r/behindthebastards • u/notmyworkaccount5 • Nov 06 '24
Discussion Our fellow citizens are the true bastards
I don't know if this post is okay, like many others here I'm both depressed and in a slight panic over the election results and I just need to vent a little.
I just wanted to share this great message I got on this work reddit account this morning because between the results and this I'm just coming to terms with the fact that our fellow citizens are the problem.
They see this as a sports competition where as long as they win they don't give a shit what happens, however sexist, racist, vile, and crude their team is does not matter because they get to go "HAHA WE WON YOU LOST".
Edit: spelling fixes because exhaustion let that slip by.
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u/666_is_Nero Nov 06 '24
Honestly not overly surprised. The episodes about the kind of everyday people that supported the Nazi rise to power shows that it’s not the most evil and corrupt that give fascism power, but those that just want to feel important. And the MAGA movement has been able to do that well sadly enough.
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u/histprofdave Nov 06 '24
It's true. The problem isn't Trump. The problem is a culture that considers Trump a good or viable option, which a majority (shudder) in this election seem to think. Either they love his authoritarianism, or consider the fact he tried to overthrow the government unworthy of disqualification. That displays a disdain for liberal democracy and the rule of law, whether they believe it or not.
The only "green shoots" I see here are: I don't know how much of this represents a real majoritarian movement that is hostile to democracy and open society, or whether this really is a cult of personality around Trump. Other candidates openly embracing fascist rhetoric, like Kari Lake and Mark Robinson, were soundly defeated. I watched a number of those voter interviews with people who said they voted for Trump, and while I don't think much of their intelligence, they didn't strike me as people having much of any ideology. It didn't seem like they even follow politics. Elections are largely just based around vibes for them.
That doesn't mean this isn't a big problem. People who do have ideology, anti-democratic people, Christian nationalists, etc, will now have access to the levers of power. The federal court system will essentially be overrun by far right judges. But I could still see a situation where these guys think their ideas rather than their figurehead are popular, and they overreach and provoke a backlash. But even if Democrats get back into power, I have no faith they will make changes needed to prevent fascist mobilization, as they did nothing to stop it over the last four years, they did create a winning strategy around engagement, and now we're in a worse place than ever.
In the meantime, don't isolate. Keep in touch with like-minded leftist and progressive folks. Help people you can. Speak the truth. Fascists want us to feel weak and powerless like the loser who messaged you. It's disheartening 70 million fascist enablers came out yesterday, but we're also a country of 300 million. They aren't the majority they believe they are.
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u/badform49 Nov 06 '24
The thing that keeps echoing through my head is how many people did this to pwn people like me. They get to prove that people like me aren't so smart. After all, look how badly the libs just got pwned. This is just a popularity contest every four years to them.
And the rest of us get to live in the world they created with their rah-rah, go team go attitude.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
That phrase "Conservatives would eat shit if liberals had to smell their breath" is evergreen apparently.
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u/Agreeable-Chap Nov 06 '24
I just hope this leads some leftists to stop believing they can reach these people with “solidarity” when the only thing they actually care about is causing other people pain. I’m already tired of watching libs and leftists blame each other for the loss while ignoring the teeming hordes of open fascists who actually did this to us just because they like how it feels.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
10000%
I used to listen to Podsaveamerica but had to drop it because there's this mentality libs have of having to reach these fascists with empathy and solidarity while ignoring progressive concerns and shaming them into voting.
Sometimes it feels like libs hate progressives more than they hate literal fascists.
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u/Agreeable-Chap Nov 06 '24
It goes both ways, I’ve been seeing the same shit from leftists who are more interested in sanctimoniously blaming “shitlibs” and making excuses for Trump voters than acknowledging them as literal fascists who just sold their neighbors out for no other reason than because they like how being on top feels.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
Yeah sadly leftist/liberal infighting and fracturing while fascists lockstep to seize power is just history repeating itself.
