We can no longer hide behind the excuse of “the electoral college”. We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said “Yes. We want more of that.”
We are not better than this.
I dont get how someone can vote for Obama twice and then just say fuck it at some point. Isn’t that what more or less keeps happening, how does one make sense of all this?
How is there so much turnover and churn every election, how can someone who says he’s going to make everything harder for you have any appeal?
My only guess is he’s promising to go even harder on people they don’t like which magically makes it all palatable
That was my brother-in-law. In West Virginia. Votes for Obama twice then Trump.
Near as I can tell, they want “change” and doesn’t matter much what that means. They feel powerless in the face of the “other”. The government itself is “other”. It’s who they blame for problems whether it’s taxes or complicated rules for their small business or the way “elites” get away with doing the stuff they can’t do. They have some legitimate gripes with the government and “elites”.
Obama sold “change” really well. So did Trump. It’s not the same kind of change. And, he employed many more “others”. Trump’s change is a lie but Obama’s change never materialized even though he was probably more sincere about it.
These people are dealing with feelings of frustration, inadequacy, envy and shame. They’re lashing out and their only power is their vote. Trump fed those feelings and gave them a target and convinced them that only he could help them.
If you were to put on your diagnostician hat, what do you think he actually needs and would be satisfied with. Like what actual change does he seek and would it actually satisfy him?
What kind of change was Obama actually selling, what ideas did your relative have that Obama was going to fix that he became disillusioned by?
I think making them financially and emotionally comfortable. Reduce the wealth gap and convince them that government is advocating for them in concrete ways.
This would be real change and I’m not sure many places in the USA—especially where it’s most needed—are capable of making that change.
Certainly, Trump and his ilk are working to do the opposite while waving panaceas in their faces.
Sometimes, I think Democrats and the left get too caught up in the big picture issues and ignore the ground work that’s needed. They’re trying to grow a forest without clearing the rocks and weeds. You don’t combat transphobia, misogyny and racism just by preaching the virtues of inclusivity. You have to address the insecurities that lead to that kind of hate. That means helping the despicable people and I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to help them. But, that puts us in a vicious circle.
I don’t think change will ever come from the top. It’s got to start very local. Think about conservative talk radio and how influential that is/was. It was someone talking directly to them even if it was a syndicated show it was on a local AM station. They sowed the fear and anxiety that lead us here. The Dems/liberal/left still seems to mostly ignore that.
Do they have patience for this? Everything you’re suggesting is a long term change. No President can do this during their term. The constant search for change just means any progress gets thrown away every four years. And as you said, much of it has to come from the bottom up, from the very people who are frustrated with the status quo
Are he just doomed because people don’t have the patience for long term societal change, or don’t see that they need to be part of it?
Are we doomed because people can’t get beyond outrage media?
Are we doomed because complaining about a problem is easier than fixing it,or easier even than learning the truth about it?
Post scriptum: This got way longer and way more opinionated than I intended. I still believe there is some fundamental argument in there, but it’s not delivered rational. Sorry.
–
Something I have repeatedly heard and read in criticism of modern democratic governments is that they don’t actually do anything.
The calculus of political compromise, the promise and ideal of stability, and over complex systems they over see make them fundamentally incapable of changing anything. The way democracies govern cannot adapt to outside change and will not deliver on inside demands. Change is opposed to how they calculate decision paths, how they understand incentive.
They promise you that the continuation of injustice will guarantee price stability and then inflation happens. They ask you to cut back your carbon footprint and climate change escalates anyway. And when the fascists are appearing on the horizon they ask you to defend democracy, the system that fails you over and over again, by sacrificing your ideals, your needs, and in many cases your personal safety and security by opposing fascism.
Democratic governments have proven that they cannot and will not protect you from economic hardship, war, climate catastrophe, wealth inequality, and your neighbor’s tree standing to close to your fence.
This is nothing that is necessary or inherent to democracies, it is how the internal way of thinking of democratic governments incentives their decision making.
People want things to change. Past governments have shown that they won’t deliver on that ever.
And to make that clear I don’t think minority rights are nothing, but they are for minorities. There is no fundamental change to the lives of the majority populous on the scale of same sex marriage.
