USA politics following Trump's election

[totalize]

Humanity's heart is often filled with brutality and stupidity, they blame others without taking responsibility. It's natural to blame because we've all at one time or another been harmed by others.

It's ok to blame and often this blame is legitimate to a certain extent, but there is always a price for not taking responsibility for yourself and your role in society.

Your post can be meaningfully condensed to these two sections.

The change of power (peaceful or violent) is not related to taking personality responsibility or your role in society. Societies go through drastic political and social reform because of converging social forces. It's partially true that we can play our own role in these social forces, but the way humans interact suggests that really, we will be swept along with a tide.

The social and political forces at play in representative democracies are at play regardless of how personally responsible you are. The global (not just US) social and political forces since "The End of History" acted and manoeuvred in such a way that we as citizens can't really take responsibility. Representative democracy is not a bad system, but it explicitly draws political responsibility away from the body politic, and towards a political class. What the hell are people supposed to take responsibility for? More to the realistic question: how can Americans "take responsibility" for their country's political outlook?

It's ok to ruminate on how or if the democratic or republican parties will change. It's ok to make platitudes about humanity and blame. It's not ok to suggest that the broader social forces in a representative democracy are the responsibility of the citizens; it's the responsibility of the administration of the institutions and the political and media class. It's not ok to talk about how it's immature to play the blame game and then lay blame on a huge part of a country, within nearly the same breath.

[mu4]

Your post can be meaningfully condensed to these two sections.

The change of power (peaceful or violent) is not related to taking personality responsibility or your role in society. Societies go through drastic political and social reform because of converging social forces. It's partially true that we can play our own role in these social forces, but the way humans interact suggests that really, we will be swept along with a tide.

The social and political forces at play in representative democracies are at play regardless of how personally responsible you are. The global (not just US) social and political forces since "The End of History" acted and manoeuvred in such a way that we as citizens can't really take responsibility. Representative democracy is not a bad system, but it explicitly draws political responsibility away from the body politic, and towards a political class. What the hell are people supposed to take responsibility for? More to the realistic question: how can Americans "take responsibility" for their country's political outlook?

It's ok to ruminate on how or if the democratic or republican parties will change. It's ok to make platitudes about humanity and blame. It's not ok to suggest that the broader social forces in a representative democracy are the responsibility of the citizens; it's the responsibility of the administration of the institutions and the political and media class. It's not ok to talk about how it's immature to play the blame game and then lay blame on a huge part of a country, within nearly the same breath.

I blame everyone(including myself) for the current election results, it is a collective failure. I am not playing the blame game, because we all are imperfect and we all have areas where we take the wrong course of actions or have the wrong beliefs. All I can do is change, and ask others to change, I ask each individual think about how they can change the world for the better and what they can do to influence themselves and the people around them. This is something limited but it can have profound effect if enough people choose this path.

As far as what responsibilities people and groups can take accountability for. People can take responsibility for their bad policies and oppression of others. People can take responsibility for their apathy and indifference to the suffering of others. People can take responsibility for ignoring poor whites. For each legitimate blame there is a legitimate change that each individual and group of individual can make, this is why blame is useful, sometimes it informs others and sometimes it informs oneself.

I have not called anyone immature nor am I asking them not to blame others, in fact they should blame others for what they perceive, but they should listen to the response as well. They should also try to see if there is some legitimacy to the blame other point towards them.

America is also a wonderful place full of decent people, and if even a small portion of the population worked towards better solutions, many problems can be solved. It was not by a huge margin that Trump won the election, and it's rarely by a huge margin that major events are influenced.

There is also no path for individuals except taking personal responsibility for their own self-interest, and advancing those interests without gross evil. Individuals can organize and collaborate but at the end of the day, it is still individual motivations that gels people together in a free society.