I was gonna title this “And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice” and then write “Stuck inside of America with the fascism blues again” here, but I’m not sure if that comes off like gloating and that’s honestly the last thing I want to do this morning.
I wasn’t talking about Hasan Piker, really. I don’t agree with him, of course. Let me put it this way: If he’d flipped it around and talked about what a good strategy it was for Trump to get all his followers heated up on lies and ready for violence, get billionaires and media to go in the tank for him, and coordinate with enemies of the US to destabilize our democracy in order to get elected so he could keep kicking out the safeguards and guard rails once he’s back in and firmly above the law, seize on any imperfection or compromise in the Democratic side and play it up to the point that a whole bunch of suckers on the left buy into it and depress the vote so he can win, and unfold whatever’s coming now… well, if he’d said that, then he wouldn’t be wrong. But looking at it purely from a standpoint of strategy, in this context, is missing a massive other aspect. Talking about the Democratic strategy, which I think Piker is probably doing sincerely here, is missing the point in the same way. Even talking about how elected officials can get the support of the voters seems like it’ll probably be almost a moot point by 4 years from now.
What I was talking about was OP and the little gang of people who’ve been spreading the narrative that the Democrats are the worst thing, basically indistinguishable from fascism, and are now having trouble hiding their eagerness to double down on assuring everyone that it’s all the Democrats’ fault and this whole thing was inevitable. If any of you guys are inside the United States and honestly believe this, have been withholding support until something more to the your liking comes along, thinking that is a good way to make progress… oh my brother, just you wait, and I hope it’s not too bad for you, when it comes.
That’s why I posted the meme. If OP’s really in the US and on the left, they’re going to be learning a whole bunch of new songs to sing over the next couple of years, I think.
But why would you talk about the republican strategy? After-all Trump got almost as many votes as he did back in 2020, only ~2,5 million less. And it’s not like their strategy wildly differed from what they did 2020. Trump got his followers heated up, he tried to coordinate with foreign entities to find kompromat, he tried to undermine the electoral process, he tested the safeguard and guard rails Jan 6. The only really new thing he did was having billionaires be more prominent in supporting him. But none of it changed his votes.
The question you should be asking is “If trump got roughly as many votes as he did back in 2020, how did he win both the electoral college and popular vote?” I don’t see how that question could be answered by looking at the republican party, they didn’t do anything new and their result was also the same. IMO the answer to that question lies with the democratic party. There is something the democrats did or didn’t do that cost them 14 million votes (81 mil in 2020 vs 67 mil in 2024). And realistically a large part of those 14 million voters were “Fuck Trump” voters who were sick and tired of his shit. But this time Trump went full fascist and somehow people were more apathetic towards his?
I kinda agree with Hasan on the part that trying to appear more moderate when your opponent is a full blown fascist doesn’t really do anything. You just come across as a lite version of fascism. Maybe democrats should’ve stayed more in opposition to the republicans because when the voters don’t want fascism, they also don’t a lighter version of fascism. I don’t know what went wrong, I’m not a political pundit. I just see republicans getting roughly the same amount of votes and the democrats losing ~20% of the votes and I just don’t see how that is not the democrats fault when they’re the ones who lost the votes.
Yeah, no, we’re on the same page. Whether you pin it on the OP or Piker. There are a bunch of presumably leftist pundits that have been asking to see the left’s management all through this process (and I mean since 2016) and will continue to act offended that anybody would suggest there is a responsibility in not being persuaded when the alternative is a fascist anarchocapitalist cabal.
As last time, the response to any mention of this will be “it’s their fault for not convincing me”, which has never been a legitimate argument but will be outright insulting if (when) things start to go poorly.
A better case is that the entire country shifted right, especially fed by a mass of new protofascist youth, but you don’t get extra credit for only being part of the problem and not the whole problem.
In any case, like I said earlier, I have no obligation to split hairs. The US has failed as a country and as a people. They can apportion blame however they see fit. For the rest of us it is now a matter of how to build an international community of democracies in the upcoming climate. We all have to write off the US and find a new way forward without them.