cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/usa@midwest.social/p/2035642/everything-got-worse-gen-z-express-frustration-regret-after-trump-vote
cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/politics@piefed.world/p/2034306/navigating-the-vote-buyers-remorse-gen-z-on-trump
The Gen Z Trump voters might be the dumbest people on the planet right now. Genuinely.
Like, you expect the boomers to be stupid and impressionable, because ::gestures around::, but not the younger folks.
These people will live with their shame for a lifetime.
That’s the generation that grew up with the large social media sites in place, and the constant message there traditional media would be untrustworthy.
I’m finding it difficult to understand why you think younger people are somehow less stupid and impressionable?
That’s almost a by-definition sort of expectation here.
Young people are stupid and impressionable, just like how older people are less physically capable.
Impressionability is literally a defining aspect of being young and still having a developing brain. This is also why it’s such a huge fight to corrupt our education system.
Think of how stupid the average genZer is, then remember: half of them are stupider than that.
Bravo!
I’d guess it has to do with the benefit of doubt based on a lack of evidence, and a dash of confirmation bias thrown in. For example, there’s plenty of evidence that the generations before them suck at choosing leaders and then suck at governing when they finally get a seat at the table. I would choose to defend millennials because as an older millennial I am biased toward that generation. But Gen Z doesn’t yet have a lot of evidence out there in either direction.
All that said, I feel like the statement “Boomers destroyed the planet in essentially every way and made life worse for every generation that preceded and followed it” is just fact. But again, I’m biased.
I think the key issue here is that, regardless of generation, most humans are stupid and impressionable.
Not sure someone unintelligent enough to vote for Trump can experience an emotion as complex as shame.
Realistically, others will be experiencing the shame for them for the rest of their lives while they continue to make poor decisions they feel no shame for.
“I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum
Stupidity is not related to age.
To be fair, he said “Gen Z Trump voters”, not simple Gen Z.
Though that’s the same, as most are further right than Boomers.
It shows the issue isn’t intelligence but messaging.
To be fair, he said:
Like, you expect the boomers to be stupid and impressionable, because ::gestures around::, but not the younger folks.
ignorance is though.
Saying reprehensible shit like that now makes me think that you are stupid and impressionable. Go figure.
found the gen-z voter guys!
I will maybe make an exception for boomers. Fuck the lead-brained “me first” generation.
Hear hear!
Gee, it’s not like we warned you, pointed to the pile of shit his first term was and how terrible things got, and before his first term we pointed to all the awful shit he did that he fucking bragged about doing, along with all his failed business dealings (how the fuck do you bankrupt a casino in Atlantic City?) and then pointed out all his shady connections to Russian oligarchs and criminal gangs with believable if difficult to prove implications that much of his income was built on laundering money.
But no no, he TOTALLY was going to do things right this time and lie with every other breathe.
I don’t even feel sorry for you fucking morons anymore, if you voted for Trump there really is no excuse anymore.
I fail to understand how most people can see the Trump grift from miles away, and others are completely blind to it 🤔
Because of their media bubble, they’re still raging that grocery stores got rid of single use plastic bags, incandescent light bulbs have been replaced by LEDs, pronouns, electric cars (they’re bad), and being asked to turn their air conditioners up during heatwaves to avoid brown outs.
They aren’t blind, they just think they aren’t the ones being grifted.
Which is both a fundamental part of the grift and says a lot about people.
There are a lot of wealthy elite Republican Trump supporters who think installing an authoritarian regime will consolidate and extend their power. They don’t see that authoritarianism means the only thing protecting them from a purge is the thought of it by the leader. Their wealth, power and privilege, CEO or Senator, mean precicely shit. Just look to Saudi Arabia China or Russia to see how fragile power is.
There’s no way around it, and I don’t care if it’s someone’s family member that they love with all their heart that’s always been kind to them.
Anyone that voted for Trump, ever, but especially the 2nd and 3rd time around, ranks among the dumbest humans to ever walk the face of this earth.
Profoundly dumb, at minimum, and likely also evil.
I hate the people who did not vote against him so much it hurts.
Regret afterwards has replaced thinking through the consequences beforehand.
We’re devolving as a species and it’s probably intentional.
This is the ultimate goal of undermining education.
But how can they get more likes on social media by acting shocked and victimized if they make the intelligent decision and nothing bad happens as a result?
Drama = views. Seems like the only concept they’ve actually got a handle on.
It is a peculiar era in which we live - bad guys running the prisons putting good guys in the prisons… or worse.
They voted for him again, anyway, and then they blamed "boomers. Hopefully, they’ll change their vote.
