If you really think that both sides do this equally, I’d suggest you try living in the country you’re speaking about.
I can’t really say that, but I don’t buy that cult stuff. I have been in US few times, how many here has been in UK or Germany? Considering how strong claims you guys make about the countries.
I don’t claim that I know US politics better than you guys. I just have a strong BS detector and can’t always be passive when I feel some things are being oversimplified.
It’s partly why I keep discussing with both, liberals and with you guys here. I try to understand the situation.
PS. I see that US is kinda the country of extremes, so what you say can partly be true. But I probably would not want to live in US even if I would get the opportunity. Hahah.
So A) I agree with you about the racism thing and the reps calling out their own. It’s another of the statements I’ve seen in this thread that elicit an “lol” from me. Trump is vindictive and the party is terrified of him. He noted after his first win that they’d all be offering to blow him eventually, and sure enough. And B) much of what I post in here is disagreement with the claims of extremism. I simply don’t see it in real life, and I’ve spent the majority of my adulthood in Texas (republican stronghold) and northern New England (solidly blue state) and spend my days talking to people across the socioeconomic spectrum. I definitely encounter racism, but the politics I mostly encounter are frustration and disenfranchisement.
I wonder, how do you view/explain the increasing trend for educated, well employed women to opt out of marriage and children? These are not the beneficiaries of government largess, and they could live very nicely as half of a dual income couple. The birth rate is falling all over the first world, and it is not the impoverished who are leading this charge. Don’t the smart women want to find a cuck whose wealth she can acquire through state sponsored divorce advantages?
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The answer to the question of women’s greater presence on the left is of course their higher empathy. We are less willing to step over the bodies of starving children on the way to work. Perhaps our tendency to be more squeamish than men also plays a part - the consequences of winter weather exposure such as frostbite are…well, icky. Do I want to see a rotting hand while shopping for groceries? No, I don’t.
In my case specifically, as someone who experiences empathy but is also disgusted by government waste, cutting food and medical is shortsighted. I would like SNAP and Medicaid fixed so that they accomplish what they set out to do - ensure better health outcomes - which saves money in the long term. SNAP should be replaced with something like WIC, which requires that foods be store brand and USA grown where possible, limits sugar and other frankenfood components, and benefits farmers because these are staple foods that come from farms. Health outcomes and I would imagine school performance would be benefitted by improved nutritional intake for kids. SNAP enables that I stand behind someone in line at the grocery store who is buying pizza bagels (1 box) and a 24pk of pepsi. This is gross misuse of public resources. Medicaid disallows charges for <24 hour cancellation and no-shows, while private insurance allows providers to charge for them. This reduces the availability of services, which in my area is a big problem, as we are underserved medically. Fridays and weekends at emergency rooms are filled with people complaining of issues that should have been addressed via primary care visits earlier in the week, so we’re all paying $1800 for someone to go to the ED for a toothache. These wastes should be disincentivized, as should lifestyle-related illnesses. Why are we paying hundreds of thousands of dollars treating someone with COPD who continues to smoke?
You are increasingly weirdly repetitive in your speech, which sounds very propaganda-y and a little creepy - the way you use your key words now - so I would note that “go along with Democratic Socialism” is very WTF-y. Lewiston is one wacky town in a vast sea of non-wacky or significantly-less-wacky towns across America, and even New England. I don’t know any women who are “for” transgenderism as you define it, or really at all. Most of the liberals I know somewhere on the spectrum between indifferent and disturbed (by the politics more than the trans themselves). I don’t know anyone in RL who are screaming “BRING IN MORE MIGRANTS! MORE REFUGEES!”
In fact, most of the people I know, whether socially or through work - and I work with both college professors and trailer park people - are moderate, as is 80% of the population. One of my long-term patients is an elementary school teacher, whose daughter is toying with gender identity at age 13. When at her yearly checkup the doc asked about gender and kiddo proudly said “boy!” The doctor offered a referral to the big city and someone who could help “medically.” Mom went ballistic (not in the exam room) and complained to the health center, which expressed horror and apology that this happened. Mom is very clear (this is an ongoing worry) that she will love her daughter regardless, but is tortured that this is our culture now. As I am. So I am stymied to think of who it is you’re describing when you talk about half the people in America. I know Trump is corrupt. We have evidence of this, going back decades. The Clintons - same. So when I’m choosing between them in a voting booth, my decision is based on the evil I can more easily swallow, not which of them represents me. Neither of them do.
