Most of my former trumper friends don’t even watch Fox News or newsmax or whatever right wing “news” channel. They’re getting their information in an echo chamber on social media. I love my liberal minded community, but social media is a huge influencer too with many echo chambers. All algorithm based.
I blocked them all on Facebook after scanning their posts. Their moral compass does not align with my own and they refuse to grow and learn.
I live in Canada, and Elon evidently has his sights set on our federal election next year.
I’m scared. I have special needs kids (AuDHD and deaf) and I’m hearing impaired and neurodivergent as well. My husband is conservative. He believes our institutions will not let abortion rights go but there’s many MP’s who are anti-choice in our federal Conservative Party.
I too am waking up to the immense algorithm of hatred on social media. I searched for a channel I don't usually care for because it's all lies, and was absolutely appalled and frankly frightened by the content. We dems need to truly wake up to what we are faced with in our fight to save this country from themselves. Or selfishly, save ourselves, (explicit word inserted starting with an f) them.
During the so called trucker convoy in the midst of Covid, the protest was very much influenced by bad actors in the US, including funding from the Christian version of Go Find Me. There are definitely efforts especially in western Canada to stoke this division and grievance.
Pretty much all the Conservatives are pro lifers. Remember this is an amalgamation of Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance Party with its evangelical beliefs.
People are only pro-lifers if they are willing to fund pre-natal care for indigent women, and ensure health care, child care, good food, education, housing and clothing for the child until adults. if not, they are just forced-birthers.
As I said, I blame corporate and social media. Of course Russian bots had a huge impact on social media. That is why, there are so many fewer accounts the day after the election.
Perhaps you’re thinking of TikTok. Per CBC November 7/24: The federal government ordered an end to TikTok's Canadian operations on Wednesday, citing national security concerns. But its decision to keep the app itself available has privacy experts puzzled. The order to shut down the social media platform's Vancouver and Toronto offices came after a months-long national security review of the app. The federal government banned TikTok from government devices in February 2023.”
Canada is smart to do that. More countries should follow suit. But that is not the only opiate to the masses. How about the NYT. They basically spread disinformation by not giving information about Trump, his party and their understood actions in the past and stated future intentions and the effects that would have.
It would be great for someone to do a research project on all of the different media that people who voted for Trump consume vs. those who voted for Harris, vs. those 93 mil who were eligible to vote and didn't.
I'm starting to think on the level of fentanyl level. Numbers don't lie. The death threats of this new "administration" and it's cultists is going to be epic.
You have more strength than me. At least in this moment, I am EXHAUSTED of being the bigger person. Especially with people who are so gleefully and sadistically proud of “owning” me.
Since the GOP is going to have Congress too, I fully support just stepping back and letting them have it. They will have to own every mess they create. It will be fun to watch, when (or if) the scales fall from the eyes of the MAGA faithful. I live in a rural area with lots of fruit production. Most of apple farmers are MAGA’s. Every summer the migrants come. I’m hoping they don’t next year. I’ll be interested to see how many citizens step up to do the work for the same pay the migrants got.
They didn’t even choose ignorance. These are the same people who started gamergate 10 years ago. They’ve always, always, had contempt for women in their hearts.
We feel our righteous anger and grieve. Then we think strategically about problem solving. The Harris-Walz campaign did an amazing job of expanding the big tent to include grassroots volunteers with boots on the ground and former Trump Republicans with big megaphones. This is the Pro-Democracy movement on which we build going forward, both for upcoming elections and for winning hearts and minds.
And if there are, they will be “Hungary style pre-ordained winners” types. Now that the MAGA’s have their hands on the levers of power again, not a snowball’s chance in hell they will ever allow a scenario where they might lose it.
True. And yet, when I talk with these people on social media, they posture as if they know everything without a doubt. Project 2025? “That’s not real, just a scare tactic.” Huh? What’s the point of a scare tactic. “He’s not racist, no way.” There’s no point in conversing with these willfull ignoramuses.
Note from a divided house: my husband claims he read project 2025 and wasn’t worried. My man in Christ, you are THE most ADHD person I have ever known. You might have glanced at a page here and there through some other site. But I guarantee you just took Joe Rogans word for it — whatever he said. And o btw, if you keep telling me how the brain worm guy is actually going to make the FDA better, I am going to have to deposit your balls into your rib cage.
They’re about to find out how real all this stuff is. And like many others on this thread, I don’t give a cr*p what happens to them. all my sympathies lie with the others they are taking down with them.
I must object to this viewpoint many of us are now adopting of having little sympathy for those who voted for him because he let us all know who he is before the election, so they should have known better. I strongly disagree. Some of us got to see who he really is, but if you only watch Fox News, you saw nothing about the Trump that we got to know. Everything was heavily edited. And what you did see about Kamala was a lot of lies.
My sister, a devoted Trump supporter, believes Kamala has done nothing of any merit in her entire life but only slept her way to the top. That Trump saved us in many ways in his first term and Biden has just tanked the economy and ruined the country. My sister is not a dumb person. She is educated (at least school-wise), and she lives in the SF Bay Area, but she only watches and listens to Fox News. Reads no newspapers and magazines. Fox does not lie, so why does she need to read what anyone else says? Thus, she has only seen and learned one side of the story. Is that her fault? Perhaps somewhat, but I don't think it’s completely her fault.
Back in the 1990's Sinclair Broadcasting, a right-learning company, went around in all the red states, especially in the rural areas, and bought up all the local radio stations and local newspapers. They gradually closed down all the local papers, and changed the local radio stations to only carrying Fox News programs and talk shows of that ilk, like Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon, etc. Now, if you drive through the mid-western states and mountain states in the more rural areas, all you hear is Fox, religious programs, country western music, and the farm report. And heaven only knows what they teach, or don't teach the children who live in those areas. I know they aren't teaching any critical thinking skills to anyone. And we have seen how the mainstream media did not cover this election or either of the last 2 presidential terms, in any way remotely showing the truth of the situation. So even if they subscribed to a city paper, they still didn't get the full picture about Trump.
So, I find it extremely difficult to understand how you can feel these people do not deserve our sympathy and support at this time. It is not their fault this has happened to them or that they voted this way. Not everyone in this country has the time or energy to become a fully informed voter who has researched all sides of every issue and every candidate. And it has been a concerted effort for the past 30 plus years for the Republican Party to dumb down their electorate, to control what people in the red states and rural areas learn about just about any subject, to control what they see, read, and hear from the media.
If anything, these people are really going to need our compassion and empathy if they ever wake up to the truth of what their vote is going to do, to this country and our democracy that I know they all deeply love.
Feel free to give these willfully ignorant people all the compassion you want. Don’t ask others to though. It will certainly not be coming from me. Those who voted for trump have let down their fellow citizens and the world. Trump has been around for almost a decade now. There’s simply no excuse for them not to know exactly who he is and what he wants to do. If they claim they don’t, it’s a lie. Thanks to trump voters more women will die from draconian abortion laws and likely assault from men since misogyny has been given the green light. They have caused all of us a world of hurt and you want to make excuses for them?! Hell NO!
Seriously! I’m a little, really old mountain girl from N.C. but I’ve known about trump and his purported mafia ties for years! I never watched The Apprentice simply because reality shows are anything but. So trump, to me, was a loser from the git-go. I also knew he had declared bankruptcy several times so what kind of a businessman could he be? For me, he was a loser from the start; all guff and nothing but lies so his 2016 election was a blow. If I could see all that, what made others so effing blind?
With all due respect to your educated sister. The information has been there all along, she just had to look for it. How hard is that?
My suspicion is that she, and too many others, like what they see in Trump and his minions and are just fine with "sticking it to the Libs". I will have no sympathy whatsoever since we will be suffering right along with them.
She had a choice to switch to another news channel. She had a choice to go and read up if she had any doubts. She chose not to. This is not the Dark Ages - every bit of information was at her fingertips. She chose not to access it and not to listen. So no.... people like that don't get a pass.
Sorry. I have friends all over the US that live in very red parts of the country. Ignorance is just laziness. Those friends are not repugs or brainwashed. The only reason anyone is a MAGA is because it speaks to their inherent biases and hatred. FULL STOP.
No sympathy here, either. Trump and his out racism, misogyny, criminality, xenophobia — wait, there’s more!! — were just what they were seeking. No one forced them to choose the cruelty, lack of empathy, selfishness that Trump offered. They fear and hate anyone who isn’t like them. They are traitors to our democracy and to democratic countries throughout the world. And THEY — the white, straight, Christian ones — won’t be amongst those rounded up by the fascists.
