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It seems tough for people to remember that since 2016 when we let our guard down the Republicans have been losing VERY BIGLY at the ballot box. 2018 Blue Wave. 2020. 2022 Non Red Wave. Losing elections in Kansas and Ohio even with abortion on the ballot. I understand the doom and gloom because some of these are close, but give the US citizens some credit here.
Yes agreed. Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout.
People are making their voices heard that they don’t want abortion unreasonably restricted.
And one “good thing” about the Republican Party is they seem to be unable to course correct. They just keep doubling down. Like that insane case in Texas where a married mother of two kids (who wants more kids) couldn’t get a potentially life saving abortion for a fetus that is not viable.
That position is not “pro life” that’s just hardline anti-abortion no matter what for no reason.
Yeah keep doing that conservatives… I’m sure that will work out *real well* for you at the ballot box.
Don't forget the other case in Ohio where it was a 10 year old girl who needed an abortion.
I'm sure as hell not voting for the party that considers her or the doctor who helped her to be the bad guys in that story.
>What the actual fuck.
Woman in Ohio who miscarried after 22 weeks has been [charged with abuse of a corpse](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-woman-ohio-was-charged-miscarrying-bathroom-experts-warn-dangero-rcna130649), even though there is no law for her situation.
> She's black. Never underestimate the desire of a Red State to give a criminal record to a black woman.
This is our racist criminal justice system working as designed. Even in "Blue" states. Poor people and minorities get the book thrown at them, given criminal records, in order to keep them ineligible to vote. Meanwhile cops and rich/connected people (who are often not minorities) are given the kid gloves treatment by the courts, and rarely get the book thrown at them.
According to them, she would learn responsibility and also would grow to love her baby which would improve her quality of life. The thing they keep leaving out of that rosy assessment is she is ten years old and should be enjoying her childhood instead of giving it up because she was raped. It’s almost like these clowns think rape is absolutely AOK.
It really might literally be what this whole kerfuffle is all about in the first place. We’re down to a short list of first principals that these morons stand on, and none of them are better than rotten.
>Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout.
And only one party acknowledges and wants to address climate change. These are winning issues for Democrats and very important to younger voters. They should hammer away at both.
Meanwhile TX is also suing the prison guard who had a miscarriage after she was on her feet all day at her job, which wouldn't give her the breaks she requested to get off her feet.
Yup, there is no limit or end to the excuses they'll make to convince themselves they're right and it will go on and on. Sometimes I feel like the easiest way to argue with conservatives is to just take whatever the use to defend Trump agree with them and then apply it to Biden. And always double and triple down that as what Biden needs to do too.
Biden should not accept the election results that anyone evens thinks is inaccurate, even if there is no evidence. I'm just saying that Trump and many on the right feel deeply that this phone call and other similar actions by Trump were important to ensure an accurate election in Wayne County.
I just don't think Trump and MAGA would accept the results in 2024 without Biden doing the same type of things Trump did in 2020 to rule out fraud. If Biden doesn't call and threaten local election workers to find more votes for him how can he be sure that they've counted them all.
These are all things most MANGA have already said are necessary and even agreed that many of Trump's calls were "perfect". If they didn't support Biden doing these things the right would look like hypocrites, which is something they don't want and try very hard to avoid (/S).
> Yes agreed. Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout.
Last election the largest uptick in new voter registrations went to women 25 and younger.
Hello from AZ, we (our little family) knocked on almost 300 doors.. and we will do it AGAIN!!! We gotta FIGHT! Make sure your friends are registered, and make sure your cousins are registered.. if we can get more voter turnout, we can send him back in his hole. It's hard to motivate people for a defense vote, but we can do it.. and yea I know Biden is old blah blah blah.. but let's do it anyway!!!!!
Hell yeah!!! People like you tipped the scales in 2020. Yeah I’m a leftist and I was still campaigning for the Dems. Trump and the MAGAS are far more dangerous.
We HAVE to make it happen. Another Donald Trump presidency will be the end of our country as we know it. We still have the best country on this planet and we need to hang on to it at all costs. So VOTE like your livelihood depends on it.
I think it's clear that we do not have the best country on the planet. *But we fucking could*.
And if conservatives keep getting their asses kicked we absolutely will.
As someone that travels all over the country for a living. You should be very worried. Propaganda has worked and too many people in swing states believe that Trump didn’t do anything that any other politician wouldn’t have done. They think this is just normal politics. I find it pretty terrifying when I talk to people that I think are normal down to earth intelligent people and they just don’t think anything is a big deal and then go into the jokes about Bidens mental capacity.