What they choose instead is burning books and people, because that is an expression of their internal suffering and pain, which they feel is ignored. They don’t care that they might be next on the chop block, as long as they get to chop for a time.
It’s a nihilistic reaction to political frustration.
That’s interesting. Where have you read this? I would like to read it too.
If I remember correct there is a [Edit] video recording from a [/Edit] Chaos communication Congress on the failure of democracies in which this is discussed. I’ll see if I can dig it up. Might be in German though, but we’ll see…
[Edit] Yeah sorry it is in German https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12056-ist_die_demokratie_noch_zu_retten
Selk, the presenter also has seemingly published mostly or exclusively in German, but I guess one can find similar researcher with publications in English.
Edit3 there is a English translation audio track available
Obama’s change never materialized
Is ObamaCare a joke to you?
Yes, yes it is
These people should consider taking a bullet to the head next time. Would save the rest of us a lot of trouble, while brining the exact same change they voted for.
This was the UK electorate with Boris Johnson.
It takes an absolute economic shitshow for people to stop wanting “change” and wanting simple good governance.
Every cycle there is a fresh new batch of voters. I’m sure most of the people who voted for Obama the first two times didn’t throw their vote in for Trump.
I hate to say this, but from what my kid tells me, Trump is more popular at his middle school than Kamala, just because he’s the goofy meme president and they aren’t aware of much else. This is in the middle of Baltimore. So I imagine a lot of voters choose based on that alone. We never got any Biden or Kamala centipede memes. Just that lame, forced, “dark Brandon” shit. The Democrats have become the stuffy old boomer party in the eyes of the youth, even though that’s almost the exact opposite. Their Internet game is weak as hell, and that’s what matters these days.
That’s crazy, the Democrats also had a better internet game. Are you saying the Democrats success with memeifying Trump is actually what made him more accessible to younger voters?
They clearly didnt. Look at the youth, what do they follow. Joe Rogan, redpill, tiktok; they vote based on memes and vibes
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Trump got about the same amount of votes as he did in 2020. Harris got about 16 million less than Biden did.
It’s less that voters changed their mind and more that millions of voters will show up and vote Democrat when they care and stay home when they don’t.
If they didn’t vote in 2024, that’s because they saw trump and said “yes, this is fine”. If they didn’t, they would’ve voted.
Even if they didn’t like Kamala, they would’ve voted for her if they didn’t think a trump presidency was acceptable.
Anything more positive for trump than “trump’s presidency is not acceptable” means that America is not “better than this”.
Simply because Obama did awful stuff too. He’s a war criminal as much as bush or biden or trump.
I thought their messaging to voters was patronizing/insulting as well.
I’m German, and non-Germans always find it weird that most of us don’t have a very strong sense of national pride and are even very critical of our country, sometimes maybe even excessively so.
We have learned what uncritical, unreflected national pride leads to. What the price is to not confront the dark side that every society has.
And now, sadly, the US has to learn the same lesson the hard way too. I only hope the US and the rest of the world can come out of it with as little bloodshed as possible. But I fear for the worst.
“Remember, remember the 5th of november.” has a altogether new meaning now.
cough AfD cough
Yeah, that’s the tragedy of it. Even in a country where it already happened once and millions of people died because of it, there are people eager for another run at it.
Even a country formed by survivors of the last round is engaging in genocide.
Yeah, that’s also wild.
Learned? Oh no. We haven’t done that yet I’m afraid.
Instead of doubling down on our beliefs with authenticity as the Right does (I mean, many abortion referendums did pass), we repeatedly cede ground to the Overton Window.
The problem is we don’t actually engage in the same degree of activism in the off-season and always let conservatives control the narrative on largely manufactured issues and half truths.
Well, there is the fact that that right-wing activism is bankrolled by some wacko billionaires, while even the DNC works against progressives where it can.
Money in politics is what it boils down to, again, and wealth inequality.
I do think we can blame the electoral college to a certain extent. How many people sat home in deep red states because their vote never matters? Unless you live in a handful of states there is almost no point. Take that away and let the people have a voice, not some bullshit system which was designed to prevent leaders like him getting elected.
