5 ms·

[flagged]

jjice 1y ago
Maybe pedantic, but the US as a whole didn't vote for it in the 2016 election. Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but Trump had more electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...
- _djo_ 1y ago
  Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. The OP is correct, Americans collectively own this just as other countries' nationals have owned responsibility for the bad governments they've put into power. If the general response is one of absolving themselves of responsibility there won't be the necessary level of reflection and reform to prevent it from happening again. As it is the damage done to US power and credibility will take decades to fix, and it's only 100 days in.
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    > Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. I'm not sure this accurately conveys the situation. American voters have been dissatisfied with the lesser of two evils choice foisted upon them every 4 years for decades. We're 75 years into endless wars. Massive numbers of union high paying jobs have been shipped overseas since the 80s hollowing out the middle and working class. One could easily see the votes as being more anti-establishment than anything else. edit: I love how people downvote comments they don't like in political discussions, even when they're just attempting to foster understanding by sharing a perspective, and not prescriptive or pejorative in any way.
    - _djo_ 1y ago
      I'm sorry, but that sounds like an excuse. Yes, when you have to vote between the lesser of two evils, but one of them is blatantly more evil and incompetent than the other, you're responsible for choosing the more evil and incompetent option and the damage that results. No system is perfect, and few countries provide morally and politically pure options to vote for in national elections. So an informed and engaged population often needs to vote tactically, understanding that establishments change slowly, and work to elect more effective candidates at local & state level who can work their way up to the national stage. Voting in the anti-establishment choice just because voters are upset that progress is slow and politics is hard is the stuff of tantrums, and voting adults are supposed to be beyond that.
      - timschmidt 1y ago
        It seems like you're trying to argue and assign blame. I'm not here for that. Just explaining what I understand of what the blue collar folks I know are thinking.
        _djo_ 1y ago
        Not trying to argue, though blame is deserved for those who voted for Trump this time around. I'm not saying that out of anger, that's just the nature of democracy and that the corollary of a voting public being able to choose their leaders means they're responsible when they make bad choices. That, in turn should trigger national debates, reflection, and reform hopefully, else the US will continue to head down an ever-increasingly authoritarian and populist path. I certainly don't want the US to go down that path, nor do I enjoy seeing the damage being done now. I just believe that if we coddle voters who made terrible political choices they're just going to keep making those bad choices election after election.
        timschmidt 1y ago
        I think it's worthwhile to consider that what you said here: > Not trying to argue, though blame is deserved for those who voted for Trump this time around. > I'm not saying that out of anger, that's just the nature of democracy and that the corollary of a voting public being able to choose their leaders means they're responsible when they make bad choices. That, in turn should trigger national debates, reflection, and reform hopefully, else the US will continue to head down an ever-increasingly authoritarian and populist path. Is almost to a word how the Right feels about the Left as well. We're watching that play out. Conflict escalation is even less fun on the societal scale.
  - jjice 1y ago
    > If the general response is one of absolving themselves of responsibility there won't be the necessary level of reflection and reform to prevent it from happening again. Where did I absolve anything? I just corrected something that was wrong. I didn't vote for the guy either time, I don't like this either.
    - _djo_ 1y ago
      I didn't direct that at you, but at the general response of the American public. Apologies for not making that clear.
      - jjice 1y ago
        Apologies for my earlier response being curt - I totally get it.
  - MyOutfitIsVague 1y ago
    Small correction: A plurality voted for Trump, not a majority. A majority is more than half of all votes. Trump got less than 50% of votes, he just got more than any other candidate, which is a plurality.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wussboy 1y ago
Unfortunately, the benefit of democracy isn’t that the people choose well. It’s that they can choose at all.
- i80and 1y ago
  Compounding the misfortune, it seems people are easily talked into choosing to not have to choose anymore
analog31 1y ago
No. We did not elect the party majority in Congress or the Supreme Court. If anything, the weakness of our constitution has spoken. Take this as a lesson, and defend your democracy while you still can.
- tgv 1y ago
  Maybe somewhat indirectly, but the US population did elect those people in the usual sense of the word.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - analog31 1y ago
    They "elected" candidates who were chosen for them.
    - 0xTJ 1y ago
      They chose between two candidates chosen via the US presidential primaries. Party members vote for delegates, who vote for a presidential candidate. Republicans chose Trump, then people who voted Republican at the election chose him over the alternative=. He did not hide his fascist and dictatorial desires and he was open about how he wanted to dismantle the government. When he lost in 2020 he threw a fit and tried to have people do a coup. People did in fact elect him, I can just hope that his actions don't leave too much lasting damage here in Canada. (Maybe de-funding US science will help start to reverse decades of brain drain.)
      - cvwright 1y ago
        Nitpick: Only one candidate was chosen by voters in the primary. The other was selected by party leaders after the primary was over.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