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u/123iambill Nov 07 '24
Because they do hate progressives more. Sure, they don't love bigotry and authoritarianism, but they care far more about maintaining the capitalist system than they do protecting minorities. So they will quickly side with fascists because "well it's a shame we had to lose the queer folk, but my portfolio looks good."
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Nov 06 '24
The hard part is that these shitgibbons truly live just to spite “libs”. It gives them reason to get out of bed everyday. They are political and religious zealots, useful human bodies to fulfill the desires of the rich and powerful. They truly truly have no reason to live for themselves other than to spread their hate and ideology. There’s no joyful recreation or compassionate human insights or art or leisure: it’s just a constant crusade. 24/7 bullying on their part and in their heads they’re the ones being persecuted.
I don’t know how wee supposed to progress with millions of idiots clamoring at the wheel trying to take the car off the road. I genuinely fear that this country’s gonna look more like Saudi Arabia (socially) in the next few decades.
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u/Hypireon Nov 06 '24
Cant wait to deal with my coworkers ugh
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
I'm in NC and I'm literally struggling to look them in the eyes because all I can feel is vitriol deep in my core towards these people.
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u/_My_Niece_Torple_ Nov 06 '24
I'm currently staying with 2 die hard MAGA family members because I have nowhere else to go and it's cold outside. The street might actually be a better option at this point.
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u/HeiGirlHei Nov 06 '24
I work for a company where the former CEO was on the governors board of directors in Florida under DeSantis. The few of us who don’t follow those beliefs are very quiet today but trying to hold strong in little groups.
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u/Jake24601 Nov 06 '24
Consider this; The Dems courted warhawk republicans who aren’t popular, were never popular, are out of office or combo of the three. Sanitizing the likes of Liz Chaney who just a few years ago was making statements about Democrats killing newborns was a mistake. Having that ghoul Dick Chaney making a video about decency or whatever? Right.
It’s also a mistake to just have celebrities and musical artists doing the heavy lifting in big city stadiums. Could it be people are showing up for the free concerts and spectacle? Well given how empty Trump’s rallies were in the end and how packed Kamala’s were, I’d say it’s the case.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
The establishment dems going "Look we have Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney!" actually made me feel sick because equating the two like the media equates the far right to the "radical left" just felt so gross.
Like one is a war criminal and the other has spent his life to try to better the lives of his fellow citizens.
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u/vniro40 Nov 06 '24
i think this was a losing strategy but it also just probably didn’t matter. imo trump was always going to win this, probably especially once he was shot at, because of vibes
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u/Amberatlast Nov 06 '24
You're never going to out-conservative conservatives but they keep trying it.
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u/kingdead42 Nov 06 '24
I think it's reasonable to acknowledge the Cheney's, but don't act like it's a strength. Let them talk to their audience (wherever that is) and say "Trump bad", but don't try and use it to bring a non-stable base to your party.
This should be a signal to the Dems (which they're famously bad at reading), that they need to build their own "fanatical" progressive base that the other side can never reach. And you can't grab the existing fanatics, because they've already latched on to the other party.
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u/TrickySnicky Nov 06 '24
"RickyBobby" desperately craves validation, just like his daddy
That is pretty much the source of our woes.
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u/MetaverseLiz Nov 06 '24
I already got a rape threat on reddit when I responded to a thread on the election in another sub. So this is already going great.
I trust zero people I don't already know now. I assume every person I interact with wants me dead/arrested/forced to give birth because the stats say they do.
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u/Armigine Doctor Reverend Nov 06 '24
Their hobbies include fentanyl, per their post history. Sounds about right
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u/GlutenFree_Paper Nov 06 '24
I mean if you spend any length of time outside of the country and then comeback to the states, you’ll realize just how selfish and grotesque Americans are.
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u/Amasin_Spoderman Nov 06 '24
I went to Thailand in September and I’m still reeling from being back around Americans.