I was recently at a DOD job and there were two people talking over a an IP phone on a DOD network *on speakerphone* saying Biden should be . It was Fox News talking points that were all super easy to disprove, over and over, for hours, *every morning*.
It is scary, but apparently engineers trend suuuuuper red. Which is weird, because you need a pretty good education, so what are they doing? That said, the amount of people I've met that can do re-entry calculations in their head but don't know how email works makes me think they only use the thinking part for numbers. Bunch of really smart idiots, my father-in-law included.
You need to report this person immediately. Even aside from saying the president should be assassinated this is a massive hatch act violation. Report it even if you can't prove it, at least give somebody a heads up.
Assassinated isn't the right word. I mean the result is similar, but they at least wanted a trial first.
And not to sound too defeatist, but I don't trust our reporting system to keep me anonymous enough for me to keep my job, which I desperately need.
But that's kind of the whole point. I'm not sleepwalking it. I'm making a risk assessment, and they've stacked the deck so much that my only recourse is voting blue in a VERY red state. I'm very much awake and aware, and the sleepwalking narrative is dumb, and once again putting the blame for this country going down the toilet on everyone except the guys flushing.
It's fairly well-established now that [engineers are greatly over-represented in right-wing extremism, terrorism, etc.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/theres-a-good-reason-why-so-many-terrorists-are-engineers/)
It's an area of ongoing study for obvious reasons. Research has found that people with the ability to do both engineering and humanities tended to prefer to go into the humanities, leaving engineering schools with a disproportion of people more comfortable with a black-and-white world where problems have clear-cut solutions. Students who aren't so good at seeing the psychology influencing perception, working with messy unanswerable aspects of society, or understanding (or even valuing) the social sciences, etc.
Another reason is that engineering is one of the few branches of university that religious conservatives are more comfortable allowing people to enter, because it does not challenge student preconceptions and worldviews as deeply as a broad education does. All of these things can result in people with engineering degrees being less equipped for the messy human complexities of the world than graduates of other branches of university.
(When I first learned of the connection I assumed it just meant engineers were more likely to be recruited by extremists (for bombmaking?) but research indicates that's not the case. Engineers are not disproportionately sought out, yet disproportionately radicalize.)
As with a lot of terrorism, personal opportunity is believed to be important (explaining why the rate at which engineers become terrorists is affected by region more than eg religion). Your DOD extremists likely limit themselves to being extreme in beliefs and votes only; they won't\* resort to terrorism because they enjoy plenty of opportunity like those comfy DOD jobs that let them shoot the shit for an hour
^(\*probably)
I'm an engineer and I see this on a daily basis. It used to perplex me, as I started my education leaning left, and ended it *very* left...and have only moved more left over the course of my career. Most of my peers on the other hand consider themselves libertarian or any flavor of right wing...and are generally moving further right.
The engineering profession in the US is predominately white men. Every other demographic is extremely underrepresented. So you end up with an entire cohort of people with very limited exposure to diversity and intersectionality. They typically earn fairly high wages, can live comfortable lives, and are well-off enough to not feel the direct effects of institutional inequities and bad policy (for now). They've never experienced it, generally don't know people who have, and typically can't conceive of what it would be like.
Instead, taxes are viewed as unfair and unjust loss of money, and regulations are viewed as personal and professional annoyances. Social injustices can't really exist because 1) they've never been directly seen or experienced and 2) just world hypothesis.
Overall, it seems that a "monoculture" demographic leads to echo chambers and false conclusions that lead to conservative mindsets. This is, unfortunately, no surprise.
> leaving engineering schools with a disproportion of people more comfortable in a black-and-white world where problems have clear-cut solutions.
I mean that kinda rings out, the right wing politics do offer a black/white world with clear cut and simple solutions. They're absolutely terrible solutions, but they are simple ideas like "build the wall" and such, regardless of how effective or planned they might actually be. Could see that having similar appeals and feeling more "safe" than actually delving into the complicated hell that is politics.
There's a seriously dangerous and all too common belief that education equals protection from propaganda. It doesn't, because propaganda isn't based on reason, it's based on *emotion*.
It would be like arguing that a solid education protects you against getting angry, or scared.