I don’t feel they deserve our sympathy because Trump himself made it clear that he is a lying, racist, misogynist creep any time he opened his mouth at one of his rallies. While the media sane washed a lot of it, sadly including the “liberal” media (in quotes because there is very little of that left as it, too, gets bought up by right-wing interests), the fact is that it has been obvious if you even make one iota of effort towards self-examination. I’m done giving WILLFUL ignorance a pass. I don’t have any left to spare for them. It’s reserved for all the rest of us who are going straight into the dumpster fire because of them.
Right now I think people, rightly, are going through stuff and anger is an understandable and justified response especially if you are part of a community that is in the firing line of these bigots. Just think - if there are parts of the country that would chose a felon, a rapist, an addled and exhausted old man screaming ‘they’re eating the dogs’ over a black woman - it must be a pretty grim place to be a black woman in.
The United States as a democratic republic will end on 19th Jan 2025. Some people need to work through their grief.
In reality - it was already fatally wounded by vast income inequalities, Taliban level religious fundamentalism, a refusal to acknowledge, much less deal with systemic racism, a legal system that refuses to hold the powerful accountable, a broken media environment where mainstream publications normalised Trump, while many people live in their own billionaire curated social media bubbles and Fox pumps out 24 hour propaganda.
I was caught up in the hope and the enthusiasm - I really thought VP Harris was the miracle doctor that could save the patient, but it was too far gone.
My concern is Trump dies in office - given his age and his lifestyle not an unrealistic concern. In part because he’s got that ‘take it all down with me’ mindset a terminal diagnosis may cause him to nuke California, but also because he is the one thing holding the disparate bunch of grifters, cranks and Religious extremists together. If Trump’s heart gives out right as the economy makes a turn for the shitter, you will have the cult going crazy looking for someone to shoot for murdering their Godhead while the entire government falls apart.
The corporate and social media apparently gave people different messages than you or I got. Of course, many Americans do not have the time, know-how, or resources to keep informed, and thus are stuck with the media available to them. I blame the media for this election result and no one else. A lesson to all of us is that a media that truthfully and thoughtfully informs is essential to a strong democracy. The corporate and social media did the opposite as far as I can see.
This is not the first article I have read today about MAGA voters waking up to the consequences, but the media is telling them now, what they should have told them before. I am glad that I dropped the NYT, WaPo, LA Times and kept the Guardian and Substacks, as well as some other independent press in the US and Europe.
Sooooo, I just tried to post this on my husband's FB page since I haven't been on it for 20 years. For some reason, it kicked it out, but not after I wrote a plea for no backlash against him, even though he agrees. Now, I'm becoming paranoid.
We need to protect our most vulnerable especially children and the LGBTQ community but everyone else needs to get a dose of what they voted for. Trump told us exactly who he is and what he is going to do so I have little sympathy for those who voted for him and will suffer under his administration.
Yes all will suffer. I grieve and sympathize for those of us who stood up for democracy and will face harm. I have no such sympathy for those who voted for him. That part of me died Wednesday morning.
That part of me also died Wednesday morning. I'm nearly to the point where if anyone needs help, my first question to them is going to be: "did you vote and if so who did you vote for"
While we will all suffer, I will get much SATISFACTION that his voter base will get it worse, all his uneducated, low information voters, conspiracy theorists, redneck bigots, christain taliban, rural and city, that already live paycheck to paycheck.....as Dumpster steals their last bread crumbs and slashes their social security check in half, then eventually eliminates it. And when the militia start harassing muslims Dearborn, oh well. Fuck all Dumpster voters and those that didn't vote. I can't get past my anger.
To be clear, I don’t want anyone to suffer. And the children of those who voted for Trump are blameless. But frankly my priority is protecting the marginalized over someone who voted for Trump and is now worried about losing their social security. I have finite bandwidth.
Trump voters suffering is the only thing that's going to finally kill this far-right, republican, oligarchy movement. Suffering is required for humanity to finally change. And the Trump voters are very obstinate. Which means they need to suffer more to finally finally learn, there is no boggeyman, the boogeyman was made up. Unless we consider dumpster to be the boogeyman, and then I would agree with that. You probably think I'm a total ass, but I'm really not.
Someone on another thread had a really good perspective - that the Overton Window has completely shifted now. We will be lucky just to get back to the middle in my lifetime, I'm 55.
Julie, your thesis seems to depend on those so affected using rational thinking/ critical thinking. One of my concerns here is that if they continue to pay attention to only the same far-right “information” sources, they will continue to be exposed to the propaganda telling them that whatever is working was done by “conservatives” and whatever is wrong was done by “the left.” As long as their identity is centered around what they perceive as their tribe, they will not learn the truth.
My feelings exactly, on checking who people voted for. I was driving around a lot today, and I was fantasizing different scenarios with people I know who are trumpers. “Oh your car won’t start and you need a ride? Go find another Red hat person.” “Sorry your teen is pregnant and can’t get an abortion. have fun raising the kid the next 18 years.”
Exactly that, we just went out to dinner at 5:00 on a Friday so everyone was getting off of work, I just looked around at all the cars as we were at each red light and say to myself: "there's a Trumper, there's another Trumper and another Trumper. Fuckers"
You could swing your hands and hit 10 of them, I'm in Tennessee.
Ah, but those of us living in blue states will suffer so much less. There is plenty of room here, come on over. Yes, we will suffer too, but at least we will have a state infrastructure providing some protection.
I know your offer is well meant, but so many of us in red states have been here for years. It's our home. And we shouldn't have to leave our homes just to feel safe. No one wants to be a refugee (and that's what we would be, fleeing from our red states).
And even if we were willing (or able) to leave, that weakens any chance for change in our home states, and burdens us with the cost of moving - not just financial, but societal and cultural costs of moving away from friends and family (at least those who don't suck). It involves giving up jobs - even remote ones, as many blue states have state taxes, and companies in red states don't have to deal with calculating for that.
I wish it was that simple, and I don't begrudge anyone who does that calculation and determines that it's better for them to leave, but someone has to stay and fight, and some of us don't have a choice but to do so. And every person who leaves does make it that much harder for us to win.
Yes, we hear you. I live in San Francisco but I feel like I lost my adopted country. It is a death. It is a death for all of us no matter where we live.
Not true. We have housing shortages already. We get our food from the same places red states do. We'll have empty shelves, high prices, ridiculously expensive insurance, overwhelmed schools. If The Brain Worm manages to tank the FDA, medicines are no more available here than in red states. The only way it would be good for people to move from red states for blue is an exchange where we're sending our MAGAs to live amongst their people and separating the country into two.
I have more sympathy for the deluded MAGA voters than for the oligarchs and their demagogue servants who manipulated them into voting against their own interests to support the upward flow of wealth to the billionaire class. The billionaire oligarchs have prevailed and White Christian nationalist fascists will celebrate. Minorities including POC, LGBTQ, and immigrants will suffer discrimination and persecution. More women will lose the right to control their own bodies, and more will suffer health consequences and die from complications of pregnancy. International alliances will crumble and authoritarians will have free rein. Climate change will worsen. Millions will lose health insurance and protections for pre-existing conditions. Social safety nets will be shredded. Infrastructure spending will be curtailed. Cost of living will rise with tariffs. Millions of productive workers and their families will be deported. Investments in education and an opportunity economy for the middle class will be scrapped in favor of tax cuts for the rich. An economic downturn will follow.
Perhaps the accelerationists have the answer. We will be accelerating a planned move to France to observe and participate remotely while American voters learn the hard way how they have been deluded and how badly they have chosen. That may not be far away enough to escape the global consequences of this historically bad election.
Just curious, who are the deluded MAGA voters? All of what Jay wrote, what you wrote about what will come has been all over every kind of media possible, for months. Willful ignorance is what it is. Deluded implies that they were lied to, or sold a bill of goods. MAGA has put it out there what the plan is. Putting their heads in the sand is no excuse. Bon Voyage, wish I could do the same!
Exactly! Willful Ignorance......yes. They chose to live in the faux news silo and/or let their pastors control every aspect of their lives......these radical pastors preaching are just as toxic as fox and newsmax and twitter.
The Trump campaign lied to them - said Project 2025 wasn't their plan - then the day after the election right-wing social media is saying, ha, fooled you, it's real. How is that not delusion? More important is what right-wing medmedia told them about Harris- like the ad that played every 10 mins here in NC on every channel, about how Kamala supported sex changes for prisoners - that's what they were voting AGAINST. Since the election I have seen posts from a MAGA acquaintance expressing relief that kids in kindergarten are now "safe from being made gay or trans." They really believe that kids are in danger from teachers! They are much more scared of that than of them being gunned down in the classroom. And of course they take their kids to the shooting range....
