Those protections are gone and a lot of people are going to suffer and die because of it.
Yup. We gave all the keys to the kingdom to the crazies and we're about to find out how bad of a choice that was.
And honestly, I couldn't care less how much Americans suffer now. That part of me is gone. We asked for it and now we're going to get it. Time to learn the hard way. Not that we're going to learn.
It doesn't matter how much conservatives suffer from conservative policy. They will ALWAYS find someone to blame but themselves. Hell, there are parts of our country that feel like 3rd world countries when you drive through them that have been voting Republican exclusively for generations and they still don't understand why their lives suck so much.
Wouldn't have helped. Learning isn't what Americans do. Americans like finding things to be mad about and then making decisions based on their emotional responses.
Can't fix stupid without massively improving the public education system, and stupid Americans just elected the guys that ran on deconstructing the public education system.
We're done.
Americans are even dumber than that.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
That's how stupid Americans are. And this election showed us that the majority of Americans are that stupid. When a majority of a society is that stupid, there are no happy endings. We're set for a period of long decline.
We're all set to suffer for the foreseeable future, but no one suffers more from conservative policy than poor, rural conservatives.
I, for one, will absolutely enjoy watching them suffer. They deserve it.
My vote goes for the internet.
Politics really started to get noticably crazier and less grounded in reality around the time everyone started having access to the internet in the palm of their hands. I've been online since 97 and the internet used to be less populated, more informative, and more fun. Around the time smart phones became a thing the internet started morphing into something else. A lot more misinformation. A lot more anger. A lot more stupid.
Humans simply were not equipped to handle the internet and social media. We don't have the educational background to navigate it responsibly. It became the greatest misinformation/propaganda tool in human history and we weren't ready for it.
Yeah, history repeats itself, right?
Two problems though.
It could very well take longer than our lifespans, placing us in a decline for the rest of our lives. Not an uncommon thing if you've studied enough history.
The stakes are higher now because modern warfare is more extreme. Even not taking nukes into account, which you clearly have to.
It's just sad. We're likely to spend years, if not decades, knowing there was another timeline we could have been on and that we were there when we diverged onto the shittier one.
Personally, I'm tired. My current plan is to ween myself off all social media and news sources and go with the "ignorance is bliss" strategy. There are far too many ignorant people in this society for us to head in a good direction. I gotta stop paying attention and caring about what happens or it'll drive me mad.
Basically.
We just had what was likely our last chance to correct course without a significant amount of suffering and we utterly failed. An extremist party that literally ran on fundamentally changing our government now has total control. We don't deserve democracy, and now we might actually lose it.
Yup.
And assuming we don't straight up lose our democracy, we're at least going to experience a long period of decline, possibly lasting the remainder of our lives.
This isn't going to magically change 4 years from now, even if the pendulum swings back and we vote Democrats into power. Our society just proved itself to be utterly uneducated and intellectually lazy. We're just going to keep digging ourselves into a deeper hole. And that's assuming in the next 4 years Republicans don't change things in such a way as to ensure they can never lose an election again.
One way or another, we've lost. The only question is the speed at which the decline will take place.
A quick glance at both party's voting history indicates Republicans aren't going to vote in favor of the average American anytime soon.
Unfortunately, it appears most Americans are too stupid and lazy to do this kind of basic research and would rather have social media and talking heads on TV tell them what to do. Idiocracy.
Fun Fact: Democrats are historically better for our economy.
Man, I thought I escaped comments this dumb when I left Reddit.
We have enough of those people to do this for the majority of Americans?
I love your optimism. But it just won't work. We now know the majority of Americans are ignorant and uninterested in learning, even from mistakes. You can present these people with facts and stats and infallible logic all day long and it won't make a difference.
We gleefully voted in a convicted felon and rapist who ALREADY had a failed presidency and openly talked about being anti-union and anti-worker rights who stated on national television that he had the concept of plans.
The only direction this society is going is down.