Former President Donald Trump urged members of a crowd in Florida to vote and said that if he wins, they “won’t have to vote anymore.”

Speaking at a Turning Point Action event in West Palm Beach on Friday, Trump, who tried to overturn the 2020 election he lost, delivered a cryptic message.

“And again, Christians, get out and vote!” he said to a cheering audience. “Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians! I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out. You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again.”

456 points

What the fuck is supposed to be cryptic about this? He’s making it perfectly clear that he wants to overthrow democracy in the US. And everybody who votes for him is OK with that.

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179 points

People asked the question before. It went something like:

“You do realize that he’ll be a dictator, right?”

" We don’t care. He’ll be our dictator and that’s all that matters."

And then they’ll say they do it for freedom and democracy.

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107 points
*

Or the more common answer:

“He misspoke and the media is taking out of context.”

Even though he has said it thirty different ways and this just happens to line up with the narrative.

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34 points

And he kept a running mate who keeps saying it.

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6 points

Both groups exist and both ignore that the other exists. Just like every “anti-woke” comment is made. Half of them say it’s about some made up nuanced take, while the other half say “no it’s really just racism/sexism/homophobia”. Which pretty much sums up what Hillary said back in 2016.

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36 points

There’s another angle to the dictator thing-

A lot of people essentially think the president already is a dictator. That’s why even people on the left say things like, “why doesn’t Biden raise the minimum wage?!” when that requires an act of congress.

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28 points

We need to bring back Schoolhouse Rock.

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10 points

I think it’s less “they think the position is already a dictator” and more “the general public has absolutely no idea how the office of the president works, or how the powers and limitations on various branches work in general” which is a failing of their education, and a poor reflection on the country as a whole.

Of course that’s exactly the way the republicunts like it, “keep the population dumb and they won’t even question why you’re oppressing them”

If your only experience with the president and their powers comes from (for millennial anyway) various crises (manufactured and non) where the president says “I’m signing this thing to do this” and because the vast majority of congress is behind them, as well as the regular) rest of the population, and it gets done (I’m thinking of things like Iraq), I can see someone thinking “well the president signed a paper, so it MUST happen”

Which is sad funny since I hear the minimum wage comment a lot, but like… How well do you think that will go? It will go just like the student loan bullshit.

And republicunts are such fucking insecure losers, they will happily drag the entire planet down into their bullshit to prevent even one single other person from getting help that they believe they’re entitled to the entirety of.

You know. Like Toddlers.

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2 points
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-11 points
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11 points

Those fuckers should be deported to some authoritarian shithole with Sharia law like Iran so they can appreciate what they’re throwing away because they’re terrified of “the gays”.

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7 points

Same with the “migrants out” thing. If immigrants actually left, farmers and business would be desperate within days because all their hardest and/or cheapest workers just vanished and now there are no more truck drivers, no more field workers so crops left rotting on the field, no more waiters, … Prices of stuff would shoot up. UK tried this recently and that’s what happened.

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7 points

“We want our dictator for… what are the good words again?”

“You mean freedom and democracy?”

“Yeah, whatever, for those!”

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44 points

Many don’t think he can pull it off, which is the scary part that might let him do it.

“Oh, that’s all talk. He can say what he wants but can’t do shit without the House and Congress, and if he wanted to change things to get more terms? With states majority agreement that’s required? Not in his lifetime. You worry for nothing, PassingThrough, it’s all showmanship, as it always has been. And no, the Army wouldn’t help such an obvious fool overthrow the government either.”

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38 points

It’s crazy.

“Oh, your drunk uncle Mike who has three arson convictions, thinks you turned the family against him, and is in your attached garage with gas and a lighter threatening to burn it down? Don’t worry about him, he’s harmless!”

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5 points

Trump said it in a way that he could have meant that you won’t have to vote for him again. He kept saying “vote for me now and in 4 years you won’t have to vote again”. I’m sure if you made this criticism to Trump’s face he would act like you’re being unreasonable and pretend that of course he meant that he can only do 1 more 4 year term. Trump’s supporters would respond similarly. But that’s why it’s called a dog whistle, the message gets to the people he wants it to while it forces his detractors to debate what’s going on inside Trump’s head.

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4 points

Also anyone who doesn’t go vote because of edgelord reasons or laziness is guilty. If the US becomes Russia v2.0, we’ll all die in WW3 guaranteed.

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4 points

I’m guessing it’s cryptic because he can just say that he meant “for me” and not “in general.”

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3 points

“In four years, you don’t have to vote again.”

Yikes.

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259 points

Your country is insane.

In any other democratic nation in the world, a politician saying this would be finished.

