We don’t know is the short answer. Is it what Trump & Co are after? Absolutely. It’s just a question of whether the other side will fight hard enough to stop it. And based on the last 20 years, Dem politicians are going to, for the most part, roll over and let it happen.
I am not having a good day today.
My girlfriend’s sister has recently married a Trump supporter. She’s Polish, he’s American, has moved over to Krakow to live with her. We met him for the first time at their wedding. His position is simply that all the bad shit that gets said about Trump is just misinformation on the part of the Democrats. His faith in that position is absolutely rock-solid. He’s also an ultra Bible-nut. Everything that’s happening is predicted in the Bible, apparently. So anything inconvenient about Trump, he just totally labels it under fake news designed to smear his man. The level of self-delusion is absolute. What makes it even weirder, is he’s really a very personable chap, loves Basia’s sister, is considerate to everyone, and funny and quite charming. So I don’t think the ‘They’re not decent people’ thing is by any means absolute. A lot of them are people who have placed themselves in an entirely different perceptual framework, and won’t be shaken from that.
It’s not a failure or breakdown of democracy, Trump is also going to win the PV by a margin of 3-4%
It’s just that yanks voted for Trump because they look to their own interests above all else.
It doesn’t need to be the end of democracy. In fact it’s the consequence of democracy (or at least the USA’s slightly twisted ‘electoral college’ version of it). And it looks like he could win the popular vote, after all.
EDIT: Beaten to it ^^^.
Out of interest, have you seen this chap interact with anyone who is say, muslim, gay, trans, black or any of the marginalised groups that Trump demonizes?
Genuinely not having a go, but the number of times I see people say something to the end of “but they’re always great with me” when both people fit into exactly the same demographic profile, and brush all the result under the carpet, is unreal.
It looks like he’s got the popular vote too, and by a huge margin.
Agreed but the Germans voted in Hitler.
The question is, now that he has regained power, will he start to govern as a authoritarian leader/fascist? Will he seek retribution by using the justice system to go after his perceived enemies? He has said that he has a list. Will he start to dismantle the democratic institutions by taking direct control of the three letter agencies etc, sacking the civil service and replacing the staff with loyalists?
No I haven’t, and I’m by no means saying he’s a perfect individual. To be honest, for us the jury is out, as yet. I’ve had very little dealings with him, and the time I have spent with him, I mainly just listened and didn’t offer much to the conversation, as it was a wedding, and I hadn’t met him before. There’s probably going to be all sorts of views I differ with him on. But at the very least he’s managing to hold down a seemingly warm relationship with a highly acomplished academic of extremely lovely nature, which is something of a wonder. To be honest I’m somewhat stumped by the scenario.
I’m not brushing anything under the carpet, I don’t yet know enough to form a full opinion, but I’m saying I don’t think it’s realistic to assume that everyone who voted for Trump is automatically an asshole. Albeit I’m absolutely sure a huge number are.
No he’s going to go after the EU, NATO, the UN, and trade deals. His concept of “making america great again” will be to make the US more insular, put diplomacy in the cupboard and hammer the rest of the world with punitive trade tariffs.
I don’t think he’s a facist, there’s only a few real facists out there and none of them have the slightest semblance of democracy. He just doesn’t give two shits about the rest of the world unless there is money in it for him or it keeps him popular.
It will be interesting to see if he issues an exec order next week stopping or cutting the support to Ukraine.
Can he issue any orders before he is inaugurated in January. I thought not.
The particular definition of interesting that is “fundamentally dangerous for a whole swathe of Eastern Europe”.
Ah yeah forgot about that, will have to wait until Jan then.
As well as the obvious policy cuntery around Ukraine, NATO and the Middle East, I’m more worried about the crackpots and cranks like RFK and Musk that he’s likely to put into significant positions.
Vaccines will be banned and the population will be drinking bleach at this rate.
Putin can’t believe his luck.
or this ^^
Regardless. He’s the big winner here. Well done Uh-merica 
We need McDonalds to step up and offer to cater his 3 meals a day.
A heart attack or stroke is going to be the only exit from this shit show.
Then we get Vance. 
fuck you and your logic
Oh yeah, a wedding is for sure not the place to start pushing back on that kind of thing.
I guess part of the “are they arseholes” debate is when you genuinely believe the person is operating in some sort of good faith, but their actions don’t then line up with that for whatever reason.
I’m going to have to be ‘that guy’ here but, all elections are conducted in the national interest; there’s no treatise that means the US is obligated to be different. European countries perceive their national interests differently but I’d argue that’s because they know that at the scale of a European country, isolationism isn’t a goer. It’s not some step change in enlightenment that yields a different result.