To be really glad I don't live in America right now

[AnonymousBleep]

I really feel for ordinary Americans. It's bad enough on this side of the Channel, hearing daily about Trump's latest petty, spiteful, idiotic bullshit - that rant against the Bishop who asked him to have mercy on immigrants, the ridiculous and insulting attempt to blame 'diversity' for the plane crash - but living under it must be so much worse. And heaven help you if you're LGBT or a woman. Or an immigrant. Or not white. Or poor. Or anyone else Trump and his freakshow of a government despises. I moan about the UK all the time, like everyone else who lives here, because god knows it's far from perfect, but at least we don't have a government in charge who is trying to strip huge swathes of the population of their rights and citizenship.

Ok I voted YABU, but honestly I think YANBU also. I agree and I am also glad I don’t. But at the same time this is democracy. It’s how it works and a clear majority have asked for this and you take the rough with the smooth. I say that as someone who lives somewhere where fascists will presumably have a loud voice in the government from next month. It sucks.
I am also glad I don’t live in England where public services are on their knees and the politics is also reactionary, but at the same time, barring anarchy or dictatorship this is what we get right now- everywhere and it’s been brought on by ourselves.

I'm sure that they appreciate your pity.

The ordinary Americans voted, he seems to be doing what he promised. Whether you agree or not with the policies, a politician quickly doing what they said they will do is a breath of fresh air. I wish that our politicians were more like that.

I'm personally very glad we have checks and balances here and that one maniac can't start deciding stuff like 'life begins at conception', get all his people onto some grand judiciary that they remain on until they die, then get it made into law. Imagine if Starmer said he wanted to invade Ireland? Everyone would think he'd lost the plot and he'd be out of power in a jiffy. And that would be correct.

This is what happens when governments fail to listen to the will of the people and act on issues that they feel strongly about.

Things go to far in the other direction and countries end up with hard line right wing governments.

The same thing is happening in the UK right now. If things don’t change for the better of the majority of the electorate Reform will be our next government

Reform supporter alert.

They won't. Their voters are all older people, and there's simply not the numbers to make that happen.

Seem to be a fair few of them on MN though.

"The majority voted for this"
The American election system is different. It doesn't work like ours does. It's not really "the people" who vote in the president.

It's terrifying to see what's happening. And the scarier part is how far he wants to go outside America. Threatening to take Greenland by force for example. It will gave effects far beyond America if he really does attempt some of the things he's said.

Labour are absolutely NOT anywhere near as bad.

Oh don't get me wrong, he's batshit. The interesting thing is that voters thought that he was more normal than the Democrat offering. There's a lesson there on the dangers of focusing too much on identity politics that only affect a tiny minority of very left wing virtue signallers. Most people can see the problems with massive immigration and economies being ruined by net zero, politicians need to address that stuff or someone else will.

There are a lot of people who look at the UK and are glad they don't live here right now. We're not in any better a place.

You may not like Trump but there are plenty of people who think Starmer is no better.

If you're hard left you'll hate Trump, if you're hard right you'll hate Starmer. If you're in between you'll probably dislike both of them.

FWIW I think the diversity argument is worth investigating. Jobs like controlling aircraft should be done by the best people to do them. Diversity should mean that the best person gets the job regardless of their background, i.e. if the best candidate is a black lesbian that shouldn't matter, not that a substandard candidate gets the job simply because they are a black lesbian.

I expected the Reform/Trump lot to be all over this. They seem to have a lot of time to go onto forums and argue that Trump is great and everyone is going to vote Reform in the UK. Weirdly, when you look into it (not so much on here, where you can't but on FB and other forums) lots of them seem to be men from Eastern Europe, and not from the UK at all.

Trump himself didn’t accept the result when Biden defeated him and led assaults on the Capitol. Please don’t mistake him for a democrat.

I’m not a fan but have family in the US and they’re all perfectly happy. I don’t think they need pity from anyone. As I said, I’m not a fan but he has millions of supporters 🤷🏿‍♀️

Nope former labour supporter now politically homeless the same as most gc women.
Nice to see where you stand politically though

100% agree. I think it's deeply depressing how the hard right have managed to weaponise identity politics and get women voting for them against their own interests.

The "older people" thing is interesting. I can remember people saying this when I started voting 30 years ago.

And yet, the right rises...

Yeah, I'm centre left. It's hardly a thrilling revelation. I'm also GC but not up for throwing out women's rights to bodily autonomy by voting for the hard right who have clearly set out that that's what they'll be doing. Trump-supporting GC women have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

We can’t say for certain that they won’t thats the issue. If Starmer doesn’t step up now more and more people will become disillusioned and veer towards them

It's not really rising in the UK. Reform have taken votes from the Conservatives and split the right wing vote. That's how Labour won (and I say that as a Labour voter). They didn't take votes from Labour though. Britain remains a broadly centrist country, with louder (because richer) voices on the hard right.

Wait, you have a lot of time to go off on a rant about another country's democratically elected president who is doing precisely what he said he would and then if someone disagrees with you, you rely on an logical fallacies rather than addressing anything they have said and accuse them of not being real?

Some hints and tips for the next time:

1. Don't start any thread, ever, and expect people to agree with you.
2. If you assume everyone who disagrees with you is a liar or a bot that means you are probably a liar and/or a bot. Projection is a very real thing.
3. If you want to engage in discussion, read what people have said and react to that, not what you wish they had said, inferred they had said, believed they should have said - only what they actually said.

OK. Thanks for the advice.

This is quite an important point - in their anti-trans efforts, women have voted for a man who thinks he has a right to dictate what happens with their bodies.

Trump is an awful candidate for women but they could only see he said "2 genders. No change"

Maybe we need to look beyond trans ideologies and see how attitudes towards them can hurt women

I feel more sorry for us, who didn't even get a vote and yet now are going to be dragged into a war with these terrifying maniacs.

You do realise that Trump has just given women their rights back by defining women in law as a biological reality. He's saved women's sports by banning men including those who id as transwomen, same with prisons where 15% of women prisoners are male and he's banned state funded child medical transition including irreversible surgery. Please can you tell me how he's removed our bodily autonomy?

Yep. It's a separate point but identity politics has ruined feminism IMHO by turning it into this one single issue. But it's opening a huge can of worms on MN - I haven't got time to spend the whole day debating it!