The only people Newsom appeals to are neo-liberals ashamed that Trump won’t keep up appearances and isn’t keeping his criminal imperialism masked in the liberal pageantry that we’ve done for decades or centuries in the US.

He is courting the right, he made a day to celebrate Ronald Fucking Reagan, jesus christ how loud of a dog-whistle do you all need.

Tankies are just roleplay kids, they hate everyone who isn’t roleplaying also. Newsom is an actual threat to democracy wrapped in a too-wide smile and promises of a “return to normal.” He would be more dangerous than Trump and he would do his damage behind a facade of national cooperation and stability while empowering the lunatics like Thiel and Musk.

Because that’s not enough, they are a resource, if we don’t tap that resource, the other side does… as they are doing now.

I’m saying it’s not an “abstract group of people” I am talking about the currency that shapes nations, the force behind the declarations and policies and intentions.

That power comes from only a small number of sources, the top two are violence or money.

The right has both, and they are doing everything they can to secure them before others can, and there are a LOT of forces trying to get a piece of both those pies. We could wrest a section of it with careful political messaging and coordination and establishing local communities and electing leadership that actually wants better outcomes instead of better donations. But you don’t do that without knowing exactly who you’re trying to message and what your message needs to be.

None of this is as simple as “fuck them, we’re doing our own thing” we’re all in this together, even the people you don’t like.

These people are the normal, liberal, middle-class of America and have the greatest political capital, more than any other group, because they are the breadbasket of our nation’s tax revenue and disposable-income shopping habits. Their comfort and desire to preserve that comfort is why ANY of this is happening. Yes they can be distracted by keys easily, but they’re already held by capital because again… they are comfortable.

The second strongest form of political capital is armed groups of brainless nationalists who will fight and die for their nation’s flag.

Where does progressive political capital sit on this scale? Somewhere below “unarmed protestors politely asking for civility.”

We need to understand how power works if we ever want actual change in this country, and it’s not hugboxes and performative inclusivity, it’s flags and guns and money.

The best pushback for this message is to post the entire interview between Newsom and Ben Shapiro and then tell me again who cares about people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrDpBwpSqSc

No, I disagree.

Trump is creating a chaotic shitstorm, but it’s almost entirely performance and theater and mindless destruction, all focused around him and his personality.

If you get someone in there with the same agendas and intentions, but who is cunning enough to mask it under populism and pretending to care about people while signing into law bills that will allow capital to have unrestricted access to our lives, allow them to take part in our politics even more and in the open, packing the courts with corporate aligned-judges… well Liberal america will be HAPPY with this, they just don’t want to see all the violence in the street, they want stability and the image of peace, which will let someone like Newsom soak up all the adoration for “making America normal again” while signing away all of our futures in a much less openly opposable way.

Trump caused the wound, but someone like Newsom will rub the sewage into it.

he will repeal 20% of Trump’s orders and people will celebrate it. He will restore a fraction of what Trump has undone and people will celebrate his name and see him as a hero just because we’ve become accustomed to total chaos. It almost looks carefully planned. Hmmn.

A long, tireless campaign of turning all of our social discourse and social pressure into online arguments and forum exchanges has made the bulk of America’s literate people tune out of political involvement entirely, how do we think there’s any chance of a “revolution” like so many people are calling for?

The exit polling from 2024 should be making us all CRY.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/behind-trumps-2024-victory-a-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-voter-coalition/

We can’t get enough people on-board for “general” strikes, we can’t get average people who want the same thing to agree on basic facts about reality like if science is valid and if vaccines work, we can’t get average, literate people to even want to be around other people anymore. Dating and sex have fallen off a cliff, people are more lonely than they’ve ever been, while at the same time clinging to their discord friend groups with snarling defensiveness when you suggest that they need to socialize more. Asociality has become an identity.

We can rebuild a positive movement if we focus on our communities, our neighbors and neighborhoods and our schools and workplaces, we can get people to connect again and start working towards group goals… but it takes a kind of work that most online leftists want NOTHING to do with, which is actual work towards better outcomes that they may not see themselves, because all of this takes a long time and a lot of patience and persistence and being social and understanding emotional intelligence.

We have ZERO leadership to capitalize on momentum by people marching and protesting, this is why BLM and No Kings had the highest turnout of protestors in history but led to NOTHING.

This isn’t a matter of people being complacent, this is people waiting for a “perfect leader” who will never come.

At least the right is so dumb that they will latch onto anyone, warts and all, to be their “daddy will save us” figurehead. It’s utterly broken and deficient on every level, but it becomes actual movement and political capital.

We can’t even get liberals and progressives to agree “if it’s okay to carry the American flag” and that’s why we have lost ALL our ground and why things are going to get worse.

Let me repeat that so you and everyone really get it.

Nobody is coming. It’s going to get worse.

