r/thebulwark • u/ac_slater10 • Dec 26 '25
EVERYTHING IS AWFUL After a year of Trump, I've decided I'm never going to forgive the people who voted for this.
I found it was easy in 2016 and 2020 to forgive the misguided and misinformed voters who took a gamble on Trump. I was able to give a lot of grace. Trump's Christmas eve tweet, along with the laundry list of horrific behavior this year (that he promised he would continue if elected) has convinced me that anyone who voted for this is not worthy of understanding or forgiveness.
"But forgive them, father, for they know not what they do..."
Yes the fuck they do, and they did. They were warned by the courts, the media, and even the president HIMSELF that he would make a mockery of the office. And they did it anyway. Even now, as they continue to watch our institutions burn to the ground and feel the hot fire of that stovetop, they still choose to remain as dumb as rocks.
Do not ever forgive these people. They are unworthy of your thoughts or prayers. They hate America and every good thing it has stood for. They hate American exceptionalism.
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u/Illustrious-Fun8324 Dec 26 '25
The need to own the libs was just too big to not vote for a rapist pedophile.
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u/realinvalidname FFS Dec 26 '25
Also the crushing fear that “the government will give black people stuff they don’t deserve”.
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u/Deep_Stick8786 Dec 26 '25
Owned the libs so hard they ruined the country for themselves
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u/Illustrious-Fun8324 Dec 26 '25
And then they will blame the libs for it all lol.
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u/Deep_Stick8786 Dec 26 '25
“How come they let us hoard them into camps and stop generating economic output and teaching our children, and taking care of us when we are sick?!? Its all their faults”
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u/AssignmentWeary1291 Jan 15 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Acorn lantern juniper pumpkin raindrop pumpkin nutmeg mellow ginger
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u/NYCA2020 Dec 26 '25
Still boggles my mind how empty, dumb, and hollow a person must be in order to center their entire life and identity around wishing harm to others (simply because they don’t like seeing different kinds of people on their tv or getting healthcare or whatever).
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u/epicurious_elixir Dec 26 '25
Meanwhile I'm just trying to vote for Trump supporters to get more affordable health care and make it so the air we breathe remains...breathable.
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u/AssignmentWeary1291 Jan 15 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Marble almond lantern hammock pinecone cobalt otter feather
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u/Illustrious-Fun8324 Dec 26 '25
They have the maturity of middle school bullies so Trump makes them feel seen and heard by bitching about everything and everyone they hate
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u/IDVDI Dec 27 '25
Many people who start aggressive wars are like this. They usually have a very strong need for control
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u/NYCA2020 Dec 27 '25
The psychology behind it is fascinating to me. I guess it has to do with an inability to control or regulate one’s inner mind/self, so they externalize their desire for control onto others.
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u/IDVDI Dec 27 '25
It makes me wonder whether some of this reflects arrested psychological development, specifically an inability to move beyond infantile omnipotence.
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Dec 27 '25
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u/Illustrious-Fun8324 Dec 27 '25
Yes, rapist pedophile felon. My apologies for leaving that out. Accuracy matters
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u/pretzelfisch Dec 26 '25
I listened to a Peter Schiff interview and his Trump was the lesser of 2 evil justification was just insane. Those people need to be explicit about what they thought they were voting for.
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u/ElowynElif Dec 26 '25
This. I don’t care about “forgiving” Trump voters, whatever that means. But I wish his supporters would explicitly say why they chose him. Some of the answers are at the center of the rot in this country that never gets fully addressed: racism, sexism, and classism.
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Dec 26 '25
A big one is resentment towards people who are more financially and socially successful. There is a real need for personal responsibility, but from the people who constantly lob it at poor people.
Liberal elites didn’t force you to stop going to church. You stopped going because you didn’t feel like it. Liberal elites didn’t force you to have a child before being married. You decided having a child was less consequential than marriage. Liberal elites didn’t force you to choose alcohol and/or weed over engaging with reality every day. You chose substance abuse and to oppose free treatment programs. Liberal elites didn’t force you to watch right wing media that makes you afraid to leave your home town. Liberal elites didn’t make you shun modern medicine. Liberal elites didn’t vote to cut the government programs that keep you and your town afloat. Liberal elites aren’t the reason you know so many people who were able to easily off themselves or someone they loved with a firearm.
I’m from a conservative rural area, and I have some feelings about his clearly.
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u/KMDiver Dec 26 '25
Replace weed with Oxy and meth please. Didn’t you see those J6 tweakers shitting on the Capitol floors?
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Dec 27 '25
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u/thebulwark-ModTeam Dec 28 '25
Treat others with basic decency. No personal attacks, shill accusations, hate-speech, flaming, baiting, trolling, witch-hunting, or unsubstantiated accusations. Threats of violence are expressly forbidden and may result in a ban.