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u/GlutenFree_Paper Nov 06 '24
The best way I can describe it is like after Frodo destroyed the ring in Return of the King and when he returned to the shire he felt empty
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u/spare_me_over Nov 06 '24
This is a person who has no human connection in their life and the only thing that makes them cum is their conviction that sending messages like this to other human beings will give them the power and wealth that they admire in the demagogues who are permanently standing on their neck.
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u/DarceysEyeOnThePrize Nov 06 '24
It’s hard when behind the bastards turned into finding out the bastards can be your own neighbors.
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u/JimJordansJacket Kissinger is a war criminal Nov 06 '24
Americans have always been complete fucking bastards. We are a garbage country, full of garbage people.
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u/MightyPitchfork Nov 06 '24
The true bastards are those that conned them. I know, "Shame me twice..." but the billionaires and Russians combined to flood the country with disinformation from all angles. You can, in fact, fool enough of the people to win an election when you spend a fucktonne of money.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
I mean at a certain point we have to realize these people are adults with full cognitive agency over their choices, shifting the blame from them to the media they choose to consume is, to me, infantilizing them and the harm they cause from the decisions they make.
This isn't North Korea where they have no option other than government propaganda, they watch these sources because those media channels tell them what they want to hear.
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u/Fearless-Incident515 Nov 06 '24
Sure.
But in twenty minutes, a lot of these adults are going to regret their decisions or will dig in to the point of changing their identity entirely.
This is going to drastically remake Americans identities.
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u/AuroraBorrelioosi Nov 06 '24
As a foreigner maybe I shouldn't pipe in, but this feels like a coping strategy you're using to shy away from some uncomfortable truths. They're not fooled by Trump. They know exactly who he is. That's why they like him. They like that he's a rapist and a felon. They like that he tried to overthrow the government. They like that he wants to hurt who they want to hurt. This is who you are. This is America.
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u/Bern_After_Reading85 Nov 06 '24
Am an American, and I agree with you. This happened because most people either wanted it or didn’t care enough to stop it and that is incredibly depressing.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
They're giving the same vibes as the people who would turn a blind eye to what the nazis were doing to out groups because it didn't affect them.
"First they came for the immigrants, I did not speak out because I am was an immigrant." - the country built on immigration.
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u/MightyPitchfork Nov 06 '24
I'm British. In the UK.
I saw this exact same thing when the UK voted for Brexit. Big money and Russian agitprop, convincing chickens to vote for KFC.
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u/Kriegerian PRODUCTS!!! Nov 06 '24
Yeah, despite what you’re going to hear from libs, Putin did not reach in and dictate the final vote count. They dumped gas on the fire that was already burning, but the problem here is Americans.
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u/MightyPitchfork Nov 06 '24
Also, Ricky Bobby has been a Redditor for over 5 years and has less than 600 karma. Which tells you what his average take on any topic is. Especially since he probably spends his entire basement dwelling time in Conservative subs.
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u/Atticus104 Nov 06 '24
It's one thing when we didn't really have a record to hold him accoutable for poltical actions in 2016, but there has been enough observed events that anyone with common sense should have figured out he is too dangerious to give power to.
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u/Micosilver Nov 06 '24
At some point you have to realize that the average voter is fascism-curious.
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u/FurballPoS Nov 06 '24
This is when you take a baseball bat to his knees as you drop off your set of store keys.
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u/samadamadingdong Nov 06 '24
I can't explain anyone voting for Trump, but when it comes to the Dems we need to live in a world where the party actually wins your vote. Dems have had a big part in pushing the Overton window towards the right even since the Hillary Clinton campaign when they thought it would be a good idea to tell all their news platforms to give Trump attention because they thought Jeb Bush was their real threat. (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/)
They platform the Republicans to go to further rightward extremes because they think it makes the Republicans look less appealing to vote for and they want to absorb the center right votes that the Republicans leave behind. All this while the Democrats leave behind the progressive, popular support that makes their early campaigning period possible.
