• yesman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What scares me shitless is the idea that Trump is what the US is and what the US has earned. Who’s ready for that conversation?

    • electrogamerman@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      100% this. Im German and I feel so strange that americans are choosing this guy for president. Not to be offensive, but damn.

      • billwashere@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As an American I feel that a majority of Americans loathe him. The issue lies in not all those people vote.

        What scares me is that any Americans vote for him. How can you be so blinded and not see what a lying, cheating grifter that he is. The man is not intelligent, doesn’t read, is petty to a fault, vindictive, spiteful, narcissistic, nepotistic and just generally not a good person. Why would you choose that for a leader? It’s because you share those traits. That’s what scares me.

        • voidMainVoid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The issue lies in not all those people vote.

          Partly. There’s also the issue with the electoral college, because that makes some votes worth more than others (depending on where you live).

        • 1847953620@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know that they all share those traits per se, but just as damning not only to them but to our culture as well is our tolerance and even expectations that people in charge have those traits. I saw it everywhere when I lived in a deeply conservative small city, anyone with power (including company management) was beyond reproach. The status quo was defended harshly by the overwhelming majority. We have lost our values to greed by using the american dream as a trojan horse full of awful ideals.

          • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            We can’t underestimate the hate for others that is behind these votes. It started as “owning the libs” and now is pretty much evolved to “eliminate the woke trans democrats”. That’s the part that’s scaring me these days. There is no platform for running the country, it’s all just piss off or erase the other side, figuratively and literally.

        • Kage520@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No no you don’t understand, I mean, sure the media makes him seem like he has those traits, but he’s really a great guy! I mean I guess it’s been proven he has those traits but who doesn’t right? Isn’t everyone deep down homophobic and racist and misogynist themselves?

          And really if you think about it, God can use anything he wants right? So why would he pick the Catholic guy out there trying to invest in America? He definitely wants the guy who most looks like my own deep down beliefs. So no matter what you say, your argument is invalid because God is on my side.

          …/s in case that was needed.

      • ATDA@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The crazy part is they think Biden makes the US look bad. When you present evidence to the contrary they say, "who cares what other countries think. "

        • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          My aunt thinks Jill Biden is controlling the country from the shadows and wants to run in place of Joe in 2024. We are fucked

            • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              That’s what I told my mother when she told me, but I doubt it’s gotten back to the source

          • eldavi@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            We are fucked

            more so because our only choice is between racist ultra-authoritarian con man and an opportunistic career politician that had always sided with racists and homophobes until it was politically popular.

          • KnumbKnuts@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            In fairness to your aunt, I have voted for Joe 3 times (2008, 2020, 2020), and even I think Joe is pretty close to weekend at Bernie’s. He really needs to step aside for Newsom.

            • erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I wanna know if we’re going to weekend at Bernie’s someone, why not Bernie? Why has he not been on the ballot yet?

          • billwashere@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well that’s just a stupid conspiracy theory. Well I guess they all are but this one seems particularly daft.

            • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              That was my first reaction, I didn’t even know how to respond to it because it’s patently absurd on its face. Really hoping it’s not some sort of viral right wing bullshit code that hasn’t cycled out into the mainstream yet

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Fellow German and… yeah. People joke about the Hitler comparisons, but you won’t see us laughing. (I mean, in general, but that’s a different topic.)

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        You should be offensive, we deserve it.

        We picked an absolute trash human as our leader, a sizeable portion of which chose him specifically because they wanted him to hurt people (see: “he’s not hurting the right people” woman.) That same group will often cite their desired outcome for any given thing is “to see liberals cry/get mad.”

        Hillary Clinton made a mistake by saying it out loud, but she was 100% correct when she said a large portion of Trump supporters are “a basket of deplorables.” They absolutely are and are deserving of scorn.

        I just hate how well propaganda works and how much money a random grifting asshole can make by parroting bullshit on YouTube, they boost each other and perpetuate this garbage era we’re going through…

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            The American political system is literally incomprehensible.

