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I feel like this election is a giant mess. I didn't feel like I was educated enough about my choices. I feel like I was pressured into voting even though I didn't want to. And worst of all I feel like my vote made no impact at all and that I might as well not have voted. People treated this election like it was the "end all" election and it was so black and white that the gray didn't even exist. You couldn't even find someone that didn't strongly take one side or another if you tried. People acted like it was good versus evil. With each side thinking the other is the evil one. And if you voted for one candidate you angered all these people and if you voted for the other, then you angered all of these people. You were damned either way. I think that even though Donald Trump got the most votes, no one won. I think the process became so messy, so drawn out, and so destructive that everybody lost. I feel like everyone just drank a bottle of poison and expected the other person to die. 

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  I know we don't agree on everything, but people seem to be getting sick of left-wing politics lately. They vote for what they vote for because they are sick of seeing next to no results for themselves or their family. That's really what it is about. It's not all racism and bigotry, it's just a lot of people want to see something actually affect them in a positive manner for once; if that means taking a risk, then you can only hope it eventually pays off.

Whether you agree with Trump or not this is why he was elected. Not only did he Beat the Republican party, Democratic party, but he also beat our press which is not always the most honest. I'm not going to sit here and try to defend or explain him but he is our president and out of nowhere you put him down out of nowhere which in a way you are putting down everyone who voted for him. I am sure your elected officials are far from perfect and if you think that the world is going to end because one man was elected president than I'm not really sure what to tell you. No one asked for your opinion but you asked for ours and it will be a shame if I get banned for answering your reply. I am so tired of the corruption and half truths going on in our government and media these days.

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It's not just that he can't answer a policy question. There is a growing number of people that are sick of euphemistic language and are drawn to anyone that ignores it. They don't ever want America to admit it ever did anything wrong or ever apologize for it. They want America to be strong, even if it isn't, but appearing to be strong is enough. Trump is the embodiment of that.

 

Adam Curtis just released a new documentary about how reality no longer matters in society today. It is about how you can make people feel regardless of reality. How we no longer dictate our actions based on reality and instead create a narrative to achieve a goal. You hear people in their 50s talk about how they could leave their front door open when they were kids, even though the 1970s was a high point of crime in the US. You hear them talk about how they don't feel safe now, even though crime in at one of the lowest points since the 1950s. That belief is manufactured and not a creation of their environment. Create a narrative, ignore reality, stick to it no matter what. If dissenting facts are brought up, double down on the narrative.

 

Honestly, I'd recommend all of Adam Curtis' documentaries. He's one of England's national treasures. The Century of the Self, Bitter Lake, The Power of Nightmares, HyperNormalisation... All his movies are great. Made me realize there is no one at the wheel and no one really knows how control anything. As much as they try to, it just #$(@* everything up. 

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I feel like this election is a giant mess. I didn't feel like I was educated enough about my choices. I feel like I was pressured into voting even though I didn't want to. And worst of all I feel like my vote made no impact at all and that I might as well not have voted. People treated this election like it was the "end all" election and it was so black and white that the gray didn't even exist. You couldn't even find someone that didn't strongly take one side or another if you tried. People acted like it was good versus evil. With each side thinking the other is the evil one. And if you voted for one candidate you angered all these people and if you voted for the other, then you angered all of these people. You were damned either way. I think that even though Donald Trump got the most votes, no one won. I think the process became so messy, so drawn out, and so destructive that everybody lost. I feel like everyone just drank a bottle of poison and expected the other person to die. 

Yeah but this polarising 'good vs evil' thing is playing out almost everywhere now. We have it here in Australia, too. 

 

I don't have a solution for it, I really don't. If I did I'd be a rich man, I'm sure.

