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.
I honestly don’t care anymore.
We just failed the most blatant test we could possibly be given. Americans are hopeless. Take the politics and politicians out of the equation and you’ve still got an abundance of stupid Americans. That story doesn’t end well regardless of other factors.
We simply aren’t intelligent or responsible enough as a whole to maintain a democracy.
I’ll be going with the “ignorance is bliss” strategy at the end of this calendar year. I’ll probably still vote in local elections, but I’m done on the federal level. Too many stupid Americans for me to keep trying to care on a large scale.
We’re going down. The only question is the speed at which it will happen.
I live in California, so I’ll be able to maintain rights while others elsewhere lose them. And at this point, I have so little faith in Americans that I simply can’t bring myself to care about them anymore.
I totally understand feeling worn out but I know there is light at the end of the tunnel if unite and work together. In 2025 there are going to be local elections. These local elections really matter because they decide who will run your community. In 2026 the House and some Senate seats are up for election along with some governess. That election I think will determine the fate of this country. We must come back stronger than ever vote out all the corrupt politicians who oppose our democracy.
The Dems raised billions for the election and lost. What did I receive after donating thousands of dollars to them.
Pleas for more money. Give us just a little bit more money and we will finally do something.
I’m done. We should fight the fascists but the corporate democrats have been completely captured. They only know how to raise money and hand it to consultants that will tell them to parade around Liz fucking Cheney.
I’m not paying them to slide further and further to the right anymore.
Nope. This is the correct response. Democrats need to relax, because they work too hard to craft intelligent messages while the other side calls them names like a four year old and sells ugly ass shoes and watches all while desecrating the flag because a billionaire asking for more money makes perfect sense to some people…
Democrats need to dumb down their messaging. Comedy vs the next president needs to be slapstick level with focus on doing makeup in the morning, eating McDonald’s, and farting. Explanations for things like tariffs need to be laid out on TikTok so anyone at or below a 6 grade comprehension level can understand.
Democrats need to dumb down their messaging.
Yup. Stupid wins in America. Next election (if there is one), Democrats need to run the dumbest, most emotionally charged, lying bullshit they possibly can. Because that’s what wins in America. Fabricated, emotional bullshit.
They need to find their version of “Immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio”.
Americans are dumb. You have to play to that to win.
This is a damned shame to say the least but I’m as guilty as anyone.
My own ostrich coping mechanism has been long term personal goals and wondering what I’ll do when I can no longer work and SS is gone.
It’s put me in a shitty state of mind lll admit, and I have no excuses. Overwhelmed is a statement of fact, not an excuse.
Exactly, focus on the controllables in life. I did the 1 thing I could which was vote and combat mis/disinformation when I saw it. The dumb won. I just gotta stay nose to the grindstone for my career and watch this shit show unfold. People are too dumb to vote for taxing billionaires and fixing our shitty healthcare and education systems because eggs cost too much. It’s not my fault they can’t be bothered to read and vet their information sources.
No this is just the liberal establishment demonstrating their aggressively “meh it won’t really affect me” attitude. If you are in a left wing organization, more people are showing up and joining and participating than in years. DSA membership increased like 25% just since the election, in an org that was losing members. Not everyone is checked out, some people are very active.
If you aren’t connected to an org, go to meetings and join one, pay dues if you can! If you don’t know where to start, just ask! Answers will probably vary by area and some people are more isolated but there’s still lots that can be done, even if you’re stuck at home.
And this is why the right well always win. They go for what they want till they get it. How long did they fight to repel row vs wade?
Row vs wade… Funny.
they tuned out years ago. that’s why he’s president again. who even cares about anything at this point? fuck it.
The people who are tuning out now are the ones who are active during the elections. We exhausted ourselves trying to get someone we didn’t really believe in elected president against someone we truly feared. And it was all for nothing because the Democratic party is incapable of appealing to the lower class.