Speaking of the Clintons and Trump’s character…
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I have been to Germany, but not the UK. I have extended family in Germany and many former colleagues/friends from all over the world. Spending 5 years on the largest, most complex SAP implementation in history means you get to work very closely with people from all over. We all lived next door to each other in corporate apartments, too, along with many nights out on the town. Kind of like a long-term summer camp for adults to extract long hours from us all.
MAGA is cult-like only in the fact that it coalesced around a political outsider leader named Donald Trump. Plenty of people are perfectly willing to outsource their thinking to Trump and the broader MAGA movement, but that’s a fairly rational position to hold for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to dive into the weeds of politics.
Democratic Socialism isn’t cult-like, it IS a cult, if you go by the dictionary definition of the word. It tolerates no dissent, functions as a wealth extraction scam, uses lies and manipulation to control its members, uses public shaming on people who object, and has weird sex stuff with kids at the heart of its agenda.
You say this like it is a bad thing. Judging from the information being released regarding the Russian collusion hoax, a little vindication is exactly what the country needs. They also tried to kill him in a quite literally unbelievable confluence of security failures.
If I’m correct and a soft coup attempt indeed took place, led at the highest levels of elected government, the State Department, and the intelligence community it ought to be punished to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I don’t think Obama is going to be “scandal-free” much longer.
That’s certainly part of it, but the problem with empathy as a basis for public policy is that you don’t get to force people to share your feelings, and feelings like empathy can seldom be explained in clear public policy terms. Women also like serial killer stories at rates higher than men, which is way beyond my ability to explain.
In my observations, especially with well-educated woke white women, it isn’t so much about what they want out of the government, but what they want out of other people. There seems to be a deep desire to be seen as saviors and the arbitrators of social justice in public policy, seemingly based on their greater feelings of empathy.
Woke white women in Lewiston all seem to be after this feeling:
I’m not making it up. Here’s something anyone can do. Go look up the Maine Democratic party platform and compare it to the Democratic Socialists of America’s policy platform. They are basically the same thing, but the Maine Democrats use much less precise language. Otherwise, nearly every single policy of the Maine Democrats is in general alignment with the DSA.
If that’s not enough for you, witness Zohran Mamdani’s recent rise, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s open declaration that Democratic Socialism is the future of the party, Kamala Harris’ campaign that centered on the concept of DEI, open borders, and transgenderism, ideas that weren’t even on the discussion table in the 2008 election.
That’s how you know you’ve experienced a slow socialist revolution. New ideas being shoved down the public’s throat that are completely incompatible with the previous ideas about government. Introducing incompatible ideas is the point of a socialist revolution. It has a long track record of getting people at each other’s throats quite effectively.
The concept of US Citizenship as the basis for voting rights and representation has been under direct attack. That’s a core idea that shapes everything about a government’s functioning. DEI is a core idea as well that is in direct opposition to the concept of equal protection under the law. You can have equity or equality, but not both. Transgenderism is also a core idea that shapes our government’s functioning in rather profound ways, and the idea that I can decide today that I’m a woman means that the government of Maine is ready to recognize me as a woman in a legal sense, including allowing me to go get naked in a women’s locker room, to be incarcerated in a women’s prison, and to access every other space that was previously reserved for women.
Democratic Socialism is very real, and I won’t be getting any less repetitive about it. Neither will the Democratic Party, it seems.
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Living and working in NYC, I can attest that a large portion of this is because his opponents were Cuomo and Adams, who are generally hated here.
Not to say that he isn’t popular and that it isn’t a meteoric rise, but I think there’s more to it. I will say that he is a social media master and his ads don’t exactly portray his proposed policies. The ads are well produced, it’s actually him speaking (compared to Cuomo saying I endorse this message at the end). But I’ve never seen so much as a T Shirt in person.
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat, but the choices were abysmal this year. Which I think speaks to the fact that this isn’t a job anyone wants, as it generally leads nowhere after.
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This was what eventually switched me over from centre left/centrist to right wing
Leftists refusing to call out BS on their side, including when said BS involves supporting agendas that are the polar opposite of liberalism like radical Islam lol
But can’t identify with the MAGA “cult” like mentality.