It's sad, but how would one move away from it? I don't have a solution for it either. To be frank, I have issues discussing politics with people in my own country because there's just a huge gap in values between people. I find it hard to even approach a topic with someone who votes for our far-right party, FRP, because they seem convinced that everyone else is being made a fool of by the left. They live in their own bubble, where they want to throw out smaller parties (which apparently ruins FRP's chances of getting their politics through) and scoff at environmental change. The general consensus amongst them seems to be that the press has a leftist-bias, and that social policies are about enabling people to sit on their ass and get paid by the people who actually work (something we are too naive to see). We live in our bubble, where we feel they are shortsighted and irresponsible, especially in regards to climate change and the less fortunate in society. Maybe they are not, but it's almost impossible to find out. How do you have a debate with someone when they think everything you say is based on a lie you've been fed by the media? I have friends that vote for right-wing parties because they want less taxes, not caring about the long term effects on the economy, or healthcare they currently don't use. But the strangest thing is that when a new issue comes up, they always side with the side they voted for, even though their vote was not cast in that direction for that reason at all.

 

I try to discuss things like these, but the general response is that politics is a waste of time. Some even seem to think it's ridiculous to care about it when we have it as well as we do, which I find rather strange, since there are a lot of people that aren't as well off (either here or elsewhere) and part of the point is also to make sure this state of being doesn't change. I'm generally at a loss as to how one would learn or even accrue interest for these things, as debates mostly get written of as something that has to be hostile (which it does not â€“ we have very civilized discussions here about a variety of topics). I sometimes feel as if we live in a fantasy land over here, and every few years when people look up from their own thing to think about voting, they latch onto some extremely generalized idea of how things should be. "This party was in government for X years and achieved virtually nothing". "This party only deceives their voters".

 

I myself have stopped voting on a case-to-case basis. I find the landscape changes too much over four years. It has become much more important to me to vote for someone I know will approach a new case with the same set of values and ideals as I have. This is also what I find interesting to discuss, which is perhaps why I often return to philosophy when debating things. That is a digression though.

 

It's not just that he can't answer a policy question. There is a growing number of people that are sick of euphemistic language and are drawn to anyone that ignores it. They don't ever want America to admit it ever did anything wrong or ever apologize for it. They want America to be strong, even if it isn't, but appearing to be strong is enough. Trump is the embodiment of that.

 

Adam Curtis just released a new documentary about how reality no longer matters in society today. It is about how you can make people feel regardless of reality. How we no longer dictate our actions based on reality and instead create a narrative to achieve a goal. You hear people in their 50s talk about how they could leave their front door open when they were kids, even though the 1970s was a high point of crime in the US. You hear them talk about how they don't feel safe now, even though crime in at one of the lowest points since the 1950s. That belief is manufactured and not a creation of their environment. Create a narrative, ignore reality, stick to it no matter what. If dissenting facts are brought up, double down on the narrative.

 

Honestly, I'd recommend all of Adam Curtis' documentaries. He's one of England's national treasures. The Century of the Self, Bitter Lake, The Power of Nightmares, HyperNormalisation... All his movies are great. Made me realize there is no one at the wheel and no one really knows how control anything. As much as they try to, it just #$(@* everything up. 

Couldn't agree more, and that is definitely an interesting topic. I will check out some of his documentaries. 

 

I do feel the need to point out that Karl Marx actually theorized about this phenomenon. I know his name often leads to negative associations â€“ which are mostly undeserved, seeing as his theories are actually not ideological, but rather a collection of theories about how society, economics and politics work â€“ but he did offer some interesting insight on a few fronts. He didn't really coin the term himself, but most theoreticians later referred to it as false consciousness. Basically, he wanted to know how workers could vote for a system that didn't benefit them much. What he came up with was the idea that they aren't unconscious, but rather they have a consciousness of how the world works which based on false presumptions. e.g. why would lower class citizens find tax cuts for the rich an appealing policy? Here the answer is simply that they have been convinced it will benefit them somehow, usually through the increase of jobs. They understand what the policy is, and who it affects, but they also think this in turn ends up benefiting them.

 

Now, I won't go around saying what is false consciousness and what is not, because I don't presume to have the ability to determine that on my own. I might even be under the effects of it myself. I do, however, think it is a very interesting phenomenon (which in some ways can be said to find backing in psychology and the idea of selective perception).