duxup 1y ago
>idiocracy It doesn't even fit that, it's worse. In Idiocracy President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho actually chose to find educated / smart people to make decisions. In this setup it's all politicians and political hangers on making decisions about things they seem to have limited education on what they manage.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  [flagged]
jzb 1y ago
As someone inside the United States... I sort of agree with you, though not entirely. Where we are today is the culmination of decades of attacks on our institutions and public discourse. This is not majority will, but it is a failure of the majority to curb the attacks on our institutions. Collectively, we're to blame -- but at the same time, is it hard to understand why the majority of people in the U.S. haven't been able to push back given what people are up against? The wealthiest folks have the resources to continually and almost casually undermine institutions, while it takes enormous effort for the larger public to push back. Most people are just trying to live their lives while the Murdochs, Kochs, and others can keep throwing money and bodies at corrupting the country. For every win against the anti-Democratic corruptions, there's two or five losses. They pile up. But the fall of the U.S. has seemed inevitable for decades. As someone who is here and isn't likely to leave -- my family is here, too many people to muster out and I won't leave them behind -- this is going to suck pretty horribly for some time. If we're very lucky, this will be the wakeup call the U.S. needs and when the dust clears we may rebuild something better. If we're not... well, I don't want to dwell on that.
- tstrimple 1y ago
  At some level it falls back on the bullshit asymmetry problem. Lies are easy. Truth requires details and nuance. This is why the "free marketplace of ideas" is doomed to fail. Too many willfully ignorant people who desperately seek out comfortable lies. Far too many unscrupulous people willing to take advantage of the ignorant.
zkmon 1y ago
America is almost like two separate countries with full animosity and opposite ideologies. But they can never have the luxury of having their own ruler.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  I think that we decided over 100 years ago that an amicable divorce was out of the question. So what now?
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    Not a lot of people with any amount of power are even talking about trying to fix the problems that are shoving us toward autocracy, and there's not really a workable way to fix them anyway. What it'd take is just not in the cards (step one would be radically changing the makeup of the Supreme Court, so...) "What now" is we keep getting closer to autocracy until we're unambiguously fully there, or a less-than-amicable divorce. That's about it. The former is by far the more likely of the two.
pyrophane 1y ago
I'm an American. I struggle almost every day with what feels like a betrayal of our republic by so many voters and leaders, and none of the explanations for why it has happened, even when taken together, are wholly satisfying. It has shaken my faith in democracy, but at the same time, there's nothing else, so I have no choice but to try to fight for it in what ways I can.
- ghugccrghbvr 1y ago
  Roger that! I tell everyone the system can handle it. But Schmidt on yt isn’t wrong. Excellent username
- zmgsabst 1y ago
  [flagged]
- thrance 1y ago
  Material forces. The wealthy have a vested interest in dismantling the state, welfare programs, regulations, etc. Just so they can get more wealth through exploiting the workers. Hence why they spend billions on propaganda tools like Fox News or influencers (Joe Rogan, Tim Pool...) propping up increasingly right-wing presidents. So far they've been successful: Raegan, Bush & cie. have been slowly but surely making things easier for the wealthy and harder for the workers. Republicans have always used right-wing populism to get their ways (Blaming migrants, blaming LGBT, blaming leftists). Notice how pro-businesss policies are the only consistent trait between GOP presidency. Trump is a turning point, he is the first one to do right-wing populism for its own sake instead of simply being pro-business. This is fascism. Here is my preferred definition of fascism if you seek one [1]. Trump is no singular phenomenon, you can compare him in some ways to previous or contemporary fascists: Putin, Mussolini... They all have in common a support from the oligarchy, and a hatred of minorities and leftists. Until we fix the power imbalances of our democracies and rid it of all money's influence (easier said than done), we will suffer through fascism every 80 years or so. The time it takes for new oligarchs to emerge and accumulate the wealth necessary to dictate politics again. [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
[flagged]
- philipwhiuk 1y ago
  This an incredibly ill-informed take. Behind in what? Child poverty? Leisure time per person? Quality of life? Average life expectancy?
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
Don't be sympathetic to us. We could rise up and stop it; we choose not to. It only just occurred to me that empires fall not because of leaders, but because of people letting its leaders tear it all down. Take us as a cautionary tale; if you don't participate in reform, this is what can happen.
oldprogrammer2 1y ago
In my opinion, this was decades in the making. Most Americans are sick of the two party system that can't seem to get anything done, as well as with a political system owned by the elite. As odd and bizarre as it is, Trump was able to channel that disgruntlement into a voting bloc. And it certainly doesn't help that the Democratic party has been unable to put forth a charismatic candidate since President Obama.
- LightBug1 1y ago
  [flagged]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tomhow 1y ago
Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN threads. It just leads to flamewar hell, which is the primary thing we're trying to avoid here. This isn't the first time we've had to ask you to adhere to the guidelines. If you up this style of commenting, we'll have to ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- LightBug1 1y ago
  [flagged]

