In case you have just come out from under a rock this week, Donald Trump won the American presidential election again. This makes him only the second President to have non-consecutive terms, which is extremely unusual in and of itself. Received wisdom is that if you're a one-term president, it's ogre for you. George H. W. Bush didn't try again in 1996. Jimmy Carter didn't try to have a second bite at the cherry in 1984. But what hasn't changed is the reactions of the terminally online.

Just like in 2016, if you log onto X, formerly Twitter, and search for "literally shaking" or similar you will encounter thousands of people with thousands of tweets to their name caterwauling, hand tragically nailed to the forehead about how this is the end of the world. But this time it's even worse. The Reddit board r/suicidewatch has been wall to wall people threatening to unalive themselves because Orange Man won again. There's also a sense of disbelief and shock that Orange Man won. After all, it was her turn. He's the Bad Guy and he's not supposed to win. It's like Voldemort or Palpatine killing Harry or Luke in the last act of the last film. It wasn't supposed to be like this, damn it! There was even an article here in Britain in the left-wing conspiratard rag Byline Times by some author of a book on the topic who claimed to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis (though their is no evidence of this other than his after the fact commenting) that this will be the end of the world. Yes! It's like the Chudjak meme but in a 4,000 word bloviation! The West has fallen, millions must die. I can see him already, hate-filled rictus on his features, brow lined from constant frowning, typing with one hand and masturbating with the other about how a second term of The King In Orange means the total collapse of all that is well and good in the world.

Meanwhile, other social media users are scaremongering about how they are going to be herded into camps for being "queer or brown" or something like that. Because that totally happened last time Trump was in charge, didn't it. There's also other users claiming to be witches and casting curses on Trump and all his compatriots. Because we all know that the ability to memorise a load of meaningless words and looking good in a silk robe gives you special powers. Christ on a bike, wiccans can't half be a hoot at times.

HARDEN THE FUCK UP.

These people frankly need to all act their age, not their shoe size. I have, in fact, explained this before. But I'm going to have to do it again for the benefit of the people who didn't listen. So here we go.

This is your fault. It is because of people like you that Orange Man won.

Let's assume for the moment that Trump is, in fact, the Antichrist. However you people, and by this I include the Kamala Harris campaign and party machine and all those vocally supporting her online, completely failed to get this message across in a way that the non-terminally online were able to appreciate. It's all well and good you lot sneering at people in flyover states as "garbage" and "cousin fuckers" and "weird" (as if an Average Redditor has standing to call anyone weird). But the fact remains that every presidential candidate this century has branded their opponent the Antichrist for whatever reason. Remember the religious right shrieking about "the Obamanation" and spreading FUD about he was secretly a Muslim, or how Mitt Romney was pure evil because he liked firing people or was going to enforce his Mormon mores on everyone else or how George W. Bush was going to lock up opponents in Gitmo or waterboard your mate for being a bit dodgy? I do. I also remember the yawnful postings from the 2000s about "Bushhitler" and how he was going to start more wars and bring back the draft and suchlike. None of which happened. And yes, Trump did this as well on all three of this campaigns. But here's the thing. Crying wolf about how your opponent is the Antichrist is, well, it's crying wolf isn't it? Nobody believes that. And then dredging up all these fever dreams about the awful things the other guy will do and how it will be the end of the world just makes you look unhinged.

No. You have to offer something positive or have ideas. Trump did. You probably think they're totally wrong. And I kind of agree. The man is nuts and his platforms aren't thought through, and he didn't really get that much done in his first term. But he had ideas and principles. His message of asking whether floating voters were better off now than four years ago was something that resonates with people who don't spend their days surrounded by pissjugs with 67 Reddit tabs open. People who actually have jobs and families and commitments. Compared to that, promising a nebulous idea of "joy" and then flinging sneery and condescending and increasingly desperate anathemas, running from "he's weird" to "he's garbage" and then "he's LITRULLY HITLER" just makes people yawn and roll their eyes. Same with hopping up and down about how "democracy itself is on the ballot." No. No it is not. Even with single party control of all three branches of government, changing the Constitution to allow someone more than two terms or abolishing elections is a huge undertaking, and one that would meet with significant resistance from even a lot of Trump's allies.

Then there's the fact that insulting and shouting invective at the electorate is no way to get them on your side. No wonder people who didn't like Trump but didn't like Harris either stayed at home in swing states. Why should anyone vote for someone who openly hates them just because the other guy might be worse. I would have thought people would have learned that in 2016. Meanwhile, Trump went out and actively courted floating voters. His share of the Hispanic vote increased beyond 2016 and 2020. Same with the black vote. And the same with young people. He and his campaign went out to court young people especially because in a cost of living crisis and a post lockdown slump, someone who promises something - anything - to young people who are facing economic struggles is going to gain ground amongst that constituency. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign simply thought they could take those votes for granted.

What's that, Harris enthusiasts of a screen-addled nature? Those people are stupid and -ists and -phobes anyhow? Yes. Yes they are. BUT THEY DIDN'T VOTE FOR YOU. And the vote of a hideous bigot is worth just the same as someone enlightened and Nice. Democracy is like that. Honestly, sometimes you people remind me of superstitious peasants blaming witchcraft for a complex system not producing the result they wanted. Or the Adeptus Mechanicus worshipping technology and converting their barely understood maintenance procedures into prayer rituals. Because it's easier to just blame forces outside your control than consider that maybe, just maybe, your side, The Good Guys, fucked the dog.