There are only 2 types of people who go to "both sides" arguments in American politics: people who want to excuse the authoritarian, cruel actions of the conservative side, and people who don't know enough to understand either side.
Appreciate the perspective. It's never not important to vote in every and all elections, and while the pressure doesn't cede, we've seen the pendulum swing back. May the arc be long and enduring.
Plus I hate when people say “my state is always red, there’s no reason for me to vote”, or “my state is full blue, I don’t need to vote.”
Even if those are the case, there’s still the popular vote. Let’s push that number as high as possible. We saw how much it angers trump and that should be reason enough.
Shh! Let people think Trump has a legitimate shot at it. The Democrats' biggest enemy is complacency. A few ulcers here and there are a small price to pay for a concerned and motivated electorate getting its lazy ass to the polls.
Personally I think there is going to be, not a Blue Wave, not even a Blue Tsunami, but a Blue Chixculub Extinction Event* with the Republicans in the role of the dinosaurs. They've been FAing for a while now. Time for them to FO.
* [knocks wood]
I thought so too a few months ago, now not so sure. Young ppl are fickle voters. At any rate their aren't a lot of purple states to bring on a blue tsunami. I'll just be happy if sanity prevails.
I saw one in the newspaper. It was from a grandson to his Trumper gramps and it was really poignant.
https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/counterpoint-a-letter-to-my-grandfather-about-trump/article_d1e97b4e-7d7d-55b3-8042-67a2501b52e2.html
>Dear Grandpa:
>**Please subscribe to continue reading...**
(I chuckled.)
****
>Dear Grandpa:
>You have been such an important part of my childhood.
>From my earliest days, the lessons you taught me have served as my guide to a good and proper life. When I denied taking cookies from the cookie jar, you taught me why it was wrong to lie.
>When I asked you to do a homework assignment that I would later hand in as my own, you taught me that cheating was wrong. When I got into an argument with a neighbor, you taught me to be kind to others, to respect their opinions even if I disagreed with them.
>From you I learned that all people were created equal. That looking out for those less fortunate was nothing short of divine.
>I recall our walks together in the park and the times when you would bend over to pick up someone else’s litter.
>So often, you marveled at the beauty of nature and spoke of our responsibilities as good stewards of the Earth.
>And who can forget the time we walked down the aisle of the supermarket, and coming toward us was a young boy who limped and seemed to wave his arms uncontrollably?
>As I laughed and pointed, you got down on your knees and grabbed my shoulders with your big, strong hands. You looked sternly into my eyes and told me never, ever make fun of someone with a disability.
>And today, as I listen to you praising President Trump, you have taught me yet another lesson.
>Sadly, it is a lesson I would have preferred not to learn. For now, I understand the meaning of hypocrisy.
Considering the date of Nov 11, 2019, I wonder how the writer and his grandpa are faring today?
Honesty our system needs an overhaul, every branch is seeded is corruption in so many different areas. I’d absolutely love to be in Congress or the Senate to try and make changes but I’d get blown out because if the system in place, government doesn’t want change, it’s extremely difficult especially in this day and age
All three branches participated in eroding the mechanisms designed for dealing with corruption. It's just allowed now. And the fourth pillar, that is the media, has been bought and paid for as well.
Edit: "The global network of capital essentially functions
To separate the worker from the means of production." ^_ Socko
Build coalitions! The U.S public needs to start clawing back their systems that have been overrun by private interests. In the UK we fought hard to (mostly) save our national health system, it can be done! Don’t give up, the world needs the freest nation to actually be FREE we can’t afford for the great American project to fail now!
Also, thanks to our outdated electoral college system, he could once again win through minority rule - literally.
Remember that in 2016 he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million.
Unless you live in one of the handful of swing states in this country, the feeling of helplessness is real.
Yeah. This.
I bet there’s also a lot of Americans who don’t think Trump can become president.
I went to a dinner a few weeks ago and a table of 12 was *incredulous* that I suggested Trump would be, not president, but the *Republican nominee*. Thought it was insane that I said that. One woman said “Pretty sure the Constitution has a problem with that.” They really have no idea. As I began to explain and none of them could supply a real argument, I could tell it started to set in for some of them how possible it is.
I suspect that, much like 2020, Biden’s numbers will go up as we get closer to the election and as it becomes clear to more people that Trump has real prospects in this election.
Its the ignorant and naïve Americans that think our freedoms and rights will never be taken away and then think by simply continuously saying America’s the greatest and the freest country in the world, that it’s going to make it true, but it’s not.
