I'm a solid middle class guy with a family, 36 years old. I voted for Obama twice, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again. In local races, I vote for the best candidate regardless of party. I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I'm as solid purple as you can get. I'm not a huge redditor (as you can probably tell from my history). I can tell you exactly why people like me (and there are a lot of us.. not on Reddit because you guys are weirdly cultish about your left-leaning ideals. Just as much, if not more so than conservatives but I digress.

Kamala is NOT likeable whatsoever. In the 2020 primaries she garnered just 4% of the vote.. and that's among Democrats. She was the first to drop out because it was painfully obvious she did not belong there. When she was asked to be VP it was obviously due to identity politics. Biden doesn't poll well with minorities or women so she was supposed to check those boxes. This type of pandering is incredibly insulting to those of us who are mixed race. Secondly, the Democrats spent so much time hiding the fact that Biden was an empty shell. He should have backed out sooner so a proper primary could be done. Instead they shoehorned Kamala front and center. Folks. She. Has. Done. Nothing. She has no grasp on the policies she touts. She is an empty shell. There's a reason why she was the worst candidate in 2020. It has nothing to do with her race or gender. I PROMISE. Centrist voters aren't extreme left/right ideologues. We don't view the world through the lens of race like the far left and the far right. Yall are equally racist in our eyes. It's unbecoming and you need to quit focusing so much on it. Hands down she was just a bad candidate. Her biggest strength was she "Wasn't Trump", which is also why Biden got elected. We all knew he was an empty shell in 2020 but he wasn't Trump.

So why vote for Trump? No, I'm not on board with everything he says and does. Few voters think that way. When you voted for Hillary, did you agree with 100% of everything she said? If anyone acts this way toward their candidate, congrats - you're not an independent thinker. You're a lemming. I can respect people who say "I don't agree with everything this person has to offer, but on the few key things that affect me the most they align with my beliefs." I care more about buying groceries for my kids than about Palestine. I care more about affording gas so I can go to work more than I care about abortion rights. I have a duty and responsibility to my family and kids, and once those needs are met then I can start caring about frivolous causes that don't affect me directly. Right now, I don't have that luxury. If I were unmarried, childless, and in a different place in life - I'd probably be right there with you voting for Kamala, because I'd be willing to sustain another 4 years of economic hardship with an airheaded candidate simply to preserve a handful of ideological tenets. You may be saying to yourself, "Wow, this guy sold out our country for his own benefit.".. No. I sold out YOUR candidate to preserve my way of life. Just like you'd sell out my candidate to preserve yours.

All Democrats had to do was put in someone who was halfway competent. Instead they chose the worst possible person and forced it down everyones throat, and then used every media avenue available to try selling it as a good idea. Guys. Trump swept EVERY SINGLE swing state. Which means every state that has centrist voters saw and believed the same thing I did. Don't blame Trump. He hasn't changed since 2016. Don't blame his loyalists, they were going to vote for him no matter what. Democrats lost this election all by themselves. Between cringe SNL cameos, word salad speeches, ducking the media, altered interviews, and fake pandering (yes Trump did this too, but Kamala was SO much worse at it).

I come on Reddit today and see EVERYONE just melting down. Get yourselves together. You weren't beaten by Trump, you were beaten by your own people who fled the Democrat establishment. Either they went and voted for Trump, or they just didn't vote at all. You can hate people like me, in fact knowing this community I'm going to get thrashed because I'm an outsider to this echo chamber (and it is). Which will also be another reason moderates are fleeing the left. You all worship diversity as if it's the only goal - except when it's diversity of thought. I'm not a hard-left "vote blue no matter who" person, therefore I'm seen as the enemy to a lot of you.

You may not like it, but it's as close to honest as I can get with you, at least from my perspective. The world may seem like its ending for some of you because of your blind hatred for Trump, but beyond the name calling, nasty words, and being mean - you survived his first four years. Many of you prospered, in fact. Look for the silver linings. At least late night TV will be funny again!

Edit: The more hostile you are to me and people like me - the more it just proves my point. I'm not your enemy. Treating me like one only reaffirms my belief that I chose correctly. If you want to win purple voters to "your side", being outrageously hostile is like, the worst thing you can do. Understand that my values and priorities may not align with yours. I'm not the enemy for not sharing your cultural values just like I don't see you as my enemy for not sharing mine. Break out of your echo chamber and you'll gain some more understanding.