I suspected we were in trouble when Kamala Harris embraced the endorsement from that absolutely turd bag Dick Cheney and is equally shit daughter Liz. I saw Hillary try to pull the same stupid strategy back in 2016. They keep trying to lure Republicans to the Democratic side and it never never never works. Republicans do not care how “fiscally responsible” you tell them that you are. They will always vote for the person with the ® next to their name. And while they’re doing that they are repelling just everyone on the left. Especially those who are poor and don’t give a shit how fiscally responsible you are they just want a break.
And now I really don’t have any faith in the Democratic party at all. I don’t think they’re as bad as Republicans but they sing their songs to the same tunes the Republicans do. Just with different lyrics.
the Democratic party is incapable of appealing to the lower class.
Anyone to whom Cheney is appealing is of appallingly low class.
Oh, you mean economic class.
What’s wrong, people don’t want a 24/7 news cycle of all the stupid shit Dumpster will say and do!?
You mean our media system pushing to have the Orange One elected to increase their ratings could backfire!?
I could only hope people stop paying attention and paying money for the corporate spun garbage we call news.
There was so much less CNN blaring in my parents house after Biden was elected. It was nice. I’m not eager to return to that.
i’m preparing mentally for the potential of a civil war ok. I need to be ready to bear the costs of the conflict, if it happens.
anyway, politically in the next four years we need to start building something we can’t just sit here and pretend that the DNC will unfuck itself and stop being incompetent half the time, and we also can’t pretend that abstaining from voting is going to fix things.
We need to be doing things, which for some reason, people really hate.
There is no help coming. The best thing to be doing now is logging out and getting structures in place to support your community.
Building community locally. Find the people doing good things around you and help them.
“Look for the helpers”
What are we supposed to do? We tried, this one had no ambiguity. If this is what people want, so be it. Gonna suck though so I’m spending my efforts on bracing myself for what’s to come.
We tried, this one had no ambiguity.
I disagree. There is ambiguity to be found. The ambiguity cannot be found in why Trump won. He has a cult and inflation is a thing. But there exists ambiguity in why Harris lost. I do not believe in the notion that Americans are so hell-bent on fascism that they overwhelmingly support Trump and everything he does. I think Harris lost because she moved to the right and failed to meaningfully differentiate herself from an administration that inspired so much apathy that Biden himself said that he didn’t care all that much if he lost.
nah, I don’t attribute it to malice, I attribute it to stupidity and ignorance.
yeah please tune out to make sure he gets zero pushback whatsoever. I mean it worked to get him elected president, why not advance to godking?
Next step, emperor of mankind
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
Blah blah excuses
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.
This excuse has always been garbage and here’s why:
Democrats, at any point in which they controlled a simple majority of the Senate, could have closed the loophole that permits the filibuster and ended this bullshit forever.
Another reason it’s garbage is that it’s the Democrats’ job to win elections and get control of Congress so they can do things, and they just fail spectacularly about 80% of the time.
And to that I ask, why do the Democrats not also use the filibuster? Or when they have control of the Senate, rewrite the rules to disallow a procedural filibuster and make it so if you want to filibuster something you have to actually stand up there and read the phone book into the record for hours on end?
If the filibuster is the problem, why is there not a large public campaign for filibuster reform?I’m sorry but this is an excuse plain and simple. The procedural filibuster, which I personally think should be abolished, can be used as a weapon by either side. If GOP filibusters the school spending bill, Dems should filibuster the defense spending bill. If GOP filibusters the medical care bill, Dems should filibuster the warrantless wiretapping bill (well, they should do that anyway, but you get the point).
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.
40 here. Been watching it slide downhill for 20 solid years now. Just getting more and more absurd. I’m done. I"ll be doing the ignorance is bliss thing from here on out so I can try to enjoy myself a little. I don’t really care about Americans anymore. Too stupid.
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?
I’m not sure if you’re aware but they’ve overturned Roe v. Wade.
And that’s just the start of the list.
How about minority rights, accessibility to health care, environmental protections, women’s pay gap and career opportunity in general, black president, woman vice president, safety laws, life expectancy.
The price of damn near everything.
Except, of course, the lowest amount you can legally pay someone for an hour of their labor. That stayed steady as a rock.
My 15 year old makes 16 per hour working fast food. I made 5.25 at his age in the 90s.
All things
Lots of down votes, but no actual responses.