I have more sympathy for the deluded MAGA voters than for the oligarchs and their demagogue servants who manipulated them into voting against their own interests to support the upward flow of wealth to the billionaire class. The billionaire oligarchs have prevailed and White Christian nationalist fascists will celebrate. Minorities including POC, LGBTQ, and immigrants will suffer discrimination and persecution. More women will lose the right to control their own bodies, and more will suffer health consequences and die from complications of pregnancy. International alliances will crumble and authoritarians will have free rein. Climate change will worsen. Millions will lose health insurance and protections for pre-existing conditions. Social safety nets will be shredded. Infrastructure spending will be curtailed. Cost of living will rise with tariffs. Millions of productive workers and their families will be deported. Investments in education and an opportunity economy for the middle class will be scrapped in favor of tax cuts for the rich. An economic downturn will follow.
Perhaps the accelerationists have the answer. We will be accelerating a planned move to France to observe and participate remotely while American voters learn the hard way how they have been deluded and how badly they have chosen. That may not be far away enough to escape the global consequences of this historically bad election.
It really is! It reminds me of the aftermath of the 2016 election when Trump voters worried that he would carry out his promises, even though so many of them didn't like them. And now they've been taken in again?
Unfortunately I expect that when the economy tanks the Republicans will still find some way to blame it on the Democrats, and the MAGA voters will believe them.
Because now the impacts are real. In reality, while preparations are being made by companies and governments (if he goes through with it, there will be retaliatory tariffs). But his plans for the Fed (which don't seem legal, but who knows with him) on what's going on in January and beyond.
If he does everything we're talking global recession by summer 2025.
Mass deportations are something that I doubt will proceed as they envision. It currently costs an average of $60k to deport one person. Trump tried to ramp up deportations the last time he was in office, and he only managed to deport ~220k people over the whole 4 years. If he wants to speed that up, he's going to need to reform the entire suite of US immigration law. And we all know how successful THAT effort has been over the last 50 years. Let's say he does manage to do this. The sheer numbers of workers and the amount of money required to deport so many people still just aren't there.
So, what then, do "mass deportations" look like? Probably not *deportation,* but we have a whole for-profit prison industry that would be delighted to provide mass *incarceration.* And then industries and farms who need workers would have to contract out prison workers to salvage their crops and keep their businesses afloat. Paying for prison labor is more expensive than hiring free workers, even though the laborers, themselves, are being paid pennies per day. Those businesses and farms are going to run out of money, and the newly flush prison corporations will be able to buy them up and continue to staff them with prison labor.
Congratulations, they have now become plantations, and we have legal slavery in the US again under the pretext of labor as punishment for prisoners. That's where I think this might be going.
That would be a bonus, not a bug. Last night Lawrence O’Donnell observed that deportations on this scale would cost more than the entire budget for DOJ and would take more than every law enforcement staff than the nation has at the state and local level. He speculated that there will be many horrific deportations, e.g. 100,000? But they will not and cannot deport all those they have been claiming.
I worry that once their prisons are built, they will expand their use for "the enemy within". The guy who professes admiration for Hitler, and the people pulling his strings, are unlikely to have a problem with the idea of setting up concentration camps.
Building gas chambers and transporting people will not be cheap either. Then we have Blue States where the real resistance will come from. Things do not move fast and at times it is good.
If anyone thinks Trump will respect the law regarding deportations, contact me. I have a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to see to you. :)
Serious, though, there is nothing to stop him...not the courts, not Congress. I think prison slavery is one way, the other is to just ship them to another country (whether that country wants them or not). The cruelty is the point.
What will stop him is the logistics. People still have to be processed for deportation, which has to be signed off on by an immigration judge. Transportation and transfer of custody has to be arranged. The country to which they are being deported has to accept repatriation. The judiciary still has to follow US law. If Orange & Co. want the law to be something different, they still have to change it, and with something as huge and unwieldy as immigration law, I frankly don't think they have the attention span. Prison camps are the path of least resistance that also allows them to keep their base from howling after their heads while making sure there's still food to be had at local supermarkets.
That's why Dobbs was decided the way it was. Partisan judiciary decided to throw out the "settled law" that was the Roe decision in order to have the change in social policy they wanted. Obergefell is 100% next on the list. Pretty much any change in social policy that was led by the federal government is now fair game. Is Social Security communist? We're going to take a second look at laws that have been in place since the Johnson administration and make sure that nobody is redistributing wealth. Don't like desegregated schools? Brown v. Board of Education suddenly gets re-examined as "incorrectly decided" and the "separate but equal" doctrine, which fooled nobody, is back in place. At least until the defunding of the Department of Education is complete.
If Trump showed us anything, it's that the law only matters so long as people agree to follow it.
I didn’t think about the prison plantation slavery angle, but I’ll bet Stephen Miller would agree. And bull whips will be tax deductible for the oligarchs.
I wonder who will listen to the complaints of the CEO's of the companies who currently employ the undocumented workers. They will now be paying a premium for their labor and will not like that one bit-- I wonder what DeSantis and Abbott will say?
Mexico (and anywhere else) still has to accept them. The US can't just make people stateless and ship them wherever -- there are international laws in play that don't allow that, and Trump can't touch them. This is why I think incarceration is the likeliest route.
You are correct, plan is to round up and incarcerate, and the private prison and surveillance company ceos are already crowing about what a great “opportunity” this is for them.
If he sends "stateless" people to other countries who haven't agreed to take them, they'll be turned back to the US. Again, I think the path of least resistance is just going to be incarceration. It allows them maximum grift potential, besides.
Personally I would like to see him break some international laws. SCOTUS can't shield him then. Let him do it, let him burn. I think it's his fastest path out of the WH. Of course then we deal with JD Couchlover but one dictator at a time.
Another update to the Constitution that will be needed.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Finally, someone pointed this out. Now, make up a crime, interpret something as a crime, or declare martial law and then throw selected people into prison. Use their labor. It IS a way to achieve focused slavery. If it does not happen, I will be pleased - but very, very surprised.
Crossing the border without documentation is a misdemeanor. It's in the same legal classification as shoplifting. Do you think people should be indefinitely confined for shoplifting?
We've had "slavery" since Dobbs decision in red states that force women to have babies; there is not much that impacts a woman's life more than having a/or another baby!
I was imagining this scenario too. There is no way they could deport that many people and will incarcerate them or put them in camps and use prison labor.
and because they target minorities aka non-white people, TRUMPERS will not care. They’ll just keep parroting “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” jingle. They don’t care. They’ll still get their produce. And homes built.
Off hand, I don' recall the part of the Constitution, but it does state enforced labor is illegal. (Except as a form of punishment for crime). I suppose MAGA would find a way to make it legal. Or just ignore Connie.
I am not ready to feel for the Trump voters. Right now I want them to get everything they deserve and more. They voted to hurt themselves and everyone else in the country and I do not care about them at all.
Jay writes that those who voted for the Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party will come to their senses after realizing their own faces just got painfully eaten.
Maybe; a rational person would certainly think so. But that assumes the LEPF voters themselves respond rationally to their trauma, that they change their thinking or behavior in response to a profoundly negative consequence.
Unfortunately, they are not rational people, as Tuesday's results demonstrate, and there's little reason to think they'll become rational anytime soon despite having had their faces eaten, especially as the MAGA/Russia propaganda machine continues to inundate them with lies and bullshit.
Further, rather than questioning their initial choices and reevaluating their stances following a disastrously bad decision, people often retreat deeper into the mindlessness of that bad decision. They double down, as it were, and crowd in even more tightly behind the self-proclaimed heroic warrior who will supposedly protect them from any more face-eating leopards. They of course do not see the irony of that, as rational and critical thought is completely crowded out by ever-increasing fear and they remain oblivious to the inevitability of their own destruction.
In South Africa the ANC government rode the "it's the fault of the old apartheid government" bus for 30 years. I hope it doesn't take the US that long to realise it's not the fault of the "radical leftist Marxist liberal Dems".
It's going to take generations to repair the damage done and get the country back on a course toward decency, honesty, equity, and justice. Capturing the country's politics; legal and judicial, economic, and education systems; mass-market media; and popular culture took the far right some 60 or 80 years. Undoing that might not take another 60 or 80 years, but it will take a long time. If my pre-teenage granddaughters see any substantial progress in their middle ages, that would be remarkable. I, of course, will be gone by then.
This is exactly my concern. I think they will continue to blame anyone and anything else aside from Trump, and the MAGA "leaders" will be happy to spoonfeed them.
I think this was a good overview, Jay. We're careening into FO after our FA election season.
That said, I believe it's also imperative for Democrats to not sit back & wait for those most effected to come crawling back. The party needs to listen to people, not consultants, and put in the work to make things better. Some of these fixes are going to require taking sledgehammers to systems, which may make some donors pissed. But if the party truly wants to help the vulnerable, and not just be "Republican Lite" they have to put in the work to differentiate.