In 2016, Trump promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Over the course of his presidency, he followed through on this catastrophic commitment, stacking the federal judiciary with staunch abortion opponents, including three Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn Roe and with it the federal right to abortion in a case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
And then the morons blame Biden for it because he was president when the supreme court made that ruling.
Have to look at Gen Z the way you look at every single institution and structure in the world right now.
Hope that they’ll be okay, but make absolutely ZERO plans under the ASSUMPTION that they will. The preppers are right.
Maybe they should stop rizzing and gooning and do their fucking homework before voting (or not voting).
Treat it like a fucking video game if you want. The data is all there and readily available on the characters. The stats show that one character is way, way, way, way, way better. Choose that character.
It’s not like both characters are equal, despite what a TON of dipshits and bots would like you to believe.
30-year-old boomer take.
The good old FAFO. Zero sympathy for the MAGA voters and I do not wish them luck for the shitshow they created. Return your diplomas and recycle your asses.
Under half of all eligible gen z voters voted like 47 percent. Worthless dog turd humans. Enjoy the shit show morons.
And our generation had better voter turnout when we were their age? It doesn’t seem much different from voter turnout in general.
It’s a shame idiots didn’t listen to those of us who said exactly what would happen. You fucked around. Now you found out. And in the meantime the rest of us got screwed. Gee, thanks.
It a shame they didn’t listen to Trump.
He said EXACTLY what he was going to do.
“I’m gonna run this country like one of my companies.”
Like a fascist dictator, right into the ground…
beholden to Russian interests
It is kind of funny how the US simultaneously exalts FREEDOM and tyranny. The tyranny being the private realm, where your boss has total control
The issue is that freedom is a paradox; if everyone can do whatever they want, what if doing what you want to do prevents someone else from doing what they want to do? We needed some way to figure out who was allowed to do more, and we decided might makes right. If you want the most freedom for yourself, you need to limit the freedom of others as much as possible, and that’s just what those in power did, and continue to do.
Which is why we should be talking about “workplace democracy” instead of “socialism”.
He talks so much and said multiple conflicting things.
he talks so much and never says anything at all.
Yep!
No, he lied and said he was going to stop all the wars and start no new ones. Kamala on the other hand, promised to have the most lethal military ever. Don’t you remember?
I’ll never understand how they could ignore literal millions of loved ones and trust a rich spoiled known scammer to change things for the better for them and not himself, on top of all of us explicitly saying he and republicans will purposely crash the economy and hurt innocent people for fun in the name of religion and conservatism.
‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face—as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocating under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who could not spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’
People will belive anything if they want it,or fear it to be true.
Did I just find Wizard’s First Rule in the wild?
Yes
Nice! Having read the first book over 20 years ago and having never watched the TV series, that’s a pretty awesome find for me.
Right, I know that intellectually. I’ll never understand it in my heart.
It’s not Trump they trust, it’s his misinformation machine. Manosphere for boys and trad wife content for girls. Andrew Tate evidently knows better than their own people.
Same reason capitalism persists.
If we’re lucky, some of the “both sides” people might take note.
Ah, who am I kidding, they only listen to fascist propaganda.
(not that the establishment Dems don’t suck, mind, but still an order of magnitude better than the fucking fascists)
The unfortunate part of this is that even if the Dems got in, all this other bs would still be brewing until the gop got in power again anyway, and no one would be fighting as hard to establish a socialist movement right now.
That’s just about the only silver lining, at least more people can see the consequences of the systems they enable this way. Hopefully the admin doesn’t destroy the world first…
Ever consider the possibility fascism and socialism both suck?
The center is being squeezed by people suffering from internet brain rot on either side pushing for failed systems of the past. You’re getting a taste of why fascism sucks. Do you need to actually experience why socialism sucks for yourself rather than just reading a history book?
If you burn your hand on one burner on the stove do you assume that pressing it on another burner will make it better?
You don’t even know what the word “socialism” even means; why should we listen to your opinions?
You can enact some socialist policies without become a socialist society.
Socialised healthcare and education is a no-brainer.
As a non-American, I repeatedly got told to shut up and mind my own business when I complained about Trump. Well, he got elected and fucked the US, and fucked the rest of the world, and he’s threatening to invade my country so it turns out it was my business after all. Cheers for that.
The rest of us either fled or dug our heels in and prepared. The MAGA voters who regret their votes are welcome to sacrifice themselves to the frontlines
The MAGA voters who regret their votes are welcome to sacrifice themselves to the frontlines
Fascist statement.
They fucked around and we all found out.
But Harris wouldn’t support Palestine …
Listen, I really really like puppies, and that guy doesn’t care about puppies at all, so I’m not voting for him.
