Election Season 2024 (United States)

[Sofia Grace]

The only qualification required for any of these people has been loyalty. That's it. 

[Oniya]

The only qualification required for any of these people has been loyalty. That's it.

I was looking at the list and thinking 'It's "The Billionaire Boys Club and Linda."'

[TheGlyphstone]

He has the intellectual depth of a puddle and the emotional maturity of a toddler. He doesn't need a hidden agenda, he just chooses for loyalty as was said. It's a fortuitous correlation that the only people willing to be loyal to him are also incompetent maniacs that will destroy their departments.

[Beorning]

OK, who the heck are Linda McMahon and Dr. Oz?

[Beguile's Mistress]

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration as Attorney General.

[Caela]

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration as Attorney General.

Good! 

Now, can the rest of those with SA allegations also withdraw.

[TheGlyphstone]

OK, who the heck are Linda McMahon and Dr. Oz?

McMahon is a business mogul, wife to the owner of the WWE professional wrestling franchise. Oz is a celebrity doctor who peddles quack fringe pseudo science.

[Oniya]

OK, who the heck are Linda McMahon and Dr. Oz?

Linda McMahon is the former CEO of the WWE.  She actually did hold the top role for a while, when Vince was out on sexual exploitation accusations - which are coming back out now.

Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz, also known as Dr. Oz, is an American television presenter, physician, author, professor emeritus of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, and former political candidate.  (He ran for one of Pennsylvania's seats, opposite John Fetterman, and notoriously complained about not being able to get tequila and a crudite tray at the grocery.  You have to go to a licensed establishment to get distilled alcohol here, and we call it a veggie tray.)

[Samael]

Looking over the pond to the US, I start to grow more and more concerned for my friends in the US.

Having the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court is a terrifying picture, especially considering how Trump made clear what he wants to do when he becomes president officially again in 2 months.

All the signs leaning towards turning the US Government into an autocratic hellhole filled with people who openly said how they want to hurt and abuse the most vulnerable citizens is seriously horrifying.

Agenda 2025 seems to be the name of the game, and Gilead the end goal.

[Beguile's Mistress]

The GOP also wants to do all they can to make anyone NOT a white, Anglo, male a vulnerable species so they can violate and abuse them with impunity.

[midnightblack]

The GOP also wants to do all they can to make anyone NOT a white, Anglo, male a vulnerable species so they can violate and abuse them with impunity.

Considering that the other side in a political system (a democratic one, mind you; and we're talking about a representative side, not a fringe group of weirdos) is the enemy of humanity incarnate and the servant of a nameless obscenity is not a very healthy world-view. In my country we've been muddling with our poor attempt at democracy for a bit over three decades now and every single election has taken place under the threat that "if the other guys win we are all going to die!". Guess what. Regardless of who won, nothing much ever happened and history just followed its course, more or less for the better. There are plenty of abysmal characters in the republican party or at least gravitating around it. The same is true for the democrats. And there are also plenty of reasonable people on both sides. They might disagree with each other on what needs to be done, but having the freedom to disagree on matters is the whole point of a democracy. I think it's rather difficult for catastrophes to originate internally at this moment in history. For better or worse, at least the political systems on both sides of the North Atlantic are fairly stable. I'll be surprised if Trump and his circus panoply of nominees will manage anything substantial. Destructive or otherwise. You can always have external catastrophes of course, but you can't necessarily blame the government for those.

[JadesJubilee]

Considering that the other side in a political system (a democratic one, mind you; and we're talking about a representative side, not a fringe group of weirdos) is the enemy of humanity incarnate and the servant of a nameless obscenity is not a very healthy world-view. In my country we've been muddling with our poor attempt at democracy for a bit over three decades now and every single election has taken place under the threat that "if the other guys win we are all going to die!". Guess what. Regardless of who won, nothing much ever happened and history just followed its course, more or less for the better. There are plenty of abysmal characters in the republican party or at least gravitating around it. The same is true for the democrats. And there are also plenty of reasonable people on both sides. They might disagree with each other on what needs to be done, but having the freedom to disagree on matters is the whole point of a democracy. I think it's rather difficult for catastrophes to originate internally at this moment in history. For better or worse, at least the political systems on both sides of the North Atlantic are fairly stable. I'll be surprised if Trump and his circus panoply of nominees will manage anything substantial. Destructive or otherwise. You can always have external catastrophes of course, but you can't necessarily blame the government for those.

I wish I could share the... Optimism? Almost? But realistically, we in America are still feeling the effects of Trump's first presidency. The way he handled Covid was completely irresponsible (though as someone who was permanently disabled by the disease during Biden's presidency, I don't think he was much better) and the deregulation of the food industry has lead to many people getting sick, or worse, from contaminated food.

