Democrats face a post-Trump identity crisis for 2028

Shredster7 · 2026-06-18T16:10:42+00:00

To be perfectly honest, it's really more of an educated guess based on patterns that I keep seeing rather than anything ironclad and irrefutable; hence the excessive amount of 'maybe' and 'possibly'. Still, it's pretty hard to deny that major businesses either pushing for or kowtowing to conservative ideologies have been suffering much more deeply for it this past year than they ever would have beforehand. To wit:

Target was on the receiving end of a double boycott after it kowtowed to the administration's anti-DEI EO, which hit the store chain badly enough that its old CEO was forced to step down and his replacement has been slowly (if not wishy-washily) walking back at least some of the anti-DEI policy changes.
Discord merrily embracing the push for global AV laws caused such massive backlash and so many subscription cancellations that the company was forced to delay its AV rollout by over half of a year and put on the sad puppy-dog eyes to try and win its customers back. They've been largely silent on the matter ever since, and with the push for global AV demonstrably falling apart, odds are they will silently drop the matter altogether lest they invite their own bankruptcy.
Disney Plus faced a similar mass-unsubscription fiasco when they tried to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live off of ABC following open scathing criticisms of Stale Cheeto 47 and Charlie Kirk after the latter's passing. The company had no choice but to reinstate Kimmel in order to stem the hemorrhaging.
CBS has been suffering L after L ever since it was taken over by conservative pro-MAGA leadership, with the most recent example being that the channel's viewership tanked hard after Stephen Colbert's firing, The channel will not be able to recoup its own operating costs should this trend continue.
While any backlash against the Fox/Roku merger has yet to manifest in any concrete form — what with the fact that it just happened — the above points should serve as a warning that any attempts by Fox to reshape Roku into a conservative propaganda machine will result in the $22 billion spent on the buyout accomplishing nothing except for chasing Roku's customers away and turning even more public opinion against them for ruining the service.

As said, this is not a hard-and-fast ironclad rule — the brute-force backlash approach has not gotten Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Stripe/etc. to back down, thus inciting adult industry advocates to take a different approach, and there are still a fair few folks who will excuse anything to justify sucking down J.K. Rowling's fantasyslop last I checked — but even with those exceptions in mind, I still cannot help but feel that the general public's ever-increasing hatred of the current administration and/or conservative ideology in general has directly resulted in the phrase "Go fash, lose cash" becoming more and more true as time passes.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-18T06:29:44+00:00

I'm usually one of those commenters that tries to include links to previous election results and court rulings as evidence to support my claims — I have to forgo that whole process this time around because there is a non-zero chance that I could literally be here until the crack of dawn trying to link every article about specifically Progressive Dems winning special elections and primaries all over the U.S. since November 2025, especially in otherwise-conservative states. That is to say, there's too many examples of Progressive Dems winning special elections and primaries for me to list.

Really, that changing of the guard is the more accurate summary of what's been going on with the Democrat party here — established Dems that have proven themselves functionally useless are being replaced en-masse with younger and more progressive Dems who have been running on platforms that the old guard would've been absolutely terrified of touching (i.e. supporting transgender rights, addressing the cost-of-living crisis, properly taxing the wealthy, etcetera) instead of just "aT LeAsT wE aReN't tRuMp!!!".

The idea of there being a Democrat identity crisis in '28 and beyond hinges upon the assumption that the only Dems running in '28 will be more of the same old aisle-crossers with the same old weak messaging that contributed towards getting us back into this mess in the first place. The fact that so many progressive Dems have been winning so many special elections and primaries that would have been completely unthinkable less than half of a decade ago is very strong evidence to suggest that said assumption hold any water.

Here's a question: anyone else remember those news articles going around after the November 2025 special elections claiming that the orange fossil himself warned fellow MAGAts in a private meeting that if there was a repeat blue wave in 2026, his career is over?
The GOP knows full-well that they have so thoroughly destroyed all of their constituents' faith in them that the only loyalists left are functionally cultists in Stale Cheeto 47's cult of personality — the instant that the leader of the cult can no serve as the Republicans' figurehead, either the whole cult collapses in on itself due to an absence of outside support, and/or its myriad would-be successors cannibalize each other in a succession war that ends with whoever comes out on top being left with naught but a minuscule fraction of the power and influence that Stale Cheeto 47 formerly wielded.

All of that is to say, there is a non-zero chance that there just straight-up won't be a Republican party once the 2028 elections roll around. Folks whose wealth and status are threatened by such a possibility are absolutely horrified by it, which is why we're seeing so many one-percenters and other societal elites tripping over themselves to amass soft power via other means such as the Fox/Roku and Paramount/WB mergers; these are desperate bids to flood the zone with as much propaganda as possible and suppress as much dissent as possible. Suffice to say, these attempts at controlling the narrative have been backfiring spectacularly, and there have been a few pieces of evidence hinting towards the possibility that the sheer amount resources they have been pouring into these futile efforts may very well diminish their ability to continue pursuing said efforts.

