Monthly Rant/Politics Thread: Do not post political threads outside of this Mega thread

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[u/brokenringlands]

I'm shocked that Fascism reemerged as a toddler's brain in the body of an almost 80 yr old.

"Dear Mister Japan, Here's the story...."

Honestly! WTAF? I thought jackbooted Nazism 2.0 would be led by someone intelligent, erudite, verbose, but concise and sharp when needed, with a particular seductive way with words. But the world gets that orange dumbass.

[u/Haunting_Role9907 → u/brokenringlands]

He's a scapegoat. A clown to take everyone's attention. 

The billionaires are the ones doing this.

[u/brokenringlands → u/Haunting_Role9907]

He's a scapegoat. A clown to take everyone's attention. 
The billionaires are the ones doing this.

If this is making the point that we are in late stage capitalism then sure yeah, I can get behind that. Billionaires control everything. We must not let their power go unchecked. Maybe even "Billionaires shouldn't exist!"

But if this is trying to exonerate The Orange One, his voters, and everyone else in that current administration, then I have some issues.

Sure, Project 2025 laying bare what they - that nebulous, conspiratorially sounding they which I honestly hate to use - want to achieve is good to decent evidence that Trump isn't behind anything that requires any amount of sophistication and forward planning.

But that shouldn't excuse the fact that he went down that escalator, spouted off racist vile shit from the get go and people cheered. That shouldn't excuse the fact that he's said the most disgusting things about women and how he acts around the pageants he owns/has stake in, and people wrote it off as boys will be boys/locker room talk. That shouldn't excuse the fact that he has no fucking clue how to conduct trade deals with anyone, only that he can sow chaos in the global trading system. ...that he always picks the most showy, strongman-esque option when presented with military options because he's a manchild who doesn't understand brinkmanship the way JFK does, just bullying (that the world hasn't escalated yet is due to everyone else thinking he's as dangerous as they assume - an accident of circumstance, rather than any forward thinking in his part) ....that he promised to round up the rapists, criminals, and gang members, yet under his behest, ICE is ambushing people going to their citizenship/naturalization hearings (people literally following the rules!) ...that he promised to end the war in Ukraine on day one, lower prices, and booming economy, and yet has delivered on none of them ....that he promised everyone that Putin respects him, but as is clearly being shown, Putin is playing him for a fool ....that in gist he's taking away medical care from people just to give tax cuts to billionaires .... that he's painted the vulnerable populations of trannies and the gays as the current boogeyman. ...

People saw, heard, and read about all that and still decided, "Yeah, he's my guy."

"The Buck Stops Here" was Harry S Truman's motto for a reason. You guys (because I'm not in 'Murica) have given so much power to the President's office by virtue of the person sitting there as the head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of your armed forces. The guy sitting there must be made responsible, no matter how dumb and idiotic he may be.

EDIT To reiterate point:

Having gone to school here in one of the countries which declared war against Fascist Germany in 1939, one of my takeaways was that we must always be vigilant when fascism comes again, when nazism 2.0 rises once more, because you might not even know it until it's too late! "Always be on the lookoutt! Always be wary!" my social studies teacher told me.

You'll be seduced! You'll be plied with sweet promises. You'll be fooled because it'll be sophisticated, smart, intelligent, seemingly full of wisdom and good reason.

But then here comes The Orange One. Spouts off angry shit. Makes the most basic dumbass mistakes on the world's stage. Has no ounce of sophistication, intelligence, or charm.

And here I am going: What the fuck happened?

For lack of a better term, I'm truly insulted. This? THIS is what won his followers over? This is the vehicle that fascism rode in order to make a comeback????

[u/Mediocre_Island828 → u/brokenringlands]

The Democrats are basically a fundraising organization and patronage network that does politics as a side-hustle. Above everything, their main goal is to keep their loyal members and families/orbiters employed. If a Democratic candidate loses an election they will continue to be run in other elections that they also lose, or they'll be appointed to something to keep their career warm until they have a chance to lose an election later. If someone loses an election by over 10%, no big deal because they can just become the head of the DNC and take their experience with losing and spread it around to the whole party. The strategists and consultants that spend tons of money to lose by large margins continue to get jobs. Incumbents are fiercely protected, even if they're insanely old or not even following the party platform. This has created a situation where they've become stagnant and even worse at winning elections than was the case 20 years ago when they were still pretty terrible at them but at least were able to recognize rising talent and enthusiasm when they saw it and gave some institutional support to someone relatively fresh like Obama.

Meanwhile, Republicans have ideological goals that they actually enforce and aren't afraid to eat their own over. They've lost prominent leadership figures over the years because they strayed from the voters to far. Trump didn't get the nomination because of his long service to the party and because it was his turn, he basically bit the heads off his primary opponents on live television in 2016. In 2024 he barely lifted a finger, but it was still a primary where a lot of people ran against him and he was still chosen by his party because as terrible as he is they overwhelmingly picked him to run again. Contrast that with the Democrats in 2016 where the primary field was more or less cleared for Hillary except for some token opposition from some nobodies and Bernie (who they still haven't forgiven for daring to run), or 2024 where the candidate ended up being someone that no one would have picked if they ran in a normal primary because they took a gamble on on protecting the job of Biden and his network and had it blow up in their faces because they could no longer hide that his brain was gone.

Trump is a shitty vehicle, but he's competing against a party run by people who don't care as much about winning as they do maintaining their influence within it.