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Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
It’s not ironic at all. The MAGA movement is really similar to how Mussolini came to power.

The campaign against barbarians (Steve Miller’s) crusade, Elons “not enough white babies” stuff, sucking up to the church (Vatican City is a Mussolini scheme), aspirations for conquest of Greenland and Panama, etc are all analogous to the maga playbook.

Most people are clueless. There are idiots who think they are getting $1 eggs next week. Riling up weirdos like libertarians lets the movement punch above their weight.

>$1 eggs next week

Should just move to Belarus and you can have that today.

Why are libertarians weridos?
Go talk to one.
I don't think I know one or will come across one.
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>Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support

Very interesting insight, thank you for sharing it. Do you happen to know other examples as well?

There were a few articles on this in the media a day or two after the election that had lists in them, but I can't find them anymore because this new news overwhelmed the search terms I remember.

Many of the promises were directly conflicting, and/or upsetting to other groups that also had promises made to them. One example would be he promised some groups to push for the death penalty for anyone involved in selling drugs, in conflict with his pardon of Ulbricht here.

Wouldn't surprise me the slightest. Politicians' promises are weak signals to begin with, and we're talking about a politician here who's explicitly labeled as populist. I found a similar inability with search.
Unfortunately you could level the same type of name calling towards Democrats. It's now public record they colluded with all the major media outlets, coerced big tech to censor and debank opponents, imprisoned whistleblowers, violated bodily autonomy with unconstitutional mandates, weaponized the courts to conduct lawfare, and now issued an unprecedented number of pre-emptive pardons for unspecified crimes committed by Fauci, Hunter Biden, et al.

I remember when the Democrats were the anti-war party, but Biden was escalating the Ukraine war in the final days of his presidency, and celebrated Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Crazy how things have changed so much. The left unanimously viewed Bush and Cheney as obviously psychopathic war criminals, and now almost all the Neocons have jumped over to the Democrats. The left used to be extremely skeptical of globalization as evident by the Seattle WTO Protests, mass immigration as evident by Bernie Sanders' comments on its effect on workers' wages, and Big Pharma's perverse incentives to keep people sick and regularly consuming drugs. Yet the media has utterly psyop'd the progressives... it's kinda disturbing.

Authoritarianism is also popular with the democrats right now, but I don’t see how anything I said is name calling: I used terms with a specific meaning appropriate for the context- the only reason they have a negative connotation is because of what they actually mean. Do you know of other terms with the same meaning and more neutral connotations?
If you go by Trump's actions in his first term he was a pretty standard Republican, and mostly just cut taxes, with a lot of wild rhetoric which is part of his deal making shtick. In real terms I don't see Trump as uniquely authoritarian, probably less so than Biden, Obama and Bush. He seems to support free speech far more, which is the foundation for all other freedoms. He makes his money from the leisure industry, so his interests are aligned with Americans doing well and having disposable income. And he supports decentralization, so liberal states can adopt liberal policies, and so forth.

It seems people forget about the insane infringements of civil rights through the Patriot Act, NDAA, mass surveillance, lockdowns, firing people over vaccine mandates, etc. A poll showed about half of Democrats supported putting Americans into camps if they didn't take the vaccine, and a third supported seizing custody of their children. Democrats supported mass censorship and state control over media, which is far more authoritarian and fascist than anything the Republicans were doing.

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Trump has said he might take Greenland "by force". That doesn't sound "anti-war" to me.

I think the Ukraine stuff is more complicated than you're making it out.

People in power in this era do that.

The democrats are broken. They keep running women, and not getting messages out that appeal to the average voter. They lost their core reliable voters (old people, Catholics, unions) and are alienating more traditional voting blocs like African Americans and some Hispanic populations with the constant drama over trans issues. Nobody heard about anything this election cycle other than abortion and transgender issues. It’s a big tent party, but when progressives steal all the oxygen, the wheels fall off the train.

They need to run a tall white dude with good hair who talks about economic opportunity, fair play and protecting the future.

My parents live in the country. A farmer (whose father was the county Democratic Party chair) has a massive sign “Trump. I don’t like him, but we need him”. That’s the 2024 election unfortunately.

> Nobody heard about anything this election cycle other than abortion and transgender issues.

The only place I've seen anything about "transgender issues" is from the Republicans saying that that is the only thing Democrats are running on.

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Old people actually leaned bluer this year relative to past elections.
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In 2016 John McAffee tried to run for president as a libertarian candidate, RIP.
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I know he was a drug addict, but a pedophile? I never heard about that, can you tell me more or are you just being weird?
What is the age of consent for whales?
Lol, that tweet I remember!
> Unfortunately my previous comment was flagged, presumably by pedophiles or their supporters.

Or, you know... people who think it's a dick move to call an entire political movement pedophiles without a shred of evidence.

> Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.

Ironic? It's the oldest trick in the book bro