What, you’re worried that the kill-all-puppies party is gonna win? Come on, they’re ridiculous, they’re not gonna make it, so I may as well vote for them just for the thrill of it.
I get it, I’m not an American so can’t vote for either. But I do wish my country would get rid of the first around the post system so my vote for the “I like puppies” party actually meant something. And people didn’t have to feel that they have to vote for the “kill shelters have the right to defend themselves” guy just to stop the “I hate puppies” guy.
She WAS going to support Ukraine and now that’s fucked also.
Except for literally everyone, no one warned them!
“Hey idiot fucking listen to me”
Perhaps the case made to them wasn’t made in the most appealing way. Voting is actually about appetites, thus winning messages are more apetising.
You tired of winning yet?
The idea of winning is always going to be the more appetising idea.
People with no critical thinking skills vote the way they do because of their emotions. And that’s the problem. If more people voted based on logic and reason and the common good, we would never have been in this darkest timeline.
Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: ‘A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.’
Yep, and I think Trump is particularly good at manipulating the emotions/apetites of his voter base.
The entire point of a campaign is to get votes…
2020 people held their noses and voted Biden, and the people running that geriatric puppet show used it to latch onto power and do whatever the fuck they want.
Jamie Harrison only knows how to take bribes from the wealthy, that’s why he lost to Lindsey Graham despite breaking fundraising efforts. As DNC chair from 2021 to 2025, he did what everyone expected him to do who knew who he was.
He raised a shit ton of money and lost an election because of not caring about anything else.
The real shame is uninformed people not understanding the DNC is just whatever the chair wants it to be, and when the chair changes you judge the organization by the current chair, not the one who fucked up and got fired
We have 2 choices. One is better. This discussion has now concluded.
As long as the US (or any other country for that matter) sees politics as something you only do every 4 years, nothing will change, or at least not to your advantage. Oligarchs have money, but have the numbers. Get involved locally, vote at every level you can, find who in your community has the same ideals as you, change small things first.
How has that strategy been working out for you? Oh you lost to an obvious fascist? Twice? Might want to reopen the file and take another swing, lol.
Might be aggressive stubborn people like you are the problem
In other countries the candidates seek popularity, this is a weird place where there was only ever one correct choice, between two people who are absolutely disgusted by you, and will do as much harm as they are allowed to do, but one is clearly an idiot. The other was selected, not by a democratic process but by a machine, and then the corporate media says they’re the most electable, despite there being zero evidence of this.
We were about to make history by electing the first president who didn’t participate in a primary. She was anointed. Just this once, we gave up even on the name Democrat. No Kings indeed! It wasn’t Republicans saying this, it was Black Lives Matter, those people you all also hated because they were too loud and they weren’t even that loud!
Mark my words, the next time Democrats shame everyone, it’ll be before another cancelled primary, not after. They’ll be upset that you’re mad about the cancelled primary. “Do you want (some asshole) to win???”. It’ll be soon, too. your Democratic representatives do not believe in democracy, they did believe in a certain process and we finally lost that too. We have nothing left but respectability aesthetic.
I hope the DSA crushes you all and takes your damn toothbrush too. I hope they double in size, then again, then again, And i hope every single one of you goes back to brunch satisfied that you were definitely in the right whenever it was a dichotomy. I hope it’s fucking delicious and you never have to think about politics again. I hope you get all the things that’ll make your life easier, and I hope you don’t even have to understand what it took to make that happen. I hope my children can be like you. An artist and a chef. The only difference is they won’t be forced to become the sort of people who had to give up so much, everything stripped away from them because they had no choice at so many different levels, no, they will make choices and enjoy it. Fuck you. I hate you all so fucking much and I still want your life to be so wonderful. I hope you retire and you remember how the boomers treated you and how mean they were, and i hope you treat my grown children better than the boomers treated you. I hope my son ends up your neighbour and you never have to meet me or know anything about me because I would fucking HATE you. We will create a society where you do not have to participate in genocide in order to live a normal life, and you won’t even know how, and it’ll be fucking great.
I’m going to waffle house. 1:40 am and haven’t eaten in a while, I’ll be ok
We have 2 choices
No. There infinite more. You just resign yourself to the fascist ones.
Americas would be better off if everyone took civics classes.
Or plain history. Repeating it is precisely why they can’t see choices C-Ω.
Don’t cry, Zoomers. At least you don’t have to live under the socialist tyranny of health care, time off from work, and fully funded public services.
socialist tyranny of health care
Lot of Gen Z is under 26, which means they can be under their parents healthcare. Have a coworker that’s in that and until my job he didn’t realize healthcare costs for insurance that comes out of paychecks. Like I told him, save up while he can be under his parents insurance.