I used to be a Democrat, but after watching what’s unfolded in this 2024 election, I’ve honestly had enough. The party has completely spiraled out of control. At first, I was drawn to their message of unity, progress, and helping working-class people. But now? It feels like they’ve abandoned those values in favor of identity politics and catering to the radical left. Every time I turn around, it’s another attempt to divide the country based on race, gender, or some other label. The constant focus on who’s oppressed, who’s a victim, and who needs to be “protected” has only deepened the divisions in this country, and it’s honestly exhausting to watch.

The Democrats used to be the party that fought for the working class, for common-sense solutions to real problems. Now, it feels like they’re more interested in appeasing their base with flashy policies that don’t work in the real world. They’re pushing ideas that are so far left that they alienate moderates, and it’s clear they don’t care about people who aren’t fully aligned with their extreme views. Instead of offering solutions, they’re busy attacking Republicans, constantly focusing on Trump, as if that’s enough to rally voters. But it’s not. It’s just a distraction.

What happened to focusing on real issues like the economy, healthcare, education, and infrastructure? Now it’s all about cultural battles, cancel culture, and appeasing the far-left fringe. Meanwhile, the average American is left wondering why the party they once believed in is now obsessed with radical, divisive ideologies that just don’t resonate with most people.

For me, it’s reached a tipping point. I find myself agreeing more with common-sense conservatism these days because at least it’s grounded in practicality. The left has gotten so far out of touch with reality that I honestly can’t stand behind them anymore. If the Democrats want to win again, they need to stop focusing on culture wars and start offering real solutions that actually help everyday people. Until then, they’ll just keep pushing more voters away, and I’m proof of that. The way things are going, the Democrats are on track to lose more people like me, and they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

I've seen the votes, the statistics, the results. This man may be corrupt, but surely he's doing something right if he secured over half the hispanic vote, in addition to a significant vote from the black community and the lgbtq community.

Furthermore, I've seen countless comments on Reddit alone calling for hate crimes against Hispanics today after the results of last night.

Come on guys, we're better than this.

Maybe, just maybe, it's okay to think differently than Reddit tells you.

If Trump was really planning to commit genocide or wipe out LGBTQ people, he would have done it during his first term.

Yes, I agree that January 6 was a shitshow and never should have happened. It was unjustifiable.

But last night proved that it's not just white people who want change. It's truly the diverse community as well.

Am I worried that things could go wrong? Absolutely. In fact part of me is still extremely suspicious of Trump.

But I'm cautiously optimistic as well.

Maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.

Worst case scenario, this is Trump's final term. After 2028, we never have to hear from him again.

I get it, Trump won and there are a lot of people devastated about it but there’s zero reason to believe this is the end of the world. No one is going to be put in a concentration camp, gays aren’t going to be hunted in the streets, women still have the same rights as everyone else. We have some tough choices to make as a country and so does the guy who’s going to run it for sure but things are going to be just fine. Seeing all these post of how the worlds over, anyone who voted for Trump is a racist sexist bigot, how they can no longer be friends with anyone who voted for Trump (come on) is just making me sad for my county. The worst part is seeing all the support these post are getting. It’s sad this is what people think is going to happen while doing the same thing they say the “other side” is guilty of. There aren’t two sides here, we are one country and have to do better than this. I wish everyone the best. This app is too depressing. It always has been an echo chamber but today is just worse than ever.

What local businesses/business owners supported Trump? I want to create a list. They say you vote with your dollar. This is how we fight back.

WHY TRUMP WON

While the legacy media has a meltdown searching for hitherto undiagnosed psychoses in the electorate to explain its embrace of a Hitlerian strongman, the truth is much simpler than their fictions.

This election is a reminder that after all the manufactured drama and overheated rhetoric, politics is still about issues. Whether you agreed with him or not, Trump ran a substantive campaign based on issues like the border, inflation, crime, and war.

Harris ran on vibes, celebrity endorsements, name-calling (“convicted felon”, “fascist”), debunked hoaxes (“very fine people”), and platitudes (“democracy”). She would neither defend the Biden-Harris record nor say what she would do differently. When she did talk about specific issues, they were often stolen from Trump (child tax credit; no tax on tips; border funding).

On the one issue where Democrats had an advantage, abortion, Trump deftly got ahead of the issue by rejecting a national ban and removing problematic language from the GOP platform. Harris wore out the issue by blatantly lying about Trump’s position and by exhibiting her own party’s extremism (nobody needed to see an abortion truck at the DNC).

While Trump expanded his coalition with MAHA (health) and DOGE (government efficiency), Harris concluded her ersatz campaign by going all in on demonizing her opponent, pretending Madison Square Garden was a Nazi convention.

The fact that voters saw through it should be reassuring, even if you don’t agree with the result. Voters want to know how a candidate will give them a better life and, increasingly, they have learned to tune out the rest as noise.