ALL OF THIS! I am done being nice—and particularly have zero sympathy for the older contingent who are in the 4th quarter of their time here on earth fucking it up for us because they want “cheaper” eggs.
Never stereotyped anyone, nor did I call anyone a name. I simply said I have the least amount of sympathy for those of that age that voted for him. They have the least amount of time left and voted to make everyone miserable way beyond after they depart this realm.
Kate, I have grandchildren. Not everything that I care about will vanish when I depart this “realm.” You might leave it ahead of me, who knows? Check your ageism. It is tiresome.
So they voted against their grandchildren’s interests—you didn’t, and that is awesome. I have zero kids or grandkids, and voted for everyone's future way beyond my time here too.
You seem to be very defensive at something that was not even directed at you, and have the gall to call me ageist when you are the one calling people geezers. Maybe check yourself. Have a nice day.
I’m in that category except I voted blue. So did my 76 year old husband and 94 year old dad. Please don’t label people. I might not have much time left but I’m trying to make the best of it when I can and have been for over 70 years. We don’t want things to go back to 50-60’s standards.
Most of the people I know in the boomer category and older voted blue too, my comment was meant for those that apparently do want to go back…to way it never even was.
Way to blame the geezers. Do you equally blame the 30something pious pro lifers? As a geezer who remembers coat hangers, water fountains, attack dogs, etc., I have NO sympathy for them. To each our own.
65+ "Geezers" and college-educated women are the only groups who cast fewer votes for Trump this election! Don't blame the geezers! Don't be like Vance who made damning claims that those of us without children care less about the future of our country, environment, or planet. All species are my kin, and I care deeply about their future though I won't be around to share it with them!
I never “blamed” the older contingent, I simply said I have the least amount of sympathy for them. But everyone is going to interpret things through their own lens, and that is on them.
Exactly! In fact, I sometimes think childless people can see things more clearly because they are less likely to fall into the trap of thinking only of their children’s immediate physical needs at the expense of everyone’s long-term future.
A very wise observation! It is only natural that parents protect and provide for their offspring. But sometimes they go so overboard and act in ways that are destructive to our planet and our species' future including that of their kids.
"The challenge of our time will be how not to lose compassion for those who have brought this upon all of us, including themselves."
Since so many of the Felon-in-Chief's followers claim to be lovers of the Bible, I'd remind them of a classic from Hosea 8:7: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
They were warned. Repeatedly. Countless times. Damn them, we tried so hard to convince them. And if those warnings weren't enough, they only had to remember four years ago, to a pandemic made so much worse by his policies (or lack thereof) and the insurrection he brought on.
And. They. Wouldn't. Fucking. Listen.
No, no fucking sympathy. From now on, we do what we can to save ourselves and save others who tried to stop him. Those who knew better and still voted for him can suffer through the whirlwind.
As an old white woman, I have always said I will never understand how ANY woman regardless of race, any people of color regardless of race, or any marginalized people would vote for Trump — but they did. In horrible to contemplate numbers. That is a lot of hate and fear out there. They will pay. So will we. My heart is heavy for our Nation, the World and our Planet.
What I find curious is that Jeff Bezos didn’t strongly oppose Trump. We’ve all been - rightly - vilifying him for not letting an endorsement of Kamala Harris go to press at the WaPo, but that isn’t a money maker for him. I’d expect tariffs to have a major negative impact on Amazon sales due to the higher prices they will cause and yet here we are.
Did you see bozo’s message to rump? Complete bootlicker, and all he wants now are government contracts. Amazon is on its way down, business has been contracting since the pandemic “ended”—space is his next cash cow. But Apartheid Clyde will be controlling that most likely…
“The multi-billionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, continued facing criticism throughout the weekend because executives from his aerospace company met with Donald Trump on the same day the newspaper prevented its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of his opponent in the US presidential election.”
I considered that as well and all the gods know loyalty and Trump don’t coexist in his mind but with Musk bankrolling him and given Trump’s historical hatred of Bezos I discounted it as unlikely to succeed.
As much as I feel the same about Trump voters as most here, it’s not just them who will ‘find out’. It’s the rest of us, who did not vote for him, who would never, ever vote for him, who will, unfortunately, be finding out as well.
Agree with many of the comments. For those who voted for the orange Antichrist, I have zero sympathy or human feeling. They fucked around, now they can find out.
Don't believe my human empathy will be returning any time soon.
As someone in the Antichrist's death cult once said, "I don't really care. Do you?"
I’ve written extensively about why it’s impossible for anyone doing independent journalism to quit twitter. Xeets and Giggles is a byproduct of the research I do there, and without Twitter I would not be able to produce this newsletter, sadly.
We can live without xeets and giggles. Figure it out. Go to threads at least and influence your colleagues to do the same. I’m tired of excuses. Y’all talk amongst yourselves and figure it out. Taking down X needs to be a priority.
I see this rationale often, but it's simply not true. First, some of those tweets aren't in correct context. Stephen Miller did tweet that, but it was over a year ago - not after the election. I'm familiar with it as immigration is important to my family.
Second, even at the best of times for Twitter it was used by 10% of the world, and of those that used 10% of the users made up 92% of the content. Twitter isn't representative of the real world. It's a bunch of people addicted to Twitter yelling at each other and bots. That's even more true now that an estimated 30% of people have left.
Twitter isn't journalism. It never was. And believing it was is part of the reason we're here now. I enjoy your content - you don't need Twitter.
“Trump voters have no idea of the economic chaos and far higher prices such a draconian program would create. “
We told them. Explicitly. They wouldn’t listen. I have zero empathy for these people. They were willfully ignorant.
Foxaganda is a deadly drug.
Most of my former trumper friends don’t even watch Fox News or newsmax or whatever right wing “news” channel. They’re getting their information in an echo chamber on social media. I love my liberal minded community, but social media is a huge influencer too with many echo chambers. All algorithm based.
I blocked them all on Facebook after scanning their posts. Their moral compass does not align with my own and they refuse to grow and learn.
I live in Canada, and Elon evidently has his sights set on our federal election next year.
I’m scared. I have special needs kids (AuDHD and deaf) and I’m hearing impaired and neurodivergent as well. My husband is conservative. He believes our institutions will not let abortion rights go but there’s many MP’s who are anti-choice in our federal Conservative Party.
I hope the people of your country look at ours as a cautionary tale, and what's happening here won't happen to you.
If they're as misinformed and disengaged as the voters in the US, they'll think it won't happen to them. If they even notice.
I hope Canadians have more sense.
And for Christ’s sake do not let any USA citizens into your country.
I hope so, too.
I too am waking up to the immense algorithm of hatred on social media. I searched for a channel I don't usually care for because it's all lies, and was absolutely appalled and frankly frightened by the content. We dems need to truly wake up to what we are faced with in our fight to save this country from themselves. Or selfishly, save ourselves, (explicit word inserted starting with an f) them.
Best of luck, you are right to be afraid. Ring every bell, shout from every roof. Protect your kids.
During the so called trucker convoy in the midst of Covid, the protest was very much influenced by bad actors in the US, including funding from the Christian version of Go Find Me. There are definitely efforts especially in western Canada to stoke this division and grievance.
I agree. But I think they also listen to their friends.
Pretty much all the Conservatives are pro lifers. Remember this is an amalgamation of Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance Party with its evangelical beliefs.
People are only pro-lifers if they are willing to fund pre-natal care for indigent women, and ensure health care, child care, good food, education, housing and clothing for the child until adults. if not, they are just forced-birthers.
As I said, I blame corporate and social media. Of course Russian bots had a huge impact on social media. That is why, there are so many fewer accounts the day after the election.
“and Elon evidently has his sights set on our federal election next year”. Why do you say that Jenn?
I read that Canada banned Twitter.
Perhaps you’re thinking of TikTok. Per CBC November 7/24: The federal government ordered an end to TikTok's Canadian operations on Wednesday, citing national security concerns. But its decision to keep the app itself available has privacy experts puzzled. The order to shut down the social media platform's Vancouver and Toronto offices came after a months-long national security review of the app. The federal government banned TikTok from government devices in February 2023.”
Canada is smart to do that. More countries should follow suit. But that is not the only opiate to the masses. How about the NYT. They basically spread disinformation by not giving information about Trump, his party and their understood actions in the past and stated future intentions and the effects that would have.
It would be great for someone to do a research project on all of the different media that people who voted for Trump consume vs. those who voted for Harris, vs. those 93 mil who were eligible to vote and didn't.
I was wrong, Canada banned TikTok
I'm starting to think on the level of fentanyl level. Numbers don't lie. The death threats of this new "administration" and it's cultists is going to be epic.
It sure is hard to not just let them get what they voted for.
You have more strength than me. At least in this moment, I am EXHAUSTED of being the bigger person. Especially with people who are so gleefully and sadistically proud of “owning” me.
