[thebreakfastgenie]

"how are the democrats so good at losing?" why don't you ask how the republicans are so good at winning?? stop acting like democrats are the only political party with agency. republicans do things on purpose.

[choppywaterswiftboats]

^^ It seems to me that I haven’t seen many people acknowledging that republicans are good at winning because they lie and because they have a multimillion dollar industry committing to getting them elected and backing up their lies.

I’ve seen statistics correlating misinformed views to voting choice, a study about how respondents preferred Kamala’s policies over Trump’s when they weren’t told who had which set of policies, people discussing ‘vibes-based politics’—but in my opinion all this analysis is incomplete without confronting how republicans have a veritable propaganda machine working for them. It’s pretty hard for democrats to fight that. We have to rely on average donations from normal people when corporations/rich individuals can invest millions into networks who will try to get people elected who will give them tax breaks.

[thebreakfastgenie]

#seriously I want more people to talk about the sheer amount of damage rupert murdoch has done to this country#fox news is the most viewed cable news network in the country.#i remember a few months back harris’ campaign had success bringing project 2025 to the public’s attention#but democrats still don’t have anything comparable @choppywaterswiftboats

Fun fact that I will tell literally everyone all the time!!! A former Nixon staffer said they would have survived Watergate if they had their own news network. And that staffer's name was Roger Ailes!

[harpyharpyharpy]

Books to read:

Dark Money: An examination of the Koch Empire, and its patronage and entanglement in Right wing media, politics, and lobbying.

Messengers of the Right: A history of the conservative media landscape, beginning with talk radio (Clarence Manion, before the era of Rush Limbaugh), through periodicals like the National Review, and notable books, like God and Man at Yale. I'm sorry, but you don't know half as much as you think you do about American political history if you don't know who William F Buckley is. All of this walked, so Fox News could run.

Let Them Eat Tweets: A political synthesis of history, economics, and communication scholarship that posits wedge-issue-identity-politics as the method by which contemporary conservative parties drive their white working class bases away from class-based solidarity toward a party that serves only economic elites. That, Hacker and Pierson argue, is how you explain the escalation of billionaire oligopoly, rising economic inequality, and fanatic racism/other bigotries.

If you can understand these patterns and these histories, you'll begin to see why the GOP has nosedived into overtly fascist rhetoric, while STILL successfully courting voters who vote against their material economic interests.

There are no surprises here.

[fortunes-haven]

In this particular election, it seems there may have been nothing the Dems could realistically have done. Literally every single developed country that's had elections this year, the incumbent party (that is, the party in control at the time of the election) lost seats/power. Every. Single. Election.

This is extremely unusual! And the Dems got pretty darn close!

This is why I don't see a point in blaming anyone on the Democrat side running campaigns. The judicial side? Oh, absolutely. It's never been more obvious the US is in need of judicial reform in my lifetime. But the campaigns were in fact good and well-run. People around the world, however, are still angry about the Pandemic and its continuing effects, and don't care who specifically was responsible for what. They just wanted to elect someone new.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Yeah as more information emerges I'm increasingly leaning toward that, with a hefty side order of the public being mad about inflation even though the economy is actually strong by any real metric and blaming Biden/Dems for it. Which is also related to COVID; even though our economic recovery was pretty much the best in the world thanks to Biden people just don't see it that way.

[dynamicity-keysmash]

I think it's important to understand that the vast majority of voters do not spend much time thinking through their political decisions because it's simply not something that occupies much space in their minds. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and it's extremely difficult to fight feelings with facts.

Now that the Democratic party's inner core is highly-educated cosmopolitan urbanites, it seems to have lost the ability to deal with that reality.

Most people do not feel like trump is a fascist, or that he wants to be a dictator. Most people do not feel like any of Biden's massive legislative/executive accomplishments improved their lives at all. Most people do not feel like Harris's platform would've actually gotten done or helped them. Most people feel like Trump ran a better economy and that it's Democrats' fault that inflation got so bad.

In an individualistic, selfish nation with one of the worst education systems in the industrialized world, a political party cannot win by serving up a charcuterie board of various poll-tested policies that it then tries to explain to people who could not care less and don't understand anyway. It needs to create an overwhelming feeling, a feeling that changes the minds of people who don't give a fuck about anything but themselves and their wallets. Trump found that overwhelming feeling. Through bravado, cruelty, and levity, he created this zeitgeist of blunt, confident grievance that countless prideful people who feel left behind by the economy could grab onto. This feeling inspired people far beyond his cult of enthusiastic fascists and self-identified bigots.

The country chose trump because Trump's brand, vibe, and message inspired compelling emotions in more people, especially in people who have no interest in civic engagement, don't follow the news, and have been given little understanding of government/economics by our failing education system.

