, the work for improvement shouldn't be trivialized.
But the receiving side can also get better at receiving contempt and disgust and realizing the pain the other person is going through. Honestly, working on how to receive punches has helped me so much in my life. An ex-girlfriend of mine lied to me about being pregnant (I think). And at first, I was furious. Then I realized that if she were to lie about that, she must have been going through so much pain, and I probably did something to contribute to that pain. I apologized to her and felt a lot better and it also allowed me to regain trust in women again, maybe even deepening my trust.
This is going to sound partisan, but I genuinely think it’s because Trump connects with people on more levels than the Democrats do.
The name calling is part of his blustery comedic Hollywood side, which people understand is different to his policy making side. Watch the all-in podcast episode with him if you genuinely want to see a different side to him.
In contrast, Democrats often come across as only having a singular serious facet to their personality, and so immaturity undermines their entire character.
I have the same perspective. On top of it, society has gotten use to seeing reality TV shows. DC looks like a reality TV show for ugly people to them. It's not even done well.
Whatever different side you are seeing is the act, the name calling is part of his normal behavior. I don't want to say too much, but I have a family member who had to deal with Trump briefly in the 00s. From the things I heard back then, I know for sure that he tries to bully people to get what he wants and will end up shouting threats if things don't go his way.
It goes from "its the lefts fault, and maybe you shouldnt call people Nazi."
To "It works for Trump!"
to "trump connects to people. the left doesnt"
Lol. This is like when you are in an abusive relationship, and you are always wrong, and theres no real way to explain why you are always wrong - until you accept that one side is meant to be the loser in an abusive realtion.
Yes thats the key word. Control perception, and you can win. Which is what the repubs do. They can make someone who says heinous things, sound presidential.
The dems need to create that. Its cheaper, its more efficient, and it works.
I'd love for someone to come up with a workable alternative, but until they figure that technique out, the dems should figure out how to emulate what is working. Within their constraints of course. They are still a big tent party, so they cant do the same things as trump.
> They can make someone who says heinous things, sound presidential.
They do that by lying and gaslighting their voters. Fox News will call January 6 a "day of peace" and refuse to show the footage from that day of the insurrection, to the point where when Republican voters are shown footage of insurrectionists beating cops with American flags and crushing them in doors, they are surprised that's what actually happened.
That's the degree of information control that's necessary to make Trump sounds presidential, and we shouldn't wish our own representatives to gaslight and lie to us like that.
I don’t wish this anywhere in the world. But until the righteous find a solution to this tactic, people need to emulate it, if only to bring their political battle to parity.
Restraint IS a value, and it might well be yours. But the value needs someone to create a path for it to be viable and competitive. Otherwise your choice is simply between restraint and electoral irrelevance, or between combat and a chance to get some votes.
What about the right? Trump is a champion name caller and garnered sufficient respect to win his election after he pushed our country to the closest it ever has been to an actual coup.
> The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as [...]
The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no more checks and balances, then it's a coup. If Congress decided to allocate budget to something, the president should not ignore this. The legislature is losing its power.
Who says they are illegal? Can you cite some sources please? Like actual legal experts, not the guardian.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
Boy howdy there's a lot to pull apart here but ;et's start with your core statement regarding chevron deference. The recent (and wildly stupid, I think but besides the point) Chevron deference ruling says, in summary, that federal agencies have very little latitude in deciding their internal policies where not explicitly defined by congress.
The current administration replaced the head of an agency and had that agency shut itself down. Shutting yourself down is clearly not a power given to any federal agency, so by the very policy you're citing either the judicial or executive branch must act to allow such a move.
Instead, our cheeto in chief decided that those other branches don't actually need to do any of that pesky work and it's a lot easier if everyone just does what he wants.
Overturning the 14th amendment of the constitution by executive order is illegal.
Shutting down an agency like USAID require congressional approval, but was done by executive order.
Withholding congressionally approved funding for government agencies is illegal.
Sharing sensitive documents from the fiscal service with (Doge) team members who do not have the appropriate security clearances is illegal.
Giving Elon Musk an unofficial seat and allowing him unfettered access to the entire federal government without any congressional confirmation is illegal and basically amounts to setting up a shadow government.
Congress mandates that weed is illegal, funds the DEA to go after it, yet no one complains when Obama, Trump, and Biden decided not to enforce that law. Executives clearly have discretion.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
At this point any discussion on HN about Trump delivering his campaign promises (which got him a resounding electoral victory) seems to be filled with elitist rage ("Every single IT board I'm on") and thus is just proving his point.
This is the blowback for the medical overreach of the covid years, for the 1984-esque re-labeling of open gender- and race-based discrimination as DEI, for basically shaming every opposing view as
> evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists
and many more transgressions.
I'm saying this as a non us citizen working in a sector in Europe that is very likely to get absolutely clobbered by Trump. The blame is simply to put at the losing side.
Them denying the merit of their loss, the lack of any introspection and instead just one-upping their everybody-i-disagree-with-is-hitler mantra is at least comforting in the sense that I know they shouldn't be in charge.
So first he did lie about that on record saying he had nothing to do with Project 2025.
Then he certainly didn't say that he was going to dismantle the US government with Elon Musk outside of any legal framework (or I missed that). And even if he did, that wouldn't make it okay either.
> You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values
I feel like you haven't paid enough attention, this isn't a democracy anymore but a mixed regime, convincing opponents is still necessary but isn't enough to influence power anymore.
Look at Hungary if you want some indication of how it's going.
This is flatly false. He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed. It is also reasonable to assume he meant to propose a smaller budget, not supercede Congress.
> He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed
He's a conservative, and Project 2025 was from other conservatives.
You would expect there to be some overlap in policy perspectives because of the ideological overlap. It doesn't necessarily mean he's taking orders from the heritage foundation.
Before he got inaugurated the narrative is that the democrats are crazy for thinking that he would enact such unhinged policies, he himself said he knows nothing about it. Now the narrative is "that was expected".
> Trump denied having read Project 2025, and refused to commit to following it.
On the small chance that he said that in good faith and wasn't lying through his teeh. Does it really matter if he read the playbook or not? Maybe he just surrounds himself with people that have contributed to it (he does), maybe he had chatgpt summarize it to him. If the policies he implements come directly from that menu of suggestions, does it really matter?
> but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause
Sources requested for this statement, made unilateral with no evidence.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.
A single person, who somehow owns multiple major companies with, clear conflict of interest, is not a coup? What? He & his "engineers" reportedly have access to American citizen information. Where's the required oversight by Congress? I get trimming the government, but let's talk about it in the open rather than relying on his word and his word alone.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting.
Would you say that to Tea Party folks who widely protested Obama? What? This makes no sense. Didn't they also insult Obama and his birth? Or anyone who voted for Obama? Whataboutism.
Frankly, I feel you are delusional and have bought into the ruse of the current news cycle.
> "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.