Since the GOP is going to have Congress too, I fully support just stepping back and letting them have it. They will have to own every mess they create. It will be fun to watch, when (or if) the scales fall from the eyes of the MAGA faithful. I live in a rural area with lots of fruit production. Most of apple farmers are MAGA’s. Every summer the migrants come. I’m hoping they don’t next year. I’ll be interested to see how many citizens step up to do the work for the same pay the migrants got.
They believed what they were fed.
They weren’t force fed. Other information was a clicker press away. THEY. CHOSE. IGNORANCE.
They didn’t even choose ignorance. These are the same people who started gamergate 10 years ago. They’ve always, always, had contempt for women in their hearts.
They did their own research too; remember?
Thank you.
(And football/nascar.)
They begged for the feeding, deliriously and with great hate and joy at the turmoil it would cause in the lives of all those they hate.
If they choke on their Master's dickishness, so be it. I'm not performing a single life saving measure.
Imma take my joy where I can.
No life-saving measures coming from me either- reap what they sow.
FAFO. Hard lessons ahead.
I feel ya.
We feel our righteous anger and grieve. Then we think strategically about problem solving. The Harris-Walz campaign did an amazing job of expanding the big tent to include grassroots volunteers with boots on the ground and former Trump Republicans with big megaphones. This is the Pro-Democracy movement on which we build going forward, both for upcoming elections and for winning hearts and minds.
I will be VERY surprised if there will be any upcoming elections, especially by 2028.
And if there are, they will be “Hungary style pre-ordained winners” types. Now that the MAGA’s have their hands on the levers of power again, not a snowball’s chance in hell they will ever allow a scenario where they might lose it.
Their RW information bubble never told them and they never were willing or able to do their own research. Thus. They. Did. Not. Know.
True. And yet, when I talk with these people on social media, they posture as if they know everything without a doubt. Project 2025? “That’s not real, just a scare tactic.” Huh? What’s the point of a scare tactic. “He’s not racist, no way.” There’s no point in conversing with these willfull ignoramuses.
Note from a divided house: my husband claims he read project 2025 and wasn’t worried. My man in Christ, you are THE most ADHD person I have ever known. You might have glanced at a page here and there through some other site. But I guarantee you just took Joe Rogans word for it — whatever he said. And o btw, if you keep telling me how the brain worm guy is actually going to make the FDA better, I am going to have to deposit your balls into your rib cage.
They’re about to find out how real all this stuff is. And like many others on this thread, I don’t give a cr*p what happens to them. all my sympathies lie with the others they are taking down with them.
I must object to this viewpoint many of us are now adopting of having little sympathy for those who voted for him because he let us all know who he is before the election, so they should have known better. I strongly disagree. Some of us got to see who he really is, but if you only watch Fox News, you saw nothing about the Trump that we got to know. Everything was heavily edited. And what you did see about Kamala was a lot of lies.
My sister, a devoted Trump supporter, believes Kamala has done nothing of any merit in her entire life but only slept her way to the top. That Trump saved us in many ways in his first term and Biden has just tanked the economy and ruined the country. My sister is not a dumb person. She is educated (at least school-wise), and she lives in the SF Bay Area, but she only watches and listens to Fox News. Reads no newspapers and magazines. Fox does not lie, so why does she need to read what anyone else says? Thus, she has only seen and learned one side of the story. Is that her fault? Perhaps somewhat, but I don't think it’s completely her fault.
Back in the 1990's Sinclair Broadcasting, a right-learning company, went around in all the red states, especially in the rural areas, and bought up all the local radio stations and local newspapers. They gradually closed down all the local papers, and changed the local radio stations to only carrying Fox News programs and talk shows of that ilk, like Joe Rogan, Steve Bannon, etc. Now, if you drive through the mid-western states and mountain states in the more rural areas, all you hear is Fox, religious programs, country western music, and the farm report. And heaven only knows what they teach, or don't teach the children who live in those areas. I know they aren't teaching any critical thinking skills to anyone. And we have seen how the mainstream media did not cover this election or either of the last 2 presidential terms, in any way remotely showing the truth of the situation. So even if they subscribed to a city paper, they still didn't get the full picture about Trump.
So, I find it extremely difficult to understand how you can feel these people do not deserve our sympathy and support at this time. It is not their fault this has happened to them or that they voted this way. Not everyone in this country has the time or energy to become a fully informed voter who has researched all sides of every issue and every candidate. And it has been a concerted effort for the past 30 plus years for the Republican Party to dumb down their electorate, to control what people in the red states and rural areas learn about just about any subject, to control what they see, read, and hear from the media.
If anything, these people are really going to need our compassion and empathy if they ever wake up to the truth of what their vote is going to do, to this country and our democracy that I know they all deeply love.
Feel free to give these willfully ignorant people all the compassion you want. Don’t ask others to though. It will certainly not be coming from me. Those who voted for trump have let down their fellow citizens and the world. Trump has been around for almost a decade now. There’s simply no excuse for them not to know exactly who he is and what he wants to do. If they claim they don’t, it’s a lie. Thanks to trump voters more women will die from draconian abortion laws and likely assault from men since misogyny has been given the green light. They have caused all of us a world of hurt and you want to make excuses for them?! Hell NO!
Seriously! I’m a little, really old mountain girl from N.C. but I’ve known about trump and his purported mafia ties for years! I never watched The Apprentice simply because reality shows are anything but. So trump, to me, was a loser from the git-go. I also knew he had declared bankruptcy several times so what kind of a businessman could he be? For me, he was a loser from the start; all guff and nothing but lies so his 2016 election was a blow. If I could see all that, what made others so effing blind?
With all due respect to your educated sister. The information has been there all along, she just had to look for it. How hard is that?
My suspicion is that she, and too many others, like what they see in Trump and his minions and are just fine with "sticking it to the Libs". I will have no sympathy whatsoever since we will be suffering right along with them.
Umm, nope. If they can click on FoxNews, they can click on something else. I have no sympathy. They need to grow up.
She had a choice to switch to another news channel. She had a choice to go and read up if she had any doubts. She chose not to. This is not the Dark Ages - every bit of information was at her fingertips. She chose not to access it and not to listen. So no.... people like that don't get a pass.
Sorry. I have friends all over the US that live in very red parts of the country. Ignorance is just laziness. Those friends are not repugs or brainwashed. The only reason anyone is a MAGA is because it speaks to their inherent biases and hatred. FULL STOP.
This is literally the definition of willful ignorance.
No sympathy here, either. Trump and his out racism, misogyny, criminality, xenophobia — wait, there’s more!! — were just what they were seeking. No one forced them to choose the cruelty, lack of empathy, selfishness that Trump offered. They fear and hate anyone who isn’t like them. They are traitors to our democracy and to democratic countries throughout the world. And THEY — the white, straight, Christian ones — won’t be amongst those rounded up by the fascists.
I don’t feel they deserve our sympathy because Trump himself made it clear that he is a lying, racist, misogynist creep any time he opened his mouth at one of his rallies. While the media sane washed a lot of it, sadly including the “liberal” media (in quotes because there is very little of that left as it, too, gets bought up by right-wing interests), the fact is that it has been obvious if you even make one iota of effort towards self-examination. I’m done giving WILLFUL ignorance a pass. I don’t have any left to spare for them. It’s reserved for all the rest of us who are going straight into the dumpster fire because of them.
Right now I think people, rightly, are going through stuff and anger is an understandable and justified response especially if you are part of a community that is in the firing line of these bigots. Just think - if there are parts of the country that would chose a felon, a rapist, an addled and exhausted old man screaming ‘they’re eating the dogs’ over a black woman - it must be a pretty grim place to be a black woman in.
The United States as a democratic republic will end on 19th Jan 2025. Some people need to work through their grief.
In reality - it was already fatally wounded by vast income inequalities, Taliban level religious fundamentalism, a refusal to acknowledge, much less deal with systemic racism, a legal system that refuses to hold the powerful accountable, a broken media environment where mainstream publications normalised Trump, while many people live in their own billionaire curated social media bubbles and Fox pumps out 24 hour propaganda.
I was caught up in the hope and the enthusiasm - I really thought VP Harris was the miracle doctor that could save the patient, but it was too far gone.
My concern is Trump dies in office - given his age and his lifestyle not an unrealistic concern. In part because he’s got that ‘take it all down with me’ mindset a terminal diagnosis may cause him to nuke California, but also because he is the one thing holding the disparate bunch of grifters, cranks and Religious extremists together. If Trump’s heart gives out right as the economy makes a turn for the shitter, you will have the cult going crazy looking for someone to shoot for murdering their Godhead while the entire government falls apart.
I agree. The information is out there. They chose not to look at it. What can you do to fix that?