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This is basically the big thing that has been weighing on me. It’s very clear that the culture I thought I was brought up in, the thing that gave me pride, was not really US culture. It’s very clear to me that US culture values justice, democracy, truth, and the general wellbeing of people in no meaningful ways beyond the PR value of pretending to value these things. It’s very clear to me that this culture is way more racist, sexist, and classist than I was led to believe. It’s also very clear that this culture has an active disdain for education. In aggregate we are a gullible, irrationally emotional, entitled and greedy population with a nearly insatiable bloodlust for violence. We are, on the whole, a profoundly evil country made up of willfully ignorant masses that are ruled by duplicitous oligarchs. Now, I know that there are a lot of good people here. But there is nothing intrinsically American about their goodness. If anything they are an aberration from the seething awfulness that is America.
This hurt me to read because I believe it. I wouldn’t have yesterday. I feel shame to live among these people anymore. I can’t reasonably leave but I’m not sure what else to do. This feels like defeat in a way I thought could never happen. Probably because I believed in those things that made America great. Not the government, but the people. You’re right, they are not the norm but the exception to what it means to be American. Fuck me.
This is the thought that I’ve been trying to articulate. Those that are decent people aren’t good because they are Americans but in spite of being American.
Yep. Our culture teaches our children that being uneducated (or at least acting the part) is cool. That money and physical attractiveness are the only truly important things. We embody everything that all moral philosophies warn against. Even the good ones among us in this country are tainted by the toxic culture.
A lot of people are going to flip out mentally over this, maybe Ted Kazinsky level. I’m hoping to not lose my sanity, but I will never believe in America again. It cannot be trusted with not killing itself in a haze of selfish rage. Fuck this country.
This post does a good job of articulating how I’ve been feeling. I think last night made it very clear what the character of our country really is. Unsalvageable garbage, unworthy of our efforts to improve it.
I came to that conclusion about 20 years ago when Bush II was re-elected
Yeah, it was bad when Bush was reelected. But even then, I felt people were treating politics more like a team sport than actually chosing the most qualified leader. But now I feel like it’s gone from “rooting for me team” to full on cult mode. My neighbor across the street has 6 Trump signs on her house. That’s not normal behavior.
I’m probably a bit younger than you, but that election was the first one in which I was politically aware. It activated me and I’ve been fighting ever since, but I think I’m done now. My efforts will be spent locally, and will be conditional.
The only way I’ll be able to get through this is by focusing on local things. This nation as a whole is indeed irredeemably evil. The only good to be found is on a smaller scale.
I’d say we tend to still have a few good qualities from our culture (or at least a product of a subculture), but there absolutely no doubt about the bad ones. I especially hate how they are regarding education, since that’s one of the most important things we have.
It’s a shame we’re slowly losing those good qualities, though. Individualism, for instance, is at it’s extreme in the US and is one of the ways it’s attracted so many artists and creatives. Too bad corporate interests are eroding that steadily for decades, and fascism is likely to stifle the first amendment once and for all.
Voting booths are secret places where people can admit how they really feel without feeling judged. Trump won the popular vote because he appealed to a lot of people who didn’t wear MAGA hats, or walk around in garbage bags.
The sad thing is that this isn’t really a shock to the rest of the world. There’s a reason why, for decades, Americans going on backpacking trips have put Canadian flags on their gear.
The only saving grace here is that it might not be that most Americans are cruel, racist, sexist, classist, etc. It might just be that they’re incredibly dumb. I’ve listened to a lot of interviews of Trump supporters and the vast majority are idiots. They believe in crazy conspiracies. They say they love Trump’s policies then can’t name any of them. They can’t accept that he actually legitimately lost all his legal cases. They regurgitate things they’ve heard, but clearly haven’t even spent a second thinking about, because they go blank as soon as they’re asked to elaborate on anything.
And, if the problem is really that they’re morons, it may not be their fault. For some reason, the US obsession with free speech and free markets means that Internet companies can keep feeding people bullshit that makes them angry, which keeps them engaged, which keeps the ad dollars flowing. US TV networks can tell absurd lies under the guise of news, and they’re apparently immune from being sued for doing it. “Concerned parents” funded by lobbying groups can fuck up the education system so that kids never learn anything that might make them feel bad. The US is allowed to have a government funded state media network that delivers factual video, audio and written news and information around the world. But, most Americans have never heard of it because it’s not allowed to compete with the for-profit media in the country itself.