[flagged]

Maybe pedantic, but the US as a whole didn't vote for it in the 2016 election. Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but Trump had more electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...

_djo_ 1y ago
Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. The OP is correct, Americans collectively own this just as other countries' nationals have owned responsibility for the bad governments they've put into power. If the general response is one of absolving themselves of responsibility there won't be the necessary level of reflection and reform to prevent it from happening again. As it is the damage done to US power and credibility will take decades to fix, and it's only 100 days in.
- timschmidt 1y ago
  > Unfortunately a majority of American voters saw what happened in the first Trump term and decided that they wanted more of it, with even fewer controls and restrictions. I'm not sure this accurately conveys the situation. American voters have been dissatisfied with the lesser of two evils choice foisted upon them every 4 years for decades. We're 75 years into endless wars. Massive numbers of union high paying jobs have been shipped overseas since the 80s hollowing out the middle and working class. One could easily see the votes as being more anti-establishment than anything else. edit: I love how people downvote comments they don't like in political discussions, even when they're just attempting to foster understanding by sharing a perspective, and not prescriptive or pejorative in any way.
  - _djo_ 1y ago
    I'm sorry, but that sounds like an excuse. Yes, when you have to vote between the lesser of two evils, but one of them is blatantly more evil and incompetent than the other, you're responsible for choosing the more evil and incompetent option and the damage that results. No system is perfect, and few countries provide morally and politically pure options to vote for in national elections. So an informed and engaged population often needs to vote tactically, understanding that establishments change slowly, and work to elect more effective candidates at local & state level who can work their way up to the national stage. Voting in the anti-establishment choice just because voters are upset that progress is slow and politics is hard is the stuff of tantrums, and voting adults are supposed to be beyond that.
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      It seems like you're trying to argue and assign blame. I'm not here for that. Just explaining what I understand of what the blue collar folks I know are thinking.
      - _djo_ 1y ago
        Not trying to argue, though blame is deserved for those who voted for Trump this time around. I'm not saying that out of anger, that's just the nature of democracy and that the corollary of a voting public being able to choose their leaders means they're responsible when they make bad choices. That, in turn should trigger national debates, reflection, and reform hopefully, else the US will continue to head down an ever-increasingly authoritarian and populist path. I certainly don't want the US to go down that path, nor do I enjoy seeing the damage being done now. I just believe that if we coddle voters who made terrible political choices they're just going to keep making those bad choices election after election.
        timschmidt 1y ago
        I think it's worthwhile to consider that what you said here: > Not trying to argue, though blame is deserved for those who voted for Trump this time around. > I'm not saying that out of anger, that's just the nature of democracy and that the corollary of a voting public being able to choose their leaders means they're responsible when they make bad choices. That, in turn should trigger national debates, reflection, and reform hopefully, else the US will continue to head down an ever-increasingly authoritarian and populist path. Is almost to a word how the Right feels about the Left as well. We're watching that play out. Conflict escalation is even less fun on the societal scale.
- jjice 1y ago
  > If the general response is one of absolving themselves of responsibility there won't be the necessary level of reflection and reform to prevent it from happening again. Where did I absolve anything? I just corrected something that was wrong. I didn't vote for the guy either time, I don't like this either.
  - _djo_ 1y ago
    I didn't direct that at you, but at the general response of the American public. Apologies for not making that clear.
    - jjice 1y ago
      Apologies for my earlier response being curt - I totally get it.
- MyOutfitIsVague 1y ago
  Small correction: A plurality voted for Trump, not a majority. A majority is more than half of all votes. Trump got less than 50% of votes, he just got more than any other candidate, which is a plurality.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