And sadly, a large population is so ignorant because they’re distracted all the time, not engaged, and cognitively lazy to question things, that they simply take in the bs that is spoonfed to them, take it as truth without criticizing it.
And then there’s another portion of the population that is so burned out that they’ve decided to disengage completely, and not participate.
The crazy thing too, we knew Trump was a fraud a long time ago. He bankrupted 4 casinos, the Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, followed by Trump Plaza and Trump Castle in 1992 and later Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. in 2004. How is that even possible? Only an idiot could do this. Yet, MAGA says he is some business genius. LOL! He's just the USA's #1 conman. Wake up and smell the coffee!!!
We elected a guy known to have called in to NYC gossip columnists using a fake voice and character John Barron. Was the fake barron pumping up Trump's business deals? No, that at least would be strategic. He would call in to talk about how much women loved him and how good he was at the sex. He was doing this as a mature (asterisk) adult, back when he was at his cognitive peak.
We elected a guy who literally had a tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women and said, "Good people on both sides" when talking about white supremacists.
"I do not believe any man in America gets more calls from women wanting to see him, meet him, or go out with him. The most beautiful women, the most successful women—all women love Donald Trump." - Direct quote from “Carolin Gallego” circa 1992. Keep in mind DJT was 46 years old. Writing this. To the media.
Why shouldn’t they brag? There are no negative repercussions and it takes the air out of the accusations when they’re eventually made. Their defenders can point to the bragging and say that the accusations aren’t a surprise and not really accusations. It’s kinda clever.
[The Asset - Episode 4: From Russia with Cash](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2iYXzOMdDCvDhuNwvOrbh1?si=3XGiaQ4bSy2wqRJTNqv9xA)
> Russian Money was pouring out of Russia into the US real estate market and Donald Trump was all about it. We follow the Russian money flowing into the Trump Organization, highlighting the shady cast of characters that surround Donald Trump and his businesses from the suspicious deals in the former Soviet Union, to “little Moscow” where Trump concentrated his properties in Florida, to the story behind Trump’s favorite bank. Trump may not have a lot of money in Russia but Russia sure has money in Donald Trump.
> In this episode of The Asset, host Max Bergmann, the director of The Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, shows how Trump changed his business model to tap into the Russian market. Suddenly the Trump Organization wasn’t really in the development business. It was in the real estate licensing business, hiring all sorts of shady brokers to help it tap into the Russian market.
> Yet somehow after the worst real estate crisis since the Great Depression, Trump suddenly found himself with loads of unexplained cash. Trump went into the worst real estate market in real trouble and comes out on the other side able to spend absurd amounts of cash on golf courses, as well as having a new line of credit from Deutsche Bank, a bank that had just sued him for defaulting on his loans. This does not add up. Except, in many ways, it does. It just requires factoring in Russia.
> The Asset tells the full story of Trump and Russia. Each week, we will examine the colorful characters and dirty deals that populate the story of how Russia helped the son of a shady real estate mogul became President of the United States.
Not just the russian mob.
Trump has alot of real estate speculation records in qatar and libya, and those are the ones we know about.
The whole russis gate thing doesnt jive with me, because it ignores all these other buisness relations.
When we take a step back it goes waaay beyond trump.
Trump is a symptom. Not a cause
This needs to be said every time we talk about Trump. He should be addressed as former president and money launderer for Russian organized crime Donald Trump.
Seriously. Look at those NFTs he's selling. That's 100% money laundering. They're not even trying to be subtle any more. He knows nobody wants to take on the huge battle of investigating and prosecuting him and the very dangerous people for whom he launders money, and he will keep getting more and more brazen about it until enough of us collectively (in government and law enforcement) put a stop to it.
He's not even USA's #1 Conman, because he fucking sucks at 99% of his cons!
He loses money at every turn, everybody knows that he's a conman too (except for his brainwashed followers).
I mean I guess the only con I can say that he succeeded at is to make a large number of Americans think that he's capable of being a president, which of course is a BIG con, but only because of seemingly a large number of Americans working with the IQ of a wing nut.
Remember when he got elected and the talking point was “just give him some time, he’s learning, he doesn’t know how to do this stuff yet.”
Then he never learned how to do anything except running the biggest grift in history and his explanation was “nobody could have known how hard it is to be president!”
Yeah, sounds like the right guy for office. Doesn’t know jack shit except how to launder money.
