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Bracing for impact on Canadian elections.
Upon hearing the news, I felt despondent and a pit in my stomach… I went to do a bit of karaoke and my mood has recovered from that at least.
Clearly political con-artistry is effective. Ford, Smith, Moe, Poilievre and any wannabe dictators of Canada who may emerge in the future, are all taking down notes.
Anxious. I’m already dreading the next 4 years. I usually like to keep informed and up to date on world news but I think I’m going to have to avoid all news for the next few years and just try to ignore what America is doing.
You know, I work a pretty stressful job, and I think a lot of that stress and anger came from, in some twisted way, a misguided faith of sorts. I did believe that people were, at the very least, capable of making the most sensible decision when given overwhelming evidence of good vs. bad choices; that they intentionally make bad choices either because they weren’t given enough information or were acting intentionally selfish or duplicitous in some way. So whenever I had to deal with someone trying to exploit a loophole or arguing about how they swear they are going to x and such place and will pay at a later time (when you know they won’t do so), it would frustrate me, because I did believe that they were capable of making better choices.
This election is proof that people are just genuinely dumb and hopeless, to a far and large extent. Choosing to omit your own vote, or willingly voting for him, is beyond imagination. We have seen so much of what he has done in the past 8 years now, at minimum. They know what he will likely do in the next 4 years. And they still chose him. Or chose not to participate.
So I’m choosing not to feel angry at people anymore, to not give a shit if they break the rules for whatever reason they justify. Because why be angry at something if you have lost faith in it being better?
This election is proof that people are just genuinely dumb and hopeless
Or that trump really does represent their ideals, and they’re just horrible people.
Concerning, to say the least.
Consider this.
Trump is…a life-long conartist, a convicted felon, adulterer, rapist, womanizer, misogynist, racist, a twice impeached President, a guy who somehow had nearly a dozen close associates found to be guilty of crimes … Breathes
Someone who “gets along” with some of the most brutal dictators alive like they’re buddies, has been caught on tape describing sexually assaulting women, who has lied over 30,000 times in a span of 4 years, who has made threats against journalists, who has publicly mocked a disabled person, who has publicly shat on veterans, who criticised a POW for getting caught… Breathes
A guy who denied COVID, who promoted unproven treatments while condemning those who wanted to safeguard public health, who rambles incoherently about topics he has little to no grasp on, who thinks everything he does is “perfect” and "nobody has done a “better job”, is in obvious mental decline, has never admitted to being wrong or apologized for anything…
And so on!
Now, would you invite someone like that to dinner? Or have him work in your small business?
Probably not. Nobody would, not even if they were related to such a person.
Why then, would over half the voting public stake the future of their country on giving him a second term as President?
You don’t have to like Harris, or even agree with most of her policies, but she is not a trainwreak of a human being and would most certainly be a better person for the job. Any job.
As a Canadian, to know that a garbage heap of a person like Trump could be freely given excessive power by the voting public only tells me that it could happen in Canada, even if the alternative candidate was 1000x better in every way.
North America, and democracy as a whole, seems doomed. And with rich idiots, podcast morons, and domestic terrorists actively supporting a candidate like that, I worry about the future stability of our global community. And we aren’t even close to being prepared for what malicious use of AI could do during an election.
It takes far more effort and time to build a peaceful, balanced society. And less than four years to completely dismantle that progress.
Tired. Numb.
Ukraine is fucked. Palenstine is fucked. Taiwan is fucked.
Climate is turbo fucked.
And the brain rot heads north
I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would. I’ve been an NDP voter all my life, so like most lefties I was shocked by Trump’s win in 2016, horrified by his COVID bullshit, and appalled by his conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric in the 2024 campaign. Trump is so obviously horrible that I kept asking the same question: how could HALF of the US electorate support him? I just can’t believe that HALF of America are fascist misogynistic white supremacists.
So, I started listening to alternative media. For example, I listened to Trump’s interview with Joe Rogan (yes, the whole three+ hours). I listened to Bari Weiss’s Honestly podcast, where she talks to disaffected progressives, and had a great debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. And many others.
So far, this is what I’ve come up with:
- The Democratic Party has abandoned the traditional working class, or at least the working class feels abandoned by the Democratic Party. The Dems have become “cultural elites” that too many average people just can’t identify with at all. Trump may not be good for the working class, but at least he speaks to them and their concerns. This of course leads to a discussion about how the Dems would have a better relationship with labour if they hadn’t fucked over Bernie Sanders.
- The Democratic Party has become obsessed with identity politics, at the expense of real issues that matter to most people. Identity politics is pure poison that has become the leftist version of McCarthyism to a lot of people.
