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Every time he does something petty like this I am reminded that Americans voted for him twice. Not just because he was 'the other guy'. He got through primaries. Twice. Millions of people adore him. America is deeply deeply unwell, and the rest of the world needs to do whatever we can to keep ourselves safe from whatever madness is coming next.
A little under half of American voters picked him three times... a huge chunk of those ultimately regretted it after the Iran war created inflation (not about the dead Iranians though).
Many of the same people also voted for GWBush twice and regretted that too, for similar reasons.
Those people probably still have their own driver's license and power of attorney.
I think every tv show (your newscasts, SNLs, late nights and analytical ones) every reddit/twitter/other site constantly going "trump, trump, trump" are partially responsible.
Americans voted for him twice. The electoral college is how American presidents are elected. If Americans wanted the popular vote to matter in their elections, they've had two centuries to change the system. They haven't, which means they accept the system and its results as representative of the will of the American people.
Some of the poorest people voted for Trump. He returned the favor by making their life hell.
Yes, America is deeply unwell.
You also have a lot of people with really odd ideals and a lack of common sense. For example, you could have a brilliant coworker that’s very smart and be an excellent developer, and absolutely love Trump.
Has anyone actually tested that assumption though? Being sharp at debugging or system design doesn't require any transfer skill for evaluating political claims. Different domain, different muscle. We just notice it more when someone's smart in the area we respect.
People withheld their votes from Harris because of her complicity in genocide, and her pledge to continue to enable genocide. It is the number one reason people who voted for Biden gave for withholding their votes from Harris. Genocide is a red line.
Withholding votes from Harris does not mean these voters then voted for Trump. Many boycotted the election. A smaller number voted 3rd party.
Harris probably would have won if she had renounced the pro-genocide policies of Biden and pledged to cease arms transfers to Israel. She only had to win a few swing states, and swing states like Michigan with a sizable population of Palestinian diaspora were undeniably lost due to her doubling down on genocide. Heavily Jewish Zionist "blue" states like New York weren't going to swing Republican, and heavily Christian Zionist "red" states were never going go to the Dems anyway.
It’s a sound theory and would make logical sense. It’s based on how we would hope people would react to such things and actually vote based on what they believe in. However, that’s a very small minority. In reality, most people don’t think that deeply about a candidate.
If anyone thought deeply about Trump, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
I wouldn’t doubt Harris was supporting Israel in exchange for money or returned favors. Trump let Israel do whatever they want. Israel has their hand up every US politician’s ass for decades. Israel certainly won either way.
> In reality, most people don’t think that deeply about a candidate.
> If anyone thought deeply about Trump, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
You said it yourself here: The problem is that one side has more people thinking deeply than the other, and the idiots who vote regardless end up staying unified as a result.
This has "introduction of idiocracy" vibes where the smart people are overthinking things and getting completely overwhelmed.
Small thing: the AP VoteCast data had it more like "dissatisfaction with both parties" as the top non-voter reason, Gaza wasn't singled out as #1. Still probably a real factor for plenty of people, just not the dominant one the polling shows.
It's not that. Maybe some voted based on entertainment value but it was an ad hoc alliance of:
People who only ever vote GOP
Pro lifers
People who thought he was somehow being unfairly prosecuted for Jan 6 and having crates of classified documents in his pool house
Podcast listeners (people who are heavily influenced by Joe Rogan, Tim Poole, and the like)
People who are ideologically aligned with Stephen Miller
And, drumroll...
Centrists who believed the GOP talking point that Biden was the sole or primary cause of inflation. To their discredit, the dems seemed to have no interest in refuting it.
Dems seemed to be running on a platform of "We're not Trump". That was enough in 2020, after four years of Trump. It was not enough in 2024, after four years of Biden.
Anti-Trump prosecution list misses part: most GOP primary voters just liked him, full stop, before Jan 6 or indictments existed. Explaining 2024 doesn't explain 2016. Cult of personality predates every grievance listed.
Every US presidential election is baseline 50/50 and ends up decided by a small number of people who are as fickle as all get out and dumber than dirt. They don't vote for anything recognizable as a "reason."
Nobody, but maybe it's a similar phenomena of how people choose brands. Where, people tend to buy brands they recognize most, even if they don't actually know much about said brand or it's quality.
Trump was the name on everyone's lips. Could it be possible that introduced an implicit bias in his favor? Is this a case of "any publicity is good publicity"?
