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.
Hard to blame them. It’s exhausting to keep up and fight with the crazy and stupid. Because to them it’s no effort.
Of course people are tuning out. Please keep in mind I am saying the following as a mostly liberal slightly libertarian.
What has passed for liberal culture over the last decade has included an awful lot of outrage over every injustice but not an awful lot of solid action to correct those injustices. The Democratic party has tried to harness that with a lot of identity politics that avoid the real issues. And so the result is you have a ton of people who are always upset but things never get better.
So of course people burn out. Or they get cynical and decide nothing is going to change so it’s not worth getting worked up over. You see a lot of that in this very thread.
To anyone angry at me, downvote me if you want, but if you want change actually fucking do something. Stop consuming short form content like Twitter and TikTok, start consuming long form things that make you think and expose you to different viewpoints. Lex Friedman interviews are a good place to start.
Understand that not everybody who disagrees with you is bad or evil or malicious.
Very few issues are simple. There is rarely an absolute obvious right and wrong. And if somebody adopts a viewpoint you think is wrong, consider that maybe they have reasons they think it’s right and use those reasons to challenge your own beliefs. You may conclude that they are still wrong, but you must be open to the possibility that you might be wrong. If you aren’t open to being wrong, why should they be?
And in the world where nobody can admit they are wrong, nothing productive happens. You just have two sides shouting at each other.Then take a step back from your own personal outrage and think about what is actually important. If you had to choose between ensuring every American has good health care, and ensuring every American has their pronouns recognized, which do you think is more important? So which one are you focusing your advocacy and speech on?
The simple fact is, if you (and I am addressing everybody on all sides here) stop getting riled up over wedge issues and start focusing on the things that The majority of the country can agree on, you might find there’s an awfully big agenda of problems we all agree should be fixed that aren’t even being discussed.
Rules for us not for them
Based take, also great comment
It’s a shit take and here’s why:
At no point in the past 30 years have the Democrats been able to do anything because of the filibuster even when they controlled both houses of Congress. The only thing that’s held us back from moving any policy to even remotely the left is the Republican obstructionism and that’s it plain and simple
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?
All things
are showing a more subdued response
…That’s because, if you’re smart, you keep your responses off public channels. Didn’t anyone learn anything from January 6? Don’t fucking plan in public.
A few of my friends went full-on lockdown mode the second he won and I heard a rumor or two of people buying up hard drives.
I think a few people are going to spend four years offline.
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
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.
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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.
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?
They lost, what do you expect them to do? Foment an insurrection? The American people have spoken and they chose 4 years of a fascist, rapist, lying criminal for a president.
The very very low bar that everyone should have for the Democrats right now is to expect them to be furiously working to win the House and the Senate in the next midterm election. Like balls to the wall, all out. Anything less is completely acquiescing to trumpism.
You want more? They should be strategizing how to flip state legislatures. They should be working on lower levers of government from the bottom up, to fight gerrymandering and electoral shenanigans.
And these are just the normie political stuff. I’m not even going to get into the grassroots organizing, movement building, leadership development, labour organizing etc.
Franklin did tell you, from the very start: “a republic if you can keep it”. Do you want to keep it?
My two Canadian cents, take it or leave it.
I expect them to still show leadership, to try and bring hope to their constituents - and to take responsibility for the election loss.
What kind of leader just up and leaves after a loss like this? Did Bernie just fuck off after everything that happened to him? No, he’s still there, still trying to build support and help younger politicians follow in his footsteps. Harris should be doing that or should resign, not whatever she’s doing now.
Bernie is in a position where he actually does something. Vice President is a bench-warming position with no real power.
Harris isn’t just the vice president, she was the presidential candidate. For fucks sake, she wanted to be the Democrats leader for the next couple of years! She has way more power and influence compared to Bernie.
She has way more power and influence compared to Bernie.
I don’t see how, since she’s a failed candidate and the VP of a lame duck president. You’re not wrong that she could at least make an attempt to have some sort of message of resistance, but even if she did it wouldn’t have any practical effect. Milquetoast centrist is milquetoast.
Doctors are just fake jobs, everyone knows it’s the nurses who do all the work that’s why my surgeon didn’t even show up to my appendectomy.
If everyone treated their job like Democrats do theirs, the world wouldn’t work.
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.
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
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
Temptation? I’ve already gone to “fuck it - burn it to the ground”. There’s not fuck-all I’m going to do at this point that is going to make any difference.
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.
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.
Over a billion dollars raised in a few months for the Harris campaign, and the only people that voted for her were already going to vote blue. Nothing came out of it that helped anyone except the select few who got richer
Fuck every political consultant, and double fuck the ones who thought Cheney was a good idea.
The older I get and the more things I witness like Citizens United happen, the more economically rightward both parties become, the more ruthless the Republicans become to be rewarded by The Base, the more feckless the opposition becomes. The more we vote and Democrats do nothing, or just enough Republicans win to stop them. We vote and the people we vote for suddenly go “oops I was actually a consevative the whole time!” The more time passes the more I realize organized violence or riots are really are more than likely the only things that will actually change anything. The older I get though the more I realize that will never happen.
