But there isn't really an "overwhelming majority political opinion" on this site? Hence the long threads of comments of people disagreeing on the merits of ideas. Unless you're referring to the anti-trump sentiment, which is more pan-political as there are obviously a whole bunch of Americans that don't want to see our country destroyed regardless of how we wish it might be reformed.
a specific term, used mainly in social sciences as a designation for those forms of nationalism that aim to transcend (overcome, expand) traditional boundaries.
I never heard of the term before as why Im asking.
Also, in my own view. I don't consider myself political, I watch what people do, versus what they say they're going to do. And for me, any political figure can say one thing when the really want to do another.
I agree that government needs to be reformed, but somhow, Im thinking the reform issue is just being used as a vehicle to push a Accelerationism agenda.
I have no idea of that specific use of the term and what connotations it has, but maybe it fits? I was using the general prefix to mean across what are usually considered political lines. For example you and I can disagree (and we likely do!!!) on the specific approaches and directions for reforming the government, and we call that politics. But for example, if one of us thinks things would be better if the US was militarily conquered by China, that isn't really the domain of "politics" any longer.
> anti-trump sentiment, which is more pan-political
If such sentiment was across the political spectrum, he wouldn't have been voted in. The notion that what people think in your bubble is what everyone thinks is what leads to conspiracy theories like "Stop the steal", and it has a chilling effect on actually engaging with people who might be voting against their own interests (or maybe even challenging your own cherished viewpoint on something)
There was another response (flagged now) saying that pro-Trump support was pan-political. I agree with that as well.
As far as actually engaging, that's the fundamental problem! Most of his support was basically founded on rejecting discussion and reason, voting the gut feeling of something latched on to from one of the many conflicting things he said, while being happy with other people's frustration because you've pigeonholed them into "the other". Like I'm a libertarian, I personally share many of the frustrations and criticisms that got Trump elected! Yet you've seemingly assumed some caricature of me where I've got a narrow understanding with "cherished viewpoints".
Regardless of the levity with which you intended it, is it not still an assertion that I haven't done the work to understand the viewpoints I am arguing against?
I don't find that comic compelling. It feels like a post-hoc rationalization more than the actual dynamic.
I'm a libertarian. I've tried for many years to engage with so-called conservatives on their own terms. I always get othered from not just repeating their thought-terminating party lines.
One of the most glaring instances was about surveillance. I completed agreed with where they were coming from. But trying to connect the abstract topic to the digital freedom tools I was working on/with somehow made it into an argument! The only thing they wanted to hear was validation of their helpless world view.
I wasn't saying the comic was right or wrong, but certainly it's what was running through my mind when I say that we all have 'cherished' or 'deeply held' beliefs. I think at some point deeply held beliefs will be challenged by edge cases, or can hold self-contradictions at the extremes, or turn out to be impractical when applied to the real world – specifically a world of people who won't ever align on a single set of deeply held beliefs, and specifically a world with a subset that would exploit those who hold too fast any kind of belief.
> I don't find that comic compelling.
Perhaps you don't, but I've certainly seen it play out in real life. People don't like beliefs shoved down their throats, no matter how much it might be in their favor.
He got more than his opponent the second time. Trump got 49.8%, Harris got 48.3%. This is widely considered to be winning the popular vote; nobody else got more votes than he did.
As opposed to 2016 where Trump won the electoral college but received fewer total votes than his major opponent because extra votes in California don't count in the electoral college.
Notice that if you want to claim that winning the popular vote requires more than 50% then you can't claim that Clinton "won the popular vote" in 2016 because she got 48.2% to Trump's 46.1%.
No. Trump got a 49.8% plurality of the vote was the second time around. The first time around he only got 46.1% to Hillary Clinton's 48.2% (not even a plurality -- yay electoral college). He did not win a majority in either of his wins, and a plurality only the second time. Amazing what you can do with a $44 billion propaganda platform and another quarter billion in usable funds.
Sure, simplistic populism plays out in wider society where short quips and repetition matter more than coherent ideas. That doesn't really change what I said though.
(For context, because I know the tendency is to pigeonhole commenters - I'm a libertarian who shares many of the frustrations driving the destructive fervor)
That's real funny, bravo, but you didn't say that the policies were identical, you said that the choice was a "dementia patient", and now you've moved the goalpost.
If you’re referring to people who don’t vote, they de facto support the outcome. Particularly if in a swing state.
