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Highest stakes election ever?

Page 2 of 5

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Keiran Keane (U1734)
posted 11 minutes ago
comment by Pranky 23/24 LFC Draft Champ (U22336)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by Keiran Keane (U1734)
posted 6 minutes ago
Pranks, are you able to admit who you would prefer to win yet? Everyone else is able to, apart from yourself. Has that changed yet?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My word you’re boring, I told you multiple times I think both candidates are shiiiiit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So you think Harris would be equally as bad as Trump for America and the world, what are your reasons for thinking this?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
No I don’t as she would have a better team around her.
Still a shiiiit candidate but with support could do some good for the US.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

Totally on the same page as your OP, RR ... altho I'd maybe summarise the situation in the US more succinctly as an utter sh1tshow.

The level of "debate" from Trump's side throughout the campaign has been utterly laughable, propped up by the right wing, conservative media continuing as enablers in chief as they resolutely "sanewash" or turn a blind eye to his 24/7 stream of drivel. Well it would be laughable, if the consequences weren't potentially so serious, for all of us. Really can't understand the mentality of anyone on this side of the pond who thinks it doesn't really affect us ... or anyone who says they're equally poor candidates. FWIW, I don't think Harris is a particularly strong candidate, but she's night and day better than the alternative, on any measure you care to use.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Pranky 23/24 LFC Draft Champ (U22336)
posted 7 minutes ago
comment by Keiran Keane (U1734)
posted 11 minutes ago
comment by Pranky 23/24 LFC Draft Champ (U22336)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by Keiran Keane (U1734)
posted 6 minutes ago
Pranks, are you able to admit who you would prefer to win yet? Everyone else is able to, apart from yourself. Has that changed yet?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My word you’re boring, I told you multiple times I think both candidates are shiiiiit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So you think Harris would be equally as bad as Trump for America and the world, what are your reasons for thinking this?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
No I don’t as she would have a better team around her.
Still a shiiiit candidate but with support could do some good for the US.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I shall take this as your answer then. You think Trump would be worse.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
My only hope, if he gets in again, is that he will be too busy lining his pockets to care much about the whole facism thing. He doesn't care about anything other than enrichment and keeping himself out of jail... He'd flip on abortion, flop on climate etc if the right people talk to him at the right time. Once he is in and safe, he's back to his malleable self.

That that is my "hope" is quite an amazing situation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's more dangerous this time is that he's surrounded by zealots and crooks, and the whole Republican party is gone MAGA. In 2016 he inherited a government of Republican insiders, who to a large extent tried to manage him, flatter him, distract him into not making catastrophic decisions at every turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, the guardrails are no longer in place. It's genuinely worrying, but I am having to stay "positive" and hope they just fumble through another 4 years with just the expected greed and bending the laws, rather than out and out military backed facism.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

If they win*

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

The coverage over here is also a disgrace, every add campaign that you see in every add break is the biggest smear campaign you will ever come across.

Its just hate, a lot of hate and a real lack of compassion or information.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by Playmaker (U22780)
posted 10 minutes ago
It's really plain as day that what we're seeing now with our own eyes is how ppl in Germany accepted fascism and allowed it to take power.

I've stolen this from Michael Rosen but it's bang on.

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.
Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will promise to restore your honour,
make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, promise to clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you…

It doesn’t walk in saying,
“Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

Unfortunately the solution is often quite dark and destructive. It usually plays out through persecution, violence, conflict, death, resistance, and finally a purge and rebalance. At which point everyone looks round and wonders how the fook it was ever allowed to happen.

It's the usual cycle of fascism to liberal democracy to fascism and so on. My only fear is that in that unlike the past, in the modern world with social media and the level of disinformation once fascism succeeds this time it will never be beaten ideologically and liberal democracy may never regain a footing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Well put, playmaker. Only thing I'd caveat is that we didn't have lots of cycles of liberal democracy before fascism in the first half of the twentieth century. Liberal democracy was pretty new and limited before WWII. Looking back, it was easy to be complacent, think of fascism as an aberration, and a lesson we had collectively learned, as history marched in a straight and progressive line toward enlightenment. Now it seems to me more convincing to see authoritarian government as a default state that we regress to whenever we sufficiently let our guard down.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Good point RR, in my mind I was thinking since the second world war. The thing is since then it's happened in faraway places and hasn't really touched us. So we've almost developed this ignorance about it thinking "of course fascism can rise in Asia or Africa, but it can't/won't happen again here."

And that is also a big part of the reason why many many ppl still don't see the danger or are even unwilling to accept that this orange lunatic is a barefaced fraud who will seize power and suppress all the institutions of democracy.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 20 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
My only hope, if he gets in again, is that he will be too busy lining his pockets to care much about the whole facism thing. He doesn't care about anything other than enrichment and keeping himself out of jail... He'd flip on abortion, flop on climate etc if the right people talk to him at the right time. Once he is in and safe, he's back to his malleable self.

