Hardkill

Actually, believe it or not, virtually every liberal/progressive social justice policy throughout all of history that has improved the rights, freedom, fairness, and opportunities of racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ+ community has also improved the rights, freedom, fairness, and opportunities of poor white men and the white working class. Why? Because every policy or law that has been racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, classist, etc. has in actuality also caused many white men to suffer from greater poverty, less job/financial opportunities, less education opportunities, less healthcare benefits, less voting rights, greater labor shortage for their own businesses, a smaller and less diverse pool of talent to choose from for hiring workers for their businesses, staff shortages for the schools they run, no gay rights for any gay men, and so much more. Roland and his panelist start talking about it around 16:13

What about all of Kobe Bryant's best friends including Shaq and Michael Jordan crying over the tragic death of Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna? How about the Rock who admitted to crying often over his mom being suicidal when he was a teenager He said in the Entertainment Online interview in 2014, “I didn’t want to do a thing, I didn’t want to go anywhere, I was crying constantly. Eventually, you reach a point where you are all cried out. The dreams I had, they’re dashed. There is no more football. My relationship was crushed. That was my absolute worst time… I looked in my pocket, and I had seven bucks. Wow! Seven bucks to my name.” Why do masculine characters in tv series cry?

https://www.instagram.com/aoc/?hl=en

As I've become increasingly aware of the developments in US politics over the past four years, I actually don't think that any progressives in Congress, except for a small handful of representatives in the US House, have actually engaged in identitarian woke politics to any significant extent. I don't even think that AOC has focused excessively on emphasizing the importance of certain issues that have been irrelevant to most people in the country such as using preferred gender pronouns or promoting the term Latinx. I also don't think that she has ever been for open borders or excessively demonized the police. Instead, the policy priorities and public statements of progressives like her have largely centered on issues like economic inequality, healthcare, and climate change.

One overarching lesson I've ultimately learned this year is that I shouldn't have gotten so attached to any predictions made by any expert, especially when it comes to predictions made more than about one or two months in advance of any event. One thing I realized by the end of this year was how utterly futile it is to predict the outcome of any election, including a presidential election, more than a month in advance. Credit where credit is due, Leo did correctly sense that Trump was likely to win about one or two weeks out from the election. However, during 2021, 2022, 2023, and even at the beginning of 2024, he wrongly believed that Trump would lose decisively and that Biden would likely win re-election, as long as he and his party had kept governing effectively. This assessment was also influenced by the fact that Trump and his party had alienated many moderate and independent voters after a series of very despicable and unpopular actions of him and his party since 2017. Yes, I mistakenly believed that Trump and his party would likely lose the 2024 election, especially after renowned forecasters like Michael Moore and Allan Lichtman officially predicted a Trump loss about two months out from the election. However, I must admit that I always had a nagging feeling about Trump's potential return to power, ever since he left office in 2021. I explicitly stated on record on this forum multiple times how very worried I was about Trump's possible return to power. Despite my best efforts to dismiss this feeling, telling myself that Trump and his party were already so unpopular and had done so much harm to the country, the concern lingered. I am not trying to accuse anyone on this forum, including Leo himself, of wrongly assuring us that Trump could never win the presidency again or expressing confidence that the majority of Americans would never be fooled by Trump and MAGA again. Nobody is perfect, and I am sure that individuals like Leo did their best to understand where the country would head by 2024. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the truly contemptible display of ignorance and shortsightedness by the majority of the electorate, who re-elected Trump even after everything he did and even despite how hateful the entire Republican party has become. Also, a lot of people on here including myself kept flip-flopping with their 2024 predictions too much throughout the entire race. As soon as Harris became the new Democratic nominee, Many people including Leo himself, predicted that she would likely defeat Trump. I wasn't sure at first if she really had a chance. Then, as time went on people like me thought she was going to win, while some of the same people who initially predicted Harris would win said that they weren't sure anymore if she would and that it will end up being very close. Finally, Leo changed his mind again and predicted that she would likely lose to Trump. A second thing is that you don't know who is electable for any office, especially for president, until that candidate has been through the primaries. Nobody knows how well Harris would have done if Biden had announced early last year that he wouldn't run for re-election and she had gone through the entire 2024 presidential primaries. In fact, it's impossible to predict with any likelihood how well other potential candidates like Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Buttigieg, Walz, Whitmer, JB Pritzker, or someone else we've never heard of before, would have fared against Trump. For all we know, any of them might have performed worse than Harris did against Trump. It's also worth noting that none of these candidates have yet fully demonstrated the exceptional level of oratory skills that legendary presidents like FDR, JFK, or Obama in 2008 had. It's unclear whether any of them would even be as strong of a presidential candidate as Bill Clinton was in the 1990s. That's why we have to wait and see how well any of them will do in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. How about all of those economists and financial experts out there who wrongly predicted a recession in 2022, 2023, or 2024? The economy instead achieved an extraordinary soft landing and is still going remarkably strong all around. Moreover, I now really get why most political pundits have been wrong about a multitude of issues. Most of them incorrectly predicted the outcome of the 2022 midterms, and many were surprised by the numerous historic accomplishments of Biden and his party during his presidency. This is particularly noteworthy, given the profound polarization that has developed and the increasing hostility of federal courts in recent years. Even medical and scientific experts sometimes can make wrong predictions. I never thought that everything they knew about COVID was completely wrong or a total lie. However, they wrongly predicted that the COVID pandemic would end by late 2021 to early 2022 and didn't foresee how much trouble the public health officials would have with leading, advising, and communicating with the American people on managing COVID. I'm pretty sure there have been plenty of other times when experts made ridiculously wrong predictions on all sorts of issues over the past few years. I just can't think of any more specific examples off the top of my head. So, from now on, I will consider any prediction made by anybody as being really subject to change. That doesn't mean that I am going to take any serious predictions made by anyone with real expertise on a matter lightly. I will just consider predictions made by a legitimate expert more than about one or two months out as having a high likelihood, but still has a very good chance of changing and I will considered predictions made in the very near term as having a very high likelihood of occurring.