- The Dems foreign policy is seen as weak by both the left and right. They fucked around on the Ukraine war to the point where Russia is now winning. And they lifted the sanctions on Iran that allowed it to fund Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis and blow up the Middle East. And the left is pissed off that they don’t speak out against Israel’s aggressive policy toward the Palestinians. So, the Dems aren’t pleasing anyone when it comes to foreign policy.
- The Dems had a good issue with reproductive rights, but a lot of states are moving to protect reproductive rights on theor own (including ballot measures), which may have relieved some of the pressure on Trump.
- People talk a lot about Trump being better for the economy. I’m not sure economists would agree, but that is a large part of the sentiment favouringTrump. Edit: 6. Immigration. How could I forget immigration. Illegal immigration really pisses off Americans, including and perhaps especially among legal immigrants. I’m not sure that immigrants love Trump’s immigration position, but most of the country see the Dems as too ideologically compromised by identity politics to be able to do anything constructive on immigration.
You don’t have to agree with those positions and I don’t plan on defending them. This is just what I’ve picked up in trying to understand why so many people vote for Trump.
There are some important parallels and lessons here for the next Canadian election. Trudeau and the Liberals parallel the cultural elitism of the establishment Democrats. Singh appeals more to the identity politics culture warriors than he does to the working class. This is a big departure from the NDP’s traditional roots in the labour movement. And Poilievre is Trump’s mini-me. So, what can we do in Canada to avoid a repeat of the left’s failure in the US election? Doubling down on identity politics and cultural elitism isn’t going to go well.
Thank you very much for this summary. Sadly I do feel some sort of understanding to a lot of Trump voters that genuinely thought they were making a good decision, and I think your summary reflects why people would feel that way. I 100% disagree with them, but I can understand their frustration and do see a lot of that reflected in Canadian politics as well.
I’m curious about the comment on Singh. As long as I’ve been following/supporting the NDP, I’ve always felt like they were more working class and really haven’t seen a whole lot of identity politics in their expressions. With the exception of maybe racism stuff, but I feel like given Jagmeet’s own (obvious) identity, this would be a central issue to him as a leader and to them as a party. I have seen them express in interviews about concerns for the working class many times otherwise.
You’re absolutely correct in your conclusions. I’ve been trying to spread the same message and get my close friends to see this situation for what it is, and all I get for my efforts is called a libertarian (which I’m not), or be told I’m racist (I live in a blended family and friends group).
The leftist elitists in the USA love to scoff at the close-minded bigotry from the right, and pat themselves on the back about how open minded they are, while being completely closed off to anyone who tries to tell them how they’re alienating people, and causing strife with their identity politics.
Identity politics are poison. They seem purposefully engineered to sow division, instead of their stated goal of inclusion. I’ve tried to talk about this online a few times and gave up after being eviscerated by people parroting agenda points rather than actually engaging in a conversation.
The left, or the Democrats, or whatever you want to call them, have continually alienated huge portions of the population, portions required to win elections and actually change policies, with issues that affect miniscule portions of the population.
I want everyone to be treated equally. I want equality and inclusion. You don’t obtain that by telling 60% of the people in the country that their voices don’t matter, their opinions don’t matter, and their only job is to shut up and listen. Yes, it’s wise to listen more than you talk when someone who has experienced something you haven’t is sharing their experiences with you. But the overtly hostile fashion in which that message has been spread is offensive, and damaging, and alienating, and we saw the outcome of that last night.
I think a lot of people think trump is good for economy for reasons like stripping away environmental regulations. Sure it might make a company cheaper to operate without regulations but often times it is exponentially more expensive to deal with the damages.
That’s way more complex thinking that what people actually do around this. They think he’s good for the econony because he’s rich, or at least plays rich on TV.
CEOs may see him as good for business because rhey believe he’ll make running their businesses cheaper, but the average Trump voter just sees “rich = good with money”, because most people ultimately believe that the world is on some level fair, and if he’s rich it must mean he got there fairly.
Before the EPA the Cuyahoga River was at times more fire than water.
The other thing that I’d add to this is that, post-pandemic, a lot of people have felt the pinch of shifting economic realities. A lot of decisions from years and decades past that have masked the costs neoliberal policies and corporate cost cutting have come home to roost, and it has left people feeli g stressed out and resentful.
They feel their quality of life and standard of living starting to slip, and they see the injustice of the system supporting their bosses, their landlords, and their banks, but not them. And they see who’s currently at the wheel.
