this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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Seems a lot of people have only seen his tattoo or heard about his reddit comments. I encourage you to watch some of his long form interviews or campaign events. The guy is demanding real change from the neoliberal norm and so threatens their sovereignty over the party, I'd be surprised if they ever endorse him.
Whether or not you're from Maine, if all you've seen is his controversies then you're in a specific news echo chamber that does not want to share his policies.
remember, the tea party was a hostile take over of the GOP. The only way the old democrats go down is with a similar hostile take over.
The Tea Party was not "grass roots". It was 100% AstroTurf. They were created by Republican strategists and funded by conservative donors.
A hostile takeover backed by all the right wing media. The tea party was working but grass roots. The established Republicans might have regretted it but nothing about the tea party was organic except the absolute nutters that got elected.
Trump took over the GOP too. Right wing media was initially against him. You can reductively dismiss this as him still being on the side capital , but Trump's trade policy is NOT what rich people wanted in general or else the US wouldn't have championed free trade for the last 70 years.
More to the point, building a national party with enough recognition to actually win is extremely difficult. Hijacking the Democratic party and giving people a reason to vote for it, difficult though it may be, is far easier.
MAGA was a hostile takeover but the tea party wasn't the grass roots effort it was portrayed as.
A lot of people really can’t take nuance in scandals and individual negative attributes. There’s things about ME that suck that I’m glad don’t get exposed online. Might come up if I run for office, which I’ll have to deal with.
I can honestly say until Graham, I had no idea there was a format of the pirate skull-and-bones symbol that had direct Nazi connections. I respect those who know the details of history better than me.
It'd be rough for me if I ran for major office no doubt.
Specifically about the tattoo: I grew up orthodox Jewish and went to school (a yeshiva) across the street from a Holocaust museum and used to go there all the time. I did not know what the toten kopf was until Graham Platner got called out in it. I'm also into tattoo culture and have come close to getting a similar style skull because it was cool and piratey.
It also doesn’t help there are at least two different totenkopf’s. The older Prussian cavalry badge, which has many variants, and the SS one designed specifically for them.
I get it... And if I lived there and had to vote I would absolutely do more thinking on it, but my view from afar is why can't we just find people to run with these campaign platforms who don't have Nazi tattoos? It isn't that hard.
I think one of the issues is, to have these people that grow up into roles where they choose to shoulder a lot of responsibility, see the world's faults, and act beyond their station to resolve it...you kind of need a complex character for that. Someone who didn't just grow up in a poor environment, saying no to every opportunity (because they're all offered by evil crooks) to finally come out as a competent legislator with big social media presence.
We're very lucky to have waitresses turned Senator like AOC, but those perfect, morally unblemished stories of zero to hero are hard to come by. Hence why a lot of noir stories about a detective getting justice for the marginalized (anyone playing Mouse, PI?) will emphasize how morally grey they act. A lot of people are working to fight fascism because they want to recognize how they've unknowingly contributed to it (not necessarily by voting for Trump) and want to amend their mistakes.
To give an example: I haven't contributed to fascism. I also don't personally know people hurt by it. While I consider it a civic duty to fight, at times I struggle to develop motivation to do risky, above-and-beyond actions that may take up a large part of my day for low gains. That might be different for someone who's either been hit hard by it, or feels direct responsibility for it, eg by joining the army.
Hah! I've FOUND you! I don't know how long you've been hiding in 2026, but I've ratted you out, you time-traveling bastard! They always slip up eventually... 🤣
Context matters a lot. He got the tattoo with military buddies in the early 2000s, in Romania.
It's not very hard to imagine a group of drunk 20 yesr old men picking a skull tattoo because it "looks badass". There was almost certainly a language barrier with the tattoo artist and back then we didn't all have computers in our pockets to access all the world's information.
Really not that hard to belive they saw a skull as a skull.
Holy shit his John Stewart interview. Wow.
People can't afford to vote without doing research anymore. I hope we've learned that lesson at least.
<Narrator, to audience>: "They Hadn't."
Nah, don't forget he gleefully went to kill brown people in an armed invasion. Fuck that sociopathic sicko.
Your purity testing guarantees that only the worst human beings will ever be elected to office. When you demand saints, you don't get saints. You just get psychopaths pretending to be saints.
Yeah I know a ton of people that joined in 2001 after 9/11 to protect the US. Their subsequent military experience radicalized them against the military complex and American exceptionalism.
Didn't radicalize him at all - he did several tours and keeps bringing it up as something positive.
Like I said, typical sociopath. He'll say anything to get you to listen, pretending he's left wing he's made a huge platform for himself. Don't fall for it.
Either you're right and he hasn't changed and is lying for votes.
Or he has changed and actually is going to implement his platform.
Either way getting Collins out of office is the better outcome. If he actually follows his platform that's even better.
I'm leaning towards he intends to actually follow his platform based on how poorly the DNC is reacting to his primary win.
You're either trying to ragebait or haven't actually looked into him and his history at all. Either way you're wrong, its very obvious he is not and never has been sociopath.
Several times in fact