AIBU to think the US deserves the Govt it's got?

[YemenRoadYemen]

I know there are other threads about this.

But am I being unreasonable to think that America deserves the president it has because so many people - of which a ridiculous amount were women - voted for this cretin? I know he didn't get the popular vote, but he did get the job.

He put Kavanagh in there, and now if Roe vs Wade goes to the Supreme Court, the GOP plants will overturn it.

I'm so angry about this, but I feel as if America has brought this on themselves, and if that man wins in 2020, which let's face it, he almost certainly will, they've got no-one to blame but themselves.

Argue back. Please. Tell me I'm unreasonable, and why. This is all so depressing.

i say this as an American: when was the last time the American citizenry roused itself to significant, sustained protest against the predations and depredations of the US government, the people issuing concrete demands to their leaders?

1969, with the October Moratorium? (Which, by the way, stopped NIxon from a planned nuclear strike on Hanoi, as KIssinger told him the Moratorium showed that the American people would go into open revolt if he did that.)
The mid-1980s, with Act-Up?
Early in the Trump administration, we saw protests with concrete demands regarding the visa requirements for entering the US.

But since then?

So yes, if the citizens of the US are not bothered enough by US warmongering, US violation of Nuremberg Laws and Geneva Conventions, the devastation of the working class via labour arbitrage in globalization, the collapse in life expectancies of now even the middle class, the forty-year long continued erosion of reproductive rights such that, functionally, the right to abortion doesn’t exist in 40% of the country —

Not bothered enough to engage in the civil disobedience and sustained citizen protest that history shows over and over again does actually create change —

Then yes the American citizenry have the govt. they deserve. Democracy isn’t just about voting.

We deserve Trump the way the UK deserves Brexit.

He put Kavanagh in there, and now if Roe vs Wade goes to the Supreme Court, the GOP plants will overturn it.

I will eat my hat if John Roberts allows the Roberts' court to go down in history as the court that overturned Roe vs Wade. Even if he does, abortion will still be perfectly legal in many states (and illegal in states that already make it incredibly difficult to have one).

You do know that part of the UK currently criminalises abortion - right?

No, I'm not in the UK. And in all honesty, for all our flaws, troubles and international irrelevance and insignificance, my Prime Minister is pretty much the only thing that gives me any hope politically at the moment.

• However, they were Mexican speaking Hispanics, big in the union movement for many years, big into education and healthcare movements for the working classes, hugely politically active, kind, well read. They voted for Obama twice. Of course there was no way they could vote for Clinton. But the daughter says she asked them, how could you trust that Trump will be a class traitor and do what he says. And their response was "Well, we trust Trump like we trusted Obama. He didn't really stand on our side of the line in the end when it came down to us and the bankers."*

I find this boggling. Why was there 'no way' they could vote for Clinton? I know she was far from perfect (nowhere near as far from it as Trump, mind), but why was there 'no way', when the alternative was Trump? Why would they trust Trump? In this way, Americans have the government they deserve.

Whose side does Trump stand on, when it comes down to the bankers...?

But they seem to be pushing they gay mayor candidate, who looks exactly like a Clinton. Talks well, is a great talker, hits an id politics button, and is a sort of pro tech pro big money guy. There is zero chance that he will do anything crazy about poverty.

What's Trump doing about poverty?

The fact that abortion is legal in many states doesn't stop it being illegal in some, and women will be criminalised by travelling out of state.

As I understand it, women in Northern Ireland are not criminalised for traveling to other parts of the UK.

I hope 2020 proves me wrong. But I think once again, Trump will take it.

Because his opponent must be nigh on perfect, while sparring with one of the most flawed men imaginable, whose every fault is overlooked and forgiven.

women will not be criminalised for travelling out of state. Northern Ireland convicts women for procuring abortions right now. Anyone from the UK would want to deal with that injustice first before fretting about some future overturning of a Roe vs Wade.

One thing US-ians are desperately trying not to face is that the 2016 election was stolen. Not just the presidential, also about 23-24 Congressional races.

They started not counting the votes in 2000 (for all I know, they may have strated earlier, but that's when it became very obvious), and every cycle the situation gets worse. 2016 was just plain stolen.

There weren't just the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook shenanigans so well investigated by Carole Cadwalladr for Brexit and Trump. There was also plain old vote fraud, probably by diddling machines. Winning by 77,000 votes in three strategic counties with statistically very implausible patterns of votes just shouts fraud.

But the "It Can't Happen Here" mindset means nobody with enough money and power wanted to go back and examine what happened.

That's all water under the bridge at this point, but what makes it relevant is that the US has done functionally nothing to make sure 2020 doesn't have voter suppression and does count the votes.

I think an actual democracy would Dump Trump in 2020. Resoundingly. But that's not what they have. And I don't see much stopping the next election from being even more stolen than the last.

The left needs to get real, stop obsessing about identity politics and political correctness and start listening to the concerns of ordinary working people of all backgrounds

This statement is spot on and goes for for the UK as well.

I find this boggling. Why was there 'no way' they could vote for Clinton? I know she was far from perfect (nowhere near as far from it as Trump, mind), but why was there 'no way', when the alternative was Trump? Why would they trust Trump? In this way, Americans have the government they deserve. Whose side does Trump stand on, when it comes down to the bankers...?

I don't think it's that odd. There was never any question that Clinton would continue to support the class oligarchy in place. It's easy for the professional class to be comfortable with that. In a lot of cases they don't really even get why anyone has a problem with her approach. They are social progressives who favour a neoliberal economy, not leftists.
But for people from the kind of Christian-Marxist-working class background of the writer I was describing, those people are the clear enemy, the creators and defenders of the social structures that are at the root of poverty, exploitation, racism, and all the rest. They always have been the oppressors.

Clinton didn't even admit that such a thing existed. Trump recognised it and named it and said he would break it down. Would he - well, would Clinton? Would Obama?

It's not about checking a list of progressive values and the one who checks the most boxes wins, for a lot of people. It's about how likely they are to take a what at the roots of their oppression. Any chance is larger than zero chance.

I'm not sure of the point you were making about what Trump would do about poverty. My point was that Paul Buttigieg isn't likely to do anything, or do anything to threaten the capitalists, and maybe, being very similar to Clinton, he's not the man to choose for the job of challenging Trump.

Take a whack, obviously, not a what!

It would be nice to be able to edit.

No 11 year old rape victim should be forced to give birth (as recent case in Ohio)

She won’t be forced to give birth. Abortion is still legal in Ohio, as that law isn’t coming into effect until July, I believe. And it’s going to be struck down by federal courts. I get what you are saying though.

Ohio and other pro-life states pass these laws every few years, and they always get struck down by federal courts. This isn’t the first time Ohio has done this, I think this is like the third or fourth time its been passed in the state legislature.

The intention of these is to get a reversal of Roe, which is sadly a bit more likely than before

I stand by the perception (mine) that Democratic candidates must be perfect, or rejected.

While Republican candidate can be completely defective and accepted.

Just why the blatant double standard?

I don't understand why you think that. Individuals vote or not for a variety of reasons. But everyone ranks their reasons in some way. When you are looking at the group dynamics of voting it's more complicated.

I would say that if you look at consistent Republican voters vs consistent Democrat voters, they tend to use different kinds of metrics to choose. But that's not somehow wrong.

The Democrats have chosen not to bother with the concerns of working class union leftist voters, in fact that have chosen to oppose them. That's not on those voters. And it's pretty shitty of the Democrats to behave as if those people put their votes elsewhere somehow it makes the voters morally compromised. That's a pretty giant sense of entitlement.