There are no simple explanations in this arena. All campaigns min/max messaging for sought after demographics to maximize votes. One could argue that the collaboration brought on by Elon/X gave the Trump 2 campaign some of the most sophisticated frameworks for data driven, atomized political messaging/monitoring ever seen in federal electoral history. That is a monumentally effective effort to convert and acquire voters-- I advise avoiding such simplistic explanations, especially when they double as thought terminating cliches.
I was listening to a math podcast a while back and someone said "I am a conservative" and then was quick to add "with a small c". That might be an important distinction.
This mostly makes sense in non-American places that have a Conservative Party - so e.g. "small-c conservative" refers to the ideology and "big-C Conservative" refers to the party. (Same with liberal/Liberal.)
I hate that framing when used politically because it is a complete cop-out.
For one: Conservatives don't want to maintain - they often want to "go back". Trump isn't "doing nothing": He's doing way more than any recent president!
So its traditional in the sense of trying to go back in time to traditional values... But here is the thing: What point in time? They never say! They just try to say "the good old days"! What does that even mean? Be specific about what policies you want? What were the good days? Do you want to farm by hand? Are you looking to bring back slavery or segregation? Do you want to stop women from voting? What specific traditional policy do you think is so great, and tell us why you think its great! Absolute weasels...
So refreshing to see a president who knows what the people really want and is brave enough to venture into uncharted waters to achieve those goals. Kamala would never have had the courage to address such an important issue, as a matter of fact she wouldn't even have started a trade war with Canada to take back what is ours(!), which is what led to this heroic act to protect our land, people, national pride, and prosperity from the rabid communists which we currently allow sovereignty just a stones throw across the Lake of America (eagle cry). You and your family can feel secure at night knowing that we have a president who will fight, fight, fight for you and your loved ones. America was already the hottest country in the world, but the temp just keeps on rising! How does he do it?!
"Lake Ontario is more in Canada than in the United States, with Canada holding roughly 50% to 62% of the lake's surface area depending on the specific boundary line, and the U.S. holding about one-quarter to 50%." (Google summary)
Ran into this exact mess doing lake-boundary data for a mapping side project. IJC treaty lines, median-line calcs, shoreline surveys all give different numbers. Nobody agrees because "border" isn't one fixed measurement, it's three different methodologies.
For the Gulf of Mexico they changed it to "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" for Canadian traffic, I can't imagine they take the same approach for this.
"Last year, Trump signed an executive order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
It only applies to U.S. federal documents and geographic services, but some online map services also made the change."
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Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico, but nobody listened. Google's exec's were brown-nosing at the time, so they changed it on their maps, depending on the user's location. Outside of the U.S., it's "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)". Even that will likely be dropped once Trump leaves office. There's no point in having a name that nobody uses on a map.
Americans should honestly ask their president, "Don't you have something better to do?".
This won't help negotiations with Canada. It will probably harm them in fact. Trump used massive tariff threats in an attempt to extort Canada into a deal before the mid-terms. His own last minute demands (self-admitted[1]) scuttled the works. Now Americans are paying new taxes and Trump is calling Canadians "nasty" (again) while trying (but failing) to rename things like a petulant child whose binky has been taken away. It's, frankly, embarrassing for Americans, and it confirms Carney's side of the story to any Canadians who might have had doubts. We are not dealing with reasonable or competent people.
Trump just reduced any pressure Carney might have been under to compromise Canada's position in order to restart talks. Why even try to strike a deal with unreasonable, unserious people who don't respect their own signed agreements? It's better to just rag the puck and wait for them to be gone.
> There's no point in having a name that nobody uses on a map.
Unless you're empire that has expressed the desire to annex a neighboring country. It's not a good omen, but this administration will stand by it regardless.
Should be obvious by now he has little appetite for an occupation. He has a big appetite for talking about an occupation, but that is entirely in-character.
We can only hope that the midterms change the dynamics of things and maybe, just maybe, Congress reclaims its constitutionally enshrined power over taxation and commerce. I won't hold my breath though. When the Democrats are determined to lose, they're very good at it.
This is not a serious suggestion. It would be foolish to stoop to Trump's level... It would be hilarious, though, if Canada officially renamed Lake Michigan to "Lake Trump is in the Epstein Files".
> Why even try to strike a deal with unreasonable, unserious people who don't respect their own signed agreements?
Absolutely. Almost everything about this administration screams "deeply unserious". And throwing away previous agreements (that Trump made)... yeah, what's my incentive to strike a new deal? They can expect Trump to throw that one away too.
> It's better to just rag the puck and wait for them to be gone.
Sailed Ontario for years, half the lake is literally in Canada, the border runs right down the middle of it. NOAA charts, GPS chartplotters, buoy databases all reference "Ontario" by treaty language. None of that updates because of an EO.
