I’m so glad I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote for Oz either, I wrote in “Juan Guaidó”.
Fetterman is such a huge disappointment to me. There was a point where I would have put good money on him winning the 2028 presidency as a Democrat.
Fetterman is a great example of what happens when you put faith into any Amerikkkan government official.
Yup. Remember how excited people were when Sinema was elected? Surely because this person is gay and weird they couldn’t possible betray us, right?
Fetterman’s the same way.
A family man from a small town becomes a fascist when elevated to a national stage.
“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” -George Carlin
It makes a lot of sense. Fascists love simple “solutions” to complex problems which is what I would expect out of small town representatives.
He’s been bought and or has serious leverage on him in some other way.
That’s what I’ve always suspected, although the brain damage aspect rings true too. My father had some similar issues and as his mental decline intensified, so too did his conservatism.
Yeah, my dad had a TBI in 2015 and drank the orange kool-aid.
Por que no los dos?
This piece of shit is from my neck of the woods too.
Proof that most Republicans just have brain injuries
Chronic lead poisoning can absolutely cause brain damage, so that tracks.
RFK Jr., Gary Busy, Kevin Sorbo…
Lucy Lawless claims Sorbo has always been an ass, but there does seem to be less restraint since his injury. Empathy seems to require more more brain function then cruelty. I’ve never heard of someone becoming nicer after a traumatic head injury.
And dementia. One of the symptoms of early onset dementia is loss of empathy.
He has changed since he was Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania. He has been treated for a stroke and depression. I applaud his candor and openness in discussing his treatment. Getting medical treatment is not weakness.
However, his political positions have shifted since his term in Harrisburg and Senate election. Each day it seems like he less represents me and shares my views. I’ll be pushing for Malcom Kenyatta to run against him in the 2028 primary.
What is more upsetting is that even if he “changed his mind” his current ideals is not what the voters thought they were voting for. It is still unethical for him to completely change his stance after getting the job.
I find your theory that politicians have ethics amusing.
They would have ethics if we selectively culled the unethical ones like we’re supposed to.
It’s not unheard of. Barely even a rarity; it’s just that the terrible ones never quit and seem to have a natural lifespan about 30% longer.
Not a conspiracy theory either, it’s just that stress-free lifestyle of not giving a shit about anyone.
Term limits would be the solution, alongside age limits so that a geronotacracy can’t become a thing. Sucks we have to take away the political keys from grandpa, but the alternative is far worse than bad driving.
Strom Thurmond is a great example. That raisin ball of shit was a US senator for 47 years. He lived to be nearly 101. Pissing on his grave is on my bucket list.
Another Sinema. The Democrats don’t do a very good job of vetting Congressional candidates.
Nah, he legit seems to be a Phineas Gage situation (unlike Sinema). Went extreme right wing after a stroke.
Says a lot about being extremely right wing tho…
In 2013, John Fetterman chased a black jogger around his neighbourhood because he though fireworks were gunshots. More importantly, he never apologized.
The plausible deniability is there, I admit. But not apologizing is what makes me think he was always like this. The stroke just made it so he no longer had the capacity to hide it.
He was very against murder in his town, it was his whole thing. If I offer him the benefit of the doubt I can see him pulling that for at least a good reason, and unlike so many other incidents with mega racists he didn’t shoot the guy even though he had the capacity to.
I don’t think Fetterman was ever a genius, to be fair. In fact with more research into him I might even go so far as to use him as an example that you don’t have to be Einstein to be a good person, and that conservatives being stupid is only part of it; they are stupid and hateful. Whatever happened here seems to have pushed him over the edge he was already teetering on.
Damn…not a dig at you, Soup, but “He was against murder” and “At least he didn’t shoot the black guy” as defences really shows us where we are at for our country’s representatives, huh?
I didn’t say he was bad for his constituents. I just gave a publicly available reason that could have contributed to his turn to the right. For me personally, not apologizing after he made a very clear mistake, especially as we saw the increasing reports of black people getting profiled in white neighborhoods, is a yellow flag at the very least.
We have people in this thread asking why Democrats always have at least one guy who turns out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The fact of the matter is, we all have prejudicial biases, no matter how liberal or left leaning our politics are. It’s not bad to acknowledge and confront them. A lot of privileged Democrat voters though are afraid to look that in the eye, and then they’re surprised when people they elect suddenly turn out to be unpalatable to them.
What I was getting at is that his being against murder(along with the rest of the context provided, mind) means that as someone who was maybe seeing that trouble in more places than necessary he may have assumed that the gunshots he thought he heard were because a murder had taken place. Even with all that he still didn’t try to exact his own justice and detained instead of injured/killed.
I’m trying to point at that we can’t necessarily just say “oh he was evil the whole time” and write it off like good people can’t turn rotten for various reasons. The Democrats have a lot of problems and their centrism is a huge fucking problem, but the party is not left enough to constitute “sheep’s clothing”. It’s relativistic politics to make that assumption.
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Intentional.
Skip the “democratic” part. A grifter supports Trump. Nothing new here.
He’s definitely different following his stroke, I would not say he went into the running as a grifter.
He suffered a stroke and came out of it as a piece of garbage.
Edit: typo I to > into
Of course this grifter supports it
Someone should take away his hoodie and make him wear pants as punishment.
Don’t be ableist. He’s evil and corrupt because most politicians are. Get money out of politics!
It’s not ablest to discuss a brain injury affects one’s cognitive function. Especially not when it’s in regards to a public figure in power. Your next door neighbor? Maybe inappropriate unless they’re causing trouble. A senator? Totally appropriate.
There have been studies on this, brain damage is linked to more conservative political beliefs.