> genocidal dementia patient
People who voted for Trump (or threw their vote in a swing state) because of Palestine are the definition of stupid and selfish. By prioritising their interests above those they purported to represent, they will have played a (non-critical) role in the destruction of Palestine.
It baffled me that anyone thought that Trump was going to somehow be better than Kamala in regards to Palestine.
I could understand voting for a third party, but Trump outright tried to impose a Muslim ban in his first time, and said that his son in law was going to quickly solve the Middle East conflict single-handedly; seems unlikely that he would be sympathetic to people in the Middle East.
> baffled me that anyone thought that Trump was going to somehow be better than Kamala in regards to Palestine
I was in Phoenix in April 2024 when an otherwise-intelligent friend remarked on whether Trump was pro Israel. She wound up remembering his first term eventually. But at that moment I realised that the checkmate Democrats thought they had Republicans in with abortion, Republicans had Democrats in with Palestine: move to the left and you lose moderates and Pennsylvania. Move to the right (or fail to message) and you lose Michigan and your base. Message at all and you lose swing voters who don’t want to hear about foreign policy.
I'm not sure they thought that Trump would be better.
It seems they think that voting is a test unrelated to the likely outcomes. So you should vote "right" rather than compromising and voting for the better among the possible outcomes.
That's fine, you have the right to vote third-party, but are you saying aren't sympathetic to the other issues that Trump is raising?
I am not sure I loved Kamala's stance on Palestine, but I thought that Trump's tariff policies were stupid, his anti-immigrant and anti-trans rhetoric was harmful, and virtually every single stupid thing that the Diablo cheater has done with DOGE (and said he would do before the election, to be clear) seemed short-sighted-at-best and malicious-at-worst. It can be difficult to tell since both Trump and Musk are supremely stupid people who depend on hubris to fail upwards their entire lives, but regardless it seemed pretty bad to me, and it seemed like the totality of it indicated that Kamala would have been fine.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with voting on a single issue, if you think Palestine is more important than all the stuff I listed then that's fair enough and I'm actually fine with people voting third party. The way I see it though, the only person who is going to do exactly what I want, politically speaking, is me, and I'm not running. No matter who I vote for, as a result, is going to inherently be a compromise on something. I have to vote for the person that I think will do the least amount of damage and/or try and prevent the person who is going to do the most from getting in power.
I felt like a vote for a candidate that had a shot at winning was better than one that didn't, even though I tend to actually be a bit closer-aligned with the green party.
> if both sides are genocidal, there's no choice where your life gets better
As I said, stupid and selfish. Not seeing the difference between bombing and explicit ethnic cleansing and relocation for the people in Gaza is modern Sykes-Picot.
Note that I’m fine with that person not voting. (Almost prefer it.) It’s wild, though, to pretend it furthered the interests of the people they pretend to hold dear, versus some personal moral purity they’d prefer to preach about online.
> i did vote socialist/green
This is fine, even admirable, if you’re not in a swing state. If you’re in a swing state, you de facto voted for Trump and the destruction of both Gaza and the dream of a Palestinian nation-state.
> if liberals want to win elections, they need to start offering a vision of a better future
Sure. And never mention Israel or Palestine again, because I no longer have any desire to engage with the US elements of those movements who are, on both sides, adamant about redrawing foreign borders in respect of countries and cultures they have no direct relation to nor experience with.
do you have any concept of what they were doing in Gaza? 85% of schools bombed/damaged, almost every hospital destroyed, tens of millions of tons of rubble, Trump said 1.7-1.8M remaining (meaning 400-500k dead). this is a holocaust. Democrats are not doing an "innocent war". They are hiterites with a smile on their face. The Republicans are hitlerites with a frown. Sometimes vice versa depending on the situation.
I voted in PA. You guys want my vote? appeal to me and people like me.
> 85% of schools bombed/damaged, almost every hospital destroyed, tens of millions of tons of rubble, Trump said 1.7-1.8M remaining
How do you think those 2mm remaining would prefer the future to go? Razed, relocated and—let’s be honest—in all likelihood ersatz enslaved somewhere in Central Asia or Africa? Safe in the knowledge someone in America made this choice for them with a false equivalence between living on their land to fight another day and being dissolved as a nation?
That is the selfishness. That is the holier-than-thou imperial mindset; what matters is how one is portrayed and gets to think about oneself, not how the people one uses as puppets fare. (Sykes and Picot’s supporters thought they were helping, too!)