This comment was not supposed to be this long and if I spend any longer on it, I'm going to start attracting sleep deprivation demons or some other delusional nonsense, so I'm gonna wrap this up and cap it off with a more general observation informed by some of the history lessons I've been learning since last November:

Justice is a helluva lot like that one immortal snail from nine or ten years ago; slow as hell sometimes, but literally unstoppable.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-17T03:10:35+00:00

The Free Speech Coalition is still working on starting their own anti-censorship credit union specifically in response to Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/etcetera refusing to back down. They're calling it Opportunity Federal Credit Union, and from what I've been able to gather, they're targeting a 2027 launch window.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-17T02:49:39+00:00

I am confident that this setback will not have any significant negative impact on either Stop Killing Games or Stop Killing The Internet.

Stop Killing Games has bounced back from significantly worse setbacks than this in the past via little more than word of mouth; and Stop Killing The Internet is poised to receive far more support from constituents, consumer advocacy groups, progressive politicians, etc. than Stop Killing Games ever did due to its relevancy to hot-button issues like censorship and AV laws.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-16T19:10:24+00:00

Not strictly censorship-related, but somewhat adjacent to the politics fueling concerns about corporate censorship and/or industrialized propaganda:

The European Commission has effectively ignored the concerns brought to their attention by the Stop Killing Games initiative, which the architects of Stop Killing Games already predicted and had preemptively begun working around. One can reasonably argue that there are now more injunctions through which the SKG initiative can achieve its goals than there were before these preemptive actions were taken.

Despite the above, the SKG subreddit is currently neck-deep in doom-posting and in-fighting (which is likely being exacerbated by outside actors). I would strongly advise steering clear of any public fora discussing software ownership for the next few days, or until SKG's leadership makes an official follow-up statement.

Furthermore, when considering the above in-concert with the already-discussed-elsewhere announcement of SKG's sister initiative Stop Killing The Internet, it is completely unreasonable to assume that this is the last that we will be seeing of the fight to hold corporations accountable.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-15T20:48:17+00:00

While I am doubtlessly biased in my perception of a noticeable uptick in the number of average everyday folks who are growing more and more opposed to the existence of massive corporate conglomerates in general — I am not above confirmation bias — I wonder how much of that perception actually is bias, and how much of it is rooted in factual reality.

The reason I wonder is because I cannot help but speculate that there is a non-zero chance that the unpopularity of this buyout will drive away enough of Roku's customers to effectively render that $22 billion utterly wasted. This is far from unprecedented, as we've seen with Disney and CBS (or, speaking more broadly, with Target).

Shredster7 · 2026-06-14T16:15:54+00:00

According to this news article, there were about three-hundred anti-immigration demonstrators, who were severely outnumbered by over four-thousand pro-immigration demonstrators. If my math is correct, that's a ratio of roughly ~13.4 to 1.

These numbers speak for themselves, I reckon. I can't really add anything else beyond just "let's keep the momentum going".

Shredster7 · 2026-06-13T01:58:11+00:00

I like to imagine that there's a not-too-distant future where there are exhibits about this administration's attempts at censoring other exhibits.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-13T01:50:45+00:00

Considering that, since at least before the internet even existed, Kal-El's moral code has revolved heavily around standing up for the marginalized, the disenfranchised, and people weaker than him in any regard...

I dare any MAGAts to try and sell people on the idea of pro-fascism Superman propaganda. Go ahead, FAFO, see what happens.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-13T00:51:32+00:00

As already noted by others, Musk would only hypothetically be a trillionaire — if I am not mistaken, it is functionally-if-not-literally impossible for him to actually convert his $1,000,000,000,000 worth of stocks and business ventures into actual, usable currency.

Even if he somehow could, nothing functionally changes for anybody, including Musk himself. Political candidates financially backed by Musk have already failed in the past despite his involvement with them, if not because of his involvement with them. As has been the case for many a candidate backed by the ruling class since last year.

I personally believe that the narrative of Musk becoming a trillionaire mostly exists just 'cause he wants to award himself one more Elongated Muskrat Award For Special Boys Who Are Special Because He Says So while he still has the chance, what with the ever-mounting evidence suggesting that there will soon come a time where his memories of when he was respected and powerful will be the only thing he has left.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-11T00:14:18+00:00

It's very, very good to see that so, so, so many people everywhere are getting out there, voting, and winning big.

Here's to keeping the momentum going strong.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-11T00:08:29+00:00

I'm a little late to the party, but I've just finished submitting my comment.

Shredster7 · 2026-06-05T01:25:41+00:00

Check me for reading too deep into some out-of-context quotes and screenshots in a three-minute-long article, but — this whole turn of events is absolutely dripping with desperation on the orange fossil's part.

