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I, like the rest of the country, feel like nothing good will come of the election. However, I feel this way for a slightly different reason than your average person, and probably closer to the average Mottezian.
I actually don't really care too much who is president. Either one of them would IMO do a good enough job. I mostly care whether the president impacts my everyday life or causes nuclear war. However, though it isn't his fault directly, having Trump in charge would impact my everyday life negatively, mostly because it would fuel another 4 years of incessant leftist whining all around me, from all my friends and family, along with people starting to (erroneously, IMO) see and declare that racism and sexism is everywhere again. It'll start causing fights between me and my wife again. My workplace and all local institutions will start making statements about how they're standing up to Trump and racism. Under Biden, I have truly enjoyed some nice peace and respite from politics.
However, I find this state of affairs to be very irritating. It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic: we better win or we'll whine and complain for 4 years. I don't respect sore losers, and moreover, I don't like the fact that there is no path forward for the right.
Scott said this back in 2016:
Scott was absolutely correct here in how it played out. But what option does this leave the non leftists with? If the Democrat wins, then the currents move left. We get leftism enshrined into law over the next 4 years, because to the victor go the spoils. If the Republican wins, then the undercurrents move left, and more and more people get radicalized towards the left.
Is there a way for the currents to move right without the undercurrents moving left? Or is Trump just uniquely bad at making that happen? I'm tempted to say that this is just the fact that Trump is a polarizing figure, but at the same time, all the leftists I know scream bloody murder whenever a Republican is in command. They were infantile under George W Bush. And though I wasn't around then, I know many people who are still salty over Reagan and act like he was the worst.
Different people want different things. We don't live in a US where we all fundamentally want the same thing, but we just have different ideas of how to get there. No, we truly want different things.
For me, for example, leftist seething is a plus. I enjoy it. I don't care about national unity. It is not one of my preferences. I like the political tensions and the rage. For me it's a plus of Trump. I like right-wing seething too. The seething tastes good. The reasons why I don't like Trump are his authoritarianism and his foreign policy. If he suddenly supported drug legalization, promised to pardon Assange, and said that he would end all foreign aid to Israel, there's a good chance I'd vote for him. But those things aren't going to happen. So I'm not going to vote for him, but if he wins I will at least enjoy all of the leftist seething that he provokes.
Infantile seething is not just a leftist thing. I well remember all of the Republican seething during Bill Clinton's time. Populist republican forums practically considered him the Antichrist, his wife to be a murderer, and discussion of X-Files-esque black helicopter UN theories was not uncommon. Obama generated plenty of seethe on the right too, hence birtherism. It's just a part of modern American politics.
If that's the case, is this really the best forum for you to be participating in? It sounds like your values and the values of this forum are fundamentally at odds.
No arguments from me here. But for whatever reason, I expect more from the left, and the fact that they've devolved in this way from previously having the moral high ground (in my previous estimation), taking everyone around me, and no one around me seems to be willing to acknowledge this, really drives me nuts.
It is true that in a sense, my pro-seething preference goes against the "light rather than heat" values of this forum. However, I try to make sure that my own posts here are not meant to draw seethe, so I do not think that I am violating the values of the forum with my posts. And I occasionally derive some entertainment and/or knowledge from the forum, so I also have a reason to keep participating.
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