“We have freedom if speech but we don’t guarantee freedom after speech.”

— Idi Amin

Here’s a sampling of comments reacting to our recent election and state of America.

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“Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency—even if they saw these things negatively—were his fault.

This was the case on two of the biggest issues in the campaign—the 2020 economic crash and demise of reproductive rights, the operative told me. The result: The good pre-Covid economy during the Trump years largely defined undecided voters’ impressions of him, and no message about his first term could persuade them to the contrary.”

Greg Sargent

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“Our nation’s founders, all white, land-owning men, never envisioned democracy for anyone beyond themselves. White women, when they weren’t merely vessels for reproduction, existed to cater to their husbands. And enslaved Black people were viewed not as humans but as livestock.”

Jayant Sharif 

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“We must now realise the truth. It is ugly, it is harrowing, and it should fill every one of us with apprehension. In truth, we should have acknowledged it eight years ago, instead of burying our heads in the sand. But we can, at the very least, acknowledge it now.

America is no longer the ruler of the free world. It is not even currently on the side of the free world. It is on the side of Vladimir Putin and his network of authoritarian gangsters.

More pertinently, America is no longer a reliable security partner. It wouldn’t have mattered if Kamala Harris had won that election on Tuesday. The basic reality would not have changed. Around half the US electorate is prepared to vote for someone who hates the global institutions which make up the post-war order – from the EU, to the World Trade Organisation, the UN, and Nato. Of these, the last is the most acute.”

Sarah Baxter

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We just elected a guy who’s fine with the planet melting down, kids getting shot in school, insurance companies going back to denying coverage for preexisting conditions, and wants to weaponize the federal government in a way dictators do.

What happened?

Democrats thought the 2024 election would be all about Donald Trump’s embrace of fascism and the future of our democracy. And abortion. 

Pretty much all of us thought that. As did most of the news media and pundits.

But now that the exit polls and research is largely in, we’re finding, instead, that the election was all about who’d be best able to “blow up the system.”

By “the system,” voters didn’t mean democracy (although we may get the end of that); they meant the neoliberal system that Ronald Reagan introduced to replace FDR’s New Deal policies in 1981 and was subsequently embraced by Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

In other words, they said, “We want the jobs like we had before Reagan’s neoliberalism, when one person could support a household.”

Thin Hartman

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“People were tired of someone talking in this bullshit, pre-prepared politician lingo,” Joe Rogan, one of America’s most popular podcast hosts, told Trump during an interview a little more than a week before election day. “Even if they didn’t agree with you, they at least knew, whoever that guy is, that’s him. That’s really him.”

Joe Rogan

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“Who knows what the next four years are gonna be like? What we do know is that we’re gonna be governed by a monstrous child surrounded by cowards and grifters. It’s really hard to see a bright side here.”

Steven Colbert

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“In 2016, having covered presidents of both parties as they came and went, I naively believed that even the narcissist Trump would be humbled by the august power and responsibility of being the leader of the free world. That he would grow in the job.

He wasn’t, and he didn’t. We know that now — after his tens of thousands of lies in office, the near-daily chaos, his deadly botched response to the pandemic, undermining of Americans’ faith in elections, flirtations with autocrats, unprecedented refusal to accept loss and peacefully transfer power in 2020, and his absconding with the nation’s top secrets.

In victory, Teleprompter Trump mostly said the right things: “We’re going to try to help our country heal,” he read, eyes shifting left to right to scan prepared remarks. “This will truly be the golden age of America.” (Real Trump ad-libbed the “enemy camp” remarks.)

But we know Trump too well. We are entering not a golden age but a new dark age in America.”

Jackie Calmes

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“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York, in an interview with The New York Times. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports. Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”

Tom Suozzi

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Young liberal women across TikTok and Instagram are discussing and sharing information about the South Korean feminist movement, in which straight women refuse to marry, have children, date or have sex with men.

These women say they are enraged and fed up after a majority of their male counterparts voted for a candidate who was found liable for sexual abuse and whose appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices led to the overturning of national abortion rights protections.”

Harmeet Kaur