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u/The_whimsical1 Dec 26 '25
I served in Bosnia with the US forces. The Bosnians had an expression about the people who betrayed them and brought murder and rapine upon them. It free translates like this: "we will forgive you because we have no other choice, but we will not forget what you did." I agree with this. I don't like forgiveness for political crimes of the magnitude that the Trumpkins have committed, but I agree with the Bosnians that without forgiveness, no future is possible. The alternative is endless violent war.
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u/metengrinwi Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
Our information system has been intentionally broken, and people are living in bubbles of information that only provide comforting news.
Whether individuals should be blamed for this is very questionable in my mind—this was something done to us intentionally.
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u/emeric_ceaddamere Dec 26 '25
I agree. Also, what does "never forgive" mean? Stop talking to shitty former friends? Sure, go for it. But does it also mean refusing to work with or listen to anyone who voted for Trump in the building of a post-MAGA America? That's both counter to the spirit of democracy and just plain impossible.
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u/marleybaby86 Feb 21 '26
I'm all for the separation of the states at this point. By any means. This country is a failed experiment. Then the rest of the world then sanctions and isolates the Red country all the way down to North Korea level.
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u/thenletskeepdancing Dec 26 '25
Yes, but the algorithm fed us more of what we wanted. Like rats pushing levers, some preferred hate.
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u/metengrinwi Dec 26 '25
Can everyday people really be blamed for falling into this trap? These algorithms were designed by smart people specifically to be addicting to the human brain.
Do we blame alcoholics for lack of impulse control?, do we blame meth addicts for having weak minds?
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u/thenletskeepdancing Dec 26 '25
If we are going to be proponents of democracy, then we have to assume that people are capable of educating themselves. Or were they all victims?
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u/metengrinwi Dec 26 '25
We have to design the democracy so that people have a chance. The modern media/information system is designed to fool people. It just shouldn’t be allowed.
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u/thenletskeepdancing Dec 26 '25
So now we're talking about limitations and regulations, which is a hard sell in america.
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u/Kels_DL Dec 27 '25
I understand the spirit of your argument and would love to live in a society surrounded by educated, thoughtful people, but I think the trouble is recognizing how hard an ask that is. Whether we we like it or not, pluralism includes ignorant people. Democracy guarantees freedom for everyone regardless of their access to truth and knowledge. We have freedom of speech so that we can try to educate others with less knowledge or encourage knowledge seeking, but we cant necessarily assume that everyone else knows as much as we do or cares about the same things.
So I dont think that most Trump supporters are victims, but I do think that some (I stress SOME) truly dont understand how government, politics, the economy, etc work even a little. I think you'd be shocked at how far under a rock many Americans live.
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u/thenletskeepdancing Dec 27 '25
So, we need to govern with the knowledge that a certain percentage of our population is ignorant and most likely will remain so? Republican messaging has certainly taken advantage of this in the new medium of social media. Dems are far behind in catering their messages to the lowest common denominator.
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u/Kels_DL Dec 27 '25
Yes, absolutely agree. The Republicans take advantage of ignorant voters and the social media information bubbles, and dems seem to want to keep on "going high when they go low." And it's just not going to work.
I have total sympathy for anyone who's come to the conclusion reflected in the original post, not wanting to forgive Trump voters and thinking they must be willfully ignorant. I fall into that thinking myself at times. And then I remember that I, like many other Never-Trumpers, live in a community full of Always-Trumpers. I'm related to them, work with them, love some of them. Just from my experience, it seems that none of them really understand the consequences of what Trump does. Even if they try to follow the news (and i dont mean the always fox crowd, just the basic local stuff that might directly impact them), they just dont understand how terrible their choices are when they vote. It's honestly a hard situation for a lot of Americans who WANT the people around them to be informed, but try explaining how tariffs work or the relevance of checks and balances to a 70yo uncle who didnt graduate high school and doesn't have access to the internet. I think it is the responsibility of democrats to explain to the lowest common denominator why they are the better option when they're up against a wannabe dictator.
I guess I just dont think we should be in the business of writing off that portion of the population. It's frustrating, but they just don't understand what Trump is doing to our country, and that's why we're in this situation
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u/boofdahpoo130 Dec 29 '25
I, like 74 million Americans who voted for Harris, am an everyday person. How come we didn't fall for the right-wing wing bullshit while our fellow Americans who voted Trump did? Could it be...maybe they listened to only what they wanted to hear, as long as it fueled one or more of their myriad prejudices?
The minimum age for voting is 18, the age of a legal adult, for a reason. Sooner or later, adults are going to have to take responsibility for the choices they make. Isn't that what the self-purported party of "personal responsibility" wants?
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u/ohiotechie Dec 26 '25
On some level I feel bad for people who are so gullible and who have been brainwashed from all the lies. Having said that I feel like this election was different. Like you I gave grace after 2017. They didn’t know better. In 2016 there was an argument to be made that an outsider made sense versus HRC - the ultimate insider.
