When you hate your friend’s new friend

Trump isn't a new friend he's more of an abusive ex who gaslighting you into taking him back

@AmericanButterfly That is, unfortunately, the best way to put it. I'm seriously worried we won't weather the abuse this time.

@AmericanButterfly

I'm not even sure we took him back.

Almost everyone I know (and I know a looot of people, moved around a lot) voted against him. It seems like a 20:1 ratio of people who voted against him vs for him.

Yet, somehow, he "won", and I know the Russians were pouring nearly everything they had into election interference... and that was just kind of ignored?

@LilithRose i'm from a red state, South Dakota so i knew the 3 electoral collage votes were going to him but I still voted for Kamala Harris, along with 34.2% of the SD population

also 1.7% South Dakotan voted for Robert Kennedy like dudes he dropped out

@LilithRose so on the things like election interference, the in last few weeks especially I'd noticed a massive increase in pro-trump comments and dis-information in comment sections of a lot of the youtubers that I watch and such. A lot of these channels are very openly left, as are their fanbases, and while they'll occasionally get troll comments, the comment sections tend to be friendly and somewhat wholesome at times. The videos I'd noticed the comments being inundated with the pro-trump stuff were all content to do with their thoughts on the US election and trump. It's almost like there are bots set to scan for content mention trump in a negative way and signal to chatbots and trolls to come do their thing.

Now, look back across this comment section at how man comments have a down-vote and what they're about. Most comments for these comics don't even get an up-vote, let alone a down-vote... but going back to look at older comics that also mention trump, there's always at least one person there making desparaging remarks in his favour.

Dear the rest of the world,

As a representative of Sister America, I would like to apologize for the racism, sexism, outright cruelty, and ignorance of over seventy-four million of my neighbors. I would like to apologize for the lethargy of more than twenty-eight million of my neighbors who were eligible to vote and didn't. The rest of us care about issues such as human rights and the environment more than our own personal, selfish interests. We've been on this merry-go-round before- but until it directly impacts their lives in a tangible, personal fashion, people don't learn.

Some of us are going to be apologizing for our country for the next four years. It hurts my soul to see more than half my country so deluded as to put him in office again.

@StormyWeather, clever phrasing. While no more than about 30% (roughly) of eligible voters actually voted for Trump, almost 40% chose to not vote at all.

From the saner part of the US, I'm sorry this is coming to pass. We thought we were better than this. We are not all like that fucking guy and his cronies. Gods save us from the mistake we've become.

Did y'all see what happened in Amsterdam the other day? Yeah, a lot of us over here were voting against that...

Trump never should have been on the ballot in the first place after January 6 and taking documents to Maralgo and other thousands of reasons also felonies but no he was allowed to run and he won, and way fewer people voted, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if half if not most of the mail-in votes weren't even counted because people are suspicious, I guess people rather deal with trump again than try someone new who would actually make a decent president but because the richest man in the world is trump fan she lost,

Americans are not SAFE..

@Dessertedway

I fear that directly or indirectly that applies to most of the people in the world. Between his links with the fossil fuel companies and his apparently too friendly relationship with Putin I can see a lot of problems ahead.

I never wanted to renounce my citizenship before this week...

@Gnomon You have the right to renounce it. Are you going to do so, or just saying for the drama?

@rtlstien "You have the right to renounce it."

... wait, you mean, *unconditionally*? As in, no requirement to have or acquire the citizenship of another nation (beforehand, or in a quid-pro-quo exchange)? Oh well, yet another area where the U.S. choose to ignore international practices, I suppose ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness#Renunciation

there's a ton of people here worried about this. There's talk of fraud of course and even some supported evidence but no ones going to do anything about it. Things are just gonna get worse.

@TDR Everyone talks about fraud every election. Trump complained about fraud in 2020 and everyone laughed about it then. I don't see why this time is any different. American politics is just a giant hamster wheel.

@Nova81194 Because in the last election, Trump and his cronies were actually caught trying to change the results of the election to indicate that he won. Combined with the number of Republicans in office around the country who said that they would refuse to certify results that did not give the win to Trump, his landslide victory is highly suspicious.

@ShoggothOnTheRoof

I think the big puzzle to me, as an outsider, is the drastic drop in the vote that has been reported. The Republicans took less votes than they did 4 years ago but the Democrats too a lot less so instead of being millions ahead on the popular vote they were actually behind the Republicans. Given how heated the campaign was and also how many moderate Republicans were purged from that party it does seem strange. Either a lot of Democratic voters stayed home or something fishy occurred in 'losing' or 'redirecting' votes but have heard no evidence of that.

We may never know what has happened as to why the voting profile changed so much. Or possibly something will emerge some years or decades down the line.

@stevep59 Yes, there are a considerable number of questions that should be asked, but they almost certainly won't be because the political party in the position to investigate those questions has a vested interest in not letting the truth come to light.

@ShoggothOnTheRoof

I suspect they will be asked but somewhat more quietly than similar questions asked in 2021 and will be dismissed with a lot less attention played to them which will only increase the division and mistrust between the two groups.

It was so simple this time

a criminal vs a lawyer

how Murica?! HOW?!

@johnlinn Unfortunately, around 30% of the eligible voters are in a cult that's been carefully cultivated by billionaire propaganda networks like Fox News over the last 30-ish years. (Fox News is for some reason allowed to be classified as entertainment, rather than news, so it gets away with the constant lying and violent rhetoric.)

And 34-51% of eligible voters (depending on the year) don't vote in any given election, due to voter suppression and/or disillusionment. (Imagine regularly having that terrible a turnout and still arguing that illegitimate votes are an issue, like the Republicans do.)

@JediMB It wasn't just conservative media sources like FAUX. "Mainstream" news agencies like CNN and the New York Times also pulled hard for Trump, doing a considerable amount to sanewash everything he said during the campaign. When Joe Biden, a man who's had a stutter all his life, misspoke, the media pounced on it and attacked his age and fitness to be president. Yet the moment he dropped out, all talk about age and mental competency issues suddenly vanished, even as Trump would awkwardly shuffle across stages like he was about to fall and ramble incoherently as he forgot what city he was in and who he was talking to or just stand there and awkwardly sway to music for 40 minutes. The news would simply report it as if it were a perfectly normal event and he'd spoken with perfect clarity.

@JediMB
Fox News (weakly) supported Kamala over Trump