We’re all far too “civil” and hope voting for the oligarch lite will save us. We’re far too propagandized and are denied the only real changes we need to how we vote to stop this trend. We will have to be pushed until it’s really really really bad for anyone to actually organize a revolt. By then it will be far too late.
Apathy helps the oppressor, but engagement hasn’t shown to have much of a positive affect either. :/
I figured this out in The Tombs in Brooklyn 20 years ago. I was the only white guy and hearing these kids talk about conspiracy theories even back then… 9/11… David Icke… Aliens… etc… I knew then “if stones get thrown, it’ll be from the streets, the hungry, not the over educated upper middle class suburban whites.” And also not at all surprised when people of color went hard right last couple elections bc they haven’t trusted the govt … ever…
Funny enough the conspiracy theories were how I even got interested in politics to begin with! I always had a special hatred for Bush, but after being exposed to the 9/11 conspiracies I fell down a rabbit hole, crossed paths with Infowars for a bit, and finally dug myself back out to “reality” taking a brief tour of “maybe the Democrats actually give a shit about people.”
…yeah. We don’t actually have a party for the working people. Things are going to have to get rough for things to change :(
Well pass on that knowledge then cause I’m just getting starting. We got a world to save and not a whole lot of time to save it. Do whatever you can to put rockets on the elbows of those who are oppressed and misrepresented. The time to realize the monopoly on violence, and why that is was yesterday. It is now time to disobey.
Why do you believe organised violence/riots help? Not that I have good ideas, but I am pretty sure that violence will further cement Trump/GOP rule.
I think if anything the riots/strikes would be better than actual violence. Basically any direct sustained threat to their incomes will force some kind of change… anything short of that and these people will just continue to buy elections and buy the people who run. Threats to life might make things worse, but I think the “ownership class” need to be reminded that they can only fuck around so far until they “find out.” The only meaningful changes in society in relation to the owning classes came from violence.
I fully understand the anger and frustration that leads people to dreaming of and secretly prepping for violent insurrections, but I will absolutely urge them to redirect the energy into something that can actually make a change.
Historically, violent insurrections against the owning class have always been put down by the police or army and not resulting in changes.
The latest meaningful changes which happened in Europe in the late 1800s happened due to workers uniting, striking and supporting each other internationally.
This is rarely taught in schools for some reason, and it’s beginning to be a bit of an issue, since many people today have no clue about the foundation for their current life/working situation.
Even if there was a violent insurrection… then what? What are the demands? What is the desired outcome? If people can organize to figure that out, they might as well put it into a strike demand.
I get the inflation and low-information voter angle, but watching Trump win by such a wide margin was just straight disheartening. At least with Hillary losing, you could complain about the electoral college and how few votes could have flipped it. Trump ran the table this time. His people showed up, and ours didn’t. Democrats are completely lost. They can’t craft a narrative that sticks in people’s heads to save their lives. “Weird” got traction, but “weird” doesn’t do shit for working people, who are struggling with no end in sight.
Plus, I’m waiting to see what happens. Trump is older and angrier, but he was always lazy. I’m hoping he spends all his time golfing and rage-tweeting while accomplishing very little. He’ll cut taxes for rich people and appoint shitty judges for sure, but hopefully he gets bored quickly and focuses on personal grift over wrecking the country long-term.
Trump was semi-ineffectual during his first term because he was an outsider candidate. It was Jeb’s turn to get the RNC nod, but Trump won and spent the first year plus of his four trying to wrestle power from the entrenched Republican establishment and define his own administration and agenda.
Not anymore. We’re still weeks away from Jan 20 and the Republican talking heads are already murmuring about recess cabinet appointments. He’s got the party wrapped around his finger, and loyalists running the RNC, complicit Supreme Court, a House majority leader in his corner, and an affable Senate majority leader.
I hope he gets distracted trying to unfuck the effects of his policies or bogged in culture war distractions, but honestly there’s a lot of damage he can do solo as the chief executive.
My concern is more the host of ghouls following him in with a plan this time around. They’ll destroy our institutions and feast on the corpses to fatten themselves even more. The damage George W Bush did to government organizations by outsourcing to private industry will seem like small potatoes.
Trump doesn’t need to do much because he’s got a whole team behind him to get things done. He’s just some shitty Trojan horse
Yup. He’ll sign anything they put in front of him.
People don’t feel the need to riot or protest or anything, no amount of activism could provide the painful lessons this country needs better than the chaos and ruin the incoming administration will bring
If we survive maybe we can rebuild in the aftermath, but the time to fight is probably over. Country voted for this so why not just sit back and watch the FAFO happen
That’s how I’ve been feeling anyway, probably not the only one
Merrick Garland and the $upreme Court slowly snuffed out any hope for America with a pillow over her nose and mouth
