Summary
Anti-Trump Americans, especially on the left, are showing a more subdued response to Trump’s 2024 reelection compared to the activism of 2016.
Exhaustion, disillusionment with repeated setbacks, and negative media coverage have led many to disengage from politics or shift focus to personal priorities.
Activist groups, like Women’s March, are planning protests but acknowledge lower enthusiasm and more localized efforts.
Experts suggest this “tune-out” may be a coping mechanism, with some hoping new, non-political participants will lead change.
Many feel drained but believe activism will eventually regain momentum.
What’s wrong, people don’t want a 24/7 news cycle of all the stupid shit Dumpster will say and do!?
You mean our media system pushing to have the Orange One elected to increase their ratings could backfire!?
I could only hope people stop paying attention and paying money for the corporate spun garbage we call news.
What are we supposed to do? We tried, this one had no ambiguity. If this is what people want, so be it. Gonna suck though so I’m spending my efforts on bracing myself for what’s to come.
We tried, this one had no ambiguity.
I disagree. There is ambiguity to be found. The ambiguity cannot be found in why Trump won. He has a cult and inflation is a thing. But there exists ambiguity in why Harris lost. I do not believe that the notion that Americans are so hell-bent on fascism that they overwhelmingly support Trump and everything he does. I think Harris lost because she moved to the right and failed to meaningfully differentiate herself from an administration that inspired so much apathy that Biden himself said that he didn’t care all that much if he lost.
I’m 41. I’ve been involved with activism since I was 20. Things keep getting worse. Time to try something different.
I’m also trying to shift my views to be more like Carlin, where I stop caring about what happens.
Carlin cared a great deal. His whole career was about bringing things to light. He was just cynical and vulgar in his presentation.
“Scratch any cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”
Why did you scratch me, bro?
I like that
It’s a Carlin quote. Cynics are cynics because they cared and society let them down.
What things have been getting worse?
The price of damn near everything.
Except, of course, the lowest amount you can legally pay someone for an hour of their labor. That stayed steady as a rock.
All things
Lots of down votes, but no actual responses.
He’s not even fucking in office yet. I think what’s really irritating the media is we aren’t all resubscribing to papers again. Sorry guys, this ain’t 2016 and we’re not going to handle it the same way we handled 2016.
Personally, I’m buying electronics and appliances now so that I don’t have to face his dumb tariff price hikes, and I’ve renewed my passport.
It’s honestly the Democrats that make me feel drained. They’re the party that ostensibly represents my political leanings, but they’ve spent the last year funding a genocide, cozying up to Republicans like Liz Cheney, and abandoning the economic populism that got them elected in 2020. If they were at least winning, ignoring progressives like me would be justified, but nope! They made an 80-year-old man their candidate without holding a primary, replaced him at the last minute with a candidate who didn’t even make it to Iowa in 2020, and the walked into their largest electoral defeat since…what, 2004?
Trump is vile, and petty, and cruel, and I’m genuinely scared of the damage he’ll do to our country, but that’s what I expect from him. The fact that the only opposition party to the fascists is this group of cowardly, selfish failures is so demoralizing. If we can’t wrestle control of the party away from these incompetent geriatrics, I honestly don’t know if there’s any hope for American democracy.
Yeah, this exactly. I voted for Harris and I’m furious at the party for being allergic to victory. By becoming so centrist they are completely crippled. They’ve done absolutely jack shit for the average man and just sweep it under the rug. The Democratic party completely ignores us. It is utterly stagnant, with status-quo nominees like Hillary, Biden and Harris. I think without true progressives nominated in the future, dems will keep losing, and it doesn’t even feel like they care.
This is exactly what I think. I really want to be positive, but the more time passes, the more I’m convinced that the message they’ll take from this isn’t, “we need to return to our New Deal roots,” but, “we got too into, ‘identity politics,’ let’s not talk about trans issues anymore.”
I think the final test as to whether there is any hope left for the party is if they select Rahm Emanuel for the DNC chair. If they do, then progressives just need to move on; this party has nothing left to offer, even as a method of countering fascism. We’d be better off trying our luck with third parties than these perennial losers.
This is exactly what I think. I really want to be positive, but the more time passes, the more I’m convinced that the message they’ll take from this isn’t, “we need to return to our New Deal roots,” but, “we got too into, ‘identity politics,’ let’s not talk about trans issues anymore.”
And the galling thing about that is that centrists used Republican “boys in girls’ sports” hatred in their own campaign ads. They talked about trans people. They made it clear that they could not expect Democrats’ support.
And honestly the worst part is: where is the dem leadership right now? Where has Harris been since her defeat? People should have accepted blame for this historic loss and stepped down, but instead - nothing. What the hell is this?