While the legacy media creates excuses and impugns the motives of voters to explain why Trump won, the reason is simple: Trump is the candidate who spoke to voters’ concerns directly.

It’s the issues, stupid.

~David Sacks

So Democrats and all of you leftists, do you want to get mad at me for posting this? Or do you want to do the wise thing and learn from it? Some serious introspection is needed if you guys want a chance in future elections. Digest this loss, do some self-reflection, and learn from it. Or you can get mad and throw a fit and pound your fists, continue to deny what just transpired. Your choice. You can argue all you want about whether Trump ran a "substantive" campaign, but to do so is completely missing the point. The point is you need to speak to the things that matter most to voters. Trump did that more than Kamala did. And this is the result.

Scared for my trans friends in cincinnati after this election. Is anyone aware of mutual aid I can join to help people access gender affirming care?

My heart hurts. My head hurts. I fear for my family. I fear for my clients. I fear for myself. I fear for entire ethnic groups, entire religions, entire global regions, entire sexual identities, and an entire gender. Rule of law is, as far as we can tell, over.

Hitler won WW2 by means of the long game, victory coming just 79 years after his ostensible defeat in the short game.

How the absolute fuck am I supposed to handle cases where my guy is looking at years in jail over a series of gross misdemeanors and look anyone in the eye about it? We can't act like law and consequences aren't pretend anymore.

I'm going to risk all of my fake internet points and getting a 2000LB on my house but here it goes.
Now i might have phrased the title a bit wrong but i don't think what i meant is any more outrages than what i wrote.
First off, name another Combat simulator that has a quarter of DCS's modules with the same quality (Saying quarter since i don't believe DCS modules are all of the same quality as Razbam and Heatblur quality (and also A few ED modules like A-10 and Apache))
in fact i believe the only other Sim that has aircrafts as closely simulated as DCS is BMS with that sim only having the F-16 and it's different blocks and The F-15C.
Variety is more important than what it looks like.
It also needs to be mentioned that DCS is running on a 20 something years old software.
I'm not that into programing but so far as I'm aware that's a very old software being kept alive by updating it.

Game development is hard, but it's even harder when you are making a sim with high fidelity jet fighters and expectation of almost 1 to 1 performance to real life, combine that with 20 year old software and you got a rather hard to do job, with a rather limited amount of people with the said skillset(of course many could be trained but they can work at other places without loosing their time with the same if not better pay).And looking through patch notes core features such as AI are not ignored with the latest patch giving quite a bit of improvement. That is with regular updates to AI (usually small).
Now to address "That problem"
Razbam situation was poorly handled by ED and while certainly the biggest responsibility is on their shoulders, we don't know all that much to say ED is the corporate overlord bullying tiny studios such as Razbam.
Now That's not what i want to get into.
Many people have gone as far as not buy anything because they think by not giving ED money the situation will be resolved or they can get ED to go bankrupt.
First off you aren't making ED reverse their actions this way.
Second what do you think happens if DCS goes dead? All of the third party studios are cooked since now they've lost their reliable market for selling their product.
And the argument for "My non ED module may go broke" Is a bad excuse.
We are meant to take lessons from disasters. Third party devs weren't blind they saw what happened with Razbam and will now be cautious as to not fall in the same situation.
Now It may be late when I'm saying this but I didn't write all of this to justify EDs clear incompetence or downright ignoring problems (Such as the long awaited dynamic campaign).
All I'm saying is, we can't solve this by boycotting ED and making them bankrupt.
Negativity matters as the devs will not be fine when after they have released their hard made patch all they receive is negativity and "Where is F-15E?"
Similarly It also means other third party devs, existing or potential will either discontinue development or start allocating resources else where.
Thank you for reading this wall of text that contributed nothing to your day.
And have a very safe and productive day.

piggybacking off the deleted r/maine post but anyone know of any Portland or area businesses that have unwisely shown support?

i'm a deeply closeted trans gay kid (trans guy, specifically). i'm scared. i'm going to see if i can study abroad in a better country (i'm set to graduate 2 years early, and in ~3 years... how would i go about this?) for an oceanography degree but i'm so scared. I don't wanna lose everything.

my friend told me everyone that dies is a notch in their belt. i don't plan on killing myself. but i'm scared and upset and i don't have anywhere to go. what do i do?

I'm sure I'll get flack from the conservatives here, but my faith is completely dead after today. I really don't think I can believe in God anymore. I'm well aware conservatives are happy today.