May he RIP. He arguably accomplished the most for the world as a former president compared to any other former president in modern US History if not in all of US History. He also was perhaps the most moral president in modern US History.

Right! That's what all of the critics have been saying! There are certainly problems with the mainstream media, including their failure to hold Trump and MAGA accountable enough and their tendency to engage in false equivalence. This has led to a lack of trust in the media among many Americans. However, if the mainstream media is undermined too much, then most people will no longer believe in any of the good-quality reporting of real facts on what's truly going on in our country and the rest of the world. This is a concerning prospect, as a well-functioning democracy relies on an informed citizenry. If we lose faith in credible sources of information, then we will really lose our democracy. Moreover, most people who are low-information and low-educated folk will get very easily confused on what are the real facts versus what are not the real facts if they don't believe in the mainstream media anymore.

I am really glad that progressive programs such as Majority Report, Hutch, The Vanguard, and the Humanist Report are calling out a lot of TYT's bullshit: I also want to see all of these alternative left media people tear each other apart. Many of them really deserve it.

Even Destiny, Pondering Politics, and that Pisco guy are all dumbfounded by what Cenk and TYT are trying to do: Marc Lamont Hill, a well-respected expert on urban education, culture, and politics as well as a host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English, doesn't think that Cenk and TYT have necessarily sold out. He believes that they are making a mistake out of naivety. I actually believe that's what is really going on:

I also forgot to mention that it's also true that more moderate to liberal people used to live in more rural areas of the country before fleeing to more urban/suburban areas of the nation. Furthermore, I forgot two more very significant factors that have made it even more difficult if not virtually impossible for Democrats to win congressional and statewide elections in traditionally Republican areas. The widespread gerrymandering of electoral districts has drastically tilted the playing field, while the 2010 Citizens United v FEC ruling has flooded these elections with virtually unlimited corporate money, further stacking the deck against Democratic candidates.

Since around the early 2000s, most rural Americans have usually voted against their own economic interests by voting Republican in elections. This voting behavior may be influenced by various factors, including the pervasive presence of right-wing propaganda. But rural America used to be largely populist, with voters supporting progressive candidates who advocated for farmers' rights and labor reform. The Democratic Party's New Deal policies, implemented during the Great Depression, resonated strongly with rural voters, who benefited from programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration. Why do you think that is in your opinion? Is it because Democratic Party has become increasingly too socially liberal and too culturally diverse for them since the late 1900s? Is it because of how increasingly polarized the media landscape has gotten? Is it because of the significant decline of union membership in the US since the 1970s and 1980s among rural Americans, which has caused many to lose their sense of community and shared identity, and have driven them to join conservative groups such as gun clubs, Turning Point USA, evangelical church groups, and right-wing online outlets? Is it because they fear that anymore liberal/progressive economic reforms will also help out racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, poor people in urban areas, people who aren’t Christian, and so on? Is it because the Democratic Party stopped reaching to most rural Americans for too long?

Ah ok. So, everything I said was in my first post are some reasons of the reasons why. I asked you because I don’t believe you ever talked specifically about why that used to be the case. That’s why I was wondering if you had your own take on that. There has be some way to rebuild that whole New Deal coalition. Otherwise, how will Democrats ever be able to win back control of the Senate in Congress ever again let alone win back large majorities in both chambers of Congress like with the New Deal coalition?

I understand that, but again, why do you think that they used to vote so much more for candidates and parties that were truly for their economic interests during the 1900s like with the Square Deal, the New Freedom, New Deal, the Great Society, or even during the late 1900s? How do you explain why the vast majority of Americans in South and Rural America used to be long time FDR Democrats? Is it because of the factors I mentioned in my OP?