I dunno, maybe the world can save the US. The fact is, Europe does occasionally have strong influence in the US. Americans have to deal with cookie banners because of a GDPR law that doesn’t apply in the US. Maybe if the EU took on the US tech monopolies it would actually affect the way Americans are brainwashed. But, unfortunately, I have serious doubts about whether the US can dig itself out of the hole it’s in. Right now it looks like the hole is just getting deeper and deeper.
I just need to reply to this, a couple days late even. Thank you for writing this here. It is a powerful statement, and also extremely saddening and so very accurate. Saved to share with others, so thank you.
Very sad but very true.
We absolutely are not. We are a nation of bigots, racists, and simpletons.
This is us, this is America.
No no no. That’s who voted. Those that sat on their ass and pouted about other shit is who did not. There are only 67 million of us that said no to the orange man.
Honestly, I would consider anyone who sat out also a simpleton for not realizing the importance
Even the far left is stupid in America. They’re supposed to be the educated ones. But instead of doing their civic duty, they stayed home. And you can blame it on Democrats all you like, but it’s your duty to go vote, no matter who you vote for. The turnout this election was pathetic.
I don’t understand how these people are going to complain now for the next 4 years, when they didn’t even want to take part.
It is absolutely fucking infuriating how many people disagree with your assessment here but you are absolutely 100% right as fuck.
I expected him to win, but i did not expect such a sad turnout.
Ok this line of thinking is pissing me off.
As of this right now the turn out is 140,144,378 and counting (it will be weeks before the final number).
If we look at the last 90 or so years we can see that this “sad turnout” is the second highest only behind 2020s 158,481,688.
90 years ago the entire US population was less than that 140 million, let alone eligible voters. Percentage of eligible voters would make a better argument than absolute numbers when you’re comparing over time.
That said, 140m versus 158m is a huge drop. An astonishing drop. The final total could still amount to a >10% reduction in turnout, despite a slight increase in the number of eligible voters. I don’t understand how that could be viewed as not sad, regardless of who you vote for.
Ok, a few things. This is also using the percent of eligible voters and shows about the expected turn out if not higher then normal. And more importantly 140 million is not the final number in fact some places have stated “National turnout has been estimated at 64.5 percent this year, with around 158 million ballots counted out of the 245 million eligible voters.”
I am sorry that this is not the easy target of blame people clearly want it to be.
She got 14 millions less votes than Biden.I doubt there are even 10 million far leftists in the USA.
Gaza is to Harris what Drone Strikes were to Hillary in 2016.
But instead of doing their civic duty, they stayed home
Do you have anything to back this up, or is this typical Democrat blaming people they never tried to appeal to?
Abysmal voter turnout
2020 is not the fucking baseline, this was above average, great even. 2020 was the highest turnout since Reconstruction you can’t rely on that to stick
Honestly it should be. If people could find ways to vote during a pandemic, they should be able to do it without one. That we’ve regressed is a serious issue
Am I right in my understanding that the ‘super high’ turnout of 2020 was still less than 50% of eligible voters? That really looks like maybe a minimum turnout threshold should exist :(
You mean the abysmal (checks notes) second highest turn out since 1932? The turnout whose numbers are still as of right now being counted? That turnout?
Guess liberals should have tried to get people excited to vote.
You shouldve been aninated enough to vote against trump. He is just that bad, abstaining is abhorrent.
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Right on the money.
Yeah turn on each other immediately. That will give you hope for next time.
What next time?
Good chance there isn’t going to be a next time, dude. It’s hard not sounding hyperbolic when saying things like “its the end of the world” but the next four years were CRITICAL to climate change, and we’ve voted to pour even more gas all over it. We don’t even have violent resistance to fall back on. The ‘progressives’ who stayed home this election because they couldnt hold their nose and vote for harris? Have damned us all. They’re just as much to blame for whats about to happen as the pathetic campaign harris was running.
It doesn’t matter if we’re fracturing the left. There was never any unity there in the first place.
The ‘progressives’ who stayed home this election because they couldnt hold their nose and vote for harris? Have damned us all.