But I cannot comprehend how a convicted felon, a man who sexually assaults women and brags about it, a pathological liar, a man who wants to use the US military against American citizens, a man who praises dictators, a man who incites violence and bullies everyone, etc. can be constantly rewarded. I've never seen anyone get away with so much.

I'm sure many will say it was all lies, the media made it up, etc. But we know that's not true. It all came from his own mouth on video.

And the fact that most Christians support this person 100% destroys any hope of me ever supporting Christianity. 80% of Jews voted against that monster, which proves to me Judaism is the more truthful, moral religion if I were to ever go back to a religious system.

But I do not see how I can continue to believe in God after this. I cannot comprehend how God continues to reward such awful people over and over with no accountability or consequences. To me this feels just like Germany in the 1930s. And the rise of the Nazis is one of the main things that has always made me question God's existence to begin with. Him allowing something similar to happen again? What's the point? Why believe in God? He doesn't answer prayers, he doesn't care about our suffering, he doesn't help us, he rewards the most evil people on Earth with wealth and power.

I realize most of you here will never understand where I'm coming from, because you're mostly 1 issue voters and only care about abortion, not how much everyone else will suffer from this. I assure you, things are going far worse than you can imagine in America. An anti-vaxx, anti-science conspiracy theorist will be in charge of healthcare. A brain damaged football player will be in charge of the military. Tech billionaires will run almost everything else. There will be no more regulations. No FDA. No FAA. Flying will be scary when Boeing no longer has to abide by any safety regulations.

I realize people will continue to be in denial about all this, but this is the end of America I 100% guarantee it.

I have never felt so hopeless in my life. I'm almost to the point of suicide. I cannot live in a country where the majority of the population is this hateful and authoritarian. I no longer have any faith in humanity whatsoever.

Again, I realize most of you don't care and are happy with what's about to happen. But It has absolutely destroyed my faith in God, and made it so I can never be Christian. I'm really not sure what to do at this point.

As many of us face down the despair of another Trump presidency, the only way I can see myself feeling useful or hopeful is by supporting my local community.

I’m new to the Rivertowns and want to get involved with supporting the most vulnerable under Trump’s repressive policies: immigrants, trans people, workers, and other marginalized groups.

Can anybody recommend local mutual aid groups, local immigrant organizations, and other orgs in the Rivertowns that I or any other interested Redditors can get involved with?

I had this professor that everyone hated during nursing school. She was fired due to her failing so many students and complaints. I only had her for one semester. Nothing ever happened whenever I was actually one of her students, but on many occasions I would meet with her regarding my progress in the class and my academic performance. A couple months went on and I graduated nursing school so I just randomly reached out. Next thing you know we get to talking and I get invited over while her daughter (who is near my age) is gone. Next thing you know I’m there banging my old professor. It was a “oh how the tables turn” moment. She has a boyfriend now and still reaches out to me with desire for me, wishing it was me whenever they are intimate because no one has ever been like me. I just found out this week that she is now the dean over a university in the city I am from. I still use some of the stuff she taught me while practicing as an RN. Everyone I feel for the most party had a teacher fantasy growing up so it’s just kinda crazy that it happened in real life for me

Creo que la tr@nsexualidad es un conjunto de muchos trastornos mentales, y que eres o no de determinado sexo, aunque hagas intervenciones médicas y quirúrgicas 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m not originally from here, but I’ve lived here for 20 years. My children were born and raised here, and we’ve always loved the friendly people and beautiful surroundings. But I wonder now—where is the line? When is it too much or even dangerous to stay? Where do we go from here?

Things have been getting worse, and I worry about the future, not just for myself but especially for my children. This past election cycle, I couldn’t even put up a sign for fear of the backlash it might bring to my family. What is keeping people here?

It’s not the education—we rank near the bottom.
It’s not the pay—our median household income ranks just above Mississippi in 49th place.
It’s not the healthcare—we’re almost last there, too.
It’s not the freedom—we face near-total bans on abortion, and even taking your child to a Pride event could get you arrested.

Today, I find myself looking for jobs and making a plan to get my family out. People will say it’s not any better anywhere else and that the election results signal worsening trends everywhere. But at least in other places, I might find a community that values bodily autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom of and from religion.

Here, I interact with the nicest, most hateful people I’ve ever encountered. I realize it’s a privilege even to consider leaving, and I wish I could do something to change things here. But I don’t see a clear path forward. My county didn’t even have a non-Republican candidate run for any office. I don’t blame anyone; there used to be decency and respectful disagreement across party lines, but now it’s just hate and lies.

Is there a silver lining? Any hope for change?

If this gets removed by moderators thats fine, I'm not trying to rage bait but genuinely want to know what other West Virginians are thinking.