I’m only 20 years old, I’ve never voted or even really bothered paying attention to any other election, and I dunno it kinda feels like I started on one that was really crazy? But I’m not sure maybe every election has been insane and I just didn’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Not even close. This was a turning point election.

    This election determined that we will live with an ultra conservative Supreme Court for the rest of our lives. In just the last couple years that court has removed women’s federally protected right to bodily autonomy and determined that presidents are above the law and can’t be held accountable for anything they do while in office. Decisions like that will continue for the remainder of our lives and chip away at our nation as we once knew it.

    Trump’s administration ran on making fundamental changes to our government, including deconstructing the department of education. He promised to make an anti-vaxxer the head of the department of health. Ukraine will cease to exist. Palestine will cease to exist. Russia will expand their borders and threaten Europe. America will lose allies. NATO will be weakened.

    We made a criminal who failed his last term as president by every conceivable metric and illegally attempted to overturn an election the most powerful figure on the planet. He will fill all positions with unqualified toadies, just like he did last time when he had the highest White House turnover rate in US history.

    What Americans just did was change the political order we will be living under for the foreseeable future. And no one will suffer more for that than your generation.

    We categorically failed you and the decline we are about to experience could last a generation and the suffering is currently unquantifiable. The decision we just made will change the world we live in in a negative way we can’t fully fathom yet.

    The remainder of your life just got a whole lot harder and I’m sorry. I did not vote for it to be this way.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    Not even a little bit.

    And you’re probably not gonna get a point of comparison, because it’s looking likely to be one party rule by the absolute shittiest american embarrassments forever at this point. At least until America does some stupid shit globally and gets themselves invaded by a united band of good guys down the road.

    • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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      32 minutes ago

      Would take China and/or India in that case. Europe and Canada don’t have the population, Mexico probably doesn’t the will.

  • Nyciferi@kbin.melroy.org
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    2 hours ago

    Elections have strong outcomes, strong repercussions and sometimes strong benefits. Right now, this past election will have sharp and strong repercussions. Your vote is indirectly saying that you’re OKAY with whatever party you chose, to do with as they wish. And what they do with whatever they wish, will affect millions, including you.

    So right now, everyone who didn’t vote for the Orange Fascist, are having solid reasons to be worried. They expect a lot of things to be ripped away or outright dismantled, setting the course to potentially have irreversible damages. All because of the collective voter’s choices that wanted the opposing party in.

    In an election, I would much people vote to have a voice than abstain and not vote, expecting outcomes to magically work. However, there is a personal responsibility to be had when it comes to voting. That is, whatever comes your way in how people react when they find out who you voted for.

    I always seem to lose friends every election, long tenure or short tenure, because of my choices that complicate theirs. It’s unfortunately a thing that’s going to happen. And it may happen to you.

    By the way, I’ve failed to mention that it is important to vote, based on what you feel is valuable for the party to focus on. If they ever.

  • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    No, they’ve been getting progressively crazier since 2016.

    2000 was fairly divisive, it went to the Supreme Court after all. But it wasn’t even a fraction this dramatic, people mostly shrugged and figured GWB would be like his father, which was unfortunate, but sane at any rate. Nobody was really predicting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

    2004 was pretty dull. John Kerry challenged GWB but felt sort of like an empty suit.

    2008 was nice, Obama was a strong and exciting candidate vs the very known quantity of McCain, who was a moderate repub known for bipartisanship. Sarah Palin provided for hours of entertaining impersonations by people like Tina Fey, but since she was the VP candidate nobody really cared.

    2012 was dull. Romney was a strong candidate, another moderate repub. But Obama was fine, he hadn’t broken the country or anything. Brought us out of a recession, even if people were upset about bank bailouts and stuff. Lot of people got health insurance.

    Then it starts getting spicy.

  • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    It’s part of a trend of a significant portion of the electorate feeling ignored. It’s a trend that’s happening in large parts of the West, we’re seeing it in Europe too in places like France and Germany.

    Now you can argue about whether these people have a genuine grievance or not. But if we don’t try and address the underlying causes of these people abandoning moderate parties, we’re going to see more and more extreme candidates and parties being successful. And I don’t think that’s something any of us want.

  • calabast@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    Yes, it was really crazy. In the past few decades our politicians had different goals, but generally still followed the same rules. Trump has shown he wants to dismantle any and all systems that don’t serve him, and the Republican party is happy to let him do so, so this election seems like it might have far greater consequences than the ones in memorable past.

  • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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    2 hours ago

    If blue still has any branch of government then this might have been a nothing burger. Yeah, we’d be set back 10 years but nothing unfixable.

    Trump has absolutely no checks on his whims. Even the supreme Court is in lockstep. He could make it illegal to not be orange on day one and actually enforce it. Not everywhere equally, since blue states still exist. But we’ll see if trump doesn’t use military force on them.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    In former times if one candidate had promised to overthrow the entire system and abolish elections and democracy, then nobody would have voted for that clown.

  • Bear@lemmynsfw.com
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    2 hours ago

    No it just depends on the candidates. Most have been boring but Obama, Clinton, Trump, Harris were all controversial.

    • pancakes@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      You might be younger or forgetting but before Obama it was George W., definitely not controversial… And before that there was more controversy. Americans have always had divisive elections, but there’s been a noticable uptick in the elections involving Trump.

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      2 hours ago

      This election has the same dreadful feeling as 2000.

      Nevermind the crazyness, it’s the certainty that something worldwide bad is going to happen due to the incompetence of the American government.

  • LegitimateEngineer@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    2012 was what felt like a more normal election where the candidates respected each other and it played out a lot more typically. (Same for 2008). Trump changed that up and it’ll possibly stay that way going forward.

  • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    It’s usually between someone you kinda don’t like and someone you kinda like, so the stakes are lower. This year we had to choose between The Antichrist and Some Boring Lady, but this country hates women 🤷‍♂️

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    5 hours ago

    This election was special, cause the candidate who got the most votes actually won.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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    4 hours ago

    This election was crazier than the last election. On the other hand it will be less crazy than the next election.

    • teamevil@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      That’s cute that you think there’ll be another election… If you think for a second these Nazis are going to let the chance that they could be voted out of power ever occur You’re a fool