That that is my "hope" is quite an amazing situation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's more dangerous this time is that he's surrounded by zealots and crooks, and the whole Republican party is gone MAGA. In 2016 he inherited a government of Republican insiders, who to a large extent tried to manage him, flatter him, distract him into not making catastrophic decisions at every turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This. Yep, all bets are off if he gets in this time. The Republican party no longer exists, just the insane MAGA cult of Donald Trump, the ultimate charlatan. It's really quite extraordinary how that's been allowed to play out, by senior politicians who haven't had the balls to stand up to his nonsense ... even after he incited a fecking insurrection!

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

Posted this on the other thread but meant to put it here

But they’re eating the cats and dogs.

How can people believe and buy into rhetoric like the above? It genuinely hurts my brain.

I think the oompah loompah will win but hope I’m wrong. Talking to some folk over here and they say oh I’d vote trump because he’s amusing.

Amusing! He’s fooking deranged and dangerous.

When I ask about things like foreign policy, immigration stance etc I get the answer ah sure it doesn’t concern us.

It’s the POTUS, the voting outcome will have global ramifications

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 13 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
My only hope, if he gets in again, is that he will be too busy lining his pockets to care much about the whole facism thing. He doesn't care about anything other than enrichment and keeping himself out of jail... He'd flip on abortion, flop on climate etc if the right people talk to him at the right time. Once he is in and safe, he's back to his malleable self.

That that is my "hope" is quite an amazing situation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's more dangerous this time is that he's surrounded by zealots and crooks, and the whole Republican party is gone MAGA. In 2016 he inherited a government of Republican insiders, who to a large extent tried to manage him, flatter him, distract him into not making catastrophic decisions at every turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, the guardrails are no longer in place. It's genuinely worrying, but I am having to stay "positive" and hope they just fumble through another 4 years with just the expected greed and bending the laws, rather than out and out military backed facism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately 'Project 2025' isn't just about industrial-scale grifting next time around, if given the opportunity ... it's about changing the political landscape by whatever means required so that MAGA stay in power indefinitely. A dictatorship, if you will, with Trump as President for life, presumably followed by future generations of his family. I genuinely think that if the Dems don't win this time, they might never have an opportunity to win again.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.

comment by Busby (U19985)

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

Bookies still have Trump as favourite, though they may be hedging it as more will be piled on him.

I think they are the worst set of candidates I've ever seen. Imagine going from Obama to these pair?

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 25 seconds ago
comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah you could basically use Brexit as a template to target the same people for voting for Trump. People keep forgetting that the majority of people in the UK are stupid as well. In elections it doesn't matter how stupid a majority is, all that matters is that it is a majority.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

How can people believe and buy into rhetoric like the above? It genuinely hurts my brain.
-----------------------------
I've become genuinely curious over the past few months as to whether the influential people who push this kind of stuff are genuinely stupid themselves and are just influencing a wave of fellow stupid people, or are actually reasonably smart in a devious kind of way. Used to think it was the latter but I'm not so sure with this new wave of right wing populism.

Take Elon Musk as an example - he has spent the last few months constantly on twitter posting/re-tweeting some of the most mind-bogglingly dumb shīt you've ever seen. The other day he showed a graph of how mentions of the word 'racism' have increased in academic literature since the year 1900, and used this as evidence of a 'woke mind virus' that is ruining the world.

Is he actually that dumb? Or is he just really good at tapping into the minds of dumb people?

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Dave The Jackal (U22179)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 13 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
My only hope, if he gets in again, is that he will be too busy lining his pockets to care much about the whole facism thing. He doesn't care about anything other than enrichment and keeping himself out of jail... He'd flip on abortion, flop on climate etc if the right people talk to him at the right time. Once he is in and safe, he's back to his malleable self.

That that is my "hope" is quite an amazing situation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's more dangerous this time is that he's surrounded by zealots and crooks, and the whole Republican party is gone MAGA. In 2016 he inherited a government of Republican insiders, who to a large extent tried to manage him, flatter him, distract him into not making catastrophic decisions at every turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, the guardrails are no longer in place. It's genuinely worrying, but I am having to stay "positive" and hope they just fumble through another 4 years with just the expected greed and bending the laws, rather than out and out military backed facism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately 'Project 2025' isn't just about industrial-scale grifting next time around, if given the opportunity ... it's about changing the political landscape by whatever means required so that MAGA stay in power indefinitely. A dictatorship, if you will, with Trump as President for life, presumably followed by future generations of his family. I genuinely think that if the Dems don't win this time, they might never have an opportunity to win again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The only challenge left will be congress and the senate. I'm fairly confident one of two things will happen. Either the Republicans in the chamber will help Trump to curtail all its powers. Or he'll sell it to the nation that they're all enemies of the state and get rid of them altogether.

