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I didn't vote for Trump, though considering I live in one of the least-swing states in the country, I didn't vote at all because I didn't think it would be worth the gas I would expend driving to the polling place.
In any case, Trump is president now.
When I was a kid at the time of Obama v McCain my nice teacher Miss Collins gave us a very simplified and seven-year-old friendly explanation of politics. In some countries, one guy got to be in charge and nobody else got any say. But America was different because we got to have elections every four years, which let the people choose who we wanted to be in charge. Everybody went into a booth and chose who they wanted to be president, and whoever got picked by the most people automatically won.
When I got a little older I started spending a bunch of time on various forums and image boards where I learned that actually democracy is fake and gay. It's all a sham. We live under the system/the Cathedral/the regime/whatever. Voting doesn't matter because no matter who wins, The Regime will never allow a true based right-winger to come to power.
This skepticism continued through the Trump years, with the explanation for his 2016 victory being that They were caught off guard. And of course his loss in 2020 was because the System was no longer off guard, and had fortified itself against the possibility of another Trump victory through means of gross election fraud. "There's no voting your way out of this." In the lead up to 2024, various RW voices, including many on this forum, insisted that Trump would never be allowed to take office again. Mysterious votes would be hauled out at 3:00 AM to ensure a Harris win. Or else he would be assassinated. Or once in office, he would not be permitted to actually do anything Based™ by the Deep State.
Well, despite the universal opprobrium and opposition of every single group of people I've been assured are really running the show, variously journalists, left-wing billionaires, the CIA, other unelected federal bureaucrats, college professors, the Jews, NGOs, liberal white women, or some combination thereof, Trump won. "They were caught off guard" no longer remotely works as an explanation.
Trump doing mass firings of federal employees, mass deportations, and dismantling DEI, just like he promised. The libs are coping and seething, but they can't do anything more than that, and the reason they can't do anything more than that is because more people pressed the "Trump" button than the "Harris" button in the voting booth, and according to the magic piece of paper, this means Trump is in charge now. Democracy worked exactly like Miss Collins said it would. This literally happened, just replace Hitler with "woke DEI". As soon as it the results of the election were clear, the libs immediately acted in accordance with the magic piece of paper and handed over power, without any attempt at military coups, riots, Hail Mary legal endeavors, or even a lib January 6th. And no Deep State has stepped forward to prevent him from doing exactly what he said he would do on the campaign trail. The Magic Piece of Paper has spoken.
While this is a massive L for the libs, it's also a massive L for many reactionary theory of politics which have proven so popular in what can broadly be called the "dissident right."
Like what is the cope for this? Trump isn't a real right-winger, the System would never allow the election of a real right-winger who would restore seigneurial dues and reverse the industrial revolution? The System is just biding its time until it can do a reverse QAnon Storm?
All the based esoteric schizos gibbering about the Cathedral and ZOG and how everybody is a communist were wrong. Turns, they were the fake and gay ones all along, and my sweet normie liberal second grade teacher was right the whole time. Democracy is Real and Straight. Sorry Miss Collins.
Libs did try to resist Trump after his first election, believing he was illegitimate, didn't win the popular vote, needed tk be impeached over Russia, Stormy Daniels, etc. The last ten years has included more and more political conflict outside the voting booth.
Aa for your question about right wing theory cope: I've been in parties and bars with a lot of these people, we've had these exact conversations. The working theory is that we were wrong. We didn't believe in democracy or our ability to fight back and fix things, which is the same as saying we really didn't believe in America. Trump was the only one who did. Trump was right and we were wrong.
It is refreshing that I no longer hear this stuff anymore. Leftists have now accepted that Trump won legitimately for his second term, and no one seems to be doubting that he is the rightful president. Instead it's a lot of "I can't believe people voted for this". But I consider that a lot better then the constant refusal that he is the rightful president, because all of the investigations and doubts really did prevent Trump from fully having the power last time. It was one witch hunt after another, causing everyone left of Jeb Bush to really internalize that it's a virtue to resist Trump on every level. I think the lack of question to his legitimacy this time will make things different this time around, for what it's worth.
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It's worth reflecting on the fact that we all almost saw Trump's head explode on live TV. He was right by about 2 inches.
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