Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Psyched! He's closing the Department of Education in Washignton (sic) DC", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster, who managed to misspell the name of our country's capital city, very excitedly posted a video of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump saying that he would "close down" the U.S. Department of Education. Trump's plan is to send the Department's functions back to the states. While my predictive powers have been shown wanting recently, I am fairly confident in suggesting that the next several years will feature a torrent of complaints about leopards eating faces from those who voted for the leopards eating faces party. In fact, I expect that this cliché will be used so often in coming years that, if you are not sick of hearing it already, you will be soon. Nowhere is that more likely than in the event that Trump is actually successful in shuttering the Department of Education. It is pretty clear from the get-go that most MAGAs have no idea what the department actually does. Nor do they understand the right-wing motives for getting rid of it. What they know is that their cult leader supports it and, therefore, it must be good. That's enough to provoke this moment of near ecstasy from the original poster. As several posters point out, Trump doesn't actually have the power to shut down the department. That would require Congressional legislation. With a Republican majority in the Senate and a probable majority in the House, such legislation might be possible. However, given the Senate's filibuster and the very slight majority House Republicans are likely to have, passing any controversial legislation could be a struggle. As a result, MAGAs may be saved from themselves. But, in the case that they are not, they will likely be surprised by the results. Some of the MAGA posters in this thread believe that there is a national school curriculum that the Department of Education oversees. Of course, no such curriculum exists. Similarly, many of the MAGAs are convinced that it is this national curriculum that has resulted in "woke" education such as teaching about LGBTQ issues. They believe that with authority over education returned to the states, curriculums will return to emphasizing the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. What is more likely, however, is that there will be fragmentation as states take different paths. Based on what we have seen so far, Republican states, far from returning to the basics, will focus on putting religion, specifically Christianity, into the classroom. Oklahoma, for instance, has already decreed that every classroom must have a Bible. By sheer coincidence, the only Bible that meets the state's requirements is the one sold by Trump. Many of the liberal posters warn that another result will be to weaken, if not destroy completely, public education. They suggest that some states will favor vouchers and charter schools — including those run by for-profit organizations — instead of traditional public schools. The biggest fear cited by posters is the impact on special education. Currently, funding for special education programs comes from the Department of Education. If that funding goes away, states will need to fund such programs themselves. Poor states, which tend to be Republican states, will likely be hit harder than states with more money. This highlights why liberals should be cautious about taking pleasure in seeing MAGAs "finding out". As in this case, where the impact would likely fall on kids with special needs in red states, the victims of MAGA policies will tend to be powerless innocents.

The next most active thread was also posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "40% of women under 30 voted for Trump", the original poster suggests that women under 30 should have been obvious Vice President Kamala Harris voters. However, 40% of them voted for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. This is up from the 33% that voted for him in 2020. The original poster wonders what the explanation is for this shift towards Trump. Analysis of the motivations of voters during this election cycle will be critical for preparing for future elections and interesting simply from an academic point of view. However, the data currently available is preliminary, and it will take time to gather the sort of detailed data necessary to inform this sort of discussion. As a result, most of the responses are based on anecdotes, personal experience, or simply "vibes". It is really difficult to know which posts accurately explain why young women voted the way they did and which posts are misses. Presumably, young women had a number of reasons for their votes, and there is not a single succinct answer. One of the threads that I discussed yesterday was about the support for Trump among working-class women. There is considerable overlap between that thread and this one. Posters cite inflation and the economy as a reason young women might have voted for Trump. Others argue that it is cultural issues such as transgender rights (a topic that comes up in almost every thread these days despite my efforts to combat the trend). Other posters blame the sources of information upon which they believe young women rely. "Most don’t read articles or books, instead getting their views and news from quick snippets on one of the major social media platforms," writes one poster. Other posters suggest that young women were put off by Harris' position regarding Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Other posters suggested that was a marginal issue and question why it would encourage votes for Trump instead of a third party in any case. One poster claimed that Trump-voting young men are generally better looking and more masculine than Harris-voting men. Young women, therefore, are attracted to the Trump supporters and that allegedly influenced their vote. The same poster also said that young women were turned off by vaccine mandates. Another poster brought up the same phenomenon that I noted in my post yesterday. As she explains it, "I don't know how we change the shift where Republicans can say and do anything they want and people will still vote for them even if they don't agree with everything that they stand for 100%. But by God if a Democrat takes a position that you are even lukewarm about, they lose votes and never get them back..". Whether this rule applies to all Democrats or just Kamala Harris is a question to which I don't know the answer, but it does seem very real.