I think it was the Trump voters that did that, actually.
It is all of the electorates fault, and exclusively the electorates fault
And the electorate (well, active electorate) is majority Trump voters
Abstaining is an active political choice. Every adult in America is the electorate
The opinion of a shit starter and flame fanner is not needed.
14 million
Democrats didnt want people voting. This was the year of fighting against ballot access. They directly disenfranchised so many people.
That’s bullshit. Dems win when turnout is larger. Turnout was significantly below 2020.
Dems have learned to never nominate a woman again, because this country is so fucking sexist.
Exactly, why else would GOP work so hard to purge voter lists of people with foreign sounding names a week before the election.
1 person requested reviews of 100,000 voters via an automated tool the GOP made available
Yeah, Dems are going to fight against spoilers propped up by the GOP.
You’re an idiot to think they were anything aside from that.
As for Cornell West, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cornel-west-donation-harlan-crow-1234857237/
Fuck do you mean spoilers, they are running for election, democrats are spoilers for them.
Oh, my sweet summer child.
Read a book.
Read my links.
Democrats fought hard to ban candidates from participating in this election.
Back in 2016 they did a panel of all the creators of the TV political dramas. West Wing, Veep, Scandal, House of Cards, and all the rest.
All the creators said the same thing; if they’d had a character who said he ‘liked soldiers who didn’t get captured’ the networks and advertisers would have demanded that character be shown to be hated by all Americans.
I used to give the collective ‘us’ the benefit of the doubt and assume we’re just stupid, not evil.
After 4 years of Trump + all the Nazi shit he’s said since, he did even better than he did the first time. People aren’t ignorant to all that, they fucking love it.
We need to hurry up and go extinct and hope some critter rises from the ashes and evolves to be less of a collective sack of shit.
I for one welcome our horseshoe crab overlords. Tardigrades would be a very cool second choice, but they’re probably too busy being the perfect organism to give a shit about taking over the planet.
Tardigrades are definitely resilient enough for a solid shot at it.
Less realistically (since whatever wipes us out will also wipe them out) if we wanted to bring it a bit closer to home, I’d be rooting for the orangutans, which are chill as fuck. IIRC we evolved from chimpanzees, which are angry face-eaty little fuckers, which honestly explains a lot of today’s bullshit when you consider that as our foundation.
A ‘humanity’ that branched out from orangutans and progressed to the technological equivalent to where we’re at now… we’d be looking at a legit utopia.
If history weren’t such an asshole, that first mutant chimp that went on to become whatever the fuck the world is doing now… would have just gotten eaten by a crocodile or something after taking its first steps, and the planet lives happily ever after.
Trump, again, played the god card. Affirming his divine and righteous purpose.*
* god put him here because he’s the Antichrist. A fucking demon. There are no angels left.
(Shamelessly stolen from c/politicalmemes:)
I’m still unconvinced of any God’s existence, let alone the Abrahamic God.
But if I did, I’d believe with 100% certainty that this man is the antichrist.
I can’t remember the website, but awhile back someone made a blog post that draws parallels between the Bible and real life to show that DT is the antichrist, and as someone who’s read it cover to cover, it’s creepy how much matches up directly, and how much more could fit a general aspect.
By general aspect I mean like how you could see someone 500-2,000 years ago describing an A-10 Warthog (with the stereotypical angry face painted on the side) as a screeching bird of prey with the head of a lion that spits fire and thunder from its mouth.
Enough fits. Even if you don’t believe in an antichrist, the fact that so much lines up with the LITERAL worst possible being on earth should be alarming.
Yep! Sure is!
Thanksgiving with the religious family is gonna be great.
Just with a bit of estimation of the remaining 12% of votes uncounted, Trump is going to beat his 2020 vote record by a couple million, 81 million on the high end and maybe closer to 77 million on the low end. Unlikely, but possible he beats the 2020 all time record set by Biden. Definitely beats his 2020 numbers.
Kamala recently pulled ahead of Hillary’s 65 million and Obama’s 66 million, she’s gonna end up around 71-74 million.