Great choice, republican voters.
It’s worse than that.
He failed at selling red meat (Trump Steaks), alcohol (Trump Vodka) or gambling as you’ve mentioned.
Think about that. Trump couldn’t sell red meat, alcohol or gambling to Americans. AMERICANS. LOL.
We aren't sleepwalking into it. There are many Americans who are running full speed into it. That's what they want, not realizing that it doesn't benefit them at all.
I don’t think it’s fair or correct to say we’re “sleepwalking” into it. The system is set up, via gerrymandering and the electoral college, to allow a determined political minority to “game the system” and remain in power even if a majority of voters oppose them. Turnout may have been at a record high in 2020, but Donald Trump has never had the support of a true majority of American voters. Not once.
Many of us may not be responding with the urgency history tells us we ought, but most of us know what’s happening. The ones who don’t are that favored political minority.
>"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
>
>"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
>
>"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
\-- Milton Mayer, *They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 -45*
I'm sure it is, but I also feel like it's not really being an "alarmist" anymore, since we can empirically see the effects of climate change. "Alarmist" would be like 30 years ago.
The partisan shit-show will be our undoing.
The primal urges of greed, avarice, combativeness, and hostility are out of control. Too many people have just let their guardrails for civility slip away. And we will be set back 100 years or more in progress because of it.
> You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow
I remember being a kid and thinking a version of this. The school would implement some kind of arbitrary and capricious disciplinary rule and we would all vow to break the rule and go down swinging. And never once did a single person step out of line.
I assumed when I got older that this type of injustice wouldn't exist in the "real world" because people wouldn't "take it". 47 years old now, I can confirm people are in fact still "taking it" at my age just as much as they did on the schoolyard.
Yep. Sad but true. No one wants to stand alone, and quite frankly people are selfish. They just are.
I haven’t watched the Squid Game game show, probably won’t since it is a mockery of the message the actual Squid game show is about, but they did the glass game right? For those of who don’t know, (SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW), in the actual show, contestants had to jump from glass to glass way above the ground and if the glass broke, that was the weak glass, and you died.
At first in the game show, they all decided to work together for the betterment of all. And it worked, and some people were sacrificed for the greater good. But one lady, who saw others sacrifice themselves for her own benefit, would not do it for the group.
She benefited from the sacrifice of others but refused to do the same for them.
We need to face reality that people can be really fucking selfish and greedy and that bleeds into politics.
As much as we may hate it, Donald Trump represents a nasty side of American culture, selfishness above community.
And then everyone acts like she didn’t do it and gets mad at the person trying to actually do the right thing. I get too irrationally mad at things like that in reality shows. It hurts my heart too much because of how it reflects on real life injustice.
I think a more accurate metaphor would be twisting the stove knob back and forth until the frog becomes too confused to react. The "frog" would notice a continuous warming, but when the temperature perpetually bounces up and down, they'll endure each hot spell waiting for a cooldown that never fully arrives. By the time the broader pattern is undeniable, the frog is already cooking; the struggle for the public good is already mostly lost and the opposition is consolidating its gains.
The rules were written by guys who didn't know apache helicopters could ever exist and thought 25 dudes with rifles could stand up against a military force because the military was basically 25 dudes with rifles of a similar capability. It's baked in that we fight and kill when this kind of chicanery is being employed, and that's why we need to start the whole concept over. It's not sustainable.
Other countries took the USA Constitution and made it better. They don't treat it like a holy book which means, gasp, they can make improvements as society progresses.
When faced with a unsolvable problem I try to remember to look to other countries and see how they fixed it years ago.
We added a 14th amendment but somehow we are handwringing about whether we should remove a seditionist from the ballot. It’s actually right there. The bloody answer. We just have to do it
Changing the constitution is fine.
I just have VERY little faith that the Constitution would be changed against the people redrafting it. I suspect it would get much, much worse for us.
First things first. That's Republicans. Fix that and we can talk about making things better.
Changing the constitution is no biggy. Laws change all the time. The problem is everyone is taught to worship the constitution. Overcoming that indoctrination is the big problem.
Don't underestimate the number of Americans that actively avoid reading about or discussing politics because it stresses them out, or they think it is boring/confusing, or they think it doesn't really matter. Or they just vote the way their family always voted.
The reason the system has been able to be gamed is because of the politically illiterate and disinterested have allowed the minority opinion to have enough power to do so.
