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2016 US elections was a ridiculously sobering moment for realizing that we had not progressed nearly to the extent that I nievely thought.
This one rings home pretty hard. I’ve definitely viewed the people around me differently since then. And especially since covid as well.
Agreed, Covid ties or is a close runner up for me as well in terms of people showing their true colors.
2016 and the following four years were eyeing opening on just how far away from even okay a majority of the US is.
Yeah but it was the election that was the "event". At the time i thought it must have been an aberration, it was during the following years I realised it was a symptom of the real problem.
Up until that point, I was a naive centrist that thought sane liberalism would win out. That election single-handedly destroyed that view and slammed me hard to the left.
You're probably in the real center now, my understanding is American center is to the right, and their left is actually closer to center
The US Democrats are center right in many aspects yeah.
I should probably clarify that it slammed me firmly in the Bernie camp, but I've drifted even further to the left (broadly libertarian/anarcho-socialism) since then
I'm slightly left of centre, but I am now voting quite far left to try counter the right swing we are most likely going to have with this next election.
I'm not even from the US and honestly it was a sobering moment for me as well. I realised how people like Hitler get into power. Before 2016 I knew it was possible like cognitively but Trump being elected made it feel real in a way it never had before.
Same for my country (Hungary). For the first time almost all off the opposition parties agreed to merge into eachother, then the chosen opposition president almost became the old corrupt guy's wife (old people voted for them), then the Ukraine már happened where everyone knew Orbán made a ton of contracts with Putin, LITERALLY disses Zelensky but never mentions Putin's name and Orbán won with a record 2/3 again.
Hungarian people literally can't remember about 1956, it seems.
I have thought a lot about the "How do background characters tell if they're in a story?" thing a lot since.
The day the alternate timeline stopped being a meme. The day "we're in too damned interesting times to this not be the end of humanity" became a reality.
If the world burns, whatever. We have had it coming.