Because of this, they also grow increasingly resentful towards discussions of people who need help. They feel like no one is there to help them as the world shifts around them, and yet they have smug culture warriors telling them that they’re worse than Hiitler for not thinking of people they’ll never meet, half a world away.
Trump and Milhouse will not help them, but at least they will not tell them that they are not deserving. And that’s more than what they perceive Democrats, the Liberals, or the NDP doing for them.
Yeah, I think a lot of the parallels in Canada is that the failure here is with the NDP, not the Liberals or Conservatives. Overall, those two parties haven’t changed, but at some point - post Layton - the NDP apparently decided to go down that same identity politics road, while similarly abandoning the general working class. Maybe they felt they just weren’t getting enough votes with the latter and there were enough who felt strongly about such social issues, but FFS they could have at least tried harder to support BOTH.
I’m honestly starting to wonder if the reason they’ve continued to support the Liberals is not so much a fear of z Conservative government, but rather if there’s some dirt the Liberals have on NDP leadership to keep them on a leash. Nothing else really explains why they’ve continued down this path of political suicide.
Numb. Sad. Mostly numb.
I was cheering for Kamala. I wanted the US to succeed. She had the big rallies, the celebrity endorsements, the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. It looked like sanity was going to prevail. Then Trump just basically sweeps it and it’s like…oh. It’s easy to call the Americans “stupid” or whatever insults I’ve seen flying around the internet, but there was a vote. He won the vote. Over 72 million people think that Trump and the Republican ideology lines up best with their ideology. Who am I to argue with that? I don’t agree with it, but I guess that’s democracy in action. Regardless of what lies were told or what disinformation was spread, people overwhelmingly went out, voted for ol’ Donny, and this is the result. That’s how she goes I guess…? I don’t fucking know anymore dude.
My heart absolutely breaks for the people of Ukraine. I’m sure they’ll lose their US support come January. They don’t deserve that.
Meh. It’s not good, but there’s not a lot we can do about it.
I’m not feeling good about Canada’s future. The cost of living is increasing, we don’t have enough medical staff, and the price of rent is too damn high. Our conservative politicians want to play culture war, and our left leaning politicians are AWOL.
It’s fertile ground for populism, and nobody competent seems to have a plan.
So I guess you could say I’m a bit bummed.
Maybe if the doctors flee America when their health care system is destroyed they’ll come back to Canada and we can have some GPs, as a treat.
Not fucking great buddy. Not fucking great.
Empathy at what my American friends are going through, and dread about our own incoming conservative wave.
Shocked, saddened here.
I can’t believe Trump did so well. He’ll be the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. He’s a racist, sexist, transphobic, fascist, anti-science rapist, convicted felon, climate change-denier, and champion of the uber wealthy.
I guess there are many more deeply racist and sexist people than I wish to believe. It’s BS how first-past-the-post and the electoral college systems work - it’s so very easy to manipulate the system when you know the precious few key areas in advance to try to influence. Control of mainstream news and social media by the billionaire gives dis-, misinformation, and other bias so much reach to undermine democracy and voters’ rational self-interest.
One thing that has helped me the teensiest bit is that even though he got the popular vote, he still got less votes than he did in 2020. It doesn’t help me to know that so many people were blatantly apathetic or misogynistic or whatever we’re blaming the lack of democratic votes on, but at least he got less votes than before.
I’m worried this will embolden the bigots of the North and justify some of the terrifying things happening in Prairie politics with anti-trans laws and involuntary placement of homeless people into mental hospitals (AKA the rise of Sanitoriums).
PP and federal conservatives have already expressed anti trans sentiment so I won’t be surprised if it gets introduced into federal politics as well next election. We barely scraped by in BC to avoid the transphobic pos conservative leader this time around. I’m getting ready to fight.
Oh, also both major parties in BC wanted involuntary placement so that’s also well underway here too. Gotta love that :/
Nervous. Fascism is getting more popular, not less. We WILL see the same trend.
When I saw the convoys in Canada, I knew you guys were in a similar situation. Europe is wavering too.
Long term? Democracy will persist. Short term? It will be tested worldwide.
My biggest fear is that climate change is pushing people to the extremes, and we get distracted in petty wars over nothing while we don’t treat the underlying problem at its core. Humans in desperate situations do idiotic things.
Vile. Disgusting.
I feel so bad for the minority of people there. But the majority apparently, instead of seeing “fuck yeah, Kamala, she could be beacon of democracy and progress in the world” decided “nope, orange man hate people me hate so FUCK YOU OTHER PEOPLE”.
It’s so sad.
Honestly terrified for what this will mean for marginalized groups in America. I’m worried that we tend to copy American trends, so what will this mean for our future?
