Actually, though Trump had significantly more electoral college votes, he won the popular vote by 1.5 percent… So not at all a mandate.
But Trump’s theory is “Name it and claim it” and enough supporters believe the lie that they rabidly support him.
Common sense, truth, and logic mean nothing in his world.
Well the Space Pope is going to need some sort of Xatican to pen their xeets from so this makes xense
That right there has become one of my most commonly mused over concepts the past few years & it has become increasingly more prevalant & worrying.
Almost nothing makes proper sense &/or feels logical anymore.
It almost feels as if humanity is on some sort of autopilot towards destruction of life-as-we-know-it and it’s through the actions of just a few, cultishly followed by a smallish portion of the masses & this circus is watched in disbelief by the rest of humanity… yet nobody can do anything.
I read another article about his 13th child who was just born. It stated he plans on moving his kids into one location in Texas. I would assume this is where they will live.
I mean, I was well used to that from Bosnia, but seeing it at this scale in the US is quite something else, I’ll admit.
There is an uneasy feeling here. Many I know now find themselves on guard in public. Careful about what they say. Careful about hand gestures. A fear they may be misread and verbally assaulted or worse.
It feels like something is about to explode…
Well, in 2016 Hillary Clinton had a 2.6 million majority in the popular vote, yet lost the election to Trump. And there was a valid argument that because Trump had not received as many votes as Clinton, he did not have the mandate to govern.
In 2020, Joe Biden won the election with a majority of 8 million in the popular vote. Having lost the election to Biden, Trump and his team made all manner of spurious claims of election fraud and rigging. No valid evidence was ever produced to support these claims. The result of the election was clear - not only did Trump lose, but he had no claim on the popular vote. He had no mandate.
In the 2024 election Trump polled some 2.5 million votes more than Harris. Not only did he win the electoral college vote, he could also legitimately claim to have won the popular vote. It is true that Trump did not attract more than 50% of the votes cast - which was due to the presence of other candidates in the ballot - but he nevertheless gained more votes than any other candidate. By the rules of the U.S. electoral system, Trump won, fair and square. By the U.S. rules, he has the mandate to govern.
That’s a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who believe in democracy. We have no choice but to suck it up, because, whilst democracy is imperfect, it’s a lot better than any of the alternatives.
The sad fact is that in the U.S., Democrat voters are concentrated in certain areas, whereas Republican voters are more randomly scattered - and this skews the voting system.
If you wanted to calculate a true, representatitve, mandate, you would have to compare the votes cast for a candidate to the total number of people eligible to vote, not just the number who turned out at a particular election. And by this metric, I suspect you would find that no President has ever had an overall mandate.
I think the highest voter turnout the U.S. had seen in postwar years was in 1960, when John F Kennedy gained 34 million votes. But at the time, the total eligible voting population was 108 million. Kennedy won, yet 74 million eligible Americans did not vote for him.
I know there are people complaining that Trump did not win more than 50% of the vote, but that’s not how the U.S. system works.
Store all that info somewhere. The agency that oversees fair elections has been summoned. They are currently going thru all records for the last 4 years to see if their info is “accurate”…in other words, it is quite likely the next “massive amounts of fraud” will be found in past elections. Meaning Trump will finally get his ‘proof’ the last election was ‘stolen’
There is a pseudo-quote you will see around:
“If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”
This has been variously attributed to people such as Vladimir Lenin and Josef Goebbels - who may have repeated it, but there’s no record of them doing so - who knows?. As a quote, it’s a lie - but it gets repeated so often people believe it. Interesting circularity there.
The actual quote appears to have been paraphrased from an 1869 book “The Crown of a Life” (vol 3, pp 154-5) by the British author Isa Blagden. It means more or less the same thing:
“If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth. And if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it”.
Right now it is the “massive amounts of fraud” being found as they dismantle each agency. There is no proof. The things they cite have been things that were caught on a regular basis. People 115 years old drawing social security 
people in other countries drawing social security
We knew this all along. The government regularly went after cases like this. Our info has been stolen and sold and sold and sold. This is nothing new. Yet, somehow, people believe they are doing something wonderful and cleaning out all corruption. It is really mind-boggling. It is because they just keep saying it over and over. Fraud. Shut it down. Wasteful. Shut it down. And all the agencies who could offer real evidence of these claims, gone. Shut down.
I refuse the golden ring trying to be pierced in my nose. I refuse to be led about like a cow to the slaughter house.
Keep your head down, girl. Now is not the time for individual heroics.
A resistance will build - in the meantime, don’t make yourself a target.
I’m just gonna say it, I’ve not much room in my house but I think I speak for all non us members of the board here, all citizen scientists have safe harbor in Europe and beyond if yr cool with couch surfing with the internet’s most eclectic recluses, should things go a little bit too oligarch-ish… or fascist… Olifasci?
What I’m trying to say is, don’t die for a cause the opposition thinks is a “woke myth”, flee to the hills that are alive with the sound of music. Switzerland I think that scene was filmed in?
Jedidia is in Switzerland right? Or who was it? Either way, everyone to their gaff, pronto! I know @arpoja is but I haven’t seen them around in a while. Sure let’s go knock on their door and surprise em 
I am totally up to exploring my Scottish/Irish/English/Welsh roots.
I have a well established bolt hole in Central America.
Hope it’s not Panama.
No, but that is the problem with bolt holes and totalitarian states. Eventually, they start attacking various targets, and ultimately they end up at war with basically everyone. It is pretty unpredictable where the massive damage will happen before they are defeated. I actually think Central America is safer than Europe, in the long run. If my little country is deemed ‘not supportive’ it’s really not a big enough deal to generate much more than a saber rattle, if that. When ‘made greater’ America’s demands get so absurd that Europe gets past their Chamberlain moment and balks it’s going to be a massive confrontation.
It’s moments like these I have to check my privelage, it goes beyond that of my skin colour, even greater than the lofty white privilege.
I have Irish privelage. It opens doors everywhere, unanimously loved, for better or worse, the world over it seems. (No matter how hard Israel tries to convince America we’re not cool like them)
And being positioned just at the edge of Europe and having fuck all strategic value outside of having a nice big internet cable next to us in the Atlantic and a corporate tax haven, generally don’t have much to worry about with world conflicts.
I’m just gonna chill on the island and see how it all pans out 
I was friendly with some Costa Rican doctors some years ago. I remember being quite taken aback when they told me Costa Rica doesn’t have an army. They reckon they don’t need one.
That was my thoughts about 25+ years ago.
Turns out the result isn’t great… & its washing up on our shores in an icky flotsom & the tide is still coming in.
I wont rant but I know one thing. It was the choices of those in power that allowed it & its the good, regular people who are left standing ankle deep in shite.