Yesterday's next most active thread was titled, "If you are a mistress, do you feel ANY guilt?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The entire text of the original poster's post was, "Or do you just not care AT all???" As far as I could tell, the original poster only responded one time to this thread, so her contribution was about as minimal as could be. Other posters, however, happily took up the slack. DCUM apparently has a significant number of women who are involved with married men as well as an equally significant, if not more so, number of women whose husbands have cheated on them. Put the two groups together as this thread did, and you end up with one of the most active threads of the day. There is really nothing in this thread that hasn't been posted a hundred times before. But, I guess there could be some new users who haven't been repeatedly exposed to similar posts. Some of the "other women" do feel guilty and wish that the relationships they are in had never started. But, they seem helpless to end things. Others feel no guilt whatsoever. This is especially true among those women who are single. In their view, they are doing nothing wrong. Rather, it is the married men who are the ones who are cheating. Another woman argued that a husband wouldn't be cheating if his wife had treated him well. Similarly, a poster expressed no remorse saying that her affair partner was only in his marriage for the kids and had no feelings for his wife. Another woman who is married and having an affair with a married man says that she feels no guilt. The arrangement works for her. While the thread is directed at "mistresses", there are far more posts from others. Both men and women posters attempt to explain the thinking of the affair partners. According to a male poster, the women fool themselves into thinking that they have nothing to do with any problems the affair might cause the man's family. He also says that they irrationally don't think that a guy with a history of cheating will cheat on them. A woman poster says that affair partners don't understand that they are almost always disposable. The men who get involved with them have no intention of leaving their families, and once the excitement of the affair ends, they move on. Several posters objected to wives who have been cheated on blaming the affair partner. They were urged to blame their cheating spouse instead. This thread eventually transitioned into a discussion of affairs in general. Both male and female posters described having affairs, sometimes several. Very few seemed to feel any guilt. There were several justifications offered for their behavior, and a frequent theme was that they had no interest in leaving their marriages. In many cases, they actually described their marriages as good and said that they love their spouses. They didn't see any contradiction between this and having an affair. Another thing that is apparent in this thread is that not all affairs are the same. Some have lasted for years. Others were brief encounters. One poster describes a relationship that seems to be quite open, involving spending Christmas and Valentine's Day together and travelling internationally for her birthday. Needless to say, many posters are outraged by the women who are having affairs and heap considerable scorn on them.

The final thread that I will discuss today was another one posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Legal immigrant status", the original poster says that she has been a naturalized citizen since she was two years old and is worried that her citizenship might be taken away as a result of policies being promoted by Stephen Miller. A recurring theme in recent DCUM discussions is posters fearing the worst from President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump and Trump supporters rushing to assure everyone that Trump will never do whatever is causing concern. The Trump supporters often appear to be uninformed about what Trump has said that he will do, or indeed, about what he has already done. As such, many posters criticize the original poster for having an unreasonable fear and being overly dramatic. Several encourage the original poster to get better news sources. This is ironic because it is exactly the posters offering such advice who seem the least informed. What can be said so far is that Trump has announced that Tom Homan will be the "border czar" and responsible for deportations. Homan was recently asked about family separations and said that if families want to stay together, they can all be deported at once (including U.S. citizen spouses and children). During Trump's first administration, family separations at the border received a lot of attention. While they received less publicity, there were also separations caused by deportations. For instance, Jorge Garcia came to the U.S. when he was 10 and lived here for 30 years. He married an U.S. citizen and they had two children. Garcia had no criminal record and had been trying to obtain legal status but in November 2017 Trump's immigration officials ordered him deported. Trump defenders claim that only undocumented residents with criminal records will be targeted for deportations. However, Garcia's case shows that a criminal record is not required. Still, Trump apologists say, Garcia was not a legal resident, and the original poster has citizenship. This ignores a recent tweet by Stephen Miller saying that, "Yes. We started a new denaturalization project under Trump. In 2025, expect it to be turbocharged." To this, Trump apologists say that only criminals or those who lied on their citizenship applications risk having their citizenship stripped from them. But if, as Trump promises, legal protections are reduced, it will be harder for naturalized citizens to defend themselves against such charges. Moreover, accusations may be frivolous. For instance, as one poster points out, Trump says he will deport Hamas supporters. But what constitutes a "Hamas supporter"? Is simply protesting Israel's war in Gaza enough? Due to fear of coming up on Trump's radar, naturalized citizens may be less willing to risk protesting or otherwise exercising their rights. This is one means of suppressing dissent. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are unlikely to face such risks. For instance, Elon Musk has been accused of violating his visa status by coming to the U.S. on a student visa but then, rather than attending university, working. This is exactly the scenario that might cause someone to be denaturalized. However, I suspect that Musk faces little risk due to his support for Trump. Several posters advise the original poster to begin making a plan "just in case". It is better to be prepared unnecessarily, they argue, than to be surprised and have no options.