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Mono Accipiter's point is a very good one. I think the capacity for fact based, logic thought for the average human brain is met. Information is ever more abundant, technology gets ever more sophisticated, circumstances in life change ever faster and chains of interest/how and why things are done the way they are done gets ever more complicated.

 

Our brains are meant to survive and thrive in a stone age world and hasn't seen much evolution since then. Maybe we need to find a system to better accommodate that fact.

 

Transcendence is an imho very good movie on that topic btw. The narrative pacing has it's weaknesses though.

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I tend to vote more in local elections since the turnout is lower and my vote matters much more. I live in a city where the city/county politicians cannot join political parties, so they actually have to speak about stuff without repeating some party line mumbo jumbo. They also work with each other without all that red team vs blue team nonsense. 

 

Texas was going heavy Trump, so I just wrote in Doctor Doom for president. I was more concerned about the county sheriff and a big bond issue we have since Texas is massively red and voting any other way wouldn't matter in the age of the Electoral College. It's worth noting that Trump did not win a majority of the votes cast, he won the most electoral votes. This is the fifth time it has happened, and the second time in five elections. Democracy is amazing isn't it? 

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I kind of consider myself a political animal in as much as I enjoy watching how politics in all countries and all persuasions is played out.

In the coverage here we saw a lot of voters saying: "the lesser of two evils" when they made their choice. To me this says a lot about the peculiarities of American politics.

 

I guess what I, and a lot of onlookers are bemused about, is a man that has shown himself to be: misogynistic, racist, arrogant, ignorant (on a few topics), politically inexperienced, tax-paying averse (although touted as the saviour of the economy) and speaks in a manner more akin to a salesman than a politician is the lesser of two evils! I guess the stench of elitism and cronyism is too strong on the Clinton side.

 

Whatever the case it can not be denied American politics has a very large bearing on the whole world just because of the position the US holds. 32 billion dollars fell in the stock market yesterday here in Aust., though it all bounced back again this morning. Everybody rightly, regardless of where we live, has a view on this, some of us may convey those views in a more palatable manner than others.

Just as the Brexit took us all for surprise, so to this election. Again though just as the fallout from Brexit quickly dissipated so to will over-the-top reactions about President Trump.

 

So need for any of us to get too dramatic or defensive over this, it is just another historic event we can all tell our grandkids about.

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Yeah, you're right. American politics is very peculiar, although I can't really pinpoint when this "lesser of two evils" started to become a thing over here. I may be off by a decade or two, but it seems to have been within the past 20 years or so. It's to the point now that it seems most Americans are really voting against a specific candidate they don't like rather than voting for a candidate and I'm not convinced the majority understand any of the issues at stake. Of course, the other side of the story here is that the news media turns it into a circus to grab the most eyeballs for advertising revenue and Americans love watching train wrecks in action. :innocent:

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Whether you agree with Trump or not this is why he was elected. Not only did he Beat the Republican party, Democratic party, but he also beat our press which is not always the most honest. I'm not going to sit here and try to defend or explain him but he is our president and out of nowhere you put him down out of nowhere which in a way you are putting down everyone who voted for him. I am sure your elected officials are far from perfect and if you think that the world is going to end because one man was elected president than I'm not really sure what to tell you. No one asked for your opinion but you asked for ours and it will be a shame if I get banned for answering your reply. I am so tired of the corruption and half truths going on in our government and media these days.

Your new president is a billionaire, he went into the election for marketing reasons, and you elected him, he never wanted to be president and do his best for americans (Prove me otherwise. Maybe he'll change and do great things for all the americans and less bad for the rest of the world who knows for now!)...

 

It's your right to vote for whoever you want, and everyone in the USA but WE the world have the right to commentate your choices because your country is the most imperialist country in the modern days in this world and the one that has the biggest impact (especially military and economically Wise because of the dollar...).

 

Also Trump isn't god and we can make fun of him if we want... You can make fun of my president when you want (I am against my current republic, against ultra liberal economy and I am for a global revolution... So I defacto hate him and will vote for someone else next election).