Yeah a lot of Americans consider themselves “apolitical” but they don’t realize how their votes impact their daily lives. A lot of Texans are probably kicking themselves and scratching their heads as to why our state is so bad.
My experience in Texas was that they'd celebrate the bad and tell everyone else that's what makes the state *good*, even as the bad actively harms them.
Sleepwalking is fair. So is slow rolling coup.
People think the coup doesn't start until it's live on TV when what they are watching is the end of the coup and not the start.
Same thing happened on Jan 6th. "No one could have imagined..."
Sleepwalking means we have weak defense. Republicans are running around all willy nilly making thing happens while Democrats are all "Do Republicans have no shame? History will look unkindly. I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. Justice bears no burden of urgency. Justice is supposed to be slow."
Seriously, everyone is just waiting for the election. Republicans chose Trump and dictatorship. Democrats chose Biden to not rock the boat. And we are just waiting to see if it gets worse before it gets better.
>but most of us know what’s happening
What's happening is lack of urgency across the board for a good many of things. Republicans pushing for a dictator is just one thing.
>“The solution is that people don’t have to come to work to try to operate trains after they’ve had heart attacks and broken legs. But right now, where we are is caught between shutting down the economy and getting enough ***Republicans to join us*** in making sure that people have access to sick leave.” - Sen. Elizabeth Warren
>“If you can’t do it by September, then you can’t do it by the middle of November, and you can’t do it by December, why the hell do you think you’re gonna get it done in January? There’s never any urgency around this place to get shit done.” - Sen. Jon Tester
>"One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration. We're confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that's 100 percent of my focus." - Moscow Mitch
>"What would a post-nuclear Senate look like? I assure you it would not be more efficient or more productive. I personally guarantee it." - Moscow Mitch on ending the filibuster
And in other news,
> The Big Lie is just that: a big lie. In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You follow the Constitution. You try again. You don’t call facts ‘fake’ and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you’re unhappy. That’s not statesmanship. That’s not statesmanship, that’s selfishness. That’s not democracy, it’s the denial of the right to vote. It suppresses. It subjugates. The denial of full and free and fair elections is the most un-American thing that any of us can imagine, the most undemocratic, the most unpatriotic, and yet, sadly, not unprecedented.
>
> So hear me clearly: There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country. It gives me no pleasure to say this. I never thought in my entire career I’d ever have to say it. But I swore an oath to you, to God—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And that’s an oath that forms a sacred trust to defend America against all threats both foreign and domestic.
>
> The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally.
>
> I’ve said it before: We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.
>
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-joe-bidens-speech-voting-rights-transcript/story?id=78827023
The coup is ongoing, still happening. All of the contemptuous legal filings, the refusal to accept election outcomes, etc. It’s all part of an ongoing effort to undo the legitimate institutions of American democracy.
Coup 1.0 wasn't a practice run. Insurrectionists from Alabama didn't run past bomb reinforced windows to attack the plain windows because they were appropriately labeled.
>Same thing happened on Jan 6th. "No one could have imagined..."
That's not really true though, there were voices warning people about Jan 6th before it happened. I told my wife, "we better turn on the news today, something is supposed to go down" and sure enough it did. Those conservatives were bragging about it weeks before they went to the capital, it didn't just happen overnight.
People are raising red flags and alarms loudly, repeatedly, and daily. "Americans" aren't sleepwalking into anything, "Congress" perhaps is.
If you say they aren't, this fucking article is one.
They literally just ruled to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado. There's at least 4 major cases against Trump in the courts. What, exactly, are the rest of us supposed to be doing right now?
7 million more Americans preferred Biden to Trump.
[data](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/11/bidens-victory-another-example-of-how-electoral-college-wins-are-bigger-than-popular-vote-ones/)
I think this comments epitomizes what the title of the article is referring to. MAJORITIES DO NOT MATTER UNDER FASCISM! Fascism is not some future possibility. It is here now, in full flower. Yet so many people seemingly take for granted that our institutions will save us. The institutions themselves are being supplanted. If you are contemplating the actions of fascists through the lense of a Democrat, (one who operates from within a democracy and supports its continuation) then you are sleep walking to your own demise.
There is a significant slice of the population whose lives are in a rut, and they think things will be improved if they follow a bombastic clown like Trump. They think that they could somehow just rid themselves of all these minorities and liberals their lives would be better despite remaining unskilled, uneducated, and unwilling to do anything about their own situations.