Oh yes. One final thing. You can't claim that democracy itself it at stake, then parachute your candidate into the nomination by the fiat of a cabal of insiders and apparatchiks without anyone voting for her to be the nominee. People aren't stupid. They do notice these things. That's why you lost credibility with them. They might not like Trump, but they aren't going to vote for you just because you feel like you deserve their vote ethically or morally. They'll stay at home instead.

That's about it really. I had hoped not to have to do a sequel to HARDEN THE FUCK UP, but - Actually no. I'm not going to lie to you. I kind of hoped I would, because I like salt and schadenfreude, and pointing out that the terminally online never learn, and laughing at the downfall of the self-proclaimed adults in the room that think they are Just Better and Know Better than all the plebs, and then get it wrong horribly. The long and the short of it is, Trump won, Harris lost, and you lot are responsible because you couldn't get your woman past a multiply impeached, rambling, corrupt old nutter because you couldn't see over your own massive egos. Once again, you need to act your age, not your shoe size. But you won't listen to me because I'm just a crusty old millennial Britbong. What do I know.

I'm off down the bookies to put £30.00 on there being fiery but mostly peaceful protests in the near future.

(IN24/9)

Where to begin? Let me start with some reasoning, before proceeding on to the Ad Hominem part. Let me know which you are

There is a logical fallacy called the base rate fallacy, that says that when dealing with a specific case, you also have to look at the base rate. That involves lots of math, so I will just refer to it by another term: the waving a metal pole during a lightning storm fallacy or the I am going to smear myself with salmon and wander around in bear territory fallacy. Do you know how many people die from lightning strikes each year in the United States? Apparently around four. Do you know how many people die from bear attacks in the United States each year? Usually one or two. So we are talking about a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of death by lightning and/or bear. So, the clever person might think, what harm is there in you know, taking a metal pole outside and waving it around in the middle of a thunderstorm? What would be the problem, this very clever person might ask, in smearing myself in raw salmon and wandering around in the mountains in Montana in October?

The obvious answer is that statistics don't tell an entire story, especially when we can pretty clearly see logical chains of cause and effect. The things that people are afraid or upset about concerning what Trump might do are things that are totally backed up by evidence of things that he has very publicly said and did recently. If a politician publicly comments about what a political rival would when you put a gun in their face, it makes it more likely that they would actually do this thing. Does a president want to be a dictator? Well, if a president praises Hitler, it really increases the fact that that isn't just a hyperbolic statement. And the person who made the revelation that Trump wished he had "Hitler's generals" was John Kelly, his former Chief of Staff, and someone who was generally politically supportive of Trump's agenda. Until he worked for him. This did not come from a hysterical tumblrite, this came from a four star general. Is it an exaggeration to say a politician is planning a coup when he has already tried to do exactly that, and was willing to send a mob to threaten or kill even his own vice-president? You can argue about exactly what Trump wanted to happen that day, but he has never apologized for what happened or said it was wrong.

The one thing that has to be mentioned is that personally, I think the signs of Trump's gathering dementia are perhaps a bigger problem. I am not a doctor, but I know when a 78 year old man starts miming oral sex on a microphone in public, that there might be some impulse control problems. Is this dementia or just something else? I can consult basic statistical guidelines:

"Rates of dementia and mild cognitive impairment rose sharply with age: three percent of people between 65 and 69 had dementia, rising to 35% for people aged 90 and over."1

So anyone who wants to do the integral calculus can tell us just what percentage chance a 78 year old man who has been spacing out in public might be suffering from dementia. Does a man with poor impulse control having access to enough nuclear weapons to destroy human civilization make you nervous? If so, it might be for reasons other than spending too much time online.

The people who are worried about Donald Trump's autocratic tendency and erratic behavior are not pearl clutchers or hand wringers. And you, Hazelnut, are not a big clever boy who is above it all and sees things more clearly than us.

Okay, yes, now it is ad hominem time. But I will keep these mild. Because the above is at least entertaining. But also, pretty mediocre. As far as I know, Hazelnut is British, and I don't know if he has visited the United States, and which parts, and for how long. (I actually asked him this information, but haven't got an answer, if I am wrong, I will update this). But I have lived in the United States for most of my life, and I have visited 44 states, and lived in five. Most recently, I lived in a small town in Montana. I have seen the United States from San Francisco to some of the most remote towns in the United States. And most of the stereotypes presented above about the people scared of Trump are...well, they are lazy stereotypes about how "screen addled" "reddit users" make fun of people in "flyover states". It is lazy stereotyping of people's lazy stereotyping, which gets points for being "meta", but there is nothing in the above writeup that shows any insight or experience into what people in the United States are like. Someone is criticizing people for being "terminally online"...but seems to have formed their opinions through second or third hand social media experiences. "Ah, I saw someone else caricaturize Bay Area liberals on the intarwebs! I am not an expert in all of American politics and society!" Sorry, nope, that doesn't work for me.

Anyway, there are one or two good ideas above, but to sum up: the people who are worried about Trump have very good reasons to be worried, based on Trump's public words and behavior. And the people who are worried about Trump are not some stereotype of hysterical tumblr users, but are a wide cross-section of American society.