A year after promising viewers a “red tsunami” in the 2022 midterms, only to be left with egg on their faces after the GOP drastically underperformed, Fox News was once again wondering what went wrong after Democrats romped to victory in statewide elections on Tuesday night.
Despite recent polls showing President Joe Biden deeply underwater with voters and even losing to Donald Trump in several battleground states, the Democratic incumbent governor easily won victory over his MAGA-endorsed opponent in deep-red Kentucky. And over in Ohio, a state Trump won by eight points in 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment ensuring access to abortion care in the state’s constitution.
The continued drag that undoing Roe v. Wade has had on the GOP was especially apparent in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin had promised to implement a 15-week abortion ban if the GOP was able to gain unified control over the state’s General Assembly. Instead, not only were Youngkin’s hopes of a Republican sweep dashed, but the Democrats now control both chambers.
Elder millennial here. Same. Grew up in a conservative, religious house hold, thinking we were some kind of bastion of morality, while the blue team was dead set on blending babies down into a paste for their satanic rituals n’ shit. Started actually paying attention to politics in the Clinton presidency, but ofc was hyper-focused on shit that doesn’t matter (relative to actual policy, anyway) like his affair, so cue the confirmation bias.
Then Bush happened, but by then I was actually thinking critically, so there was a lot of “wtf, I know he’s on our team, but this isn’t right”. I was still a fucking idiot though, so I landed in the “bOtH siDeS arE teH sAMe!!” trap and championed the Libertarian party for a bit.
Eventually realized the LP, despite having some sincerely decent concepts on paper (shoutout to the non-aggression principle), boiled down to just handing corporations the reigns of the nation; and that the notion of the free market policing itself is a laughable pipe dream (reality check for pretty much any Libertarian proposal: “What would telecoms do with this proposed power?”).
And I couldn’t support the blue team because… um… well there was the situation with Clinton’s blowjob… and, uh… hmmmm… why the fuck have I been vilifying them all this time?! FINALLY took a closer look at the real left’s goals, and not just Fox’s boogeyman fantasy version, and FINALLY realized I’d been drinking the right’s kool-aid from basically birth all the way through the Libertarian phase.
Fast forward another decade-ish and 2016 happened, which really pulled off the last shred of veneer that used to present the GOP as anything other than seething hateful cultists: that was the kick in the ass that made me realize that I’ve got some catching up to do, and urgently. Haven’t missed an election since, big or small: solid blue.
The really important bit here: none of ^that is unique. It took some blundering in the dark to realize that I was… well, blundering in the dark; but I was raised alongside a horde of other kids whose parents “shifted right as they aged” and just didn’t question the boogeyman fantasy shit until we got out of the house, and then turned left. Then more left. Then ALL THE WAY LEFT.
And it’s not just in blue bubbles, either - I was active duty in the military when we switched from Obama to Trump; the military definitely leans right, but it’s not absolute as it’s often presented. Even there, a significant portion of the servicemen and women I interacted with were on track wit their own version of my rant here. People in general, but millennial and younger especially, are REALLY sick of this neonazi, christofascist shit on the red team.
It’s kind of amazing how much the military still leans right after all the Trump shit.
The draft dodging, the incredible disrespect for the military, the obscene bullshit like the hurricane marker incident, the dictator worship, the subservience to Putin, and of course the coup. I would think military people would be better at recognizing incompetence at least.
A couple redditers put together a list of links to articles highlighting each of Trump’s attacks on our own military, from policy to just disrespectful shit like his “I lIkE pEopLe wHo wErn’T cApTUrEd.”
Ignoring the shit he did against every other slice of our nation, and JUST focusing on things that hurt the military/vets, there had to be around a hundred links.
I definitely converted a few people with that list.
But yeah, the right’s kool-aid is a potent drug - it’s easy to just keep chugging without question.
Do you still have the link to that post?
Ah, the good old tango of
"Yeah, sure, we could do That Thing with the proposed powers, but we’d NEVER EVER do That Thing, we’re not evil after all. We just ABSOLUTELY NEED the capability to do That Thing right now. K, thanks.
Whoops, we did That Thing."