I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here. Yes, even though the pro-Trump folks don’t comprise a majority of Americans, it’s exceedingly concerning that they’re as close to 50% of the U.S. population as they are. I don’t think I said otherwise, though. I also didn’t say anything about whether the anti-Trump majority (if indeed it is a majority) is/isn’t/was/wasn’t/should be/shouldn’t be “silent.”

Were the anti-Trump folks really “silent” before the election? Was there something they weren’t saying that they should have? 'Cuz it’s not like there wasn’t anybody campaigning against him.

the majority of people voted for him

Eh… That’s not quite accurate. Current estimates are that 77,301,997 people voted for Trump, which is less than 50% of the 155,211,283 total votes cast. (But Kamala, the second-most-voted-for candidate got less than that at 75,017,626.)

But only about 64% of those eligible to vote voted.

So, not even half of those who did vote in the 2024 presidential election voted for Trump, let alone those who were eligible to voted, let alone all “people” in the U.S… But the ones who voted for Trump composed many more than the number of people who voted for any other candidate.

Sources: one and two.

American here.

First, you’re right. About basically all of what you said above.

I think you particularly hit the nail on the head with this:

I’m always thinking “dude, you need to chill” cause literally no one is attacking them and they’re fully secure. But it seems like they’re always searching for a fight or something.

The media here, funded by the big corporations, manufacture tons of FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”) Things to be scared of. “They’re putting chemicals in the water that’s turning the frogs” (and by extension, your kids) “gay.” “The ‘woke mafia’ is trying to convert your kids to atheism.” “The Democrats are going to take your guns so they can install a totalitarian one world government without any resistance.” Most of it’s not true at all. Some has a nugget of truth but it’s not actually any threat.

I will say the Republicans are worse about this than the Democrats (the Democrats’ concerns are more legitimate than the Republicans’), but the Democrats are far from immune. Both are living in fantasy worlds.

…until something very bad happens like the second civil war…

Indeed there’s plenty of rhetoric out there pushing the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war. Between the woke antifa (short for “antifascist”) and the fascist conspiracy theorists.

Just about everyone looks better when they smile.

You’re the one who brought looks into it.

There are compassionate leaders?

DC movies are just so cursed. Not always by DC’s/WB’s own fault, but always cursed. I hate to already be expecting the new Superman to be a massive dumpster fire, but who knows what we should expect.

If a) you actually got it to a rolling boil for a sufficient time (some teas recommend heating to less than boiling temperature), b) the water boiled in the cup (as in, microwave rather than tea kettle you may have let cool a while before actually pouring it in the cup), and c) you took surgeon-like steps to avoid contamination during and after the steeping process, I’d imagine it’d be just as sterile as any thing properly sterilized by boiling would be.

Nope. Lots of stuff commonly believed by Christians isn’t from the Bible. (Though sometimes they’ll do a lot of mental gymnastics to assert that what they believe is from “the only reasonable interpretation” of the Bible.)

Just a few other things commonly believed by Christians not (or at least only dubiously) from the Bible:

• The seven deadly sins
• The nine circles of hell
• The seven levels of heaven
• Transubstantiation
• The trinity

“Streisand effect” comes to mind, but like “sunk cost fallacy” it’s just an example of something “becoming more popular the more it fails.”

I feel like we’ve said this to OP already too, but:

…it came off that he was so popular…

However it may have come off, not enough people voted for him to win him the primary. He wasn’t that popular. For reasons mentioned elsewhere.

It’s possible some people who favored Sanders over Hillary voted for Hillary in the primary anyway fearing that she was more likely to win the primary and not wanting to chance unintentionally boosting the chances of someone other than Hillary or Sanders getting the nomination. I don’t know of any polls or anything that might have indicated that was or wasn’t the case. But that still means people didn’t vote enough for Bernie.

…because fewer people voted for him than for Hillary?

Not quite sure what kind of answer you’re fishing for here.

He just wasn’t “as popular as you believe he was.”

Yes, but how do you think candidates get “popular?” With Hillary’s and the DNC’s thumb on the scales, Hillary’s campaign had an unfair and underhanded influence on the public.

I’m not sure if anything Hillary’s campaign did was “illegal”, but it definitely broke things like the DNC’s own bylaws.

No president has tried it before. Whether he can get away with pardoning himself has yet to be seen. For him not to get away with it would require someone to bring some sort of court case challenging it. And to bring a case, they have to have “standing.” (That is to say, they have to have some credible justification why the self-pardoning action the president took wronged the petitioner in some way.) Which would probably require some legal argument that has never been made before.

I’m guessing Trump probably could get away with it, but given that no president has tried this, we’ll just have to see for sure.