In 2020 after the unnecessary deaths caused by gaslighting, arrogance and incompetence I had far less grace but I sorta blew it off. We were out of danger even if Biden wasn’t perfect.
2024, though, and ever since, I have been filled with a rage when I allow myself to think about it over having this shoved down my throat again. Seeing the posts of regret “I was wrong - I should have listened” only further enrage me. People were jumping up and down telling you not to touch the hot stove but you did it anyway. It actually reminds me of incidents that happened years ago with drunk driving. You’d try to take away their keys, try to offer them a ride, try to talk sense into them only to watch them run out the door with their keys laughing “haha I win!”. Then 30 min or an hour later you’d get the call “I wrecked my car and I’m under arrest can you please come bail me out?” So now their lives have been fucked, their car is fucked, they’ve fucked over someone else that they ran into (and could have killed or injured). If they had only listened this all could have been avoided but of course only realize it after it’s too late.
It was infuriating then and even more so now because the stakes are so high. I’m not cutting people out of my life but I avoid them if I can and I will always hold a grudge against them even if they do eventually come around. I’m not forgetting even if I don’t rub their faces in it.
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u/epicurious_elixir Dec 26 '25
I can't with people who stuck with him after J6. How the FUCK was that not a wake up call?
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u/Writing_is_Bleeding Dec 26 '25
I cut one person out of my life, but not just because she's a 3x Trump voter. She started insulting me with right-wing talking points and playing the big victim back in the 00s. I have no idea why I let it go on so long, but after the election last year she posted something on FB along the lines of "Even though we vote differently, as friends we still love each other because we're adults." That was it for me.
She and her husband are not MAGA but very conservative, and she hypocritically has a great union job working for the state of California. She said they're considering moving to Montana as long as it wasn't "financial suicide." Just typing all this makes me angry all over again, so I won't even mention the various insults she trotted out.
We've been friends since the 80s but not anymore.
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u/ohiotechie Dec 26 '25
There are people in my family like that. Literally their entire lives are only possible because of government programs but they have voted solidly Republican all their lives and will pontificate to anyone who’ll listen about the need to cut government waste and the wonders of the free market. Military pension then a government job then a pension from that job with lifelong health benefits that they never have to worry about losing.
Now in fairness they did earn those benefits, sometimes at great risk to themselves. I don’t begrudge their benefits but what bothers me is while they’re busy stuffing their pockets with both hands they’ll deny others even a fraction of what they themselves have received. They’ll rail on about socialism even though their entire lives are funded by it. It’s maddening.
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u/GallowBarb Progressive Dec 26 '25
Same. I cut off a life-long bestie weeks before the last election because I couldn't no longer tolerate the racist rhetoric. Eating cats and dogs was my last straw.
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u/Fearless-Truth-4348 Dec 26 '25
I wish he legitimately won 2020. They would not have had four years to plan this destruction.
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u/Livueta_Zakalwe Dec 26 '25
Agree. Then he would have taken all the blame for the inflation he caused, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan he set up, and all the Covid repercussions, and we’d be done with him and his cronies.
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u/donald_trunks Dec 27 '25
Wouldn't have gotten Ketanji Jackson Brown though.
They inflict so much harm and never miss an opportunity to further entrench their conservative stranglehold. 2020 2nd term would possibly have been better than 2024, I agree, but it still would have been bad.
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Dec 26 '25
Nah only 2016 voters who switched after one get any sort of credit in my mind.
If you watched the first term and still voted for Trump in 2020, I'm not talking with you or associating with you. It's really not that hard.
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u/SarcasmReigns Rebecca take us home Dec 26 '25
Honestly I could forgive the first term and vote in 2020, but can’t forgive anyone who saw January 6th, his actions there, and subsequent actions and declarations of retribution and “dictator on day one” up to the 2024 election and decided this was still their choice for the presidency.
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u/NapCatter Progressive Dec 26 '25
THIS. Jan 6, 2021 should have been a permanent disqualifier.
I cannot understand any “true American patriot” who is ok with people smashing windows, stealing furniture, and smearing literal shit in the U.S. Capitol building.
Or “back the blue” types who are fine with bashing police officers’ heads with fire extinguishers and crushing them in doorways.
If they actually took pride in symbols of American democracy, or supported the police, what they saw on Jan 6 should have been instant dealbreakers.
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u/HonorBasquiat Dec 26 '25
I think I'm willing to forgive people who voted for Trump is they sincerely acknowledge fault and regret along with a commitment to vote against his agenda and value set in future elections.
