Beans

I look at what is happening with Greene and can’t help but think of this as something akin to cancel culture. While I align closer with AOC than MTG, I’m not sure distancing yourself from somebody like Greene - who has genuinely started changing their views despite her Bill Burr style rhetoric stating she’s not changing and has always thought like this - is helpful to your cause. I think it could do a few things like alienate potential partners, keep Greene from moving closer to you on the spectrum, etc. and none of them are particularly good.

I think all we can really do is welcome Greene over with open arms. Now, I’m tempered because I’m not sure she will shift any farther than where she is now, but I think alienating her is a good way to keep her as your enemy. And I don’t need more of those. Frankly, I applaud Green for this last year she’s spent in the ire of Trump. It take courage to speak out. And now that she is speaking out we want to alienate her? I don’t like that, even knowing that welcoming her over will come with a lot of strain.

Edit: I’m gonna stand by what I’m saying and say you are exactly who this message is for. No one is perfect, and I’m not saying she hasn’t done or isn’t doing some horrible stuff. That has nothing to do with what I said. What I said was that casting her aside just hurts all of us because we are alienating people who are trying to change. Think back to who you were as a teen or even ten years ago, did you like who you were? We’ve all done horrible shit. We aren’t magically better people. This is like telling an addict to get help, then when they do, we tell them we can’t have them on our lives because they used to do drugs.

Yeah, I think the idea that we need to “primary candidates” is technically right, but that’s got nothing to do with this. The issue is THAT money rules American Politics in a way different from other nations (people get mad at me for saying that, but you can go watch Johnny Harris talk about the role money plays in American Politics, or Philip Defranco, or BoyBoy). The issue isn’t “primaries,” the issue is that Congress greatly control who gets to even run prior to the primaries. And even during the primaries they choose who to put money behind. And we do primary incumbents? Like, when did anyone say we didn’t (not you, the other commenter). Otherwise we wouldn’t have the RNC/DNC or the literal primary elections.

Oh, and outside of money the issue is Gerrymandering. Before anyone shits on me, go look up how effective gerrymandering is. It decides elections. More than votes and more than money.

Yeah, I think saying “toxic masculinity” and moving on like it’s these guys’ fault they’re isolated is a large part of the issue. While I don’t recommend befriending every single lonely guy out there, it won’t kill people to listen or care about others.

Saying it’s “you’re” fault and absolving oneself of fault doesn’t do that. It just pushes someone else into more isolation. That’s how you end up with guys talking to porn bots: because no one will listen to them. That’s how you get incels following Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes: people called out their “toxic masculinity,” but weren’t willing to help, just protect themselves.

While I get it that boundaries are a good defense against legitimate threats, as someone who was in this demographic, it literally took just one person being nice to me and now I’m not just some “nice guy” on Reddit (Now I’m a piece of shit on Lemmy). Now I’m married and can show incels I meet that there is a path forward where they aren’t lonely and they don’t have to listen to virgin wannabe rapists to learn how to be cool.

I think you both are essentially right. Like, I don’t think he’s a plant by republicans, but I do think that like Hilary, his values align with republicans, not liberals (I make the distinction of republicans and liberals because most elected democrats are not as far left as their constituents). But I think almost all Representatives are part of the ruling class. In America, you kinda have to be. Either they take corporate money or they own businesses (i.e. are part of “corporate”)

Americans get it: the politicians benefit from acting like it’s left vs right. It’s a small amount of Americans that don’t get this, the rest of us are stuck with a two party system where unless you are a .1%er you can’t create a new party, and EVERY .1%er supports whatever side won’t tax them.

I think the most frustrating thing to me is that the ONE person I’ve overheard explaining why we “just had to” bomb and kill civilians and children was justifying it with the threat of nuclear bombs because we “can’t trust them” to uphold “Fatwa.” Which is stupid for many reasons that I shouldn’t have to get into: but the one I will is that “sure, we can’t trust our enemy, so let’s kill the civilians we said we were going to protect from that enemy.”

I’m frustrated to see that number ONLY be at 59%.

I suppose you’re right that your country is similar or has similarities. I’m not saying that other countries don’t have problems with their own governments or money. But that’s not what I was illustrating here. What I’m illustrating is why the fair elections turn out how they do. Would I say that Russia is less corrupt or less ruled by money? No. Ukrain? Obviously not.

What I’m illustrating is that America, despite being “the land of the free,” is very much not free. And this idea that all Americans are at fault for Donald being elected isn’t true. About 47% of its population didn’t vote for him (before you say anything I do understand how elections work) and now he is tearing our republic/democracy apart.