 

By the way, I have americans friends (before you think I have something against the americans as a people in general, no I have something against the foreign politic of your governments since a long time (South America, Iraq, Africa, the list goes on and on and on, but it works for my country also, France, on a smaller scale, I know ;) )

 

But that being said I am not scared of Trump specially or hate him, I just don't like his "image" and the way he thinks (or don't).

 

Have a nice day and a nice week. Now I must leave this topic ^^

Edited by Zorkha
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Him winning was a huge shock for a lot of people over here. Particularly because he won the electoral votes but not the popular. It's a given that the media is biased but everyone can see what kind of person he is from simply watching him speak. I couldn't begin to fathom why anyone actually thinks he would make a good president but, it basically boils down to a lot of misinformation about both candidates so much so that it started to become difficult to decipher what was true. The wide scale demonizing of not just the other candidates but anyone voting for them as well. What EssArrBee said was exactly on point. Facts had almost nothing to do with the result of the election because no one really cared about them.

 

I would not lump everyone that voted for him into one category but it's likely the combination of:

 

People who vote Republican by default

Extremists (The KKK endorsed him)

The white majority who are afraid of the minority taking the country from them (those that buy into fear mongering)

Anyone looking to thumb their nose at the establishment

 

With all of that being said, I personally know people who voted for him as the nominee because they thought it was so funny he was running and "wanted to keep the joke going".

 

Not so funny anymore I imagine.

 

I don't think he will nuke the planet (as some would have you believe) but he is incapable of the job he has now and I don't think he really cares about any of the American people either (This is just a ego boost for him). I think likely he will just continue to be embroiled in controversy at every turn to the point it will just continue the spectacle we saw in the election and nothing as far as policy will likely get done.

Edited by TehKaoZ
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@GrantSP: The effects of Brexit has not yet dissipated. The pound is very low in value compared to our currency, and our economy hasn't exactly been going very well. It was 13 NOK to 1 GBP before the decision, it is now at 10.28 NOK to 1 GBP. 

 

@Greg: I found this video very interesting, would you say it's somewhat accurate about the nature of your voting system? In my country parties can go together to form governments after the general election, so if I vote for a smaller party it will be equally as contributing in keeping the party I like the least from getting to form a government.

 

 

@Zorkha: I usually refrain from saying things like "your president" and "you elected". There are very many Americans, and as you said, some might not feel at home within that category. 

 

I am a bit scared of Trump. Not because I think he will hurt me or anyone in my country much, but because I think he will champion a system (free market capitalism with cuts in social policies) that I see as hurting the ones who already are the most in need of help, as well as increasing economic inequality. Something both I and the IMF (which is a pro-capitalist organization if there is one) agree is a bad thing. 

 

EDIT: Linked the wrong video, whoops.  :blush:

Edited by MonoAccipiter
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I cab agree with most of that, except for the part where he has a good portfolio. It is, at best, a very mixed one, with numerous projects that are borderline fraud (Trump University, bankruptcies that seemed to harm everyone but him) as well as some very dubious business decisions (Trump Steaks + Trump Shuttle + the whole calculation of what he would have made in a regular market fund). In fact, the only reason I call it mixed is to give him the benefit of a doubt I am very uncertain about giving.

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@Greg: I found this video very interesting, would you say it's somewhat accurate about the nature of your voting system? In my country parties can go together to form governments after the general election, so if I vote for a smaller party it will be equally as contributing in keeping the party I like the least from getting to form a government.

 

Yes, I think this video is a fairly accurate representation of our voting system especially toward the end where it mentions independent candidates acting as spoilers. In all cases in which we've had an independent candidate running for office, it seems the sole purpose of the independent candidate is to detract voters away from the Democrat or Republican candidate. The 2000 election was particular controversial with allegations that Al Gore would have won the Florida vote and been elected president if Ralph Nader had not run as an independent based on statistics that the majority of Nader's votes in Florida would have gone to Al Gore. The vote in Florida in 2000 was a nightmare anyway so I doubt anyone can really say who actually won the Florida vote if all votes had been counted. Also keep in mind that I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the alleged statistics that Gore would have won Florida and the majority of the electoral college, but it is certainly a possibility.

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