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You highlight an important point: the fascists are fascists because their primitive lizard brain responds to hear and insecurity with tribalism.
And we have the same lizard brain.
Point being: fascists aren't stupid or inferior, and we need to constantly be on guard to reject the same instincts in ourselves.
Having said that: they are adults, and they should be held responsible for their own adult decisions.
Whether they acted out of malice or ignorance, they bear the same moral culpability for the consequences of their vote. They have a social responsibility to ensure they are informed and vote accordingly; everyone should be able to spot fascism and authoritarianism when they see it.
Fuck anyone who actually voted for trump. Period. Edit: itβs on them to try to redeem themselves
Some of the folk who swallowed the propaganda and want to erase folk like me from the planet may have been conned, but however they got there, their goal is still to hurt other people.
Trump has been trash since the 1980s. He was a garbage president in 2016. If you "fell for it" in 2020 and/or 2024, you're dumber than dirt.
I blame them completely. Voters are not children. You're responsible for your own actions.
Have you seen them at the polls? You're right, they aren't children. Individually i think voters are smart, but as a collective they are dumber than children. If you consider that it's no surprise that Google searches like "did Biden drop out" spiked on election day.
If a grown adult with the mental acuity of a child assaults you and tries to rob you, you are entirely justified in fighting them off and holding them morally culpable for their actions.
If said manchild instead publically advocates for and votes to have someone else do this to you, they are just as morally culpable.
Idiocy may be an explanation, but it is no excuse.
Who else should we blame? Trump won the popular vote, so it was those who voted for him who caused this. Whether theyβre dumb as shit or not doesnβt change that.
100%
It's not like we can even blame it on the fire hose of misinformation the Trump campaign will never be able to stop themselves from shitting out
Trump has already been president. He failed so hard that he lost by over 7 million votes after just 4 years and 2 impeachments while in office.
Then he was found liable for rape and had to pay millions, then he was convicted on 34 felony counts of fraud, and still he was still on the hook for federal indictments for his attempt to overthrow the government in 2020 in which not only did many participants serve prison time for, some died in the process of it. Many of Trump's own officers were also convicted. Giuliani has been sued into bankruptcy and has been disbarred for what Trump asked him to do.
Yeah. That seems like a good idea to give that guy power again. /s
Trump objectively represents the worst that America has to offer to itself and the world.
He lied his ass off to get his first term, no one learned from that.
I genuinely felt sorry for his victims that first time.
Then he lied his ass off for a 2nd term.
This time, I feel like people deserve what they get this time.
To me, they're just as culpable as Trump this time. Every horrible thing that happens this time have zero hesitation to remind people that they voted for it.
There are no excuses.
They ate the propaganda. I can't really say its their fault, propaganda is why they did what they did, the fault lies with those who promoted far-right propaganda.
A lot.
I know there's a proportion that were simply ignorant and tuned out of politics... but most Trump voters did so over the very loud objections of trans relatives or while openly embracing the nativism.
Lastly, I think that Harris did a terrible job advocating for her election and she owns a fair portion of the blame as well.
Trump wasn't an unknown this time. He attempted to subvert our election process and he's a convicted rapist. He openly embraced corruption during his last term and is already shilling crypto bullshit.
Trump voters are terrible selfish people - end of story.
How much do you blame Germans? As in the ones from 1940s?
We might not have started killing people yet but the signs are here, for anyone who cares to know their history. We had a Nazi salute at the inauguration for Christ sake.
Yeah. It's shocking that your friends and neighbors are party to this. It was to many Germans too.
Given the way AIPAC and the ADL control everything, while advocating lebensraum for their master race... I don't blame the Germans one hair versus anyone else... the "victim" has become the abuser, raping aid doctors to death in their death camps...
There is literally no difference between a Trump supporter/voter and a Nazi
If we're talking the average working class voter, I hold a great amount of sympathy for them. I really do understand where they're coming from.
The Democrats are corrupt as hell and aren't doing a damn thing for the American people. Pre-Trump Republicans are corrupt as hell and aren't doing a damn thing for the American people. The country is legitimately falling apart and there's no one to turn to.
Here comes this guy out of nowhere who's never been in politics and thus not beholden to their corrupt schemes. He's promising to tear down the whole damn system that isn't working for the average American. He recognizes and acknowledges the plight of working class America. He's claiming that it needs to break completely before it can be repaired.
This is the reasoning behind my little brother supporting Trump. He's so desperate for real change that he's willing to overlook a lot of Trump's bad behaviors. To my brother, Trump is a useful wrecking ball, a bulldozer coming to forcefully wipe away everything wrong with politics.
Of course, Trump has no real intentions of fixing anything. He's just there to loot the government and shield himself from the law. All of the right wing supporters, politicians, preachers, and business execs are just stepping stones.
Agreed, this particular type of person I can at least feel empathy for. Feeling the system has failed and deciding that someone who will blow it all up is better than someone who will maintain the status quo.
I feel that people like your brother are in the minority though and most of Trump's voters like his policies, and so I completely blame them, but that's just my gut feeling, I don't have stats or studies.