wussboy 1y ago

Unfortunately, the benefit of democracy isn’t that the people choose well. It’s that they can choose at all.

i80and 1y ago
Compounding the misfortune, it seems people are easily talked into choosing to not have to choose anymore

analog31 1y ago

No. We did not elect the party majority in Congress or the Supreme Court. If anything, the weakness of our constitution has spoken. Take this as a lesson, and defend your democracy while you still can.

tgv 1y ago
Maybe somewhat indirectly, but the US population did elect those people in the usual sense of the word.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 1y ago
  They "elected" candidates who were chosen for them.
  - 0xTJ 1y ago
    They chose between two candidates chosen via the US presidential primaries. Party members vote for delegates, who vote for a presidential candidate. Republicans chose Trump, then people who voted Republican at the election chose him over the alternative=. He did not hide his fascist and dictatorial desires and he was open about how he wanted to dismantle the government. When he lost in 2020 he threw a fit and tried to have people do a coup. People did in fact elect him, I can just hope that his actions don't leave too much lasting damage here in Canada. (Maybe de-funding US science will help start to reverse decades of brain drain.)
    - cvwright 1y ago
      Nitpick: Only one candidate was chosen by voters in the primary. The other was selected by party leaders after the primary was over.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

duxup 1y ago

>idiocracy It doesn't even fit that, it's worse. In Idiocracy President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho actually chose to find educated / smart people to make decisions. In this setup it's all politicians and political hangers on making decisions about things they seem to have limited education on what they manage.

LightBug1 1y ago
[flagged]

jzb 1y ago

As someone inside the United States... I sort of agree with you, though not entirely. Where we are today is the culmination of decades of attacks on our institutions and public discourse. This is not majority will, but it is a failure of the majority to curb the attacks on our institutions. Collectively, we're to blame -- but at the same time, is it hard to understand why the majority of people in the U.S. haven't been able to push back given what people are up against? The wealthiest folks have the resources to continually and almost casually undermine institutions, while it takes enormous effort for the larger public to push back. Most people are just trying to live their lives while the Murdochs, Kochs, and others can keep throwing money and bodies at corrupting the country. For every win against the anti-Democratic corruptions, there's two or five losses. They pile up. But the fall of the U.S. has seemed inevitable for decades. As someone who is here and isn't likely to leave -- my family is here, too many people to muster out and I won't leave them behind -- this is going to suck pretty horribly for some time. If we're very lucky, this will be the wakeup call the U.S. needs and when the dust clears we may rebuild something better. If we're not... well, I don't want to dwell on that.