Now I can’t really identify with liberalism at all, as I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed liberal social policy has often led to an enormous amount of societal damage on a wide scale, seemingly unintentional and/or consequences that were not thought out at conception of policy/social change… Not everything is bad, for instance I like how the Netherlands essentially got rid of heroin addiction using policies that could be construed by some to be “progressive” (though not really… sort of…)
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This is what I’ve observed in Maine as well. They actively avoid calling themselves “Democratic Socialists” while campaigning on vaguely-defined policies. When elected, they begin diligently implementing policies that are straight from the DSA’s platform. We also publicly fund many Democratic Socialist activist nonprofits with tax dollars. We have a large number who are actively working towards the goal of abolishing all prisons, in addition to using race and identity as the basis for awarding public funding. Our public schools are now seeped in state-mandated Democratic Socialist ideas.
It is also worthwhile to mention that the DSA is NOT a political party, but an activist organization.
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This is often my experience when talking with people. So it makes sense, the political language and polarisation seems much more extreme in US than in Europe, but regular people are regular people with regular conserns. No matter where you go.
As a interesting anecdote. Let’s look ”wokeism”. There surely are debates going here too, and some stuff is ridiculous from both sides. But IRL you really don’t see it affecting people’s lifes, not in a major way anyway.
But according to the internet, the whole western civilization seems to be collapsing because of gays and whatever. Without social media I would not know the whole ”problem” exists, and I follow our society pretty closely.
I don’t claim these culture wars don’t exists. Nor that they should not be discussed. But at least where I live, they tend to get way too much attention compared to their actual effects to the world. ”Majoring the minors” as people in lifting world would say.
I see it with my own two eyes on a near-daily basis. Young women with wispy facial hair and scars from having their breasts removed staff many local businesses in Lewiston. Men who go to similar, but less visible, means to present as women are also encountered nearly as frequently.
An examination of actual government policy, including public school policy, also informs me that the State of Maine officially endorses the belief that we can somehow transcend our bodies in a way that the government must legally recognize us as members of the opposite sex. Stories from local women about the creepy guy in the women’s locker room at the YMCA also tell me that I’m not just making this up.
I also have two friends I know personally who adopted a transgender identity, one of whom has had surgery to “affirm” their identity. The other one I believe is just a butch lesbian who fortunately hasn’t gone all-in on the idea that she’s a swinging dick like me.
Part of the population are transgenders, that goes without saying.
But ”cultural transgenderism” is on the rise, no doubt. It’s still very marginal here.
And from my perspective, adults can do decisions conserning their body, even if it would be radical/harmful.
Wether it’s using steroids for bodybuilding, gaining weight for Sumo wrestling (or for powerfifting), or changing sex.
Only adults though. People under 25 or so should be patient and discover are they really ready and do they really understand the risks.
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Nobody particularly cared about transgenders in society until recently. Artists like David Bowie and other rock and roll acts have been playing around with gender expression for longer than I’ve been alive. Ru Paul and Dennis Rodman got along just fine in society, achieving high levels of success. It wasn’t until Democrats began pushing the ideology on children and incorporating it into public policy that any real backlash to the idea came about.
Transgenderism is quite genius from a political power perspective. Democrat’s rejection of equal protection under the law is accomplished by embracing the idea of “marginalized people” being deserving of more public money, preferential treatment in public schools, preferential hiring and admissions, and preferential treatment in prosecuting crime, along with the idea that we should use vast amounts of public funding and stop enforcing immigration policy so we can get MORE marginalized people into society.
This was accomplished mostly along racial lines, but by allowing white people to become “marginalized” by self-declared identity expands the “big tent” of Democrat policy beneficiaries in exchange for political loyalty. When it comes to transgenderists, they are often some of the most fanatical ideologues of the Democrats today. They are, after all, often deeply invested in the whole idea, both emotionally and financially.
People love to be a victim, and transgenderism and LGBTQ+ identities allow ANYONE to be “marginalized”. “Marginalized” people are the in-group in this version of socialism; the beneficiaries of wealth extracted from the out-group of society.
Feelings of empathy form the basis of the “reasoning” for Maine public schools requiring all staff to speak in a way that pretends that we can somehow become members of the opposite sex. I don’t see anything empathetic about encouraging children to become lifelong medical patients and doing it behind parents’ backs.
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And these types have been the absolute worst to deal with from my anecdotal experience. If that is what they want, it is their life and their choice. But, most of them I know seem absolutely miserable and loathe wasting any chance of having children once a certain age.
