Trump and his fascists deserve most of the blame, but I fear that liberals won’t learn from this. Realpolitik is bullshit. When you promise to help people but then sell us out to lobbyists and the donor class decade after decade after decade, then people lose all faith in institutions. Facts don’t matter because those facts were used to gaslight time and time again.

If you are rich you can rape and do whatever you want.

This is why I hate capitalism so much. Extreme power disparity is the heart of tyranny and the extreme disparities in wealth that capitalism creates only leads to extreme disparities in political power.

I fear that the US went past a breaking point and that the US will fully be an oligarchy after Trump is done

How so? My dad voted for Trump’s fascism, but my mom did not. I am not going to avoid my mom just to punish my dad.

I sincerely hope that goes well for you. I doubt Trump will let it happen, he has vowed to deport all the foreigners, but I hope things work out for you

Advertising is absolutely morally reprehensible. It is propaganda that exists only to manipulate people into buying shit they didn’t want or need. And it turns out that mindless consumerism is destroying society and our planet.

Cutting down the trees was out next biggest mistake. For example, the Europeans who colonized the US cut down 93% of the trees they found. They clear cut forests of giant oaks and blackwalnut trees. And we replaced all of that natural beauty with asphalt and endless urban sprawl.

For now. But the whole world consumes US media which is allowing fascism to spread like a malignant cancer

Fellow millennial here and I’d say the common culture of the past that made us feel stupid for not knowing certain famous people is mostly dead. Society is so splintered in what media we consume that even my friends with very similar interests consume different games, movies, books, music, etc.

Real leftists would advocate for socialism.

True, but there are there differing approaches to socialism: MLs want authoritarian socialism (government runs everything), while Democratic Socialists usually want a hybrid of market socialism (co-ops) and government run socialism for needs that free market co-ops cannot address. And then there are libertarian socialists who want only worker owned co-ops and syndicates. Finally, we have SocDems that want indirect socialism where strong regulations and labor protections try to achieve socialist goals through capitalism.

I’m a capitalist.

Do you work for a living? If so, then you aren’t part of the capitalist class.

You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality

Technically true, but our system serves money over the common good which allows Putin and Israel to put our politicians in their pocket through bribes, donations and lobbying.

We want to vote for zero genocide, but our broken two party system has become a horrific trolley problem where the only choices given to us are full genocide and half genocide. So I will vote for half genocide because the trolley will default to full genocide if we don’t.

Seriously, this is a trolley problem. You have the entire Palestinian population on the track (Trump), but you can pull a switch to move the trolley to only kill half as many (Harris). It sucks and I will never forgive our broken system for forcing me to make such a choice, but until we replace our corrupt system with something better we have to minimize harm in every way we can.

You’re not wrong, but people who are voting against fascism are also not wrong. There are pros and cons to each.

Are we really a beneficiary? All the economic gains seem to only be realized at the top because the owner class has perfected the art of paying us the absolute minimum we need to survive.

I often think everyone should be an organ donor by default and have to opt out rather than opt in, but Jesus, stories like this make me reconsider.

Sort of like how it is illegal for companies to fire or mistreat workers for trying to unionize?

The uncomfortable truth is that our laws protect the rich (including their companies), but rarely bind them and bind workers, but rarely protect us.

The mentality that the future is always someone else’s problem is proving to be the biggest weakness of capitalism and our species.

Not at all. It’s necessary to protect your own industry.

But mostly the tariffs are there to protect the capitalist class. When globalism hurts workers and offshores our jobs our politicians do nothing, but when profits are threatened they act swiftly.

The US only have right wing parties. Neolib dems and fascist Repubs are both right wing parties.