The corporate and social media apparently gave people different messages than you or I got. Of course, many Americans do not have the time, know-how, or resources to keep informed, and thus are stuck with the media available to them. I blame the media for this election result and no one else. A lesson to all of us is that a media that truthfully and thoughtfully informs is essential to a strong democracy. The corporate and social media did the opposite as far as I can see.
This is not the first article I have read today about MAGA voters waking up to the consequences, but the media is telling them now, what they should have told them before. I am glad that I dropped the NYT, WaPo, LA Times and kept the Guardian and Substacks, as well as some other independent press in the US and Europe.
Sooooo, I just tried to post this on my husband's FB page since I haven't been on it for 20 years. For some reason, it kicked it out, but not after I wrote a plea for no backlash against him, even though he agrees. Now, I'm becoming paranoid.
I don’t think FB likes Substack, or any share that might take your eyeballs away from them, very much.
We need to protect our most vulnerable especially children and the LGBTQ community but everyone else needs to get a dose of what they voted for. Trump told us exactly who he is and what he is going to do so I have little sympathy for those who voted for him and will suffer under his administration.
All will suffer, not only those who voted for him. That's not poetic justice, and the irony does not alleviate our suffering.
Yes all will suffer. I grieve and sympathize for those of us who stood up for democracy and will face harm. I have no such sympathy for those who voted for him. That part of me died Wednesday morning.
That part of me also died Wednesday morning. I'm nearly to the point where if anyone needs help, my first question to them is going to be: "did you vote and if so who did you vote for"
While we will all suffer, I will get much SATISFACTION that his voter base will get it worse, all his uneducated, low information voters, conspiracy theorists, redneck bigots, christain taliban, rural and city, that already live paycheck to paycheck.....as Dumpster steals their last bread crumbs and slashes their social security check in half, then eventually eliminates it. And when the militia start harassing muslims Dearborn, oh well. Fuck all Dumpster voters and those that didn't vote. I can't get past my anger.
To be clear, I don’t want anyone to suffer. And the children of those who voted for Trump are blameless. But frankly my priority is protecting the marginalized over someone who voted for Trump and is now worried about losing their social security. I have finite bandwidth.
Trump voters suffering is the only thing that's going to finally kill this far-right, republican, oligarchy movement. Suffering is required for humanity to finally change. And the Trump voters are very obstinate. Which means they need to suffer more to finally finally learn, there is no boggeyman, the boogeyman was made up. Unless we consider dumpster to be the boogeyman, and then I would agree with that. You probably think I'm a total ass, but I'm really not.
Someone on another thread had a really good perspective - that the Overton Window has completely shifted now. We will be lucky just to get back to the middle in my lifetime, I'm 55.
Julie, your thesis seems to depend on those so affected using rational thinking/ critical thinking. One of my concerns here is that if they continue to pay attention to only the same far-right “information” sources, they will continue to be exposed to the propaganda telling them that whatever is working was done by “conservatives” and whatever is wrong was done by “the left.” As long as their identity is centered around what they perceive as their tribe, they will not learn the truth.
Love that phrase - finite bandwidth. I’m adopting it.
This is definitely the petty part of my grief process. In the end we all rise or fall together but man it’s tough now.
My feelings exactly, on checking who people voted for. I was driving around a lot today, and I was fantasizing different scenarios with people I know who are trumpers. “Oh your car won’t start and you need a ride? Go find another Red hat person.” “Sorry your teen is pregnant and can’t get an abortion. have fun raising the kid the next 18 years.”
Exactly that, we just went out to dinner at 5:00 on a Friday so everyone was getting off of work, I just looked around at all the cars as we were at each red light and say to myself: "there's a Trumper, there's another Trumper and another Trumper. Fuckers"
You could swing your hands and hit 10 of them, I'm in Tennessee.
Ah, but those of us living in blue states will suffer so much less. There is plenty of room here, come on over. Yes, we will suffer too, but at least we will have a state infrastructure providing some protection.
I know your offer is well meant, but so many of us in red states have been here for years. It's our home. And we shouldn't have to leave our homes just to feel safe. No one wants to be a refugee (and that's what we would be, fleeing from our red states).
And even if we were willing (or able) to leave, that weakens any chance for change in our home states, and burdens us with the cost of moving - not just financial, but societal and cultural costs of moving away from friends and family (at least those who don't suck). It involves giving up jobs - even remote ones, as many blue states have state taxes, and companies in red states don't have to deal with calculating for that.
I wish it was that simple, and I don't begrudge anyone who does that calculation and determines that it's better for them to leave, but someone has to stay and fight, and some of us don't have a choice but to do so. And every person who leaves does make it that much harder for us to win.
Yes, we hear you. I live in San Francisco but I feel like I lost my adopted country. It is a death. It is a death for all of us no matter where we live.
Top ex. — Day 1 Comstock Act will be used to ban abortion, contraception nationwide. Blue states won’t protect women from this movement.
Not true. We have housing shortages already. We get our food from the same places red states do. We'll have empty shelves, high prices, ridiculously expensive insurance, overwhelmed schools. If The Brain Worm manages to tank the FDA, medicines are no more available here than in red states. The only way it would be good for people to move from red states for blue is an exchange where we're sending our MAGAs to live amongst their people and separating the country into two.
I have more sympathy for the deluded MAGA voters than for the oligarchs and their demagogue servants who manipulated them into voting against their own interests to support the upward flow of wealth to the billionaire class. The billionaire oligarchs have prevailed and White Christian nationalist fascists will celebrate. Minorities including POC, LGBTQ, and immigrants will suffer discrimination and persecution. More women will lose the right to control their own bodies, and more will suffer health consequences and die from complications of pregnancy. International alliances will crumble and authoritarians will have free rein. Climate change will worsen. Millions will lose health insurance and protections for pre-existing conditions. Social safety nets will be shredded. Infrastructure spending will be curtailed. Cost of living will rise with tariffs. Millions of productive workers and their families will be deported. Investments in education and an opportunity economy for the middle class will be scrapped in favor of tax cuts for the rich. An economic downturn will follow.
Perhaps the accelerationists have the answer. We will be accelerating a planned move to France to observe and participate remotely while American voters learn the hard way how they have been deluded and how badly they have chosen. That may not be far away enough to escape the global consequences of this historically bad election.
RESIST!!!
Just curious, who are the deluded MAGA voters? All of what Jay wrote, what you wrote about what will come has been all over every kind of media possible, for months. Willful ignorance is what it is. Deluded implies that they were lied to, or sold a bill of goods. MAGA has put it out there what the plan is. Putting their heads in the sand is no excuse. Bon Voyage, wish I could do the same!
Exactly! Willful Ignorance......yes. They chose to live in the faux news silo and/or let their pastors control every aspect of their lives......these radical pastors preaching are just as toxic as fox and newsmax and twitter.
No fucks given.
The Trump campaign lied to them - said Project 2025 wasn't their plan - then the day after the election right-wing social media is saying, ha, fooled you, it's real. How is that not delusion? More important is what right-wing medmedia told them about Harris- like the ad that played every 10 mins here in NC on every channel, about how Kamala supported sex changes for prisoners - that's what they were voting AGAINST. Since the election I have seen posts from a MAGA acquaintance expressing relief that kids in kindergarten are now "safe from being made gay or trans." They really believe that kids are in danger from teachers! They are much more scared of that than of them being gunned down in the classroom. And of course they take their kids to the shooting range....
I have more sympathy for the deluded MAGA voters than for the oligarchs and their demagogue servants who manipulated them into voting against their own interests to support the upward flow of wealth to the billionaire class. The billionaire oligarchs have prevailed and White Christian nationalist fascists will celebrate. Minorities including POC, LGBTQ, and immigrants will suffer discrimination and persecution. More women will lose the right to control their own bodies, and more will suffer health consequences and die from complications of pregnancy. International alliances will crumble and authoritarians will have free rein. Climate change will worsen. Millions will lose health insurance and protections for pre-existing conditions. Social safety nets will be shredded. Infrastructure spending will be curtailed. Cost of living will rise with tariffs. Millions of productive workers and their families will be deported. Investments in education and an opportunity economy for the middle class will be scrapped in favor of tax cuts for the rich. An economic downturn will follow.
Perhaps the accelerationists have the answer. We will be accelerating a planned move to France to observe and participate remotely while American voters learn the hard way how they have been deluded and how badly they have chosen. That may not be far away enough to escape the global consequences of this historically bad election.
RESIST!!!
It's a little baffling to me that MAGA voters are listening to explanations of tariffs now but wouldn't before the election.
It’s maddening.
It really is! It reminds me of the aftermath of the 2016 election when Trump voters worried that he would carry out his promises, even though so many of them didn't like them. And now they've been taken in again?