I wish I had a party that even paid lip service to representing my political leanings, but left-libertarians apparently don’t exist in the US. I voted for my district’s Democrat as that was the closest I was going to get this time around, but even that was a protest vote as I am in a conservative bastion. Even if the Democrat party is wrested away from the corporatists, it will be temporary and the problem will repeat
We need to pass graduated voting nation-wide so we can get some viable alternative parties in here. I would love to have viable candidates ranging the gamut from conservative to communist, as that promotes a healthy political ecosystem instead of the current monoculture two party system. Makes a blight like the Christian nationalists or the Trump cult or the “leftist” oligarchs capable of infecting large swaths of the system.
The fuck am I supposed to do? I’ve been organizing, I’ve been to protests, I’ve done everything I can to head this disaster off. I’ll be fine throughout this and I’ll do what I can to take care of the innocents who’re going to suffer, but what the fuck else is there to do? Clearly people either want this, or don’t care enough to try and stop it. So, fuck it. They can reap what they sow. Maybe this will wake some of them up, or they’ll all fucking die of the next big pandemic and then they won’t be a problem any more.
It’s not even about the general populace and what they want. We the people do all the groundwork for progressive politics and in the end it’s our own party that ignores us and does us in. That’s why I’m demoralized personally. I don’t think I’ll ever get fired up again for this party unless there’s radical shift to the left.
Yep. Right there with you, dude. I did my part for over 15 years. The second I heard he won, I started locking down everything I use and run online.
Come January, a lot of us are going dark, homies. Stay safe, lock up those banned books.
History is about to repeat its boots all over your faces.
Support mutual aid networks locally and keep moving forward. The only way we can solve this is by local support. National politics have become a distraction. Fuckit, help your neighbors and conserve your energy for those you can actually help.
Yep the best thing we can do is make our individual communities as self sufficient, independent, and secure as possible. By doing exactly what you said which eventually might create second power
It’s ok to take a break to recharge for a bit, but know that the right has been pushing on this for decades, and they only win when we stop pushing to protect people who are vulnerable and in need.
That kind of thinking only works when enough people think protecting others is a worthy cause. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case anymore.
People are uninformed. The reality is that they vote incumbents when they feel good and for change when they feel bad. And, in the end, winning the voter base means being the best at propaganda and swaying how people are feeling. Unfortunately, even if you want to do the right thing, you still have to win people over with propaganda. Pushing for good policy that’s too complicated for the average person with the attention span of a small rodent to follow doesn’t work. Its why Trump always gets crushed in the debates and still wins elections. People literally think they’re voting for the economy which is a net positive for everyone and that Trump doesn’t mean the hateful stuff he says. That’s how good their propaganda game is.
Yup
i see the new administration as a threat to governance of all kinds in the US so maybe it would be useful to preserve the work of those institutions if they are shutdown or damaged so that they can be rebooted when the administration changes
just an idea, i totally agree with your point of view
I’m sick of hearing about the asshole, and sick of hearing about him getting “slammed” by some celebrity or politician, and sick of hearing how he’s a huge threat so we need to send a sternly worded letter.
Getting upset over this is so draining, especially because there’s nothing we can do to stop him in the short term.
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Getting upset over this is so draining, especially because there’s nothing we can do to stop him in the short term.
For me personally, I think the most draining part of the whole thing is that nothing was done to stop him in the 4 years he was out of power.
1,461 days, all of them spent listening to people talk about how horrible it would be if he got back into power, and yet absolutely fucking nothing was done in that time to prevent the horrible things we were warned about from happening.Exactly. Breathless emails and texts talking about how we have to defend democracy from fascism (by giving them money) but no real action on their part for four goddamn years.
Scratch a liberal and they abandon you to the fascists I guess
How dense are you? People are just tired from decades worth of having corporations and wealthy elites push the middle and lower class into the ground.
Me too. Rolling over won’t help
Until Democrats stop being Republican-lite, they’ll never learn. And this is what they get. Apathy and disillusionment.
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Pretty much the majority of Americans.
I’m going to go ahead and respect democracy. Trump won fair and square. He should be able to implement his policies because that’s what the majority wants.
Wants? The people who voted for him don’t even know what they want. Didn’t know what tariffs were. Say they are constitutionalist but then say they want a Christian nation. Say they want to get rid of pedos then make one the president and a lot into Congress.
The people want to survive and be able to afford to live, and some of them got duped into thinking a parasite would do that for them.
The rest are just simply racist or hate gays and trans and will vote a monster in to hurt them, even to the detriment of themselves and others.
Democracy just voted to end democracy. It doesn’t work when the public is uninformed.
I’m afraid that his policies will be unethical, illegal, and un-American with no checks and balances. I can’t do anything about it now though; I already voted as blue as I could.
So yeah… I’m ready to say fuck it for the next term and hope that he gets stuck on things that slow him down (like laws already on the books that can’t be easily ignored, and pressure from other world leaders)
Im not sure un American really qualifies anymore. This is America apparently.
