"Yes.

The Wookie

100%. The Democrats did a horrible job of messaging. They failed to remind voters Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic had us locked in our houses watching the economy tank. They let the media focus on the price of eggs instead of low unemployment, easing inflation, & rising wages.

As Team Trump cuts off all of the infrastructure investments, slashes federal programs, & imposes tariffs I'd expect the economy to go into recession & people will start to feel the error of their vote.

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
Where do 70 million Democrats find shelter in a 4 year storm ?

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
Here in Australia we will have some Right Wing hijacking to contend with in our General Election next year.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 I keep reading about that and am sorry it's happening.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 I ask myself that as someone who feels definitely vulnerable, an aging openly gay man married to another man, living in a deep-red bible-belt state. I feel precarious.

William Lindsey :toad:

@NJWookie The problem is, how does anyone, Democrats or anyone else, compete with spates and spates of disinformation constantly beamed into the heads of gullible people by online sites today?

William Lindsey :toad:

"These choices aren’t just shocking. They’re sending the message that Donald Trump cares about loyalty over basic competence. And perhaps more importantly, they’re setting a norm from the beginning: that no matter what Trump does, he expects Republicans to comply."

~ Jill Filipovic

#Trump #fascism #cruelty
/9

Jokers and Losers

Trump’s cabinet is absurd. Republicans will accept it anyway. That’s the point.

(jill.substack.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

"Trump is giving his middle finger to America.

Nominating the alleged sexual trafficker Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General, Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, and bizarro Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence, are acts of nihilistic disruption."

~ Robert Reich

#Trump #fascism #cruelty
/10

Trump wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Health Secretary. OMG. Really?

Friends,

(robertreich.substack.com)

lupus_blackfur

@wdlindsy

I don't think I'll ever wrap my head around how it is that these criminal conmen grifting Mob-style Robber Barons so successfully duped 75M voters...

I know they did.

Just not sure I'll ever be able to achieve the mental gymnastics to fully understand voters embracing it.

Especially for a 2nd time.

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
In our homeland (UK) friends and relatives are hugely worried by #nigelfarage - last seen at the Trump election party instead of working, as hes paid to do, in Clacton (his electorate).

He's being groomed by US RWing to pull off a similar stunt in our next election. There will be backing from #tommyrobinson (our own particularly nasty version of #andrewtate X #stevebannon)

Who knows where this will all end?
The #UKToriesUnfitForOffice have run our #NHS so far into the ground it makes cheap pickings for #USinsurance companies and billionaire pharma types to snap up as a bargain.

EVERYWHERE will suffer bc of what #maga_morons have done.

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

@wdlindsy

Salvador Dali's classic, The Persistence of Memory, seems ever more poignant (and relevant!) at times like these. It's established and fairly well known that when looking back over what were, in retrospect, terrible decisions, many of us will attempt to rationalize them, to come up with post-hoc reasons why they were the right thing to do. So amongst the people who are suddenly looking up tariffs and the cost of food and accepting that they made a bad choice, there are all the more people who will cling to their decision, coming up with all manner of excuse after excuse.

(Back in 2016, many such voters finally settled on 'but at least he's not Hillary', because all their other excuses were voided out.)

And this kind of post-decision rationalization is addictive: it can be found in all sorts of decisions where cognitive dissonance hits. Buyer's remorse? Sour grapes? These and more are a backbone giving some people the seeming right to make bad decisions.

The Wookie

@wdlindsy

That is the problem. You can work to combat it but there is also a point where failed promises of that disinformation turn people away.

I grew up in 80s/90s Atlantic City where Trump's promises to revitalize the town and create jobs with shimmering casinos was the driving hope of the time. His casinos failed, people lost their jobs, and eventually people moved away from the false promises. I fear that we'll need a major economic collapse, war, or national health crisis before enough voters turn away from Trump.

William Lindsey :toad:

@NJWookie Yes, many of us are eager to turn away from information that challenges our preconceived ideas, and it does take harsh reality, often, to wake us up. Even then, some of us choose to remain oblivious, it seems to me, and to refuse to recognize how our own bad choices have led to the harsh conditions now tormenting us.

William Lindsey :toad:

@theogrin Thank you for this excellent commentary and for introducing me to a source I don't know, Dali's Persistence of Memory.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 Yes, it's been clear to me for some time now that the odious Farage and the odious Bannon are joined at the hip, both joined to Trump, too. If anyone thinks that the horrific situation now about to unfold in the US will be confined to that nation, they don't understand how interconnected the world is, and how active a global right-wing network is in engineering what's unfolding now.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lupus_blackfur I ask that question, too, but because I grew up in the US South during the Civil Rights period and saw first-hand the bitter determination of many of my fellow white Southerners to resist rights for people of color and to believe all kinds of nonsense to justify that resistance, I have long seen how factors like racism get many of us to vote, over and over, against our self-interest. Racism (and other -isms) is a powerful drug, and a powerfully stupefying one.

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
Spot on.
Im finding atm EVERYTHING is making me anxious.

I empathise with your feelings of being exhausted and depleted. I feel duty bound to keep up to date and informed bc that's what my husb + I do.

But then again what a Dark Time we are living through. It feels like the early days of a war in everything except arms and ammunition.

Today my worry is the raft of Trumps appointments. Not least of all Kennedy who will stop all vax research in USA (and therefore abroad).

So what will happen when a pathogen mutates again as it will one day and there are no labs conducting research. Does Trump ever care.

These appointments are all about fawning to him.

lupus_blackfur

@wdlindsy

Yes.

My circumstances very similar.

Was as stupefied by it then as I am now.

As a young-un, I remember the juxtaposition between "who I think I am" and "is what they are what they want me to be... What I'm supposed to be"...

Very confusing until I was old enough that "who I think I am" took over.

The Wookie

@wdlindsy

Given the narrow margins of the election and configuration of Senate seats up for election in '26 it will only take a fraction of voters to change their vote for the Dems to control Congress and the Senate in '27/28. This assumes we are still having elections by then. Point being we don't need the entire electorate to see their error or have a change of heart. We only need a small percentage shift. Also in '26 Trump will not be on the ballot removing the energized Trump voter that voted a straight GOP ticket this year.

Doug 🌈🇨🇦 :verified:

@wdlindsy if H5N1 bird flu gets loose in the population while vaccine skeptics run health services, 50% of Americans will die. I can't see that ending well.