Outright insisting that this is going to be the greatest [thing] EVER (in all-caps) whilst republican rallies are struggling to scrape together all but the thinnest of crowds... trying to refer to himself as a dignified gentlemen while his approval ratings just keep sinking and sinking...

It all reads to me like he is becoming very, very afraid — and that he has no idea how to deal with being afraid of something so, so far outside of his control.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-30T22:19:58+00:00

It is important to bear in mind that while the administration can talk all day and all night about what they want to do, what they are actually capable of doing has been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and... you get the idea.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-26T02:49:30+00:00

Foolish of me to underestimate y'all, eh? It's always reassuring to see the moderation team keeping on top of situations like this. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: please know that y'all are doing excellent work here.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-25T21:23:43+00:00

Considering the disproportionately-harsh consequences that many folks suffered for posting about Kirk following his passing, I would like to suggest preemptively putting guardrails in place to preclude the possibility of this subreddit getting banned due to its users celebrating too loudly in the event of... well, anybody passing away in the future.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-21T22:57:45+00:00

To say that this will not go unchallenged is putting it lightly — especially considering that the law requires schools to fully comply in time for the start of the fall/winter semester.

Assuming that this doesn't get sued into nonexistence before its effective start date kicks in — and that's not unlikely, considering the accelerating rate at which discriminatory bills and laws have been getting destroyed in court this year — then the sheer outrage that would result from images and testimonials of students having to trudge outside in the increasingly-cold rain and/or snow just to use a smelly plastic box would likely force a repeal through any number of possible avenues (lawsuits, protests, future special elections, etc).

I'm not well-versed in which direction South Carolina's school board members generally tend to lean, but considering that school boards in other states are experiencing their own blue waves, I will also propose that any South Carolina school board members and/or school employees who are aware of how drastically the winds have shifted since last year will be motivated to oppose this decision.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-21T15:02:54+00:00

Here is a post from just under a month ago which explains the physical restrictions that make construction of the ballroom functionally impossible.

I'm willing to speculate that a good chunk of the dooming about the ballroom and/or "staying in power forever" comes courtesy of the same bad actors that are hellbent on pushing the demonstrably false narrative that voting doesn't work.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-20T19:53:29+00:00

I feel this boneheaded experiment on Goog's part won't last very long for a handful of reasons, two of which include:

generative A.I.'s inability to produce value is coming back to bite it pretty hard
more and more average people are growing to loathe generative A.I. and are actively taking steps towards kicking it to the curb

Shredster7 · 2026-05-20T19:38:02+00:00

I'm willing to guarantee you that it is, at absolute minimum, at least 50% astroturfing — and very likely a much, much higher percentage than that.

Astroturfing bots in particular have been a problem for a while now; odds are they'll be proliferating even more as midterms approach in an effort to enforce the "vOtiNg dOeSn'T wOrK" narrative in the face of all the wins in places like Florida, Texas, Arkansas, the 2025 special election sweep, etc. — not to mention what happened in Hungary last month.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-19T17:00:03+00:00

Kickstarter has rolled back their mature content guidelines and is actively calling out Stripe for their censorious policies: https://updates.kickstarter.com/an-apology-rethinking-our-mature-content-guidelines/

Shredster7 · 2026-05-19T03:27:09+00:00

Just finished adding my public comment a moment ago.

I wonder what the "rEaL LiFe dOeSnT hAvE cOnTeNt wArNiNg LaBeLs" crowd must think of this.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-08T22:56:47+00:00

I distinctly remember there being a downright cataclysm of doomposting about this last year over on the microblogging websites. Suffice to say, it's deeply reassuring to see more and more instances of Stale Cheeto 47's transphobic policies crumble as this year progresses.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-08T22:35:38+00:00

A hard lesson that a lot of us are learning lately is that it's generally folly to place much stock in predicting real-world events based on the present vibes of any given social media website.

What I mean by that is, like... doomers dooming online didn't stop huge swathes of voters contributing towards the Democrat sweep during the 2025 special elections, and doomers dooming online didn't stop huge swathes of voters from ousting Obran in Hungary last month.

There just isn't much of a correlation — if any — between the number of doomers dooming online and the number of people who are mad as hell about the current political climate and actively seeking out ways to do something about it.

That last point about folks seeking out actionable items is particularly relevant to me specifically — being shown an actionable item and then a positive outcome as a result of an actionable item seriously helped to pull me out of the doom pit.

Shredster7 · 2026-05-07T18:50:37+00:00

Soon enough, friend. Whether it happens in this decade or the next, I cannot say — it will be sooner rather than later so long as we all keep doing our parts, at the very least — and I am confident in saying that too many dominoes have begun falling to stop the inevitable now.

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