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Yeah, good answers. Thank you.

Are you expecting someone to provide you with all the answers?

Only to explain the answers that they’re already bringing up.

And, honestly, your answer and OP’s answer are exactly the sort of answers I needed. Thank you.

I guess the short restatement is something like “work with others to create an alternative to depending on the capitalist/fascist system for crumbs and then protect that alternative system on a self-defense basis with firearms. (And be ready to before you actually have to.)”

Seems like you’re advocating:

• “Get organized/involved” - What’s that mean in more practical terms? Start attending social gatherings put on/hosted by radical leftist organizations? And maybe start ones if they don’t exist in your area?
• “Get armed” - So, acquire firearms. To use in some particular way? (You mentioned you’re not advocating for “acts of violence or an insurrection like January 6th”, so not that, apparently.) Or just to have for when “something” happens? If so, what specifically?
• “Don’t wait until troops are rolling down the street to stage a resistance” - 'K. Not really helpful until I understand more specifically what you’re advocating for people to do.
• “Start organizing” - Same as that first bullet?
• “Get involved in mutual aid” - Yeah, ok. I’ve read Eisenstein. I know his book Sacred Economics has some tips for how to get involved with existing mutual aid organizations. I definitely need to re-read that bit and read other sources about that. But at least I have an idea where to start with some of that, I guess. I’d still like more specifics on what in particular you mean by this, though.
• “Get involved with resistance” - So, let’s say you’re a respected voice in a mutual aid radical anarchist collective with guns and enthusiasm. What do you suggest they do?
• “Stand, fight, and maybe even die” - How? Not January 6th, but… how then?
• “Don’t do nothing”/“Don’t lay down and accept our fate” - Not really helpful on its own if we don’t know what you’re suggesting we do instead of “doing nothing” or “laying down and accepting our fate.”

I don’t really know if this is a “I can’t really say what I’m advocating for because I’ll be banned, so I’m dancing around the issue and hoping you’ll stochastically pick up on what I’m not saying” thing either.

Without knowing more concretely what you suggest we do, I don’t really have a take on whether I agree or not.

Right?!

I’ve dabbled in learning Japanese enough to know that learning a second language as an adult has a way of driving home to you how little I really understand about my own native language. And learning what little I have of a second language definitely has taught me more about English.

I think if someone referred to “the Travises shared given name” without adding the extra “es”, my brain would get stuck on that for a bit. I don’t know that that would be the case for most people or not. But if someone were talking to me about the name shared by multiple people named “Travis”, my brain would churn less, get " stuck" for a shorter time, and be less likely to have to catch back up to the conversation if the extra “es” was included.

Without the extra “es”, it feels like it could get a little “garden-path-y.” Like:

• “The Travis…”
• “The Travis” sounds like a pretty pretentious way to be referred to.
• “…es”
• Possessive. 'k. What does he have?
• “shared given name…”
• Oh, so “The Travis” was magnanimous enough to offer his name for consideration when it came time to decide the name of… maybe one of his relatives’ newborns…?

Right? Not to say I wouldn’t expect to catch on in a couple more words there. And also more realistically, my brain wouldn’t be stuck on this interpretation in the conversation, but more “suspending judgement” and holding both possibilities for interpretations in mind until something resolved the question. But speaking just for myself, I think my brain would have to go through all those machinations if the extra “es” wasn’t there. And that requires more wetware cycles than if the extra “es” wad there. If it was, it’d be unambiguous immediately after the second “es” that “Travis” was both plural and possessive.

(To be fair, after the second “es” another possibility would be that we were talking about multiple groups of people named “Travis”. Chapters of a club only open to people named “Travis” for instance. Kindof like the word “peoples” which is similarly “double-pluralized”. But it seems to me unlikely my brain would jump to that possibility the way it might jump to a possessive form of the title “The Travis.”)

Also, it’s very possible my brain works differently than most. I think I have a pretty “stilted” manner of speech. People occasionally poke gentle fun at me about it. (All in good fun, mind you.) And it’s possible my brain doesn’t process speech quite like most people’s do.

There’s a linguistics professor at MIT who I once heard say in a class (an Open Courseware class… I didn’t attend MIT or anything):

“We’ll speak no more of prescriptive linguistics except to mock it.”

However you want to say it, say it. Your particular style of speech is unique and beautiful and you should keep speaking that way.

I personally would pronounce it like “Travises”. As if pluralizing it. (“There are multiple Travises in the phone book.”) Makes it fairly clear. I guess that brings up the question what to do if there are multiple Travises who co-own something. “The Travises’ shared given name.” I think off the top of my head, I’d probably pronounce it like “Traviseses.” Cool!