I hope for the sake of humanity that all the sane people in the US go out and tells everyone they know that cares about democracy and the rule of law what Trump is planning to do, especially in the swing states.

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97 points

Our country is full of proudly ignorant bootlickers

Turns out all you need to do is make up some bullshit about “American dreams” and “bootstraps,” make them believe they too can (and probably already should!) be a billionaire, and the one thing stopping that are those goddamn Marxist Democrats and their “progressive taxation,” and “social safety nets for the blacks (please ignore the fact that I’m on disability, it’s different)”.

Republicans have been sabotaging our country’s own public education system for 25+ years at this point. Selling the future prosperity of our nation down the river for a voter-base with cult-like devotion, and a unique ability to ignore objective reality.

Unfortunately for the planet, it seems to have been wildly successful.

The next step is to do away with democracy altogether.

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29 points
*

It’s been the Koch brothers and the John Birch Society’s dream (amongst others) to propagandize so many people of the “American Dream” and evils of anything other than capitalism. They were ecstatic when the Tea Party movement worked out for them, but they lost control of it with Trump. It’s a monster of their own making.

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18 points

and evils of anything other than capitalism

*other than WHAT THEY CALL capitalism

They look at monopolies where the market leader buys laws, lobbies for protection and muscles competition out of the game unhindered and then they decry anybody calling it out as communists or socialists or the devil or whatever other bad word is en vogue that day.

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7 points

Kochs lost control of Trump to the JBS types. The Kochs are more Mitch McConnell type power brokers, all about the money and corporations. JBS is more MAGA, with the heavy undercurrent of conspiracy.

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8 points

Exactly - I started noticing prideful ignorance in the early 2010s. People around me made bad choices and would not be corrected. Their ignorance was just as valid as someone else’s actual knowledge. That’s when, strengthened by their own baseless pride, their shame disappeared. I’m not saying shame is good, but when it’s the only thing keeping the deplorables in check, maybe a little of it helps.

It used to be that I’m general, horrible people realised they were horrible and at least went through the motions of being decent. They were like cockroaches scurrying for the shadows when you turned on the light. Now they’re like a cat peeing on your bed - they pause long enough to lock eyes with you, then continue peeing.

Speaking optimistically, at least now we know exactly who they are.

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4 points

They were like cockroaches scurrying for the shadows when you turned on the light.

Oh, I actually used this comparison once when such people still generally did that. They were pissed. I didn’t directly address them BTW, they decided which side they’re on for themselves.

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2 points

It’s wild that all it took was one sick, deranged, racist, liar (who hasn’t been able to string together a coherent sentence since the early 90s) to lead by example…

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5 points

Turns out all you need to do is make up some bullshit about “American dreams” and “bootstraps,” make them believe they too can (and probably already should!) be a billionaire, and the one thing stopping that are those goddamn Marxist Democrats and their “progressive taxation,” and “social safety nets for the blacks (please ignore the fact that I’m on disability, it’s different)”.

Well, to generalize your statement a bit, I’ve had a conflict with people who thought that the only thing preventing them from living in socialist heaven were jerks like me talking about human rights, market economy, transparency, accountability, governments actually changing, putting thieves in jail and getting activists out of jail, legalization of various substances, any consensual sexual activity, privacy, freedom of speech, competitive judicial system, culture of protest, yadda-yadda once a few years …

They sincerely thought all this prevented life in my country from being good, while themselves being thieving ignorant intriguing insecure shits was normal. You know, the kind of people who contribute clearly negatively to the society, but think life is unjust to them, they should live better and somebody has stolen everything from them.

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2 points

The GOP have been selling these people hope and magic since Reagan. It’s no longer about hard work for republicans, now all they have to do is destroy cities and kick out everyone they don’t like, and we will return to the magic that never existed in the 1950’s.

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65 points

I hate to break it to you, but it’s not just our country.

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37 points

It may be the most successful example of indoctrination of parts of the populace of a supposedly developed nation by the ruling class though.

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21 points

It’s a smashing success for regulatory capture of the courts so that unlimited funds, foreign and domestic, can be legally spent on propaganda targeting fear-addicted racists.

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3 points

Right, Russia is fucked too

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1 point

This is lemmy, the goal is always to shit on America.

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14 points

Probably because it’s one of the worst examples of many bad things. Source: am American. The only way you can avoid criticizing America as a thinking person is to focus on the ways it’s a little better than other countries. For example we mostly have clean drinking water while other countries don’t. But if you for a moment focus back on America itself it’s hard not to find things that just damned well ought to be better. Never be sick in America. Our healthcare is a pathetic piece of shit!

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7 points

Pointing out flaws instead of blindly shouting “murka numbuh wun!” is not a bad thing…

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2 points

“I’m the normal one, everyone around me is crazy!!!”