Sorry bud, but your brother is a Nazi. Voting for fascism just to change things? My ass. If a fascist tells you heβs a fascist, believe him. And fascists donβt want change. They want power.
I'm pretty torn on this to be honest.
On the one hand, propaganda is a hell of a drug especially if you're already sympathetic to the ideas of one party or another. You want to be able to agree with them or you're left realizing you have no options at all. It's a similar thing to those on the left being "forced" to support Democrats even if they basically loath the current party. If not for them then they have absolutely nothing, no hope of any representation at all.
On the other hand, how many times can you be confronted with outrageous situations and such a large, essentially global, consensus that "your team" is just straight up wrong before you realize you're supporting actual bad people? You're making a choice to support people doing actual bad things, but again, based on the propaganda you might never believe bad things are actually bad, or are even really happening.
I've had many many arguments with my father and I've come to realize he absolutely will not accept information that is not what he already wanted to hear. Fox is good when it says "Trump good", fox is bad when they say "Trump did something wrong." I pleaded with him to at the very least stop watching the fox primetime peanut gallery where they lie with impunity, that he would be better served watching Fox journalists like (at the time) Shepard Smith. His response was "Smith is too opinionated, I prefer Hannity." ... Sean Fucking Hannity, the guy who's show is literally an opinion show. He just wants confirmation bias. When a Republican committee release a document it's gospel, when a Democrat lead committee release something it's fake news lies.
I blame them collectively for supporting fascists, but I can't really blame an individual human for being a stubborn ignorant human. It's our nature to be thick headed. Some way more than others.
"No one is the villain of their own story." My stubborness is that I choose to believe this quote is true. 99% of people believe they're doing the right thing, it's why we even have the cliche of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Never forgive, never forget.
Just to be clear i am not defending the extremists. So before you judge this just remember I'm not talking about shit like QAnon. Those guys can fuck right off.
I don't hate all of them. They just fell for the propaganda, which none of us are immune to. I don't think the average republican is as racist or fascist waiting for an opportunity to do shitty things. They are just people that want a better life for themselves and their families like the rest of us do. The problem is that they've been led to believe the democrats and immigrants are responsible instead of the literal people they voted into office and the corporations dictating their every choice through algorithms and misinformation. They've been bamboozled to the highest degree and we shouldn't hate them for that. And we've been led to believe that republicans are responsible for all of our problems when it's literally the people we vote into office fucking us over too. We're both getting fucked by everyone in charge and we all take it in stride when it's "our guy."
I remember when I was a kid back in the early 2000's there was a sentiment between pretty much everyone that the government doesn't give a shit about us. Sayings like "fuck the system" were ubiquitous when I was I'm high-school regardless of if you were a Republican, Democrat, or somewhere in between. Nowadays we are being manipulated to hate each other for the smallest of reasons because it benefits the powers that be. And that's not just Republicans. Like, when was the last time you had an actual conversation with a Republican that wasn't trying to tell them they are wrong and explain why you are right? And when was the last time a Republican talked to you without doing the same thing?
Like when it really comes down to it, why the fuck are we fighting with each other when we all know FOR A FACT we are all being manipulated to hate each other? The extremists can't fuck right off, but the average American from all backgrounds are being manipulated to hate each other instead of looking at the real issues. And now we have fucking Elmo doing a Nazi salute at the fucking inauguration of the president. And I'm sure a lot of average republicans are just as pissed as everyone else. And for the democrats, Biden just rode off into the sunset like it was another fucking Monday.
It's all about money and power. If you go through and look at the majority of reasons why you hate the average republican or hate the average democrat, I can guarantee if you go back far enough you will find someone trying to sell you something or make money off you. And when you see the average American regardless of politics out in the wild, are they really that different from you? As long as we keep insulting each other for the dumbest shit, the only thing we are going to accomplish is exactly what they want. When a certain Mario brother brought us all together on a topic for once, how long did it take for us to go back to hating each other? A couple days? A week, maybe?
So I guess TL;DR is no, not really. We are all susceptible to propaganda and we all fall for it. Just remember the next time you're pissed off at someone, try to think about whether or not it's your opinion or what someone told you is your opinion. And that goes for both "sides." The powers that be are bamboozling us all so we ignore the fact that it's their fault.
What is an "average working class Trump voter" ?
With private ballots why are you so sure rich upper middle class people didn't vote for him ?
He won the popular vote. That doesn't happen with just upper middle class people.
Only ones to blame are the Democratic National Committee with their heads in each other's ass cavities echochambers of corruption. They shoved off Bernie Sanders when the whole left wanted him and his fight for the everyday citizens .
I blame every GOP vote on the DNC, which stopped having democratic elections to compete and became a grift for PR execs like Jen O'Malley Dillon, who ran the Biden/Kamala not trying to win campaign. At this point the GOP is the only place Americans can democratically vote dissent, the DNC is a Hong Kong-style picked candidate party but with a secret leadership, and the duopoly will NEVER allow a real third party after Perot, but being the right wing party branding-wise EVERY dem (including Cheney MSNBC dems) would need to do so and that would never happen