[jfengel]

Oligarchs have always had full control in America. They've chosen to exercise that in an especially conspicuous way, but in the end, a bunch of people went into the voting booth and pulled the lever labeled "felon".

The oligarchs have a huge thumb on the scale, but it's not mind control. As Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Maybe we will indeed get it good and hard, and four years from now we'll reconsider. That won't do much good for the Ukrainians, who will almost certainly have suffered a genocide, but we decided that apparently we're good with that.

Or maybe we'll muddle through, like we did last time. The fact is that a President has only limited power to affect your life directly. Yeah, there's every reason to think that erecting a massive trade barrier will crash the economy, and trashing the federal government will cause tons of misery in the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd. But we have the sour grapes that the new leadership is at least incompetent, and rarely accomplishes anything he sets out for.

I'm extraordinarily disappointed that Americans have chosen literal criminality. It's hard to imagine that we said "Yeah, nearly everybody around him was convicted, and the first thing he's going to do is pardon himself, but at least he's not..." and I'll let you finish that sentence.

But that's not the oligarchs, at least not immediately. We did this to ourselves, at least in aggregate. A lot of people are going to get hurt who didn't do this to themselves, and all I can do now is try to mitigate that as best I can.

[Sol2Sol]

This is also a source of great frustration to me. That so many people discounted the character issue when many who worked directly with him including his own former VP, Chief of Staff and military leaders said that his character issues disqualified him for the job is amazing to me.

My motto for the rest of the year and going forward is to no longer try to understand the actions of others, but to just accept. Peoples actions won't necessarily match my paradigm of what is rational and logical.

[Rapzid]

That many people from his previous administration and own party coming out against his character issues? It's unprecedented. Mind boggling.

Plus January 6th and all his legal problems(plus convictions). That whole government documents circus.

And we have collectively looked past this and put him back in office? He won the GOP PRIMARY?! I know people aren't "feeling the economy vibes" but dang.

[jfengel]

I'm not really convinced of the "economy" argument. It's easy to make, but there is no reason to think that the other guy is actually any better. They may not be thrilled with where they are now, but they were not noticeably better off four years ago.

Some are worse off; some are better; many are about the same. It's just not sufficient to explain electing a literal criminal.

I'm sure it figures in somewhere, but I don't think it's anywhere near enough to explain the situation.

[Rapzid]

They've mapped polls showing economy being the biggest voter issue and correlated that with voter behavior.

Also, they mapped the counties highest hit by wages trailing inflation in PA.. They flipped for Trump from Biden this round.

It's a referendum on the current party in office, so people just want change and that was promised to them heavily by Trump.

But man.. Trump wasn't the only other choice. There was a whole GOP primary lol.

[damnesian]

>tons of misery in the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd

Well, and also in the "I genuinely need medicare because my wages were stagnant most of my career" crowd, too.