politics

Because the conditions required for fascism to take root have been incubating for decades.

Massive wealth inequality, insecure employment, non-existent labor laws and worker's rights, hollowed-out education, healthcare and social services, large corporations getting to write their own laws verbatim, political parties sucking dick for their donors, endless war ensuring unlimited money for the military-industrial complex, demonization of brown-people-of-the-week, fetishization of 'the troops' and ongoing acceptance of brutality.

People are poor, desperate, ignorant, exploited and forgotten, they're shown every day that killing the shit out of outsiders is the solution to all the country's problems, anyone pushing actual progressive ideals is shut down and demonized as a threat to the profits of the 0.1%, giving people a choice between rightwing bastardry and neoliberal bastardry as their only lens through which to see the world.

Give that the opportunity to flare up and of course it's fucking going to. The republicans want it, the dems do nothing to prevent it.

It's like watching a party get the wrong kind of rowdy all night, you keep supplying drinks regardless, then you wonder why it turns into a fight, oh no how could this ever happen?

Because people are dumb. And I don't mean that in some flippant, off-hand, snarky way. I mean that in all dead seriousness. People are dumb.

The truest line ever written was from Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black.

"A person is smart. But people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." The novelization of the film actually takes it a bit further and adds "A mob is only as smart as it's dumbest member."

Long story short, group-think skews towards the simplistic and instinctual. This election is close for the same reason that one scared cow will turn into a stampede even though the rest of them have no idea what they're running from...because we're wired to see that if other people are running, maybe we should be too...it's a matter of survival.

A smart person can see past that and resist when they're alone. But get them into a crowd of like minded individuals and we aren't smart anymore. And people like Trump take advantage of that.

Same answer it's been for my whole lifetime: a small number of extremely wealthy individuals pumping a constant stream of money into conservative media with the express purpose of changing public opinion.

People who've been listening to this stuff their entire lives don't live in the real world. They legitimately don't believe in reality, and after a certain point I'm not sure it's possible to bring them back. Much like climate change, this kind of thing should've been stopped at the source decades ago, and it might just be too late now.

This is a health check and America is very sick.

lies, hatred, and illegal behavior have resulted in zero consequence because people are afraid of hurting GOP's sensitive fee fees, so now a rapist convicted felon con man might be dictator next week

where are all the "we need to respect their viewpoint!!" people now?

Conservatism is fascism. When someone is only mildly conservative, the fascism is not apparent. The more conservative someone is, the more apparent the fascism becomes.

This can be seen in Italy, Germany, Russia and anywhere else a fascist government has come to power through the support of a conservative population.

Some of it is people who read none of the stuff we are. They are heads down, working, etc, just glancing at headlines.

They know one thing: prices were better under trump.

They don’t know one thing: what inflation is. They think if inflation goes down then prices go down.

In short: they think if they vote for trump, prices will go back to 2016-2020.

That’s it. That is why. Prices never go back, and trumps plans for working class will make life even worse, but they still think he’ll bring 2016-2020 prices back with him.

Because there are far more idiot bigots in this country than anyone wanted to admit.

Trump supporters live in a different reality. Because they're in a fascist cult.

Fox News primarily.

What really gets me is I've had people on the Right tell me about the illegal immigrant problem and about how they do all these crimes. Then when I trap them with the obvious, "Trump is felon though" argument I always get, "Oh he's different." alongside the usual conspiracy theories. These are just the bad actors.

So thinking about it, what's even worse are the people who are supporting Trump as reactionary supporters. All they know is they're angry and the Democrats are the ones who always talk about change. So time to vote for not them for reasons they can never explain.

Because the democrats and their supporters refuse to face the reality that the last four years didn't bring much of any material improvements for the vast majority of people. Everything costs more and no one is making anywhere near close to what they need to keep up, let alone thrive.

Well it's like a friend once said to me when I was about six. If assholes could fly this place would be an airport.

Either the election isn't close at all which would make sense with how desperate and frankly weird Republican party antics have been lately. They're nothing but off putting and seem to focus on efforts that are most likely to make them look like overly online idiots. Or the polling is accurate and people are just the dumbest they have ever been and thus democracy is a failure in the modern era. Which means the first party to take over and nullify an election will likely hold power for quite some time. Rather distressing. I am hopeful that the polling is just wrong in this case.

Maybe the fact that every time Kamala says she wants to appoint Republicans to her cabinet and sign Republican immigration policies into law she slides in the polls a bit should tell us something

It may not be. Polling has been off lately, especially "polling without a specific name attached".

OTOH, lots of people vote for party not the person.

Does anyone know if "already voted" people are included in prospective voter polls? If they are excluded, we might be seeing a shift in polling towards Trump because his supporters vote day-of more than Harris voters.