Obama might not have won in either 2008 or 2012 if the toxic cloud of right-wing and anti-mainstream media outlets had been as dense and pervasive back then as it has become in recent years.

Very well then.... I'll respect that. I was just trying to warn others on here as a concerned citizen of America and I still think that there needs to be a much greater discussion about the future.

I hope I am wrong for everyone's sake.

I am sorry, but I don't understand. You even said yourself that this is going to be most dangerous administration ever in US History. All of the guardrails will be gone. If Trump's second presidency was going to be just like another traditional conservative Republican's presidency like that of Reagan, HW Bush, W Bush, or even Nixon then yeah all of my hysteria would be ridiculously overblown. Our country has never had someone as horrifying as Trump is for a president and you know it. God knows what he will truly be capable of now that he will be able to actually order a Navy Seal team to shoot any of his enemies for no good reason without any impunity at all because he now has absolute immunity for all "official acts" as President of the United States.

I am telling it as honestly as I can. We gotta prepare for the worst.

Trump will be able to run the country more as a police state like Putin in Russia has and a lot of white cops in the country will feel a lot more emboldened to engage in even more police brutality than ever before.

Calling out all of Trump and MAGA's crimes and corruption has no doubt become more crucial than ever before. However, aren't you concerned that when Trump becomes president again, he and MAGA might retaliate against you and everyone else on here for posting threads like this, given the unprecedented power Trump will have and their very serious threats to suppress freedom of speech and the press all over the country? Or will we be safe from them as long as we refrain from making any reckless or threatening statements, such as death threats, against them?

Given the increasing expense of living in California, I might need to move to a red state like Texas, where the cost of living is of course significantly lower. However, blue states have consistently demonstrated better outcomes in terms of health, wealth, safety, education, and economic productivity. Most blue states also have more equitable income state and local tax rates than red states do, believe it or not. California actually has the most equitable income state and local tax rate in the US. https://www.instagram.com/p/CdgZ6KOOGww/?hl=en Texas, in particular, has one of the worst healthcare systems in the country. Furthermore, the state is considered one of the least safe places to live in the United States, largely due to its hyper-permissive gun culture and lax gun laws. Needless to say, the politics in red states are generally less favorable than those in blue states. State laws regarding the rights of non-whites, women, non-Christians, environmental protection, voting rights, and social justice issues are obviously less progressive in red states compared to blue states. Actually, Given Trump and the MAGA Republicans' control of the government trifecta and a conservative supermajority in the US Supreme Court, along with having state-level trifectas in each red state, will these states become very authoritarian over the next four years? How hard is it to live in a red state, especially if you are not a rich white man and don't believe in Christ?

The murder rate in the country probably went down this year even further. Also, the late aughts were a bad time to live in because of the 2008 financial crisis and how angry people were about the War on Terror in the Middle East under Bush. Even during the early 2010s, a lot of people were still suffering from the after-effects of the Great Recession. But whatever.... Dark days are still ahead....

No he is right. It's currently been the lowest since the mid to late 1960s, second only to lower violent crime during the mid to late 2010s. https://jasher.substack.com/p/an-overview-of-us-crime-and-policing https://jasher.substack.com/p/murder-fell-at-the-fastest-pace-ever But right now, it's hard for me to believe that violent crime won't spike during the next several years when our country has become more divided than ever since the antebellum of the Civil War and economic inequality is still at the highest it has been since the eve of the Great Depression. The divisions and economic inequality in our country are only going to continue to get worse and worse in the long run until we have some kind of major crisis that will be able to wake the country up on these problems.

That's true. But for how long will it stay low? I don't see how violent crime in America won't spike to historic levels when America is headed for a new age of capitalist dystopia, especially now that Trump, Musk, and all of the other corporate fascists will be able to run the country as cruel tyrants for the foreseeable future: In the end, there will be so much rage and resentment amongst the people, that millions upon millions of people are going to become mad enough to do something as psycho as what someone like Luigi did times x1000. I wouldn't be surprised if white-collar crime exploded in our country like crazy now that all of the rich and corporate elites of the country will have free reign to do whatever kind of underhanded business scheme they want. The mainstream media is already bending the knee to Trump and all of his cronies. The Fourth Estate is in serious trouble which means we may no longer even have the kind of press we always used to have to hold any of the oligarchs and any MAGA freak accountable. I really hope that this prediction of mine will turn out to be really stupid that I end up embarrassing myself completely and I am sorry for all of my doom posting, but from a rational and realistic perspective, none of this can bode well for the future...

I have a really bad gut feeling that violent crime overall is going to skyrocket during the rest of this decade. We could very well see the kind of bloodbath our country hasn't been since the late 1800s. The fear and rage in this country will become so widespread before you know it.