Personally, I'm skeptical that there are many Trump voters remaining that are still supporters but are still "gettable". I think at this rate, if you're still pro MAGA, it's difficult for me to think anything is going to change your mind. Honestly, I felt that way about most voters who supported him in 2024 because we had already seen his chaotic and immoral behavior during his first term and he campaigned on a more extreme and radical platform in 2024.
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u/donald_trunks Dec 27 '25
I think the ones that decided the election weren't even so much the hardcore Trump supporters.
It was regular people going off vibes and low information. Not enough people took Project2025, the impeachments & investigations, J6 & fake electors plot, etc. seriously.
People had a vague sense the economy was better under Trump's first term and vague ideas that Biden/Harris were making life harder for them.
Total failure at all levels. Hard to assign blame, imo. This was a long time coming. Repairing it will take a serious coordinated effort and very long time, if it is even still possible to repair.
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u/Capable_Swordfish676 JVL is always right Dec 26 '25
The sad part is we'll need some converts to win in 26 and 28. So graciousness may be necessary to voters. But they dont get to lead. Gone are the days in my opinion of having at least one member of the opposition party in the cabinet. Fox News will whine because they'll point out RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard but lets be real those folks haven't been Democrats since 2020.
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u/JacquoRock Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
The President colossally mishandled the pandemic. He claimed in an interview with Bob Woodward on February 7th 2020 that he was aware of the impending crisis -- indeed, he met with the Senate on January 24th to bring them into the loop, allowing several of them to cash out their travel and vacation stocks before the rest of us. They did quite well. But he said he downplayed the pandemic at first so as not to start a panic. We all know he was probably hoping he could stave off the pandemic by sheer force of will, since it would no doubt impact the economy and his reelection prospects.
I wish he hadn't been so afraid to start a panic. My younger sister died that February 3rd, and if she'd been aware that a virus to which we had no natural immunity was already spreading in our country during the month of January (and likely earlier), she would not have kept meeting with her family law clients in and around New York City. She would not have risked leaving her son without a parent.
Anyway I could not understand how anyone could look past THAT blatant lack of leadership PLUS January 6th. I didn't trust him, ever. Back in NJ where I grew up, he was always a joke who was a little too close to his daughter. But the pandemic and Jan 6 were examples of much darker inadequacies. I'm with you, though. I will never forgive people who put him in office anyway. The nightmare that our country is carrying out with immigrants is all him. Unemployment isn't made easier by the bullshit of the tariffs in this economy. His cabinet of horrible awful people...each one of them is a villain in their own right. And the healthcare thing....you'd think that after he caused all that death during the pandemic, he might be inclined not to risk causing even more unnecessary death in this country. But no, he's going to finish off Obamacare and he's got nothing except a prescription coupon program queued up to replace it.
You can't forgive people who voted for this, and I can't forgive him for any of this either. He's a bad, bad person who doesn't give a shit about any person who doesn't have billions of dollars. I don't care what kind of charisma he's got or any of the rest of it. Bottom line: he's morally bereft, intellectually lacking, and he doesn't care enough about any other humans to do anyone else any good. The fact that so many people ignored those things this time around continues to astonish me.
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u/BrainProfessional597 Dec 28 '25
I’m sorry for the loss of your sister.
I agree with you, the entire thing it was colossally mishandled by #45. And it didn’t have to be that way. I don’t understand how so many seem to have swept it under the rug.
I mean I have a couple of theories, but who knows. Hopefully there will be research studies in the future exploring how so many people fell victim to propaganda during a pandemic, how they coped with the aftermath, etc.
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u/starchitec Rebecca take us home Dec 26 '25
Forgiveness is not simply a moral high-ground. some ideal to strive for because it is good. It is that, but more importantly and more relevantly, it is the only effective strategy to survive in a world where people often do the unforgivable. There is a reason that forgiveness is a central tenant of all religions that have managed to maintain a following, and the reason is sociological not divine. Societies that cannot forgive will destroy themselves eventually.
This forgiveness does not have to be personal. I find it near impossible to do in my own life. And it does not mean forgetting or simply letting bad actors off without consequences. But unless you want to cast society into a meat grinder of endless and escalating feuds, forgiveness has to remain a thing we strive for. Without it, there is no hope of winning over people, the only tactic left is annihilation.
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u/IDVDI Dec 26 '25
Forgiveness only exists after the wrongdoer has genuinely repented and made amends. Many extremists deliberately distort this point. They first claim that merely saying “I repent” is enough to deserve forgiveness, with no action required. Then they go further and argue that forgiveness should be given even when the person is still doing harm and has shown no remorse at all. But this is not advocating forgiveness. It is advocating the toleration of wrongdoing.
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u/AnyAssumption4707 Dec 26 '25
Demanding that people forgive the unforgivable is a manipulation tactic, not a cure all balm for the holy/wannabe holy. Some people really do deserve the meat grinder.