My wife holds a masters and PHD, but prioritized having children above her career and education, but still did it as she wanted. I am probably old fashioned, misogynistic, etc. by most current feminist standards. But, my wife also laughs at those same feminists as she gets to enjoy her children every day and do whatever she wants. (I am also well aware that raising children correctly as a mother is a massive job and one that is the most important in my opinion along with being invaluable).
Most younger “modern” western women are absolutely delusional and miserable. The amount of antipsychotic and antidepressant use is staggering among that group, but makes sense.
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From my selfish perspective there is one huge difference. I didn’t have the opportunity to have the government subsidize my pursuit of bodybuilding. My monthly pharmaceutical expenses were pretty steep. All my pharmaceutical expenses came out of my pocket. And I never cried about it. My transition was going on for three decades.
If anyone wants a sex change it is fine with me. Save up your money and do the honorable thing. Pay for it with your money.
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I often wonder how much drug use explains why I seem to live in an entirely different reality than so many women in Maine.
I should probably start going to church again if I’m ever going to meet any women worth marrying.
This is a massive difference, along with the absence of public schools “affirming” steroids in bodybuilding as a scientifically-backed heath treatment.
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I don’t necessarily disagree.
I believe most women would want children as they have always been the caretakers.
This is simply not an option for many as it is increasingly difficult to support a family on a single income - largely due to the literal doubling of the supply of workers when women were empowered into the workforce.
Why do you think the Rockefellers were funding feminist voices in the 60s? The most notorious modern day slave owners were probably for in it for the benefit of women, right?
Or maybe they knew by doubling the pool of workers, they could pay the workers half as much.
And maybe the government realized they could indoctrinate ALL children now that the parents are only part time caretakers.
Hooray for empowerment, right?
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I saw this poll on YouTube under the Patrick Bet David podcast. These are the results of his mostly right-leaning viewers.
Every poll I’ve seen from their page favors trump, but the results of this poll are how we’re viewing his handling of the Epstein files.
I’m not surprised by the poll results, but I’m still in the Kayfabe camp. There just isn’t enough facts available for me to be confident that Trump actually wants it buried and that Vance is lying. It’s possible, but I doubt they would have campaigned on it if Trump didn’t want it to happen.
If I once again don my hat of speculation, the Trump Administration seems to be making a rather compelling case that a soft coup attempt took place, initiated by the Obama administration through the intelligence community, then executed by the media in a way that’s strikingly similar to CIA-backed coups in other countries since 1946 or so.
Heck, they got 51 former intelligence analysts to say that Hunter Biden’s laptop wasn’t really real days before the 2020 election, with no explanation given to date for where all of Biden’s votes went in the 2024 election. This is on top of the entire Russian collusion hoax that led up to it, along with the scandal of covering up Biden’s health. We watched it all happen together.
I don’t think Trump taking control of DC is just to stop crime in DC, although that’s a good enough reason on its own. I’m expecting some rather major announcements in the next 30 days in relation to the 3 major scandals I just mentioned above. Maybe Epstein is connected to that somehow, or maybe not, but it makes sense to not blow up the country and the news cycle by releasing everything classified about it right now, assuming other plans are in the works.
Politically-speaking, Trump doesn’t pay any price for this right now. The midterms are still a ways off, and a lot can happen between now and then. If the people answering “no” in the poll are right, and the files never get released to any meaningful degree, it could potentially harm Republicans in the midterms, and Republicans are very aware of that.
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Since empathy and woke women came up earlier, here’s a whole procession of them at last night’s city council meeting. They came to town to explain to Lewiston why Lewiston’s streets ought to be riddled with needles, with seriously ill people roaming our streets, combining with the rampant gunfire to make Lewiston a complete hellscape for any child growing up here in 2025.
The first two women don’t even live in Lewiston, but they have a REALLY strong opinion about what Lewiston needs, and clean, safe streets aren’t a priority.
The third guy works in “harm reduction”, and looks and sounds like it, too. The fourth gal is the president of the “Church of Safe Injection”, who openly advocate for the abolition of all prisons, and received nearly $500,000 in public funding from the Biden administration.
It all reminds me of a famous C.S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
-C.S. Lewis
Here’s last nights woke white women explaining why the hellscape conditions of downtown are a GOOD thing, time-stamped to the start of their public comments. So much empathy!
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