You’re missing the political viewpoint of 45% of the country if you’re not main-lining right-wing radio and Fox News. No, stop—don’t google what they just said, imagine you just believe it and see where that takes you.

[edit] if you want root-cause for how we got here, look into media ownership laws in the US, and into the Citizens United court case (check out the 5-4 podcast for a fun/horrifying take). Single entities can own unlimited reach of media, which didn’t used to be the case, as recently as the very early 2000s IIRC, and Citizens opened up unlimited corporate spending in elections, with exactly the implications you’d expect for e.g. foreign spending on US elections. Er, I mean, the actual root cause is kinda the system of elections the slave states pushed into the constitution, if you wanna go way back, but the proximate cause of the current political landscape is that.

Note: Running out the door, here is a brief summary that hasn't been deeply considered.

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Example: I casually commented at the gym that I thought Trump would win about a week ago and went into a very long conversation/debate with several people in the gym.

I asked each of them to show me their filter bubbles... once I had explained it to them. 2 Spaniards, 2 Andorran, 1 French guy. The general consensus seemed to be that Trump was a major step back socially and would pollute the environment, not care about climate change, etc.

Their information came from traditional news, Instagram/Tiktok and one from Reddit/HN/X. The only one that was even open to hearing my views during the conversation was the guy who read Reddit/HN/X. Everyone else had their minds made up.

Today at the gym, I had the 2nd part of this conversation with 3 of the guys that were there this morning. The general take away that the guy who read Reddit/HN/X summed up is one of: "Europe has yet to reach "peak tolerance" where it appears the US is already there." This realization was came to due to the issues of immigrants in both Spain/France who don't assimilate which was a hot button issue for them.

I kinda agree with this sentiment. I think that Europe (at least the part I'm in) doesn't seem to have a great immune system for people who abuse the system and generally punishes tall poppies both socially and economically. The US is completely different, tall poppies are celebrated and if you fail or get sick you have no safety net.

For me the difference in world views is best summed up by what people are focusing on. Climate, equality, and tolerance are the key issues I see pushed heavily in Europe... I see this as stemming from the "tall poppy" syndrome that is prevalent in both Spain/France. In the US, people care about other things and are generally focused on things that directly impact them. That is what this election was about. Less focus on perceived injustices or injustices of the past and more focus on making the future better with something different.

Is Europe a great place? For sure... but it has wildly different problems and world views than the US does. I think it is hard to appreciate that until you've bene immersed in both cultures long enough.

In general, I'd just say there is more nuance to everything than our brains can handle. My little mission has been to try and bring back nuance into the conversation. Black and white thinking is lazy. Nuance exists, find it and challenge your filter bubble.

I'm excited to see how this casual gym conversation continues.

I'm Italian and the views I have here (left/center left/center friends/relatives) is that he's a crazy nut job that's gonna hurt europe as well as limiting abortion rights and similar things. I'd say there's not much talk about economy because we don't understand shit in our own economy either, let alone a foreign one... Except that we think the rich are gonna get much richer and he's gonna cut social spending (ie, less Healthcare and similar things) and he's gonna crackdown on immigration. Not expressing our own views on it, that's just what i think it's talked about Trump here

Oh, he's also a misogynistic, convicted felon that spews lies. This is partially our view in my bubble, if I had to say it entirely I would get flagged lol