Objection

I would love nothing more than for this to be true and to hit that one RFK fan we have on lemmy with it, but the article doesn't really give much evidence to support the title.

Yeah pretty much. 2016 was crazier than this one for sure. This one didn't have a competitive primary on either side, and it was predicted as a toss-up whereas in 2016 every poll and media outlet was saying it was impossible for Trump to win, and there was no precedent to predict what would happen when he was in office. This is like, after people have had eight years to come to terms with Trump being a thing in whatever form that looks like. The general trend though is that things are getting crazier, and that trend is likely to continue.

Too late lmao

If I hate the game, and the players are the ones with the power to change the rules of the game and choose not to, where does that leave me?

How many times do you have to be confronted with the absolute, abject failure of that strategy before you start to question it?

In addition to Rashida Tlaib winning her district, Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin both won their states, when Harris lost. How does your narrative possibly make sense of that?

If that's why Kamala lost, then explain why Tammy Baldwin is winning Wisconsin and Elissa Slotkin is winning in Michigan.

It's not really all that complicated. The Democrats represent the status quo. The status quo sucks. The Republicans present themselves as an alternative to the status quo. So, people vote Republican.

All the centrist messaging just makes it worse. The Republicans can explain why things suck by scapegoating the poor and marginalized. But the Democrats won't call out the rich and powerful who are the actual reason things suck, so instead they just try to tell people that things don't suck at all. They "reach across the aisle" to people like Dick Cheney who are clearly part of the political establishment which only serves to help Trump present himself as an outsider. They adopt all these right-wing positions on immigration, the military, etc, but the people that appeals to already have a party waiting on them hand and foot, giving them exactly what they want. And all the bad shit he does doesn't matter to them because they believe in lesser evilism and hate the establishment.

Of course, Trump is part of the billionaire class and isn't any sort of real alternative to the existing system, but as long as Republicans are able to paint themselves that way, and are the only "alternative" game in town, people are going to turn to them when they dislike the way things are going, no matter how shitty they are.

I felt surprised and confused in 2016 when Trump won, but it's been 8 years. It's long past time to start figuring out where the Trump phenomenon came from.

Grifters grifting grifters lol.

Not that specific example, but I have used that approach before. I think the first time was about 10 years ago. There were a couple queer people in my friend group who would throw around the f-slur, which was whatever, but one night when we were drinking one of my straight friends called me it, and that bothered me. So the next day I sent a group message talking about how it made me feel uncomfortable and I didn't like it being normalized. It was a little awkward, but from then on everyone stopped using it and we all remained friends. In the long term, I think people actually respected me more for standing up for myself (since I was generally more of a pushover), and it stopped a behavior that had been making me uncomfortable and driving a bit of a wedge between us.

Most of the time, stuff like this don't come from malice, but from people having different norms or expectations and not understanding each other. They might get defensive in the moment, but once they're aware of it there's a good chance they'll stop. While people can be dicks, we are fundamentally social creatures and wired to avoid friction.

I will say it's easier to confront people when you have a voluntary relationship with them, because if they're dicks about it you can always just not hang out, but you can't do that with coworkers. If they attack you for expressing how their behavior makes you feel, then you can probably bring it to HR and you'll have a stronger case to say it's malice.

I'm not going to discuss how I feel about you doubling down on "minority rights have always been handed down from above" because I don't want to get banned, suffice to say I have no interest in discussing anything further with you.