tstrimple 1y ago
At some level it falls back on the bullshit asymmetry problem. Lies are easy. Truth requires details and nuance. This is why the "free marketplace of ideas" is doomed to fail. Too many willfully ignorant people who desperately seek out comfortable lies. Far too many unscrupulous people willing to take advantage of the ignorant.

zkmon 1y ago

America is almost like two separate countries with full animosity and opposite ideologies. But they can never have the luxury of having their own ruler.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
I think that we decided over 100 years ago that an amicable divorce was out of the question. So what now?
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  Not a lot of people with any amount of power are even talking about trying to fix the problems that are shoving us toward autocracy, and there's not really a workable way to fix them anyway. What it'd take is just not in the cards (step one would be radically changing the makeup of the Supreme Court, so...) "What now" is we keep getting closer to autocracy until we're unambiguously fully there, or a less-than-amicable divorce. That's about it. The former is by far the more likely of the two.

pyrophane 1y ago

I'm an American. I struggle almost every day with what feels like a betrayal of our republic by so many voters and leaders, and none of the explanations for why it has happened, even when taken together, are wholly satisfying. It has shaken my faith in democracy, but at the same time, there's nothing else, so I have no choice but to try to fight for it in what ways I can.

ghugccrghbvr 1y ago
Roger that! I tell everyone the system can handle it. But Schmidt on yt isn’t wrong. Excellent username
zmgsabst 1y ago
[flagged]
thrance 1y ago
Material forces. The wealthy have a vested interest in dismantling the state, welfare programs, regulations, etc. Just so they can get more wealth through exploiting the workers. Hence why they spend billions on propaganda tools like Fox News or influencers (Joe Rogan, Tim Pool...) propping up increasingly right-wing presidents. So far they've been successful: Raegan, Bush & cie. have been slowly but surely making things easier for the wealthy and harder for the workers. Republicans have always used right-wing populism to get their ways (Blaming migrants, blaming LGBT, blaming leftists). Notice how pro-businesss policies are the only consistent trait between GOP presidency. Trump is a turning point, he is the first one to do right-wing populism for its own sake instead of simply being pro-business. This is fascism. Here is my preferred definition of fascism if you seek one [1]. Trump is no singular phenomenon, you can compare him in some ways to previous or contemporary fascists: Putin, Mussolini... They all have in common a support from the oligarchy, and a hatred of minorities and leftists. Until we fix the power imbalances of our democracies and rid it of all money's influence (easier said than done), we will suffer through fascism every 80 years or so. The time it takes for new oligarchs to emerge and accumulate the wealth necessary to dictate politics again. [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

[flagged]

philipwhiuk 1y ago
This an incredibly ill-informed take. Behind in what? Child poverty? Leisure time per person? Quality of life? Average life expectancy?

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

Don't be sympathetic to us. We could rise up and stop it; we choose not to. It only just occurred to me that empires fall not because of leaders, but because of people letting its leaders tear it all down. Take us as a cautionary tale; if you don't participate in reform, this is what can happen.

oldprogrammer2 1y ago

In my opinion, this was decades in the making. Most Americans are sick of the two party system that can't seem to get anything done, as well as with a political system owned by the elite. As odd and bizarre as it is, Trump was able to channel that disgruntlement into a voting bloc. And it certainly doesn't help that the Democratic party has been unable to put forth a charismatic candidate since President Obama.

LightBug1 1y ago
[flagged]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

tomhow 1y ago

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN threads. It just leads to flamewar hell, which is the primary thing we're trying to avoid here. This isn't the first time we've had to ask you to adhere to the guidelines. If you up this style of commenting, we'll have to ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

LightBug1 1y ago
[flagged]