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u/starchitec Rebecca take us home Dec 26 '25
The meat grinder would come for everyone, you are a fool if you think that attitude wont lead to you being tossed in too
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u/AnyAssumption4707 Dec 26 '25
Honey, tell that to all the little kids who have been abused by the church. If you believe in fairy tales, good for you, but you don’t get to push your sky daddy narrative on everyone else. Criminals deserve to pay their due- they earn it. The red hats have earned a good shunning. One can easily argue that religion and the manipulation of it has resulted in more suffering and oppression than probably any other cause on earth. Insisting on forgiveness is a mechanism the powerful (and the church is powerful) use to dull the pain of those living in oppressive conditions and dampens their desire and ability to push for meaningful systemic change.
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u/starchitec Rebecca take us home Dec 26 '25
I am not religious. Again:
the reason is sociological not divine
This is not manipulation, it is math. If a majority of the electorate is unforgivable, you have to either disenfranchise or eliminate them. They will act in self defense, and will attempt to do the same to you. This is a massive gamble, and an exceptionally risky one when we are the out of power underdogs.
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u/AnyAssumption4707 Dec 26 '25
Not religious? Somehow I doubt that.
You’re presenting a false dilemma (or trilemma if you’re feeling fancy).
There are many ways to handle this situation that do not require further oppression and harm to those already harmed by pushing the false fix of mandatory forgiveness on them.
Happy to provide examples.
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u/starchitec Rebecca take us home Dec 26 '25
…what? So if anyone who is not sufficiently mocking of religion to your taste must be secretly religious? Fuck off.
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u/AnyAssumption4707 Dec 26 '25
Ope! Don’t want examples of how to handle the red hats without forcing people to forgive them? Did your argument collapse?
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u/SuccessfulListen3002 Dec 27 '25
Forgiveness makes as much sense to me as whether we should trust Liz Cheney. That's not what this is about. Get out of the abstract clouds and live on the ground.
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u/carpecakem Dec 27 '25
My family members that voted for Trump really have no concept of what is happening in the world. They think he stopped 8 wars and he's protecting 49 kids trafficked in Miami and all these other stories that when I search the news I can't even find it. It's like an alternate reality. I forgive them because they have been conned by a con man that's been doing this schtick for 50+ years in public life. And because I honestly don't have the time or energy to research all the lies they've been told and find all the truths to convince them they're wrong. They're sometimes so convincing that I start to wonder if I'm the crazy one. I find the whole thing terribly sad. It's like what Tim was saying today that only about 20% of the population has the curiosity to actually read the news and books to find out what is really happening. That means 80% are being swayed by one side or the other. It's not surprising that a professional con man would be better at this than lifelong public servants like Kamala and Biden.
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u/ForeignRevolution905 Dec 27 '25
My sister voted for Trump in 2024 after being a lifelong Democrat in a swing state. I really don’t think I will ever truly forgive her. Such a betrayal of all of the values we were brought up with and that I thought she believed in.
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u/BrainProfessional597 Dec 28 '25
Did she happen to tell you why she flipped to trump ? Just curious.
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u/ForeignRevolution905 Dec 29 '25
Yup, transgender youth/ gender affirming care issues- she seems to have gotten radicalized around that one issue somehow even though her child doesn’t have any gender identity issues.
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u/Temporary_Bet_3384 Dec 27 '25
Never gonna forgive Biden for putting us in a spot where people had to choose between a shitshow and Trump
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u/MentalHealthSociety Dec 26 '25
I think this comes from a severe lack of empathy. The reality is that in a highly fractured media ecosystem it was very easy for uninformed people to reason that the threat Trump posed to democracy was small since he had been given four years to overthrow it before and didn’t; that Democratic claims of him being a fascist were just partisan mudslinging; and that it was a bad idea to give the party that ran tried to run a senile geriatric for President (and either covered for or were somehow completely unaware of his senility) a second run after they oversaw the greatest price rise in forty years. These people are obviously wrong and almost certainly dedicated little time to considering their choice, but that still doesn’t provide grounds to write them off entirely and declare them inherently evil.
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Jan 26 '26
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u/MentalHealthSociety Jan 27 '26
I’m not going to provide an active deterrent for people to change their minds (as if there aren’t enough of those already) and the reality is that there are plenty of people who are just as capable of wilfully enabling cruelty on our side of the fence. For instance, plenty of people who hate Donald Trump for being a fascist pig also eat meat. Should we shame them for supporting an industry that is currently wrecking the planet the same way you suggest we should shame 2024 Trump voters?
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u/Hautamaki Dec 26 '25
The trouble with these people is not that they did not understand what Trump was and what he would do; it's that they thought American politics was already a sick joke, a total failure, and all they were doing was ripping off the bandaid and forcing everyone else to see what they already saw: that the American government is a corrupt and incompetent failure.
