Ask Lemmy

I wrote off politics media as hyperbolic and manipulative propaganda in 2016 and I actively distance myself from it, so I've only seen the broad strokes of this current election cycle. Unless you honestly believe you are doing important activism work, give yourself permission to just chill out about politics. If your life is full of problems caused by politics such that it's impossible for you to chill out about politics, you have my sympathy.

Those people have proven themselves to not be worthy of a relationship. Those people should be shunned for being inhumane monsters, not welcomed back into society. They will not change. They hate me and the people I love. I, and I assume many others like me, will never forgive, and never forget. And they will not stop. Even if we win the election, we will not have beaten them. This will only escalate until we beat them back and crush their ideology.

You don’t.

I haven’t talked to parts of my family the same way I used to. We don’t seek each other out anymore, though some people who do still have connections means we will still see each other for big events like thanksgiving or by happenstance.

Some of them probably think i’m an evil satan worshipping communist based on the last time we argued politics, which was either late 2015 or early to mid 2016, and I was your average slightly socialistic leftist who had just learned about Bernie’s policies for the first time.

With the genocide going on, i feel even more isolated, since I have some family who are harris voters who support israel, and aren’t exactly happy about how vocal I am about palestine. Christian liberal zionism hasn’t been something I could talk people out of.

Unless we get a blow-out for either candidate that cannot be challenged, which does not seem likely based on the polls and battle lines, even if we have a Biden-esque victory for Harris, I’m fairly unsure of what will happen next. I personally doubt full on Civil War like in the Garland movie, or the actual civil war, but I would expect all kinds of shitty legal tricks, possible Supreme Court involvement and of course, stochastic and targeted violence, particularly towards immigrants and minorities. In other words, win or lose, I think the US may be in for a bad time. Hopefully I’m working in my assumptions here and it is somewhat more boring.

To better answer your question though, assuming things don’t completely fall apart: the two sides already don’t mix much, which is part of the problem in the first place. We’ll get more govt inaction due to gridlocked congress, probably more defense spending and some states, in the absence of federal legislating, will continue to take a larger role as they have been doing already in the recent era.

So basically more of the same, on a not-great trend line. Something has to give at some point, it’s hard to imagine how you could put the genie back in the bottle now, particularly with overall conditions in the world due to late-stage capitalism and climate change constricting each year.

you can't reason with unreasonable people. it's literally impossible to have a discussion with someone who dismisses everything they don't like to hear as "fake news"

as another person commented, it requires serious deprogramming to get rid of the cult brainwashing, and that is not a simple, quick, or easy process

to answer the question: you have to get to a point where you can burn those bridges and not look back, because toxic relationships destroy mental health

I'm Canadian and because of QAnon and Trump, I don't have a relationship with my sister anymore and I see my dad once every few years out of obligation, but not a day goes by where he doesn't say something mortifyingly racist or fascistic. He watches Fox News from the US every day. They aren't allowed a Canadian channel because they don't meet our legal standards for truthful reporting. American politics always leak into Canada. I hate it.

I cut them out. Don't remember where I heard the quote but there was one that goes something like "Our values are so different that any relationship we could have that doesn't fall to violence cannot be a genuine one." Essentially we care about things that are too different to be able to talk to each other honestly and get along.

If Harris wins, ideally I'll do all the things I've been putting off until after the election. I've been meaning to update the address on my driver's license, the registration on my car, and several other things like that.

I live in a deep red state; I've been paranoid about getting them done, for fear of my voter registration "happening" to get lost in the process. And then I'd finally have an excuse to never visit my hardcore right-wing parents ever again, because my mail won't be showing up at their house anymore.

If Trump wins, I'm not going to update anything. I plan to flee. I don't have the means to leave the country, but I've got friends in blue states who are happy to take me in. That's better than nothing, I guess.

Finding normalcy isn't hard at all. It's fanning the fire of discontent to effect real change that's the difficult part.

You don't.

Had to cut out both my parents and sibling due to their homophobic remarks and my coming to terms with being gay. The politics just furthered the gap, and the last time I spoke with them in early 2023, "It's all about that woke generation" came out of my dad's mouth and that was the end. I don't expect to hear about their passing, and I'm not sure I'll care, despite them seemingly raising me to be a decent person. These are two humans who canvassed for Obama in '08 & '12, so it was sad to see them devolve.

ask again in a week and then again in three months

Considering I usually don't spend a lot of time focusing on the election, just enough to know roughly what's going on, I just do business as usual. I also am not in any groups where I deal with major politics during election past my parents watching the news and such.

The short tl;dr answer is, we don't. For me, it's something I contended with around 2003-2004 when my father stood with most staunch Republicans in advocating for extrajudicial torture of POWs and eventually of civilians including Americans who were mistaken for terrorist agents.

On the other hand, the same event drove me to study moral philosophy so I could explain at length why torture was wrong; he didn't care, which was the gaze into the abyss moment. I saw who my dad was in the dark.

Cut to 2024, and even if Harris wins (and any coup d'etat attempts are put down) we are a long, long way from the scare being over. This has been reviewed at length by CIA and we've heard from experts on civil wars, how they erupt and historically what must happen to prevent social unrest from turning violent to the degree that it overwhelms responders.

The universal panacea is the restoration of power to the people. So that's not to say we can merely preserve elections in the US. Our election system is corrupt and relies on FPTP voting models (one person, one vote) which means third parties cannot be competitive. It also means the two principal parties don't have to be very public-serving to stay in power.

This means Harris not only needs a cooperative Congress (and cooperative state populations) but also the impetus to operate against the interests of her party for the good of the public, and we all struggle to discard the One Ring. She'll also have pressure from establishment politicians, as well as progressives who are not progressive enough to go the distance and let power be diffused to a wider body of persons and interests.

What we can expect are some shorter-term measures, maybe some social safety nets, some relief for people caught in the debt crisis or homeless crisis, even some labor reform so that most of us aren't one crisis away from homelessness and a ruined life. But this will kick the can down the line, and allow the Republican party (whose only trick now is election subversion and procedural coup d'etat when not violent coup d'etat) to persist as it is (and has been at least since Reagan).

Election reform would force the Republican party to reconsider its far-right-wing position and actually offer a platform worth voting for. But so long as we don't get that, they still have viable pathways to seizing power.

All this said, some people will come to their senses as the precarity lets up. Some people will realize they can afford to be less afraid, and that a public-serving society is something worth fighting for. But that is a long, and personal process for each of them, and usually they're pretty repentant when they realize what they had become.

If pro Trump. Your pro fascist. Your activity involved in wanting me and everyone I love to be dead or enslaved.

I cut out all fascists from my life. Always have been. So really nothing really will change for the people I talk too.

Trump could die tomorrow and fascism would still be a rising problem in the US from citizens hunting FEMA responders, to elected officials like Paxton and DeSantis. Unless you consider actual fascism normal there will be no normalcy for decades in the US. Maybe longer if we don't stamp out the fash.

We don't. The hate continues to rise and election season never ends. Well, the never-ending election season might be ending real soon if someone gets their way.