Playing the blame game at liberals is not the point of what I'm trying to say here. They are going up against a lot but the types of voters that the Democrats are fighting so hard to win are not up to the task of getting out to vote especially when you consider the poll watching harassment, bomb threats and simple things like the fact that there aren't any seats for people who can't physically stand in line for hours to wait. If Dems had stopped trying to assimilate economic conservatives and never Trumper Republicans, forcing them to stay over on that side, the Republican party would implode. Then maybe it would be the Republicans now pointing the finger at each other wondering why nobody turned up to vote.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
Fully agree, the dems and libs in general need to face a "reckoning" with their priorities because leftist and progressive policies are almost universally seen as good things when they aren't presented in the lens of being a progressive/"far left" policy.
Then they also need to actually pursue those policies instead of doing what Biden did of trying to go back to normal while ignoring a fascist threat in the house. He thought he could compromise with a party that won't accept compromise and won't play by the rules he chose to bind himself to.
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u/Milton__Obote Nov 06 '24
It's really simple in my opinion. When peoples wallets are lighter they vote for the other party. They did it in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
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u/Inevitable_Effect993 Nov 07 '24
Even when they win they're still losers. Check rickybobby's post history. He's such a moron it's actually funny.
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u/MihalysRevenge Nov 07 '24
Yep on FB arguing with MAGA over the years have got tons of "go back dirty (slur)" or some variation of that (im Genizaro native from NM)
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u/flaggfox Nov 06 '24
I'm sure it's been said but the next Bastard you can talk about is the non voting American.
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u/Iridescent_burrito Nov 06 '24
Cannot emphasize enough that to those who didn't vote, or voted third party: this is your fault. We told you it would be, and you chose to be a fucking spineless moron anyway.
The blood is on your hands.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
The progressive/leftist protest vote did not cause this wide of a margin, she got ~15 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. We need some serious self reflection on why that happened instead of shaming and blaming each other to prevent this from happening again.
I feel like this has been a series of failures starting from the moment Biden took office by not immediately aggressively going after the attempted coup combined with dems yet again moving further right on issues like immigration instead of countering the bad faith talking points from the right.
Not to mention the economy argument, instead of explaining why the economy is the way it is now and saying "You're blaming the wrong people, we're trying to fix it but republicans are actively blocking that because they want you to hurt." they just went "No no the economy is great you just don't know what you're talking about!".
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u/LeotiaBlood Nov 06 '24
Frankly, I think the root of a lot of this is Biden going back on his one-term pledge. I doubt we would have ended up with Harris if there’d been a primary.
I was supportive of switching to Harris when he dropped out because I was concerned about Democrat infighting, but obviously she wasn’t a strong enough candidate.
And, yeah, the economy. The one ‘I told you so’ I have. I’ve been screaming from the rooftops that Dem messaging on the economy was trash. They tried to gaslight the American people into believing the economy was good on the individual level when it clearly is not.
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u/notmyworkaccount5 Nov 06 '24
Yeah Biden should have stepped aside for a primary, I think the libs are too up their own asses to see just how many Americans are racist and sexist enough to vote for the worst white man out of spite over a candidate like Kamala.
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u/1s35bm7 Nov 06 '24
The dems could browbeat non-voters or they could reach out and try to win their votes. I think the past several years have proven that their browbeating is a losing strategy. But here you are, still doing it
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u/Paid_Corporate_Shill Nov 06 '24
This isn’t a great take imo. There are of course plenty of bastards who just hold vile opinions and we will never win over.
There are also lots of marginal voters who don’t really pay attention to politics but noticed that the economy felt better 4 years ago than it does now, and that’s the main driver.
Would it be better if they paid attention? Of course. Are they irredeemable bastards? No. We can win them over.
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u/JKinney79 Nov 06 '24
They’re terrible of course, but I can’t help but think of the votes left on the table. Trump seems to have the same numbers he did 4 years ago, but Harris at this point has 18 million fewer votes than Biden did.
So that’s almost 20 million people who didn’t bother to show up this time.