And yes, it always looks from outsider perspectives that Americans are not studied or that we don’t travel or that we don’t pay attention to outside politics. We do. Believe me. So when I say we have a very different political system, I’d argue it’s true. And it’s true for every other country. No political system (or even government) is the same. And we are all just as helpless as each other. Like, in America we don’t have parties sprouting up like Russia, Germany, Australia, etc. we don’t have a dictatorship like Russia, North Korea. We don’t have three separate countries inside of one like the UK - we have over 50. It’s like if the EU was one country.

So it doesn’t help that you’re assuming I don’t pay attention outside my boarders. We literally just invaded Venezuela and kidnapped their leader (without our congress agreeing to it, which is required by law). America has so much power in world politics. We have military bases spread across the world; it wouldn’t even require us dispatching troops from America to stage a coup in another country. And we’ve already done it or tried to do it: look at the Philippines or Cuba (Bay of Pigs as we call it) or literally anywhere in the Middle East. I would be an idiot to not pay attention. It’s fucking scary.

And to give you another example, these corporations that I’m talking about don’t just mess with my economy and government. These chip shortages you’re seeing, that’s the companies in my country causing them. China not exporting chips that are used for cars anymore? That’s America’s fault.

I mean, what do you want us to do about it? What do you think it’s like having said child rapist as your leader when you didn’t vote for him? He has his own military force running around rounding people up and killing others. The news has only just covered 2 of them. 2025 saw more deaths due to ICE than its entire history.

It’s not the people you should point the finger at either. Do you even know the term “Gerrymandering?” Look it up. These elections are determined 16 years beforehand AND now Trump is trying to rewrite district lines so that Republicans have more districts that are even more partisan. On top of that, he’s threatening voters with violence. He’s already threatened to send military to voting stations.

On top of all of that, I don’t care what country you’re from, America has a different political system than ANY other country in the world. I don’t think even most Americans understand this. America’s two party system is ruled by money and bribes (we call these brides “lobbying”). Basically, corporations give money or trips or items to judges and politicians to get them to do what they want. And even our 4 party leaders (imagine you have 2 parliaments - one based off of population size for your state, and another where every state gets the same number of votes) are the leaders precisely because they have the most money that can be used for campaign ads. Oh yeah, don’t get me started on insider trading of our politicians. Everything I’ve described in this paragraph is 100% legal.

I’m not trying to tell people to not vote, but the truth is that in America, the land of the free and the land of democracy, our votes don’t matter, primarily because of the gerrymandering. So when you see Americans saying they’re fed up, don’t act like we aren’t fed up “enough.” We have people dying at protests. Our state level and local governments are looking at what happened in Iran and are waiting for Trump to do the same. He’s basically threatened it if any ICE agent dies.

I think Americans also hate America this much.

Edit:

Since there’s an asshole starting shit in these comments: for you guys outside of America, I want one thing to be clear. We do not like having Trump as president. He ran saying he’d bring down costs for poorer families, but instead has ran a straight-up terror campaign.

The second thing is that America has a two party system. You’ve most likely heard this fact stated, but may not know what it means. America’s politics effectively give you two parties to vote for and anyone running as one of the “other parties” is wholly for posterity to take votes away from one of the two major candidates. This two party system was effectively bought by major corporations like Amazon. Corporations and “Special interest groups” (rich people) are able to lobby (bribe politicians) over-the-board to get what they want.

The big kicker is gerrymandering: these political leaders who take “lobbying” pick and choose districts. Long-story-short: this is what really decides elections. Instead of these being “squares” of land, lawmakers divvy up their states (our states are as large as European countries in both population and land size; there are 50 not counting all the countries we occupy like Australia or territories like Puerto Rico because they don’t voter) in their own party’s interest.

There is no way for a new party to rise like any other country in the world because they don’t ever have enough money to out market these two bigger parties. Even our 4 leaders (2 leaders per party per house and senate which are like one parliament based off of population size and one fucked up “equal” one) are chosen based on money.

Our politicians are corrupt, and they make the rules. There is not a lot Americans can really do, especially with the president having Americans killed. ICE is a para-military force that’s killed more people in 2025 than it had in its entire history; it’s not just the two news sites are reporting. Even our state representatives and senates/houses are afraid. They’re essentially afraid of this becoming Iran.

And a lot of Americans are prepping to flea. A lot of us have set up dual citizenships.

It’s not great.