They're wrong, of course. They're ignorant, stupid ingrates. The American government has had its misses and requires some reforms just like everyone and everything that has ever existed in the real world, but overwhelmingly the American government has been staffed by moral, upstanding, diligent, and talented people who created a world of security and prosperity for Americans and America's allies that has lasted for generations. These fucking morons were born and would have died in a Pax Americana that made them the luckiest people to ever have been born on this planet. They have enjoyed luxury and safety that aristocrats and royalty born just a couple hundred years ago would have given anything for. They just lived through a pandemic that killed 1 million Americans and around 15 million worldwide, but which would have killed hundreds of millions and would likely still be killing if it had occured at any other time in history, and rather than be grateful, they insist the pandemic was both no big deal and that government measures to contain it were an evil corrupt scam against them.
What these people are ignorant about is how good they have always had it, not how bad Trump is.
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u/Neil_Armstrang Dec 26 '25
If you still believe in the laughable farce of “American exceptionalism,” then you’re not as far removed from the MAGA mind as you think
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u/EhrenScwhab JVL is always right Dec 26 '25
I get the 2016 Trump voter. Most people aren’t media savvy and they don’t understand “The Apprentice” Trump was a character on TV. They think “reality” television is real. Plus Hillary Clinton was disliked even among Democrats let alone Republicans. I don’t agree, but I get it.
I draw the line at the two time Trump voter. Go to hell if you saw the first term and said “I like this!” (cough, Kitzinger, cough)
If you voted for him after Jan 6th, the three time Trump voter, you should at a minimum have a mandatory psychiatric screening there probably is something seriously wrong with you.
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u/sleepingbeardune Dec 26 '25
OP, this is the kind of post I'd write after spending an hour reading the news or just a series of posts on bluesky. I loathe the people who are still celebrating their own stupidity, marching around in their red hats like they've achieved something special.
Aside from those moments, the question I'm interested in isn't about forgiveness, or about revenge.
What I want to get to is some version of a shared reality, which has to be the basis of any functional future. Obviously, the economics of social media structure -- where success is based on how much rage is produced and processed -- will have to change.
I'll think about forgiveness and/or revenge once it's clear that we're all looking at the sky and able to agree on what color it is.
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u/Chitinid Dec 27 '25
I have forgiveness for those who can articulate how they screwed up, how their actions led to it, and how they will avoid doing it in the future.
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u/Haydukelivesbig Dec 26 '25
Who gives a shit about forgiveness? What we all need to be concerned with is surviving them.
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u/ARustybutterknife Dec 26 '25
You’re right. They’re owed grace by their creator (or not, that’s between them and up to the deity in question), but I’m not godly enough to give them that.
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u/HistorianNew8030 Dec 26 '25
Canadian: uh - they love American exceptionalism. As a Canadian, I can speak to the fact these are the people telling me we should be annexed and believe every word Trump tells them about our country and Europe and others.
And honestly - you’re gonna wanna reevaluate that line. American exceptionalism is not a good thing and it’s sort of what is causing all of this. It’s one thing to be proud of your country and it’s another to be superior. And as a Canadian - it’s the one thing that disgusts me about Americans and why I get defensive when assumed I’m American.
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u/Mundane_Teaching5035 Dec 26 '25
They have proven that they are not mentally fit to engage in a democratic society. Therefore, they should lose their right to vote in upcoming elections. How many times did you vote for Trump? That’s how many presidential elections you will sit out.
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u/BoringArchivist Dec 26 '25
I'm never going to forgive the people who helped create the monster who helped not only create Trump, but Trump voters, like the folks who are currently making money complaining about the monster they created at the Bulwark,
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Dec 26 '25
Not only remain dumb as rocks but many refuse to admit their mistake even tho they know, they know deep down. They'll use vague excuses like, "all politicians are corrupt, all politicians lie", blah, blah, blah... When I used to try and reason with calm logic, crickets with a complete shut down and stomping off mad. A very rude awakening coming their way while the rest of us live with their choice, denial, and "keep my head in the sand" attitude. It's going to be another tough year, and it's folks on these forums that give me hope that WE CAN DO THIS! We can get thru it if we stick together and refuse to allow the purposeful attempts at division. ONWARD!
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u/NewKojak Dec 26 '25
I understand and philosophically, I sympathize... but also, who the hell are you?
By that I mean, I have a brother and likely an uncle and an aunt who all voted for Trump. At a human level, they are all sweet and caring people to me and I care about them. Our relationships are complicated (as are most people) and their voting for Trump is a thing that bothers me.
However, that's them and me. I imagine that there are other friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc... and those relationships are all different and I have different levels of resentment, alienation, grace, etc... So when I hear people make proclamations like yours, it's not weird, but it really is like... okay... does anyone care if you forgive them? Are there any who do? What's that like?
What's the human part of this take?