And on the note of disability, if he guts Medicare and Medicaid like he plans, thousands of disabled, poor, and elderly Americans will lose their health insurance. Getting good treatment can already be hard and expensive, as I know from personal experience.

The GOP is the conservative party. Many members of it who are otherwise considered quite centrist are openly anti-transgender (see, the reaction to Sarah McBride, our first openly transgender congresswoman) and a lot have regressive views on women, people of color, and LGBT folks in general. While I agree that it's likely nothing will happen to the foundations of our democracy, these people are going to use their turn in power to hurt a lot of vulnerable members of our society. I also agree that the individual members of the party, politician or not, are not complete monsters. They're human like the rest of us, but they're humans with beliefs that will hurt people.

My personal prediction for the future, though, is that Trump is either going to keel over or get deemed incompetent. And while it may be optimistic, I think that the Republican party is going to splinter when that happens. He's a very powerful personality, and I honestly don't think there's anyone on our political stage who I would consider his equal in that regard.

[Oniya]

My personal prediction for the future, though, is that Trump is either going to keel over or get deemed incompetent. And while it may be optimistic, I think that the Republican party is going to splinter when that happens. He's a very powerful personality, and I honestly don't think there's anyone on our political stage who I would consider his equal in that regard.

Unfortunately, while his first VP was a calming influence (witness Pence's refusal to cooperate with the Jan 6 fiasco), Vance seems to have leaped full-face into the manure truck band-wagon.

[Beorning]

Considering that the other side in a political system (a democratic one, mind you; and we're talking about a representative side, not a fringe group of weirdos) is the enemy of humanity incarnate and the servant of a nameless obscenity is not a very healthy world-view. In my country we've been muddling with our poor attempt at democracy for a bit over three decades now and every single election has taken place under the threat that "if the other guys win we are all going to die!".

I've said it before and I'll say it again: in democracies, we cannot afford that kind of optimism. It doesn't always work out.

Once again: back here, in 2015, we had people saying the same thing in regards to PiS coming to power. Now, after 8 years of PiS government and 2 terms by Andrzej Duda, the damage these people did is quite substantial. It's been a year since PiS was voted out of power and the new government is still trying to untangle the mess PiS created within our legal system. Also, the near-total ban on abortion PiS introduced? It's still there. Turns out, it's easier to introduce a ban like that, then remove it.

My experience says there *is* a reason to fear Trump's second term. From what I know of American politics, there really might not be that many "reasonable people" left within Republican party. And Trump does have tools to cause long-term damage. What if withdraws US support for Ukraine? Or gives Israel even greater carte blanche when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank? And that's talking only about US foreign relations.

It's true, demonizing political opponents is not healthy. But so is engaging in perpetual "both-sidism" and pretending that there everything will be alright, no matter who's in power. It's just not true.

Remember that Lukashenka came to power by the way of elections. So did Orban.

[midnightblack]

I wish I could share the... Optimism?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: in democracies, we cannot afford that kind of optimism.

You both make very good points in your messages and I don't necessarily disagree with you. For instance, and to touch on some matters in JadesJubilee's post, some of the critical public services here like education and healthcare have also been declining steadily over the decades, making us one of Europe's leading countries in terms of illiteracy and causing needless suffering and death through several sectors of society. And this has happened regardless of who was elected in office. Yet, when you look at things in a broader perspective, the current of history has somehow managed to drag the country along in the right direction, at least so far. There's no denying the difficult reality from an individual's perspective, but this doesn't necessarily scale trivially when you look at the bigger picture of where a nation is heading. I find it odd that you both used the term optimism. I see myself as terminally cynical. I've voted out of political conviction in my younger years, then out of the desire to see the "lesser evil" in office, and finally I ended up not really caring after I realized that the system more or less does its own thing anyway irrespective of the people that transiently hold one office or another.

Even as I'm writing this my country is going through a shock, as we've just had the first round of presidential elections and the mainstream candidates have all been swept away pretty much out of nowhere. Both options for the second round are now anti-establishment, both are in my view wholly inadequate for office and potentially quite dangerous each in different ways, but then again every possible outcome this time around was a complete disaster when looked at face value. I'm not sure that this necessarily makes me an optimist, but I do like to see that the glass is half full. Sometimes you need such a shock for the chance of a change for the better, otherwise you face the already known certainty of stagnation followed by degradation. Aside of catastrophes that are outside of anyone's power and hence there's no real reason to be concerned with them, I remain confident that things will settle down accordingly in the not-too-distant future, even if we ourselves are in for a bumpier ride.