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52 points

in any other democratic nation, he would have been finished in 2015, when the “grab’em by the pussy” tape came out

but no, it’s 2024 and we STILL have to waste time arguing about drag queens and library books

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33 points

To this day, I will never know how it didn’t end the moment he made fun of that photographer who had the deformity on his arm.

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28 points

the list of things that should have ended trump is too long for any comment, so here https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/donald-trump-worst-president-ever

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5 points

It’s because the country has a long history of treating disabled people like shit. This country literally gave the germans the inspiration to do eugenics shit.

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34 points

In any other democratic nation in the world, a politician saying this would be finished.

Unfortunately not anymore, no. Bolsonaro (luckily voted out) and Orban and the Polish potato (also luckily voted out) have been spouting similar bullshit for 10+ years. Also, Erdoğan talks bullshit like that.

All of them a little less incoherent than the fat orange turd, but still, they say this kind of bullshit.

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29 points

The craziest part is that, even with the absolute insanity this election has already been (and it will absolutely get worse), I’m seriously worried there’s going to be a worse turnout than 2020. 30% of voters are holding the country hostage, but another 30+% still can’t be bothered to get out and do the most basic thing they can do to fix it. It’s absurd. The nutjobs in the US are dragging the country to the gallows, but apathetic voters are tying the noose.

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13 points

I’m seriously worried there’s going to be a worse turnout than 2020.

2020 had the highest voter turnout in any US election. Donald Trump got more votes in 2020 (more than 74 million) than any other Presidential candidate, winner or loser, in history… except for Joe Biden in 2020, who got 81 million.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election

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3 points
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I am aware (hence my point of 30%), and that was still abysmal. 60% turnout is not much of an achievement, and that only happened because of the pandemic (which is also still happening, though easier to ignore now). Existential threats to the country just aren’t going to motivate the chronically apathetic the same way, even if they are actually a bigger threat overall.

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5 points

It’s especially weird because he’s a Republican. Traditionally they’re the party more sensitive to controversies like that, and older conservative folks I used to know would squirm if they saw the tapes or statements.

But honestly Trump just drowns everything out. Most people don’t, and never will, know the controversies because there are simply too many to keep up with.

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2 points

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he wed Jacqueline May “Jackie” Battley (February 21, 1936 – August 7, 2013), his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26.

Throughout his congressional campaign in 1974, Gingrich was having an affair with a young volunteer. An aide who worked with Gingrich throughout the 1970s stated that “it was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his marriage to Jackie.”

In the spring of 1980, he filed for divorce from Jackie after beginning an affair with Marianne Ginther.

In September 1980, according to friends who knew them both, Newt visited Jackie in the hospital the day after she had undergone surgery to treat her uterine cancer; once there, Newt began talking about the terms of their divorce, at which point Jackie threw him out of the room.

Although Newt’s presidential campaign staff continued to insist in 2011 that Jackie had requested the divorce, court documents from Carroll County, Georgia, indicated that she had in fact asked a judge to block the process, stating that although “she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce … she does not desire one at this time [and] does not admit that this marriage is irretrievably broken.”

According to L. H. Carter, Gingrich’s campaign treasurer, Gingrich said of Jackie: “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.”

Following the divorce, Jackie had to raise money from friends in her congregation to help her and the children make ends meet; she later filed a petition in court stating that Newt had failed to properly provide for his family.[262] Newt submitted a financial statement to the judge, which showed that he had been “providing only $400 a month, plus $40 in allowances for his daughters. He claimed not to be able to afford any more. But in citing his own expenses, he listed $400 just for ‘Food / dry cleaning, etc.’—for one person.”

In 1981, a judge ordered him to provide considerably more; in 1993, Jackie stated in court that Newt had failed to obey the 1981 order “from the day it was issued.”

In 1993, while still married to Marianne, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, more than two decades his junior.

Gingrich filed for divorce from Marianne in 1999, a few months after she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

On January 19, 2012, Marianne alleged in an interview on ABC’s Nightline that she had declined to accept Newt’s suggestion of an open marriage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich

It’s been a thing for a while. They do a performative squirm and vote for monsters anyways

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5 points

Your country is insane.

You don’t say! I simply hadn’t noticed! What’s so crazy about people voting for someone with no experience whatsoever except for being a rich asshole which he proved every second breath? I mean that’s just normal!!

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213 points

“I love you, christians. I am a christian!”

Who the fuck talks like that? And who the fuck votes for a guy that talks like that?

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102 points

Hello my fellow human beings, I’m a human and love doing human activities.

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26 points
80 points

These people who talk equally as phony.

Behold: a black person.