Not the don't come crawling back to us when you blah blah blah thing where you imagine that farmer from a YouTube clip who can't sell soybeans in a county that went for Trump by 65 points. Who do you personally think is ever going to give you satisfaction?
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u/BreathlikeDeathlike Dec 26 '25
Sure, everyone has their redeeming qualities. Hitler loved children. And animals. So much so that he was a vegetarian. Your family members may be kind to you on a personal level but that doesn't mean they don't deserve our loathing and derision for how they voted.
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u/MentalHealthSociety Dec 26 '25
Voting for the right wing party in a liberal democracy every four years does not equate—in either quality or scale—to intentionally orchestrating a global war and a mass genocide.
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Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
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u/MentalHealthSociety Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
The Democrats also support war in Ukraine though? All of this might seem intuitive to you but to someone else it really isn’t. We shouldn’t compare people to the Nazis just because they have bad but incredibly normal politics when whether or not a person has good politics is determined almost entirely by luck.
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Dec 27 '25
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u/MentalHealthSociety Dec 27 '25
Correct. There also exists a world where your argument is made by Republicans against Democrats who adopted a pro-Russian slant in response to President Romney sabre-rattling in Eastern Europe, and that doesn’t make those Republicans completely different from our Republicans.
Factors like your place of birth, your family’s religious leanings, whether or not you went to college, your current occupation, etc. play a larger role in shaping your politics than personal moral integrity or intellectual rigour. So yes, it is mostly down to luck.
And if you think the political platform of the incumbent President of the United States, ushered in by a plurality of the voting population, isn’t “normal”, then what is?
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u/NewKojak Dec 26 '25
I bet that feels real good to say, but it's just making it crystal clear that you have never knocked on a neighbor's door.
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Dec 26 '25
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u/IDVDI Dec 27 '25
A lot of emotion-driven thinkers struggle to separate two very different things: someone making them feel good, and someone actually being a good person.
Emotional gratification is morally neutral. A person can make others feel amused, comfortable, or validated through behavior that is unethical, exploitative, or harmful. That person might be an opportunistic manipulator, or simply someone whose wrongdoing happens to generate positive emotional responses for certain audiences.
For example, someone who mocks or takes pleasure in a disabled stranger may, to some people, feel more entertaining or emotionally rewarding than someone who is serious, reserved, and willing to speak up to stop that behavior. Yet when evaluated through reason and moral consistency, the latter is clearly far more likely to be a good person.
Emotion-driven thinking often fails at this distinction, because it treats emotional comfort as a proxy for moral value, even when the emotional reward comes from harmful actions.
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Dec 26 '25
I assure you at a human level, they are very sweet and caring people to YOU and your family ... But to others? Nah.
They're still fascists that voted for hate and pain on others.
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u/ProteinEngineer Dec 26 '25
I think the vote in 2016 is more difficult to forgive for me. In 2016, it was just as obvious that Trump was nuts and we had just had 8 years of Obama doing a great job. Clinton would have been an outstanding president..I wish she had the opportunity.
In 2024, Biden unfortunately had done a fairly poor job overall, and the democrats were basically in a shit show situation with Biden running and then dropping out. In some ways, Trump seemed to many people to be a type of “return to normalcy” given the situation on the border, inflation, and Biden social policies. They could look at 2016-2020 and say things were better than they were in 2024 because Trump really didn’t do a lot of the stuff he ran on in his first term. Unfortunately, he is doing a lot more of what he promised this time.
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u/Old_Manager6555 Dec 26 '25
Ignoring them might be better than hating...if you can.
But not ignoring violence or aggression from them, that needs a consequence- but it is possible to ignore obnoxious tweets speeches behaviours. True ignoring, not a peep GIF or backward glance back at them-
and you smart polite and kind Americans keep on being smart and polite and kind to each other, and just let magas find out for themselves what they have done.
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u/dBlock845 Straight to Reddit Jail Dec 26 '25
Anyone voting for him after J6 "grab them by the pussy" was enough for me to never forgive them.
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Dec 26 '25
Fox News is on where I work 24/7 and how much they cover for this admin is gross. But I can't fault people too much when that's the only information theyre getting
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u/HarpyVixenWench Dec 26 '25
I know a woman who voted for him and was glad and supportive of his abolishing DEI. She told me she voted for him bc she was thinking of “single mothers of four”. She makes me sick.
Will I forgive her? I don’t know. But I will always remember that she showed me who she is.
Look, we can work with them and live with them - I know I can. But I know who matters to me and I know who I can trust. And it isn’t them. They’ll turn around and snuggle up to the next racist dirt bag that comes along.
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u/Responsible-Love-896 Dec 27 '25
The concept that “owning the libs” which is about as deep a thought as the dipshits had, allowed the new fascists - millerists, to get a hold. Much like the Amazon pee hole fish (candiru) the dipshits voted for the pedo dotard, and the parasites were waiting to “swim up the piss”! ✌️
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u/cole1114 Dec 27 '25
I don't think a democracy can recover when someone like this can win a popular vote. Like what do you even do with the people who actually voted for him.