We need to start planning for the 2026 elections now. We need to mount a campaign to take back Congress in two years.
Unfortunately I expect that when the economy tanks the Republicans will still find some way to blame it on the Democrats, and the MAGA voters will believe them.
Democrats need to get ahead of that and lead the messaging for a change instead of reacting to it.
THIS ^^^
Because now the impacts are real. In reality, while preparations are being made by companies and governments (if he goes through with it, there will be retaliatory tariffs). But his plans for the Fed (which don't seem legal, but who knows with him) on what's going on in January and beyond.
If he does everything we're talking global recession by summer 2025.
who says they are? they made a choice to ignore Ornagolini's failings or worse like them.
Mass deportations are something that I doubt will proceed as they envision. It currently costs an average of $60k to deport one person. Trump tried to ramp up deportations the last time he was in office, and he only managed to deport ~220k people over the whole 4 years. If he wants to speed that up, he's going to need to reform the entire suite of US immigration law. And we all know how successful THAT effort has been over the last 50 years. Let's say he does manage to do this. The sheer numbers of workers and the amount of money required to deport so many people still just aren't there.
So, what then, do "mass deportations" look like? Probably not *deportation,* but we have a whole for-profit prison industry that would be delighted to provide mass *incarceration.* And then industries and farms who need workers would have to contract out prison workers to salvage their crops and keep their businesses afloat. Paying for prison labor is more expensive than hiring free workers, even though the laborers, themselves, are being paid pennies per day. Those businesses and farms are going to run out of money, and the newly flush prison corporations will be able to buy them up and continue to staff them with prison labor.
Congratulations, they have now become plantations, and we have legal slavery in the US again under the pretext of labor as punishment for prisoners. That's where I think this might be going.
I worry as much about it being terribly handled with little to no oversight and lots of money to be made by private prison contractors.
The nation’s largest private prison contractor, The GEO Group,is a big GOP donor. Their headquarters is, of course, in Florida…
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/geo-group/summary?id=D000022003
That would be a bonus, not a bug. Last night Lawrence O’Donnell observed that deportations on this scale would cost more than the entire budget for DOJ and would take more than every law enforcement staff than the nation has at the state and local level. He speculated that there will be many horrific deportations, e.g. 100,000? But they will not and cannot deport all those they have been claiming.
I agree! The last time, during the child separation horror, they made no record of where the kids went!
I worry that once their prisons are built, they will expand their use for "the enemy within". The guy who professes admiration for Hitler, and the people pulling his strings, are unlikely to have a problem with the idea of setting up concentration camps.
Might the Trump people realize the cost is just too high and instead send them to the gas chambers a’la Hitler?
Building gas chambers and transporting people will not be cheap either. Then we have Blue States where the real resistance will come from. Things do not move fast and at times it is good.
Using the need for gas as an excuse to turn all federal lands over to the oil companies for drilling perhaps?
If anyone thinks Trump will respect the law regarding deportations, contact me. I have a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to see to you. :)
Serious, though, there is nothing to stop him...not the courts, not Congress. I think prison slavery is one way, the other is to just ship them to another country (whether that country wants them or not). The cruelty is the point.
What will stop him is the logistics. People still have to be processed for deportation, which has to be signed off on by an immigration judge. Transportation and transfer of custody has to be arranged. The country to which they are being deported has to accept repatriation. The judiciary still has to follow US law. If Orange & Co. want the law to be something different, they still have to change it, and with something as huge and unwieldy as immigration law, I frankly don't think they have the attention span. Prison camps are the path of least resistance that also allows them to keep their base from howling after their heads while making sure there's still food to be had at local supermarkets.
"The judiciary still has to follow US law."
No, they don't.
That's why Dobbs was decided the way it was. Partisan judiciary decided to throw out the "settled law" that was the Roe decision in order to have the change in social policy they wanted. Obergefell is 100% next on the list. Pretty much any change in social policy that was led by the federal government is now fair game. Is Social Security communist? We're going to take a second look at laws that have been in place since the Johnson administration and make sure that nobody is redistributing wealth. Don't like desegregated schools? Brown v. Board of Education suddenly gets re-examined as "incorrectly decided" and the "separate but equal" doctrine, which fooled nobody, is back in place. At least until the defunding of the Department of Education is complete.
If Trump showed us anything, it's that the law only matters so long as people agree to follow it.
So much this.
If he declares a national emergency all bets are off. He is already planning to use the same law that allowed deportation and internment of Japanese.
I didn’t think about the prison plantation slavery angle, but I’ll bet Stephen Miller would agree. And bull whips will be tax deductible for the oligarchs.
I wonder who will listen to the complaints of the CEO's of the companies who currently employ the undocumented workers. They will now be paying a premium for their labor and will not like that one bit-- I wonder what DeSantis and Abbott will say?
It's a lot cheaper to deport people en masse when you just round 'em up and catapult them over the wall into Mexico.
I assume that is their plan, anyway.
Mexico (and anywhere else) still has to accept them. The US can't just make people stateless and ship them wherever -- there are international laws in play that don't allow that, and Trump can't touch them. This is why I think incarceration is the likeliest route.
You are correct, plan is to round up and incarcerate, and the private prison and surveillance company ceos are already crowing about what a great “opportunity” this is for them.
The trumpian Antichrist does not give a single shite about a single law. Those days are long gone in the good ole USA.
If he sends "stateless" people to other countries who haven't agreed to take them, they'll be turned back to the US. Again, I think the path of least resistance is just going to be incarceration. It allows them maximum grift potential, besides.
Personally I would like to see him break some international laws. SCOTUS can't shield him then. Let him do it, let him burn. I think it's his fastest path out of the WH. Of course then we deal with JD Couchlover but one dictator at a time.
Who would prosecute him? The UN? The Hague? Because that worked so well when Putin started his theft and genocide in Ukraine?
With kickbacks from the prison oligarchs to their mob boss. There’s always a grift in CFDT’s world.
Another update to the Constitution that will be needed.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
And you think they are going to uphold the Constitution???
Finally, someone pointed this out. Now, make up a crime, interpret something as a crime, or declare martial law and then throw selected people into prison. Use their labor. It IS a way to achieve focused slavery. If it does not happen, I will be pleased - but very, very surprised.
Michael, thanks for that quote!!! Reassuring. And not what the new administration has in mind!
The problem is the bit that he capitalized. The Constitution allows slavery as punishment for a crime. This is what we're about to see in the US.
Yes, their "crime" is being here illegally.
Crossing the border without documentation is a misdemeanor. It's in the same legal classification as shoplifting. Do you think people should be indefinitely confined for shoplifting?
It's not whether we think people *should* be confined. It's whether we think they *will* be.
How do you put 20 million people in prisons? How many prisons?
This is what concentration camps are for. 🤷
You need to build those too. In which states? How long will it take to transport people and then kill us?
We've had "slavery" since Dobbs decision in red states that force women to have babies; there is not much that impacts a woman's life more than having a/or another baby!
I was imagining this scenario too. There is no way they could deport that many people and will incarcerate them or put them in camps and use prison labor.
and because they target minorities aka non-white people, TRUMPERS will not care. They’ll just keep parroting “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” jingle. They don’t care. They’ll still get their produce. And homes built.
Precisely.
-and hire a massive number of ICE storm troopers to carry it out.
Hadn't thought of that. It's probable.
Off hand, I don' recall the part of the Constitution, but it does state enforced labor is illegal. (Except as a form of punishment for crime). I suppose MAGA would find a way to make it legal. Or just ignore Connie.
I am not ready to feel for the Trump voters. Right now I want them to get everything they deserve and more. They voted to hurt themselves and everyone else in the country and I do not care about them at all.
Jay writes that those who voted for the Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party will come to their senses after realizing their own faces just got painfully eaten.
Maybe; a rational person would certainly think so. But that assumes the LEPF voters themselves respond rationally to their trauma, that they change their thinking or behavior in response to a profoundly negative consequence.
Unfortunately, they are not rational people, as Tuesday's results demonstrate, and there's little reason to think they'll become rational anytime soon despite having had their faces eaten, especially as the MAGA/Russia propaganda machine continues to inundate them with lies and bullshit.
Further, rather than questioning their initial choices and reevaluating their stances following a disastrously bad decision, people often retreat deeper into the mindlessness of that bad decision. They double down, as it were, and crowd in even more tightly behind the self-proclaimed heroic warrior who will supposedly protect them from any more face-eating leopards. They of course do not see the irony of that, as rational and critical thought is completely crowded out by ever-increasing fear and they remain oblivious to the inevitability of their own destruction.
Agree with you 100.
As for those who willfully voted in the Antichrist, too bad, so sad. Don't give a shite.