If he does the former it's all over. If he does the latter I think it's the one thing that will cause outright civil war. And then fck knows what happens.

comment by Busby (U19985)

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see where we are in 12 months before praising Labour. Working for an SME (and consulting with many) they've stung us pretty badly.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Dave The Jackal (U22179)
posted 16 seconds ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 13 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 8 minutes ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
My only hope, if he gets in again, is that he will be too busy lining his pockets to care much about the whole facism thing. He doesn't care about anything other than enrichment and keeping himself out of jail... He'd flip on abortion, flop on climate etc if the right people talk to him at the right time. Once he is in and safe, he's back to his malleable self.

That that is my "hope" is quite an amazing situation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's more dangerous this time is that he's surrounded by zealots and crooks, and the whole Republican party is gone MAGA. In 2016 he inherited a government of Republican insiders, who to a large extent tried to manage him, flatter him, distract him into not making catastrophic decisions at every turn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, the guardrails are no longer in place. It's genuinely worrying, but I am having to stay "positive" and hope they just fumble through another 4 years with just the expected greed and bending the laws, rather than out and out military backed facism.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately 'Project 2025' isn't just about industrial-scale grifting next time around, if given the opportunity ... it's about changing the political landscape by whatever means required so that MAGA stay in power indefinitely. A dictatorship, if you will, with Trump as President for life, presumably followed by future generations of his family. I genuinely think that if the Dems don't win this time, they might never have an opportunity to win again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I, perhaps more out of blind hope than anything else, tell myself that the Project 2025 thing is a bit of a democratic boogeyman. I know that it is a real plan and the people behind it sometimes have Trump's ear... But he doesn't overly care about a lot of their goals, so might wave most of it away depending on the way the wind is blowing on any given day (of course, they can convince him to do certain things by offering things he does care about).

A slight saving grace with Trump is that he is so very stupid, but also petty and belligerent... This can, of course, be a terrible mix, but it also makes him unpredictable to deal with, even with smart and ruthless people.

I'm not being purposefully naive though and am genuinely concerned about the world at this point... I can't even imagine the anxiety right now, stateside, of women, parents, immigrants, lgbtq and even just people who have openly supported the democrats. Most everyone there has a target on their back, including a lot of MAGAs.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see where we are in 12 months before praising Labour. Working for an SME (and consulting with many) they've stung us pretty badly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have any problem with people voting tory... But it was a clown show for at least 8 years of those 14. Nothing to do with Labour.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by -bloodred- (U1222)
posted 3 minutes ago
How can people believe and buy into rhetoric like the above? It genuinely hurts my brain.
-----------------------------
I've become genuinely curious over the past few months as to whether the influential people who push this kind of stuff are genuinely stupid themselves and are just influencing a wave of fellow stupid people, or are actually reasonably smart in a devious kind of way. Used to think it was the latter but I'm not so sure with this new wave of right wing populism.

Take Elon Musk as an example - he has spent the last few months constantly on twitter posting/re-tweeting some of the most mind-bogglingly dumb shīt you've ever seen. The other day he showed a graph of how mentions of the word 'racism' have increased in academic literature since the year 1900, and used this as evidence of a 'woke mind virus' that is ruining the world.

Is he actually that dumb? Or is he just really good at tapping into the minds of dumb people?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don’t think he’s that dumb even if he is a tw at. There are however a multitude of dumb folk out there

comment by Busby (U19985)

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 11 seconds ago
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see where we are in 12 months before praising Labour. Working for an SME (and consulting with many) they've stung us pretty badly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have any problem with people voting tory... But it was a clown show for at least 8 years of those 14. Nothing to do with Labour.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I cant disagree there. What it's done though is move Tories further to the right as Starmer appears to be shifting more to the left than anticipated.

Which means we'll likely be in a similar position to the States come the next election.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 2 minutes ago
comment by Busby (U19985)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Ji Sung Park's Cousin (U2958)
posted 3 minutes ago
comment by Jake Moon (U11781)
posted 10 minutes ago
who europeans would vote for in america’s presidential election, by country:

https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1853551571377738072?s=46&t=bPTrpdgNggCdz9igvhmVyw

Look how shorter the list gets for Harris once you get towards the former communist countries.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you take any individual country from that list and blast their people with propaganda and misinformation specific to that country, the data would probably look a lot different.

We've just come out of 14 years of Tory clownship, plus Brexit... I don't trust our public any more than I would the people of the states. Just as many imbeciles.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see where we are in 12 months before praising Labour. Working for an SME (and consulting with many) they've stung us pretty badly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have any problem with people voting tory... But it was a clown show for at least 8 years of those 14. Nothing to do with Labour.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Given that the political, macroeconomic and social unmitigated disaster that was the austerity project started in year one of fourteen, it’s fair to say that it was a clown show of fourteen of fourteen years.

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

Not sure why anyone would have RR filtered. I've asked OP of that particular live thread why

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them submitted ballots, totaling 158,427,986 votes.

Roughly 81 million eligible voters did not cast a ballot

posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago

comment by Playmaker (U22780)
posted 1 minute ago
Approximately 240 million people were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election and roughly 66.1% of them submitted ballots, totaling 158,427,986 votes.

Roughly 81 million eligible voters did not cast a ballot
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I would think probably a similar ratio in our last election

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