It is not ableist to point out a fact.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2020.0137
I had a TBI as a teenager and went from moderately liberal to full blown anarcho communist.
You meet one person with a brain injury, you’ve met one person with a brain injury. We’re all very different because the brain is barely understood by science and our injuries even harder to quantify.
Also if you look at sufferers of CTE most become aggressive and violent until they end up taking their own lives. See boxers, football players, combat veterans. I think there’s a link between aggression and right wing ideology.
I imagine TBI is going to be more variable in its effects than something from constant low level brain damage (chemically or impact) or from a stroke as well though right?
If my assumption is right, then that would likely explain why you are an outlier, rather than that brain damage’s effect doesn’t at least trend conservative.
No, whether blunt force trauma (me) or lack of oxygen (fetterman) the exact parts of the brain affected vary from person to person and that would impact political leaning in theory.
So, liberal to authoritarian? Figures.
Wow. Anarchist and authoritarian in the same sentence. That’s a new level of political illiteracy.
Anarchists are not authoritarians.
Technically speaking, on paper both anarchism and communism advocate for the reduction of central powers that dictate authoritarianism.
In real world practice however…yeah :/
In what real world context are anarchists authoritarians?
Fake ass ancaps don’t count.
I was referring to the modern day social media “anarchists”, yeah. I am a survivor of r/politicalcompassmemes.
I think most real world anarchists aren’t arguing on corporate social media for obvious reasons. Therefore it gets co-opted by the libertarian/ancap community, the misrepresentation of the philosophy perpetuates, and then we have comments like the one I was replying to calling it authoritarian. Hence my :/
Do you know which exact type of brain damage he suffers from? Because it states while damage in one affected area can have an effect on your political opinion, damage in different areas show no difference whatsoever. It wouldn’t surprise me to see if other types of brain damage could make you more liberal too. We do know liberal and conservative brains show some differences, so different damage in different areas could make you swing either way. I mean neuroscience is still in it’s infancy, so a lot of this is just observing and trying to see patterns. Saying “brain damage makes you conservative” is too broad of a claim. It’s certainly not backed by this study.
EDIT: One more thing I don’t really understand is what this argument is trying to achive anyway. Do you want to take voting rights from people who had a stroke because they can’t decide for themselves? This topic is really thin ice and it’s usually fascist groups that propose such things.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see if other types of brain damage could make you more liberal too.
I will happily read a study that demonstrates this, however I have only been able to locate results that show brain injuries tend to make people more conservative.
If you want anyone to take you seriously on this topic you need to provide more than conjecture.
As for my argument, I have done nothing more than provide the facts as I understand them based on scientific studies.
You don‘t have to take me seriously, though I think you probably should when I warn you about the dark path you‘re walking here. It‘s enough to take the study you provided seriously which is not as conclusive as you make it to be. Certainly not enough to boil political views down to a summarized medical record.
Fetterman famously had a major change in political ideology following a brain injury.
Numerous studies have shown that brain injuries are associated with more conservative beliefs, though I don’t have the time to dig all of them up right now.
though I think you probably should when I warn you about the dark path you‘re walking here.
What would that be exactly?
Different person here. People with brain damage, along with other mental and physical disabilities, were the first group killed by the OG Nazis. Once they realized they could get away with that, they moved on to other marginalized groups.
Many people suffer brain damage WITHOUT becoming Conservatives. Or becoming assholes. Fetterman has changed party views, but he was always an asshole.
It sounds like you’re missing the difference between low and high functioning _____. People with high-functioning autism, for example, deal with a lot of struggles that everyone handwaves away because they’re mostly able to, like, get to work on time. The Nazis would have walked right past them so long as their views aligned; they wanted the people who were visibly and undeniably brain damaged because because it’s all about appearances with facists. Plus it was the first half of the 1900s, they weren’t exactly experts at that shit.
Saying “brain damage makes you conservative” is too broad of a claim
Just circling back to this because that is explicitly not what I said. Read what I commented again.
Voting rights no, but maybe that should be replaced by appointment after major head injuries. I’d also like to see an age limit on candidates tied to SS retirement age.
See: Phrenology
“It’s just facts!”
“Science was wrong once, so it can never be trusted again.”
That’s you. That’s what you sound like.
I mean was it even science as we know it today? I don’t think they used the scientific method at all for the phrenology stuff.
“Science can’t be wrong twice”
That’s you.
“Science hasn’t refined its methodologies and controls against biases since the 1790s.”
That’s you.
So what is your evidence that this study is wrong?
Only their own wishes.
Checkmate, lol 🥂
Yes and… this guy literally had a stroke and then his political actions took a 180.
I would have to agree with the guy above You. When he was pretending to be left wing, the right blamed his stroke and the left said it had nothing to do with that. Now that he turned around it’s suddenly a problem? He was just always a grifter. Watch Some More News on him.
When he was pretending to be left wing, the right blamed his stroke and the left said it had nothing to do with that. Now that he turned around it’s suddenly a problem?
Unless the person you replied to personally exhibited both dismissing it the first time and caring about it now, I don’t see how this is relevant. “The Left” is not a monolith, and even less so than other groups often mistakenly treated as a monolith.
Watch Some More News on him.
It’s not ableist to point out the verifiable facts as we know them. It’s also not ableist to discuss real world adverse effects from medical conditions. There was a marked change in many of his stances after the stroke.
Money in politics is a massive issue, and the root of a lot of our current problems… that doesn’t mean we ignore history or we simply ignore possible reasons why a politician’s stances change.
I’m sure if you had a stroke and suddenly turned into a bigger asshole you’d want the benefit of the doubt for your opinions until that stroke instead of being lumped into always having been a giant douche.
Yep. There are so many other things to criticise people on than their disabilities.