In South Africa the ANC government rode the "it's the fault of the old apartheid government" bus for 30 years. I hope it doesn't take the US that long to realise it's not the fault of the "radical leftist Marxist liberal Dems".
It's going to take generations to repair the damage done and get the country back on a course toward decency, honesty, equity, and justice. Capturing the country's politics; legal and judicial, economic, and education systems; mass-market media; and popular culture took the far right some 60 or 80 years. Undoing that might not take another 60 or 80 years, but it will take a long time. If my pre-teenage granddaughters see any substantial progress in their middle ages, that would be remarkable. I, of course, will be gone by then.
This is exactly my concern. I think they will continue to blame anyone and anything else aside from Trump, and the MAGA "leaders" will be happy to spoonfeed them.
Yes, you nailed it. Here’s a little more detail confirming your comment:
https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/cognitive-biases-and-brain-biology-help-explain-why-facts-dont-change-minds-2/
That's a very clearly written article. Thanks for posting the link.
Same. I'm a long way from trying to find "compassion". I'm struggling with not hating them.
I think this was a good overview, Jay. We're careening into FO after our FA election season.
That said, I believe it's also imperative for Democrats to not sit back & wait for those most effected to come crawling back. The party needs to listen to people, not consultants, and put in the work to make things better. Some of these fixes are going to require taking sledgehammers to systems, which may make some donors pissed. But if the party truly wants to help the vulnerable, and not just be "Republican Lite" they have to put in the work to differentiate.
JVL over at the Bulwark had a similar post today. I am on board with letting them all find out the consequences while we stand by and watch.
ALL OF THIS! I am done being nice—and particularly have zero sympathy for the older contingent who are in the 4th quarter of their time here on earth fucking it up for us because they want “cheaper” eggs.
Thanks for stereotyping us. All the Boomers I know voted Blue.
Never stereotyped anyone, nor did I call anyone a name. I simply said I have the least amount of sympathy for those of that age that voted for him. They have the least amount of time left and voted to make everyone miserable way beyond after they depart this realm.
Kate, I have grandchildren. Not everything that I care about will vanish when I depart this “realm.” You might leave it ahead of me, who knows? Check your ageism. It is tiresome.
So they voted against their grandchildren’s interests—you didn’t, and that is awesome. I have zero kids or grandkids, and voted for everyone's future way beyond my time here too.
You seem to be very defensive at something that was not even directed at you, and have the gall to call me ageist when you are the one calling people geezers. Maybe check yourself. Have a nice day.
🙄
I’m in that category except I voted blue. So did my 76 year old husband and 94 year old dad. Please don’t label people. I might not have much time left but I’m trying to make the best of it when I can and have been for over 70 years. We don’t want things to go back to 50-60’s standards.
Most of the people I know in the boomer category and older voted blue too, my comment was meant for those that apparently do want to go back…to way it never even was.
Way to blame the geezers. Do you equally blame the 30something pious pro lifers? As a geezer who remembers coat hangers, water fountains, attack dogs, etc., I have NO sympathy for them. To each our own.
65+ "Geezers" and college-educated women are the only groups who cast fewer votes for Trump this election! Don't blame the geezers! Don't be like Vance who made damning claims that those of us without children care less about the future of our country, environment, or planet. All species are my kin, and I care deeply about their future though I won't be around to share it with them!
I never “blamed” the older contingent, I simply said I have the least amount of sympathy for them. But everyone is going to interpret things through their own lens, and that is on them.
From your comment, it’s clear you reserve more sympathy for younger Trump voters than for older—that’s ageism, Kate. Own it.
I did not get that idea at all from her comment and I am old.
Exactly! In fact, I sometimes think childless people can see things more clearly because they are less likely to fall into the trap of thinking only of their children’s immediate physical needs at the expense of everyone’s long-term future.
A very wise observation! It is only natural that parents protect and provide for their offspring. But sometimes they go so overboard and act in ways that are destructive to our planet and our species' future including that of their kids.
Yeah but it’s not just old people who voted for him
Never said it was…
Kate, Yeah, you kind of did.
No she didn't. She said particularly. Which infers there are others she blames too.
Thank you Claudia.
"The challenge of our time will be how not to lose compassion for those who have brought this upon all of us, including themselves."
Since so many of the Felon-in-Chief's followers claim to be lovers of the Bible, I'd remind them of a classic from Hosea 8:7: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
They were warned. Repeatedly. Countless times. Damn them, we tried so hard to convince them. And if those warnings weren't enough, they only had to remember four years ago, to a pandemic made so much worse by his policies (or lack thereof) and the insurrection he brought on.
And. They. Wouldn't. Fucking. Listen.
No, no fucking sympathy. From now on, we do what we can to save ourselves and save others who tried to stop him. Those who knew better and still voted for him can suffer through the whirlwind.
Another good one for Bible-thumping Trump voters that I posted on my Facebook page: 1 Samuel 8:10-22
As an old white woman, I have always said I will never understand how ANY woman regardless of race, any people of color regardless of race, or any marginalized people would vote for Trump — but they did. In horrible to contemplate numbers. That is a lot of hate and fear out there. They will pay. So will we. My heart is heavy for our Nation, the World and our Planet.
It's not so much mango mussolini that is frightening to me, it's his entourage.
What I find curious is that Jeff Bezos didn’t strongly oppose Trump. We’ve all been - rightly - vilifying him for not letting an endorsement of Kamala Harris go to press at the WaPo, but that isn’t a money maker for him. I’d expect tariffs to have a major negative impact on Amazon sales due to the higher prices they will cause and yet here we are.
I don’t pretend to know what is going through his brain. But we can see what isn’t in his soul.
Did you see bozo’s message to rump? Complete bootlicker, and all he wants now are government contracts. Amazon is on its way down, business has been contracting since the pandemic “ended”—space is his next cash cow. But Apartheid Clyde will be controlling that most likely…
Yeah, Bozo stopped short of offering him a blowjob. Same with Zuckerberg.
I saw it. Disgusting after he wimped out of endorsing Kamala!! 🤬😡🤬
I have moved every Amazon purchase I make to a different vendor. Slightly more inconvenient but gives me so much joy every time I do it.
I'm in the process of trying to do the same.
Who are you using?
“The multi-billionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, continued facing criticism throughout the weekend because executives from his aerospace company met with Donald Trump on the same day the newspaper prevented its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of his opponent in the US presidential election.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/27/bezos-washington-post-non-endorsement-election
Yup, that too. So we know exactly where his loyalty lies, with his money.
Uh, it is more the lucrative Nasa and military contracts for his space firm, Blue Origin.
And I would bet my bottom dollar that Bezos will be lobbying for a carve out on the tariffs for Amazon
Sioux, I hear it’s because Bezos wants to challenge Musk for the space business. Lots of lucrative government contracts to be handed out by the FFG.
I considered that as well and all the gods know loyalty and Trump don’t coexist in his mind but with Musk bankrolling him and given Trump’s historical hatred of Bezos I discounted it as unlikely to succeed.
As much as I feel the same about Trump voters as most here, it’s not just them who will ‘find out’. It’s the rest of us, who did not vote for him, who would never, ever vote for him, who will, unfortunately, be finding out as well.
Agree with many of the comments. For those who voted for the orange Antichrist, I have zero sympathy or human feeling. They fucked around, now they can find out.
Don't believe my human empathy will be returning any time soon.
As someone in the Antichrist's death cult once said, "I don't really care. Do you?"
No. No, I don't.
I am firmly in the camp of letting it play out. Not help them avoid the worst of their proclivities.
It is going to be brutal, but this is what the will of the people voted for.
i love your saturday xeets and giggles post, but please, quit twitter.
I’ve written extensively about why it’s impossible for anyone doing independent journalism to quit twitter. Xeets and Giggles is a byproduct of the research I do there, and without Twitter I would not be able to produce this newsletter, sadly.
We can live without xeets and giggles. Figure it out. Go to threads at least and influence your colleagues to do the same. I’m tired of excuses. Y’all talk amongst yourselves and figure it out. Taking down X needs to be a priority.
Stop enriching Musk.
I see this rationale often, but it's simply not true. First, some of those tweets aren't in correct context. Stephen Miller did tweet that, but it was over a year ago - not after the election. I'm familiar with it as immigration is important to my family.
Second, even at the best of times for Twitter it was used by 10% of the world, and of those that used 10% of the users made up 92% of the content. Twitter isn't representative of the real world. It's a bunch of people addicted to Twitter yelling at each other and bots. That's even more true now that an estimated 30% of people have left.
Twitter isn't journalism. It never was. And believing it was is part of the reason we're here now. I enjoy your content - you don't need Twitter.
Perhaps I fool myself but I look up Kimmel on You Tube
I see it as a way to communicate beyond the right wing bubble. Those folks aren’t on Substack.