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55 points

Too stupid to be satire, but also too stupid to not be satire. I am not sure with this one, chief.

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55 points

If I recall correctly, he forgot to switch accounts before posting that one.

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2 points

Poe’s law 2: conservative, satire, or bot

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65 points

Imagine how stupid the average person is, then realize half of all people are stupider than that.

  • George Carlin
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25 points

I read something that put conservatives into greater context, just changed one word.

“Imagine how stupid the average Republican is, then realize half of all republicans are stupider than that.”

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12 points

Median would be the more generally correct number to use, but apparently IQ (debatable as a proxy for intelligence…) is roughly normally distributed, so either is likely close enough.

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8 points
*

Oh yeah, they normalize IQ every year, and 100 is always used as the median.

But thanks to the Flynn Effect, getting a 100 (the number they always choose for the middle) in 2024 means you’re significantly smarter than someone who got a 100 in 1990.

So when Carlin said, “think of a person with average intelligence” he was calling to mind (to his 1990 audience) a person who was average in 1990 but would score [EDIT: I originally said 70s to 80s, but I was off by a lot. Such a person would actually score right around 90 points] today.

This is what happens when you take the lead out of gasoline.

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7 points

The word average is used to signify mean, median or mode freely, depending only on context. For example, “he’s just an average Joe” is to say he’s like most other men in his demographic. In that case average means mode. In Carlin’s joke, average means median.

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4 points

Truer words never have been uttered

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3 points

Happy cake day!

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31 points

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21 points

Hello, fellow kids!

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12 points
*

Christians, apparently.

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15 points

When you’ve already lost the capacity for critical thought…

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8 points

Yes it’s like when I, too, enjoy human food like a real human

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2 points

Millions of stupid Americans. They are everywhere! Even in your city, maybe even in your neighborhood.

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1 point

Who talks like that? A grifter. A guy who literally embodies all of the seven deadly sins, trying to convince his followers that “he’s a Christian.” That is just exploding with irony.

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179 points

Trump using the language of a tyrant is not an accident. When people say that democracy is on the line this election, we’re not being hyperbolic, we’re saying that because of statements like this. Please get out there and vote this November.

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47 points

Him saying it out loud is an accident. People with dementia often forget that they’re not supposed to say certain things out loud.

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44 points

While that may be true, I also think it’s because he feels comfortable enough to say it out loud. These people and a fanatic third of the US are that far gone.

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3 points

At this point we have found out that he can say or do anything and half the country will still support him. There is no convincing anymore for most of them.

We outnumber them we just need to get higher turnout and we win every time

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24 points

Idk, the crowd was cheering for him. Think he just doesn’t have a grasp on what the average person thinks.

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2 points

He’s dumb. He forgot that other people could hear him, too.

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2 points
*

The people in the crowd have dementia, too.

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21 points

When people say that democracy is on the line this election, we’re not being hyperbolic

The election system in the US has been under siege since the end of Jim Crow. The conservative response to the civil rights act has been to egalitarianize disenfranchisement.

We’ve had Republicans chipping away at the functional organs of democracy since Eisenhower’s Red Scare leveraged the Hoover FBI to infiltrate and eradicate self-sufficient communities and their unionized labor leadership back in the 50s.

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ leadership have never sat particularly well with the influx of minority voters following the Civil Rights Act. They’ve had to digest racist backlashes within their own party from the George Wallace Dixiecrat break away campaign under LBJ to the Hilary Clinton “birther” attacks launched at Obama during the '08 primary.

The end result is Republicans openly embracing fascism at the state and local level, while Democrats dissolve their own primary system in pursuit of a rigid corporate sponsored nomination process.

This isn’t something that’s going to be fixed in an election cycle. Trump losing won’t make Republicans less fascist. Kamala taking the nomination of the discarded carcass of an establishment insider like Biden won’t heal the divide in the Democratic Party. And it certainly won’t undo the fascist GOP takeovers in Texas, Florida, and Ohio.

We’re in for a rocky road ahead under either Presidency.

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2 points

Perhaps making shady self-interested NGOs an integral part of our electoral system wasn’t such a good idea.

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-2 points

A.I. for President.

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5 points

If our democracy is so fragile that it can be destroyed by voting for the wrong person, then we have to fix some shit.

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3 points

It’s not just one person. There are years of hijacking that the republican party has done to the us system, like packing the supreme court. Those must be fixed as soon as possible.

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-51 points

Oh shaddup

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23 points

Intriguing platform; tell me more.

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159 points

oh yeah, so cryptic. gotta bust out my cryptography degree for this one. might need a couple quantum computers too. wow, the crypticity is at an all-time high. its over 8000, i tell ya.

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24 points

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10 points

Wait, I had the scouter on upside down.

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