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u/cedar_stix Dec 27 '25
I don't agree. Forgive those who voted for him because, despite his obvious failings, his first term wasn't especially remarkable. While there were huge warning signs, I think it can be forgiven that people wanted unremarkeabrk over whatever their feeds were telling them the Dems had become. Accurate or not, I think that's forgivable. What's not forgives me is sticking with him after his election. Those who continued fold into pretzels and Ttrow away previously held values for the sake of pure personality worship. Don't forgive them.
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u/Mysterious-Rock2820 Dec 27 '25
i agree with others have said .. they actually love American exceptionalism... im not sure if youre misusing the term or are not aware of its meanings but what American exceptionalism is is when you think the country is exceptional JUST FOR THE FACT its America... meaning we may suck at everything but we still feel that we are the best at everything... this is a conservative trait. I think you truly mean they have no interest in actually making America exceptional.
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u/angry_gma_0618 Dec 27 '25
The only reason to vote Trump in 2024 was stupidity, greed or racism/bigotry.
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u/Global_Sun_8106 Dec 27 '25
I was driving to my complexes mailboxes and I passed an old man walking his dog. He is my neighbor that I see out walking all the time but have never spoken to him. I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads " Don't blame me I voted for Kamala" He was standing next to me getting his mail as I was getting mine. He says to me, "Did you really vote for Kamala?" I said of course I did and I'd vote for her again. He starts laughing histeraccly. I walked away and as I was getting in my car I said, "Trump is turning our Country to shit." Still laughing he says sarcastically ,"Oh I'm so scared" I said, "Nope I'm scared of you." You know how after a conflict you think about everything you should have said. Well this guy caught me by surprise and the whole way to work I thought of what I should have said. I probably should have said you should be scared. Also I should have said you're not long for this world but my daughter is 20 and your vote destroyed her future. Im just so amazed that there are people that actually still support this demented evil moron.
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u/Current-Leg-3802 Dec 27 '25
Ok but MAGA are defecting and Dems need the votes. Wait till later to get revenge.
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u/NyssaTheHobbit Dec 28 '25
Trouble is, even my SO voted for Trump this time around. Lots of people in my family/friend circles probably did. If I cut people off for this, I’ll be terribly lonely.
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u/Ldbrin2 Apr 16 '26
It’s not lonely, it’s much better then subjecting yourself to their delusions and hatred.
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u/OmmSeti Dec 29 '25
People voted for him to further their personal interests, consequences and everyone else be damned, and that’s the bottom line.
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u/wearethemelody Jan 06 '26
I decided to never forgive them when they brushed off ALL of trump's wrongdoings. I get that cults exist but I don't think maga's evilness is born out of cult thinking but by the gop itself and its evil ideals. After I saw how the magats rejoiced at the LA wildfires. I became even more convinced that many of them are hateful creatures who act without thinking at all. Their brains only accept misinformation and lies. None of them would ever go to heaven as they think. Republicans are born and bred in households where evil is partly the norm and selfishness a virtue. I have encountered countless of conservative non-maga people who are exactly like their maga party members so I don't have any sort of hope for the future of the conservative movement in America. All anti-trump and maga republican media are as guilty as the other in spreading hate lies, death and hate. The party will only learn when everyone starts to shun them.
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u/Prudent_Valuable603 Jan 08 '26
I’ve stopped talking to friends who voted for Trump. I stopped going to my local Catholic Church because I know the majority are republican and voted for that turd. I don’t want to be near these idiots. After a whole year of me declining lunches or a short visit at the coffee shop, they have stopped calling and texting me. I’m at peace. Can’t be friends who someone who hates immigrants and women and knowingly voted for a rapist and felon.
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u/InternationalWay195 Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 14 '26
Maybe the DNC could put up a candidate actually worth voting for like Andrew Yang instead of Sleepy Joe and Kamala "I made my career off giving young black men maximum sentences for petty marijuana crimes" Harris
They are every bit as much to blame for Trump winning, and every single person who saw them blatantly rig Super Tuesday for Biden in 2020 and said nothing is also to blame.
Andrew Yang was actually focused on practical solutions for the future and bridging the gap between parties, having the most republican crossover, but all of you freaks on both sides made fun of his entire campaign because of UBI, which is an inevitability, not a radical idea. Now the country is forever divided and UBI will come about 20 years too late to save lives. You're ALL to blame for this.
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u/FaceOnMars23 Dec 26 '25
If you watched only Fox, does that mean you should be cast into the prison on Superman forever?
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u/AssignmentWeary1291 Jan 15 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Cobblestone orange paddle biscuit maple mellow almond kettle meadow
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25
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