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Goto80 | 1 year ago

If that is the case, how did this government get a majority?

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greedylizard|1 year ago

The electoral college rigs the game. If one person equaled one vote, American government could look significantly different right now.

philistine|1 year ago

Those are sufficient excuses that prevent countries from signing free trade deals with other nations: we don't trust the health of your political system to sign a free trade deal with your nation.

walls|1 year ago

It would still have trump at the head of it.

ajuc|1 year ago

They don't support imperialism, but they also don't care enough to be against imperialism. They care about egg prices or their favorite culture wars more than about people dying elsewhere.

It's egoism, simple as that.

consteval|1 year ago

I think it’s more complicated - this feels like a psychology and biology issue.

Those things are naturally closer to them which then means they generate stronger emotions. Just intuitively, emotions fuel pretty much all decisions. I mean, if heroin didn’t feel good people wouldn’t do it. If fast food didn’t taste good people wouldn’t eat it. Conversely, negative emotion create patterns of behavior.

Our behavior is complex and choice is a spectrum. I don’t really choose to brush my teeth, it just kind of happens. I can stop, but I don’t. I look around me and nobody stops brushing their teeth. Perhaps brushing our teeth is so popular because it creates positive emotions. Less shame, less worries, more comfort.

I think, those in power harness this quite effectively.!

re-thc|1 year ago

> how did this government get a majority?

That's not what people voted for (agreeing with the government). They were given choices and to pick what they felt they preferred.

ajuc|1 year ago

People have choosen to believe obvious lies because they wanted them to be true, not because they thought they were true. It's as much their fault as the politicians who lied to them.

anal_reactor|1 year ago

It did because that's exactly what people want, it's just that many people will tell you otherwise because they live in an information bubble and cannot believe that there exists voters outside of their bubble.

FirmwareBurner|1 year ago

Same with opinions on HN. People here don't realize they're in a bubble and their opinions aren't representative for the masses. If you tell them that you get downvoted and flagged.

alistairSH|1 year ago

Trump won 49.x% of the vote.

But the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections. It has an archaic, anti-democratic system called the Electoral College, which grants land in Wyoming greater relative weight than people in Texas.

ryandrake|1 year ago

Don't forget: Only about 2/3 of eligible voters voted. So those 1/3 who didn't vote, effectively voted for (or at the very least, condoned) the winner.

They didn't physically vote, but by not-voting, they are literally saying "I'm OK with whoever wins."

DougN7|1 year ago

A huge number felt they had to vote for the lesser of two bad choices. I think many that voted for Trump were naive and are genuinely surprised at what they are seeing. At least I’d like to think so, despite what you might find on forums.