Kamala lost the Popular Vote. In fact she won some blue states by smaller margins then she lost some ‘swing’ states. Nevada might not even be tight enough to qualify as a swing state this election(needs to be 5% or less, Trump’s currently winning by 5.2% meaning it wasn’t a swing state), meanwhile Minnesota was won by 3, New Jersey by 4, New Hampshire by 4 and a half, and Maine might be lost we’ll see, but those 4 were all swing states as the margin was less than 5%. New Mexico and Virginia came very close(and New Mexico would have been under 5 without RFK Jr dragging Trump down a point).
This also suggests the Electoral College no longer favors Republicans, and is somewhere between neutral and actually favoring Democrats again. 2028 a tight election with a Democrat win could see them lose the PV and win the EC.
I had a ton of 2004 vibes from the start and it looks like that was correct. He is coming back to serve a second term, and YES, this time he won the national electiiion
(Also you can’t blame third parties this time, they did horribly nationwide. At worst maybe they tightened up Virginia a bit just through how uniquely bad for Democrats it was there, but on the other hand RFK Jr is the only reason New Mexico didn’t crack a sub 5 margin and go into Swing State territory again(Harris won by 5.2 there and RFK got 1 point. No third party means that crosses the 5 point threshold)
I saw some numbers that showed Kamala underperformed in EVERY SINGLE COUNTY compared to Biden. I hope the Dems will learn from this but they literally never do.
I think there’s a handful of small rural counties where a couple fewer Trump voters showed up? I mean there’s like 3 or 4 counties where John Kerry is the best democrat preformance since 2000 so weird shit can happen
This video explains it well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzIaIiiZIpY
Basically Trump is a very American person, stemming from a very American history and culture.
He’s not an ideal, he’s not what they want American history and culture to have been. He’s a product of what it actually has been.
An exploitive, greedy, stupid, destructive, democracy overthrowing, racist, misogynist, killer on 5th avenue…
Not great.
…and he makes that seem fun.
‘member when Americans apologised to the world for re-electing Bush?
Yeah. They didn’t mean it.
To be fair, the Americans doing the apologizing probably did, the ones that liked having Bush wouldn’t have apologized in the first place?
Either that or America wanted a progressive Democrat candidate. We will never know because the second never happens.
Funny, because it has happened a couple times.
1860, 1936, and 1960. You know, some of the only moments in history America had a right to be proud of.
I don’t know we had a lot of anarchists bombing shit 1900-1920s pretty proud of that
Also the labor movement, revolting against a king I wouldve said is pretty based until the other day- but maybe we fucking need them if the people are…this
weird that we chose a fascist instead then.
I used to think this, not anymore, this one was obvious, everyone who pulled that lever, knew what they were voting for.
Kamala did not lose because voters switched. Trump lost 3 million votes compared to 2020.
Kamala lost because even less people showed up for her. She was that upopular.
turnip won because more people voted for him than kamala. more people in this nation were willing to elect a rapist, a 34 times convicted felon, one who defrauds students, cages children, takes away human rights, praises nazi’s and dictators. if you couldn’t be bothered to turn up to fight against that, well…
the system is shit, but we, at least used to have control of it. I hope we still do but the winner has already told us that he will be a dictator and we won’t have to vote again.
Tulip sounds awful. The only way democrats could lose from that is if they ran a truly horrific candidate themselves.
Anything notable from last year coming to mind?
no, not really, not in comparison anyway. I’m no dem fan but when given the option to shoot myself in the head vs. taking a tylenol for a headache, I don’t have to think real hard about that one.
again, given the choice between a rapist, a 34 times convicted felon, one who defrauds students, cages children, takes away human rights, praises nazi’s and dictators; and a minority woman with an annoying laugh, folks thought it was worth either pulling the lever for the fascist or just letting the fascist take power.
fuck kamala, fuck biden, but we could work with them, we could put pressure on them. hell, we got biden to drop out. good luck pressuring donald fucking trump to do anything that isn’t entirely self-serving.
If only journalism was this blunt at an earlier point than after he won, again.
I’d agree if it wasn’t in their opinion section
Nope, America is and wants to be, a big, racist wagie prison. I hope the jumpsuits are red white and blue.
America is a shit hole. Who could argue at this point?
We are a nation of sad small scared people. Machiavelli was right.
