Kinda like now, only now there’s a lot more dead bodies
I was 14 in 2016; I lived in a red town back then & all I knew was “funny old blonde realtor who says dumb memeable shit on TV & Twitter is gonna be president? PEAK COMEDY ROFLMFAOOL”
10 years later, I have since been throughly disabused of that immature, uneducated teenage mindset.
'Wait, holdup just a goddamn minute, youre saying it wasnt a good idea to reelect a pussy-grabbin, insurrection-instigating, lying, raping, narcisistic, grifting, thrice impeached, draft dodgin, goddamn criminal back into the most powerful office in the land? But he said hed go after his political enemies for no other reason than he didnt like them, destroy key institutions, american soft power, and go after democracy itself…
Hmm… But his opponent was a woman. In a suit. Im sure she was equivalent. Oh well.’
- 60% of eligible voters and those idiotic sitouts.
Acting like the only reason Hillary and Kamala lost was they were women ignores the actual problem.
Even the DNC acknowledged that, and corrected course.
The reason Biden won was his election was while Trump was in office, not because he had a penis.
I’m tired of the sexist shit where people act like if Kamala and Hillary were men they’d have easily won. The problem is no one except the oligarchs and those paid by them like neoliberalism, not anyone’s genitals.
I think OP’s reply is more about how dumb the average voter is, and not about voters’ fixation on genitals. Lets not manufacture outrage when there is none.
Hmm… But his opponent was a woman. In a suit. Im sure she was equivalent. Oh well.’
Riiight…
Read the room. Smh.
I guess, but even 50+ year olds feel this way. Anyways, whzt time period WAS better than now? Surely not every decade in human history has coincidentally ended up on equal footing.
ended up on equal footing.
Huh?
No one is saying that.
If it was getting worse in 2016, and is still getting worse in 2026 after getting worse the entire time, that absolutely means were worse off now than 2016.
You’re not wrong, you just don’t understand what you’re replying to.
I guess the more interesting question is when was the last time that things were generally pretty okay at least? Or has the story of humanity been a strictly monotonic decreasing function. Or how long has it been strictly decreasing or essentially strictly decreasing? Etc. Curious what time you would choose to live in. Not saying this as a 2026-defender lol.
FDR would be the most recent “good” period and we’re approaching that point of the cycle again.
Especially with low birth rate, kids born during COVID have a pretty good shot of lifing a decent life, and raising their own kids who won’t realize how important shit is and will hand it back to the oligar hs.
Thatsy whole point.
The class war will never end, either it gets this bad or it gets so good we think it’s over. But it never ends.
It did, but its verifiable worse now
No.
2016 = MAGA/Trump does incompetence and stupidity
2026 = MAGA/Trump does unprecedented corruption, calculated evil, and inescapable damage.
I was very much so an adult in 2016.
2016 still sucked. But for me it sucked in “god this is stupid, I’m so glad it’s temporary” kind of way. It felt like a temporary accident and we learned from our mistakes.
2026 sucks in a “oh fuck, this is how the rest of my life is going to be” kind of way. Everyone knew exactly who Trump was and what he wanted to do; he was still the first choice for most Americans, and now it feels like it will never get better.
I don’t deny that it was, but you have to admit that was only a trial run, and there were some people who were just barely competent still in positions that stopped him or at least scaled back some of his more unhinged actions in his first term.
He’s removed those (albeit flimsy) guardrails this time around. Everyone around him is a dangerously stupid yes man now.
Just the last two months of 2016 sucked and that was from anxiety for what was coming. 2017 was dogshit, but 2026 has been terrible in comparison because those assholes spent the last term planning out how to dismantle democracy and handed Trump a fucking playbook to do it. 2017 they didn’t know what they were doing and there were people appointed that at least stood up to his stupidity because they cared about the country over Trump. That’s not the case anymore.
I’m not American, but I remember thinking that clearly electing trump was a mistake but maybe it won’t be as bad as we fear. And at first that seemed not too far off. The Muslim ban got watered down, the wall didn’t really go anywhere. But no it ended up being much much worse.
I’m an American and I thought the same thing at first; when he was elected, I knew he’d be the worst president ever, but I figured that there were checks and balances on presidential power and he’d at least be restricted with what he can do. I didn’t realize that those checks and balances didn’t actually do anything if the president just didn’t care. When he was elected again in 2024, I knew it was going to be terrible because they stacked the Supreme Court and had a majority in the house and senate and the Republican Party is filled with sycophants.
People always want to stay the bad times started in 2016, but the 2 key events that lead to Trump getting elected were 9/11-war on terror and the 2008 financial crash. People forget but Occupy Wall Street started in 2012 and that was the real wake up call for the entire American political establishment that the status quo was not working for most people. Instead the DNC rigged the 2016 democratic primary and Trump ended up winning the election.
Things have been shit for a while for most people, but 2016 was the first time we had the opportunity to acknowledge it.
If you look at human history, its kinda hard to find a place and time that someone isn’t consrtruing as shitty.
On days when I am feeling good and optimistic, I can convince myself that this is because humanity is constantly getting better. The fact that so many Americans can look back in history and recognize the foundations of colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, etc means that these people have grown. Just as I can look at myself fro 20 years ago and see how much worse of a person I was- that means that I’ve grown and gotten better. I hope to grow and get better in the future, that the person 20 years from now will look back at me today and see someone with a lot of flaws.
But I’m not feeling that right now. Today unjust feel like the world has been doomed to cycles of violence, oppreaion, and chaos since the first single-cell organisms evolved from the primordial soup.
Don’t forget 2010’s Citizens United
Buddy…
If you’re playing that game go back to McCarthyism.
Or the Bonus Army even. The Class War never ended, it’s just when the people win they raise kids who don’t understand what it cost to give them what they have. So they trade it away.
Even if we win again, the Class War won’t end. It’s a constant fight to hold Smaug at bay.
Yeah that’s fair. Tbh I think the last opportunity for American society to save itself was the 1960s/70s. We’ve basically been unsalvageable since Reagan got elected.
I remember work the day after the election it was complete silence at lunch.
Everyone knew things were about to go to shit. There wasn’t even a point talking about it.
I had an Aussie team lead in 2016 and he messaged me the day after the election like “WTF happened?”
I was feeling grim and said “we just woke up in a fascist hellscape” which at the time was gruesome overkill for effect but I often think about that interaction now. America is not the same place it was a decade ago.
I should add I’m Canadian. This was in a Canadian office.
2026 is worse simply because none of the 1st term shitfuckery was ever addressed, let alone fixed.
I was a full grown adult in 16 and I can confirm that it was not at all the same. 16 was “oh wow, this is really stupid and is going to take a lot of fixing”. 26 is "oh wow, this is absurdly evil and will take a lifetime to fix, if ever.
2016 was testing the waters to see what he could get away with, 2026 is an insane bigot that has been told that he has no rules.
I could see this coming in 2016, but it hadn’t arrived yet.
I was a full grown adult by 1990…been a prepper since they called us survivalists.
This is the worst I’ve seen our society. Things are far worse now than 2016.
I was 30 in 2016. That term was awful, so was GWB’s entire double term in the aughts. But today is, unfortunately, materially and symbolically worse by almost every measure.
I used to wake up every morning with a feeling of existential dread over what middle of the night drug fueled rant he would’ve gone on that would dismantle some part of society.
Yes, I was younger, but not young. Unless 50 is young.
2026 is definitely worse. I was 36 in 2016, and there were some people in the government that weren’t abject cowards, but not anymore.
