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Comment by CoastalCoder | Hacker News Reader

I know this could be said of any country at any time, but please don't conflate the current administration with the whole American people.

Many, many of us are bewildered by Trump's actions, and consider him a some inscrutable mix of evil, stupid, and deranged.

I'm not even politically left (I'm pretty centrist), and I know I'm not alone in being perplexed by how he won the election.

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> I know this could be said of any country at any time, but please don't conflate the current administration with the whole American people. [...] and I know I'm not alone in being perplexed by how he won the election.

The current administration didn't grow in a vacuum. It might not be the whole of the USA people, but a large enough fraction of the USA people supported the current administration, otherwise there would be no chance of it getting elected, even with all the brokenness of the USA electoral system. And the current administration still has a large enough support from the USA people, otherwise they could do nothing: the government is not some mechanical device which blindly follows the wishes of whoever is in command, it operates through people, and if all the people rejected the current administration, its orders would have no effect.

I live in Texas, I didn't vote for Trump. It's 20hrs by car to Washington DC.

Trump is firing people at random, Musk is plugging his USB drive into all the databases, what can I practically do to "reject the current administration"?

Keeping in mind that the majority of what he's doing is a political "Gish Gallop" (https://effectiviology.com/gish-gallop/ ), as in "Gulf of America" to hide the meat of selling the FBI and Department of Justice buildings (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-t...), installing the newscaster of a propaganda network (https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/media/fox-news-reliable-sourc...) as the Secretary of Defense, dismantling USAID, and otherwise doing everything in his immediate power to break the bones of the US government?

Anything of consequence (eg: Civil War 2.0) is "even better" for Russia than what's going on now.

It's a horrifically complicated judo flip of nation-state proportions. Please get your act together, EU!

A high percentage of people here in the states were so disgusted with the GOP, they foolishly didn't vote. Now, the only thing that can bring any relief, is the US Constitution. If followed, it will right the ship, hopefully at the mid-terms.

But all the politicians in charge of the current administration are (and have been chosen to) do exactly that - blindly follow the wishes of the person in command. The voters may (or may not have) voted in the current administration either with or without electoral fraud and gerrymandering on Musk's part, we'll never know, but we do know the same political group were not against trying to take the Capitol forcibly last time, so not by democratic means. It was and is worth too much to Russia and China to not have their man in charge of their adversary (the US), doing their bidding. So they did was necessary to make that happen. Including Musk's takeover of X. His collecting of voter information. The foreign interference and disinformation campaigns. And so on. They play dirty these people, they do not represent democracy, they represent the taking down of the US and everything they used to represent. In a democracy we give the elected politicians a mandate. It means the administration only operates through the people via their vote and that only takes place typically every four/ five years. Until the next vote (if there is one, or at least there may be a rigged one), then no, it does not operate through the people, not on a day to day level of functioning. And to talk of the people rejecting the current administration before the next election is not practical. They have little power to do so. Unless you are referring to an armed insurrection against the government, a revolution. Which of course is not part of the democratic system, that is another means of the people responding all together. There have been revolutions to overturn dictatorships, yes.

> but please don't conflate the current administration with the whole American people.

No, never. I have enough experience on that matter due to where I live and due to friends I have all over Europe and US.

People and the administration of the country they happen to born/live in are completely detached in my mind.

Who do you think votes in the administation of a country?

Yes, people, and not all my friends and relatives might share the same values with me. That's OK.

However, sometimes people get more than what they bargained for, and I'm sure some people are in that situation right now.

Look, I'm from a country which is going through the exact process. It's much more complicated than that. It'd fill books.

I also have friends and relatives with different values, it's very hard to relate to them voting Republican again after what we went through with COVID. Had the party nominated someone else, maybe, but doing this again after all we knew already?

There’s always been a streak of self-loathing and nihilism in the US. Some kind of imposter syndrome writ large and handled with fake arrogance and real terror.

> please don't conflate the current administration with the whole American people.

The whole? No, of course no leader should ever be conflated with the whole people of a country. A plurality, however? Definitely.

Trump won an evidently free and fair election, growing his vote-share over essentially the whole country. He has not conducted a heel-face turn since entering office, and his actions are broadly consistent with his campaign statements.

Moreover, Trump isn't the only elected official in the federal government. If Trump were some aberration then Congress would have every ability to thwart his agenda or remove him from office; they have not. The majority-Republican Congress approved even his controversial cabinet nominees on party-line votes, and to my knowledge they have not taken any major investigative or punitive steps since.

A majority of American voters may not have voted specifically for this, but they did vote for the party and candidate who are content to allow this to happen in the supposed service of other goals. Voters who earnestly believe the misinformation shared by demagogues and social media are a tragic case, but that does not excuse voters who 'voted with their wallet,' foreswearing their obligation to the common good in hopes of a tax cut.

Do not mistake me for a rabid partisan. I do not let the Democrats off the hook either for reasons that are another rant and are directionally in alignment with Nate Silver's published opinions.

I agree. Mr. Trump can credibly argue that he received a mandate at the last election. It was not a squeaker, a “hold-your-nose-and-vote”, it was convincing and, as you say, cleanly won vote. America knew exactly who he was, and has known for some time. He was very clear in his statements what he was going to do when he was elected, who he was going to use to do it, and he is following through. all but one of the most controversial cabinet nominees sailed through their confirmations with flying colors, with barely token opposition from those who made a great public show of “being on the fence,” as we knew they would.

Part of me is curious to know exactly what those who “vote with their wallets” would abide. It is unfortunate for them that their Faustian bargain is turning out not to be true, and that neither inflation, nor the cost of living, has or will go down, and that services that they and their loved ones may rely on are being dismantled, but they were candidly advised that this would be the case.

There are dozens to maybe hundreds of moving parts when you set about to influence another country's politics. Conspiracy theories about hacking voting machines can't be confirmed. But an adversary would do it if they could. It's certain that they're doing just about everything else from co-opting religion to degrading the quality and availability of public information to bribing and/or coercing politicians. It's a war, just not a shooting war.

He won mostly because his opponent was even worse. The US deserves better choices.

The US deserves the administration it has and all the consequences that will flow from it.

“Even worse” is an odd way to say “black woman”. I am not accusing you of sexism or racism; I am saying there is enough sexism and racism in the US to account for the difference in total popular vote, and certainly to account for the 115k votes that won the election for Trump.

Had Walz been top of the ticket with exactly the same campaign and policies, he would have won. It sucks and it’s an indictment of the country, but pretending otherwise doesn’t help.

There's zero chance of that. Democrats didn't even trust their own base to have a primary for Kamala because she would repeat her 2019 primary performance.

One gamble her campaign made was that more people would vote for her specifically because she was black and/or female. I doubt there are any hard numbers, but I'd guess that number far overrode any racism/sexism vote.

Walz suggested he may run for 2028 so we may get lucky enough to witness your prediction. I'd bet against him winning more than one state before primaries.

I'm not American. Harris didn't strike me as being worse than Trump either as a person or as a political leader. What about her was even worse than Trump?

I almost can not imagine a worse president. I would rather vote for a random homeless person off the street.

Harris may not have had a great campaign but it absolutely baffles me that a majority of voters would even consider voting for Trump after all the crap he pulled last time. He should be in prison, not the white house.

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