This problem wasn't fully apparent in 2022 during the midterms, when more low-propensity voters stayed home and highly-educated, highly-engaged people made up more of the electorate.

[emilianadarling]

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into is a really, really important message that needs to be internalized.

Feelings don't care about your facts.

In Doppleganger, Naomi Klein characterizes conspiracy culture as often "getting the facts wrong, but the feelings right". And when there are real unaddressed issues, real things people are feeling, it leaves a vacuum. And that vacuum leaves a lot of space for misinformation and disinformation to take hold; for right-wing strategists to speak to those feelings, even if the 'solution' they're offering will actually make the problem worse.

And it's very hard to combat that problem with facts, especially when the act of doing so is interpreted as telling someone that what they're feeling isn't real.

If facts don't work, what does? There is no easy answer, but here are some learnings gained from others who have lived through or studied similar challenges:

Narratives: Hannah Arendt was a German-American Jew and political theorist; after WWII, she wrote extensively about totalitarianism. She argued that narratives can be more compelling and convincing to people who are more moved by feelings than they are factual data. For those people, the consistency of the narrative built by lies/propaganda is more compelling; once they have bought into that narrative, they will go to extreme lengths to ignore facts that contradict it. When lies are repeated over and over, it enforces that sense of consistency over time. A compelling narrative grounded in truth can be more compelling and effective than 'facts'.

Stories, Not Silence: Naomi Klein, a Canadian author and activist, has written about various topics over the years but most recently published "Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World" about COVID-era political polarization and conspiracy theories. She argues that to drain conspiracy theories of their energy and power, we need to be better at telling stories about topics and concepts that have become dominated by the right rather than ceding that space with leftist silence. She also argues that we need to become better at connecting in person, or at least connecting in a way where we are less vulnerable and susceptible to lies about each other.

Connection and an Envisioned Better Future: Timothy Snyder is an author and leading scholar on tyranny, freedom, and Soviet Russia. He argues that authoritarian regimes depend on people getting used to hearing the things they want to hear, and in moving people further away from shared facts we all agree on and towards emotion - either emotion to divide us, or to bring us together. Over time, the strong emotions and repetition of what you want to hear changes you: from a person who cares about facts and can function in the public sphere/democracy to a person who can't. Authoritarian argue that no one can be trusted and there are no facts - but if there are no facts, it's all emotion. It's all what feels right to us -- and we cede the field to people who are good at making things feel right to us. Fantasy becomes better than facts. Changing this means both a positive vision/fabtasy for the future of the country and collective action. Collective action is hard, but possible: it means connecting with people in real life, talking with people we disagree with -- and it doesn't have to be everyone all at once. "If 10,000 little groups do 5,000 little things, that will make a tremendous difference."

This isn't comprehensive by any means, but there are some shared themes. Other important elements -- like trust and how to rebuild trust that has been damaged or broken -- are also critical, but would warrant an entire post of their own.

Thanks to OP for the hard but worthwhile prompting thoughts. The road ahead will not be easy, and it can be hard to understand or grapple with perspectives so different and detached that it can feel like we're living in alternate realities instead of the same country as each other. When the things that seem to have such wild appeal to a certain portion of the population are so viscerally repellent to others. But at least we are gifted with the learnings and hard-won insights of other who came before or walk alongside us.

The article 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won provides good advice here. First, trust yourself. Find others you can trust. Grieve. Release that which you cannot change. Find your path to resistance.

But then, at minimum -- even if you yourself don’t want to engage with them (which is fine) -- we’ll all have to give space to those who can and do experiment with new language to appeal to others who don’t share your worldview.

[depsidase]

[call-me-cd]

[call-me-cd]

[soberscientistlife]

We have to beat him in numbers to high to contest

[soberscientistlife]

This does not happen in other civilized countries

[only-cat-memes]

[3000s]

aww so cutes

[theconcealedweapon]

There are people who actually believe that "government controls everything" is tyranny but "corporations control everything including the government" is freedom.

[mslippy]

[soberscientistlife]

[liberalsarecool]

Carrying water for fascist Trump, then lying about it, is MAGA purity test.

Youngkin serves Putin/Trump. Citizens of Virginia be damned.

[liberalsarecool]

It's wrong to say FOX viewers are gullible people being conned. They're bad faith actors who know it's all disinformation and pretend to believe otherwise as moral justification for their support for white supremacy, fascism, political violence, and hate.

They aren't gullible victims. They're complicit.

[the-birth-of-art]

"Meanwhile in Tucson"

[the-psudo]

For those who don't know Spanish: "Chinga tu madre" is a common swear for "F*** your mother." They changed it to say MAGA instead of mother, obviously. The second line is "No more orange."

[weirdness-is-good]

[whunt]

me on days when i’m in the lab doing gruesome medical experiments on human subjects

[jacob-the-gun]

Today is the only day you can reblog this.

[animentality]