Ironically, passports which most non-native-born Americans already own and keep updated constantly because they often travel in and out of the country to visit family and attend events.

It’s projected this is going to hurt red states more than blue, since most midwest white-as-fuck Americans who never left their hometown and are scared of the whole world don’t have a shred of identification past their driver’s license.

Meanwhile, most immigrant families I know have their passports and copies of their birth certificates on-hand at all times.

She most likely will face prosecution if the administration collapses, and even if it doesn’t. They’ve taken such a severe beating that even if they secure some measure of power after November and onward, they will need scapegoats and people to point at as they run big media spectacle kangaroo courts.

I will take anything at this point, but I am particularly smirkful at the idea of Pammy here being railroaded in a mock trial, the justice of her facing her own brand of injustice and lies as her party stabs her in the back would be amazing

They know without a doubt this won’t make any traction and will just get booed out of the public space right now, this whole performance is hurting trans rights and equality broadly.

But I’m quite sure they know that and are doing this on purpose.

The damage done to this country by the right is incalculable and likely irreversible.

When the internet started empowering the dumbest idiots who don’t understand the world to find and support each other, we lost.

The human brain is not naturally a problem-solving tool of logic and reasoning, it has to be trained to use logic and reason, and in a world of comfort and ease like in the USA broadly, people had no incentive to learn more and be smarter other than social pressure, and that also dissolved as people found each other online and removed the pressure to step up their intellect to be accepted in broader society.

This has made a deep, slippery well of pseudo-science and naturalism and healing oils and magic water and crystals, which because of placebo effects and social influence, feel like they do more for people in their daily lives than mysterious terms like “mRNA” that defy all understanding or capability for people of limited intelligence to discuss with their coworkers around the lunch table and relate their own personal experiences so they seem special and interesting.

“And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong," she added. "So that’s really my only reaction.

This her bold tactic for addressing this matter.

I like the part where she says “Now that my eyes have been opened to how severely we’ve all been deceived I am starting a campaign with my fellow GOP senators to see this through and prosecute every last person involved in these barbaric and evil crimes.”

Wait no… I’m being told she said none of that.

Her actual final words on the subject were "And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong, so that’s really my only reaction."

I hate these people with my whole being.

This is fantastic news. I don’t even care if they get investigated or not (most are guilty of something) I just want to sweep the mid-terms with entirely new people so we can bury this entire branch of legislative liches and fake opposition.

What will we really lose?

Further, why would he dissolve an organization that’s been doing his will for the entirety of his presidencies?

Ah, I see we’re back to “Irish people aren’t white.”

We’re really going way back for the greatest hits nowadays.

ethnic groups

That’s a really weird fucking way to spell “corporations” but I guess since we consider them “people” in the eyes of the law we might as well start applying ethnicity to them as well.

The same one. Over and over and over.

I feel strongly we would have fewer social problems if people broadly decided to hold onto memories more than 30 minutes at a time.

It’s still important to push the message to not be lazy about going out and doing the thing, especially in mid-terms which get far less turnout.

But that 89mil who did not vote in 2024 is very close to the average percentage that stays home every election anyway. My point is, the sampling of those who did vote, didn’t necessarily make me think that if uninterested people did show up, that it would have gone much different.

Of the people who were actually registered and voted in 2024, a vast number of the people who voted for Trump identified as Obama voters and Bernie supporters. People had basically discarded whatever political alignment more informed voters adhere to and just looked at the price of eggs at the time and associated that with Biden/Harris, and that was the most informed opinion shaping voting habits.

People did not watch debates. They did not pay attention to large news stories. They got most of their political news from social media; tweets and facebook memes in the small amount of time they spend scrolling content that isn’t entertainment. They did not know what either candidate was advocating and largely didn’t care, most thought it didn’t effect them either way.

This is all by design, and if we want to talk to about vote manipulation, this is the biggest issue, which is there are too many fake shills and sock-puppets all over social media, even here on Lemmy, who will adopt the stupidest or most radical takes on both sides of every issue until bystanders and browsers roll their eyes at the whole thing and tune out.

There are literally millions of people in India and other countries who farm Twitter for a few dollars every month by pushing rage-bait, arguing with people, pretending to be Americans and pretending to care about our future, while sharing propaganda and memes designed to make people hate political involvement.

Our biggest problem is not turnout but engagement and information.

There are a lot of really miserable, insufferable kids on Lemmy right now seething about this because it flies in the face of the “voting is useless, everything will be rigged” narrative that they push to validate not wanting to be involved.

Showing up at the polls is not our problem in the US, it’s getting people involved enough to actually learn about and read what candidates represent. We had the largest voter turnout in US history over the last couple elections, but people basically voted at random because they tuned out of the political chaos.

It’s far more clear this time around who is doing what to disrupt the status-quo in the US and I expect we’re going to see a massive swing in the opposite direction between this November and 2028.