But anyone older than, at this moment, being born after 10/18/2000 is now falling into the insurance pile.
Sucks… but this is the choice the country made.
A: “Don’t touch that - fire has a long history of hot.”
B: “Ow, fire hot!”
A: “You fuckin moron, I just told you it’s hot!”
…
A: “Hey, remember fire? Its back, still hot. Don’t touch it this time.”
B: “HELP! IT BURNS!!!”
A: develops drinking problem
That is so spot on. And thank you for the laughs today :)
It’s not about the kids tho…
The same decline appears outside the United States. Horvath told senators that across roughly 80 countries, academic performance drops after digital technology becomes widely embedded in classrooms. The timing alone raises serious questions about how learning environments affect cognitive development.
It’s about how instead of making them think, we taught them to just fucking Google shit and believe what it says.
“Oregon Trail generation” who grew up using computers but still having to learn legacy methods was the sweet spot, and there’s absolutely nothing stopping us from returning to that.
Absolutely none of us use the Dewey Decimal system, but having to go to libraries and physically walk around pulling cards and finding books built critical thinking.
Typing in “Harry Potter” on a computer and getting a PDF doesn’t build any skills.
The human brains biggest strength is offloading and being lazy. If the system thinks it doesn’t need skills because they can be offloaded, it just won’t learn them. Then at 22-23 when it’s harder to learn those skills, gen z is finding out they actually need them.
They can be helped, but what’s more important is making sure all those little kids right now start getting real educations again.
They can be helped, but what’s more important is making sure all those little kids right now start getting real educations again.
yea, that’s the problem. dumb parents, not only raising their own kids to be dumb, but also voting to raise everyone’s kids to be dumb
No.
This may shock you but dumb people have become parents thru all of human history.
We corrected that as a society by creating an education system, shockingly recently in America. I have an uncle who “went to school” in a one room schoolhouse with an outhouse. There was one other student withing 4 years of his age. He’s not dumb, but he’s always been uneducated. A real education and he could have done anything he wanted.
We fixed it as a society and then stopped caring about education as society because for some reason people thought IQ would just magically always increase naturally, and prior gains weren’t just getting everyone on the same level of education.
Stop acting like a conservative and pretending the next generation is only the responsibility of their parents.
The next generation of society is everyone’s problem, so it’s society’s job to educate them.
yea. “society.” which i guess is distinct from the parents that make up society?
yea, everyone wants to be able to tell everyone else how to raise their kids, but unfortunately that’s not how the world works. if some kid comes home and says the history teacher told them the civil war was about ending slavery, and the parents say that’s all lies, it was about the north victimizing the south, then do you honestly think that kid is going to listen to the teacher (society) over their parents?
good job putting me in my place though
I’m just shocked to see people agree with MAGA on the topic of education but claim to not be MAGA…
Like, can you at least say that you think public education should be a thing tho?
yes, public education should be a thing, is important, etc.
but despite all this public education, if parents are negating it at every turn, then what that means is that dumb kids come from dumb parents. yes, dumb kids come from smart parents too, thanks to society telling them they need to be on instagram 20 hours a day.
you can call me maga if that makes you feel like you’ve hurt my feelings, but i assure you, i don’t care what you think. parents have a bigger role in raising kids than society ever has, and ever will. i’m not claiming whether that’s good or bad either way, just that it’s how it is. we do absolutely need high quality public education rooted in facts and science.
but who is sabotaging this? dumb parents
How utterly ignorant of you, on what schooling is, and education is not.
wandering around lemmy pretty much proves this.
i work at a community college which includes the county’s “early college” which is pretty much 9th-12th grade high school age kids who qualified to take AA/AS courses for higher ed credit at the same time as their high school curriculum. what i see is pretty much it’s not the kids that are the problem. for the most part, dumb kids are the result of dumb parents, which there are a lot of in my redneck mountain town. and, surprise, dumb parents have a lot more kids than smart parents.
yea, gen z may be dumb, but it’s not gen z that made them that way
edit: i want to add, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a lack of intelligence. some of the best people i’ve ever known are not intellectuals. it’s character that makes people worthwhile. empathy. how you treat people who can’t do anything for you. if you’re accepting of people regardless of whether they hold the same beliefs, values, religion, have the same skin color, and everything else, then i would choose to be around you instead of the dickhead who’s the smartest person in the room. fuck that guy
it’s telling that these fucking dickheads are trying, desperately, to paint empathy as some kind of flaw or weakness. empathy is how the human species survived past the stone age
FYI the “Early college” thing is called dual enrollment.
yea, there’s dual enrollment where the local high school kids take some classes, but there’s also early college whose campus is on our campus. they are separate; not the same thing.
thanks though