            Everyone votes and then you find out who the winner is. And then, at some later point you find out who the president will be, and it’s not necessarily the same person for some reason.

            And yet apparently democracy has happened so that’s all.

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              the american federal government is easy to understand: everything is weighed in favor of rural conservative racists because when we were first designing the thing they realized that they were in the minority but that we’d lose the revolution without them. President? Racists get more of a say due to the electoral college. Senate? Half a million conservatives in Wyoming get just as many votes as 40 million liberals in California. House? House reps are capped at 435 permanently so as areas become more populous they end up with less representation per person. SCotUS? Even when it’s running normally it’s biased because the biased president and biased Senate pick them, but since Obama now Democrats need the presidency and a majority coalition in the Senate in order to pick justices. That’s every branch of federal government, and recently they tried to make it even worse by making state legislatures (which always lean conservative because they gerrymander to hell and back) the sole authority on what constitutes a “fair” election. Given all the out and out treason that came from state legislatures after Trump got wrecked by Biden, I think we know what conservative state legislatures will do if they get to decide what constitutes “fair”.

              • Cabrio@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Throw in a dash of first past the post, a pinch of gerrymandering, and baby we’ve got a minority government.

          • eldavi@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            republicans haven’t wont the popular vote in several decades and if you’re only now noticing; you need to (re-)evaluate your political leanings and learnings.

            • new_guy@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I mean… It’s not like I’m American or vote in America or live in America so I guess it’s not a priority to me to evaluate how these factor in my life.

              I guess it’s America’s job to do it.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes, but by the same token, you can’t honestly say that America chose him to be president. We did not. Our broken electoral system did.

            • SneedsFeednSeed@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It’s not broken if it’s working as intended. The US is a constitutional Republic not a pure democracy. Pure democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. You won’t always be the wolf, best keep that in mind.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Right except that the electoral system was not designed with that in mind. We have the transcripts of the discussion. It was to keep slavery legal. The method the POTUS was picked originally was to prevent the common person from deciding and instead award the most powerful job to whom the most powerful elites thought best could do it. Which wow even being nice to the argument is pretty bad.

              • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                the thing about tyranny of the majority is that it can’t be replaced by tyranny of the minority. it’s absolutely working as our founders intended though: racist, conservative, and biased in favor of the wealthy.

              • samus12345@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The intent was to keep a populist tyrant like Trump out of office, so it most certainly is not working as intended.

      • SoaringDE@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Same here. I think this is what happens when education is underfundet. I’m happy we’re back to G9 but we should definitely pay teachers more to counteract the lack of teachers and ensure every teacher has sufficient time to do their job well.

        Otherwise people cannot be taught to think critical, question “why is he saying X?” instead of just weather it is true or not. Often understanding why somebody is saying sometimg at the time they do is much more important after all.

        • Bezerker03@lemmy.bezzie.world
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          1 year ago

          This idea that we are under funded is not true. Per Capita we spend more than every other country on education than any other OECD country besides Luxembourg.

          We are number two world wide for funds to education per capita.

          Our funding is just wasted and ineffective. We have a cultural problem with education. Not a funding problem.

          • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes School boards and superintendents are extremely well funded. The fact that teachers have to struggle to scrape by while at the same time funding classroom supplies out of their own money just reeks of mis-allocated misspent funds. There’s always money for another Sports program. While science technology engineering and math extracurriculars in many districts don’t exist.

            It’s a perfect mirror of our diseased American culture. Where wealth and wealth alone is Merit. And those who give the least (work) get the most.

      • Gawanoh@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        There are a lot of germans voting for idiots which just repeat a few Trump topics a few months later. :(

      • limelight79@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I was visiting Germany in 2016 during the spring, before the election. Several Europeans, after hearing we were from the US, asked, “What the hell is going on in your country?”

      • editilly@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        No, Trump is the hail mary of the US ruling class. They are scared that the people just start ignoring the government and take power, so they give them demagogues

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      well yeah we have an attempted fascist overthrow of our government about once every 100 years or so because we like to stay just this side of fascism on a normal day