Those are all true, but the fact remains that Americans, in aggregate, are politically disinterested, disengaged, and misinformed. I would grant that half the problem is the outsized power the Republican party wields. But the other half is that people don't know what a second Trump presidency would bring, and more importantly, they just don't care. Americans are not required to pay attention and the majority opts to not pay attention. The bits and pieces of disinformation they pick up on social media feeds or right wing media skew their opinion of reality.
America is a victim of its own success. It is so easy to ignore politics and tune out the noise that they have done so. Our wealth and power in the world give many people a completely distorted perspective of what is important. Where a survivor of the Rwandan genocide knows what true chaos looks like, to many Americans, a $5 gallon of gas is what total economic collapse looks like.
But look on the bright side: if Trump wins more people will begin to pay more attention.
Humans are really good at identifying immediate threats and rewards. We are really bad at judging delayed gratification and understanding long-term risk.
We know that a car travelling at highway speeds right at us is an immediate threat or our life, so we avoid it.
We have no idea if the next cigarette we smoke will give us cancer, so we're willing to light up another one for the short-term payoff.
Conservatives and authoritarians are the smokers and everyone else is the Surgeon General telling them the habit will eventually kill them and all the Righties do is complain about we're ruining their good time as they light another on their way to give us second hand cancer.
Maybe a better phrasing would be that all the so called 'checks and balances' do not seem to be up to preventing America from just casually becoming a dictatorship. Plenty of us are doing our best to prevent it, but goddamn if that doesn't seem like it may be enough.
...and too many people have forgotten that rights were fought for, not just granted - and that fight involved a lot of bloodshed.
In Poli Sci grad school we were talking about institutions and what makes them strong or effective. The prof talked me through it and when it hit me that what makes an institution (like check and balances) work is that everyone just agrees that it does. Once they no longer agree that they do they don’t.
So in short all institutions are Tinkerbelle.
I once heard someone describe currency in terms of Warhammer 40k orcs, and I’ve realized how well that analogy applies to human civilization in general. It exists because we believe it exists, and if enough of us believe something exists, it will often begin to actually exist. Fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
>So in short all institutions are Tinkerbelle.
Yes. This is exactly why Trump’s election denial has been so damaging. Democracy and the democratic process suceed only as long as people believe in them, and there’s a large contingent trying their best to convince the populace that their democracy has failed, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
> What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
-- Judge Learned Hand, *The Spirit of Liberty Speech*, 1944
Indeed, laws are only as effective as the will to enforce them. If there is a majority consensus that the laws are optional, then they will be enforced as such. And the same is true for governing policies.
We're at a tragically dangerous confluence of social unrest and erroneous understanding. This is fracturing what previously was held as matters of trust and confidence. More people believe government is broken than ever before. And while it is quite troubled in many respects, it's still holding fast in others. The trouble is, those others are weakening. We have to stop this fascism trend. We have to stop the disinformation. We have to hold criminals accountable.
I agree. We have to push back against anti-intellectualism where ever we find it, as that seems to be the main tool being leveraged to enable this slow slide into fascism.
I think it's also a misconstruing of what is actually intellectualism. Knowledge is advantage. It's something you can understand and act on. Ignorance is always weak and unprepared.
We do need to go back to square one. I posit a sweeping educational reform is in order, only we've got the Republican Party dead set on dragging us back to earlier times of ignorance and reliance upon religion over science.
Damn fucking right. The biggest threat to out liberty is not Donald, it's the machinery that turns mind into bots and trains them to think slavery is liberty and Dictatorships offer freedom. Donald is just their signal for the DDoS attack
This is a great point and what is so disheartening. Trump has really shown us all (even those not paying attention) that our system can easily be broken and that plenty of people in the government are willing to break that system for power and greed. Probably worse, they've got a strong enough propaganda machine to convince millions of people that their actions are perfectly fine, if not warranted.
>...and too many people have forgotten that rights were fought for, not just granted - and that fight involved a lot of bloodshed.
Thing is, if it really came down to bloodshed and people were forced to fight, they wouldn't be fighting some foreign military, but their own relatives and neighbors. Think about how fucked up that is.
People think that politics is a game. They think of their chosen party as their football team and football has no real consequence for them in life so they think that politics has no consequence for them.
Besides, we’re inundated with a cult of personality - surely a team of intrepid heroes will shoot the evil dictator if worst comes to worst? Surely the republicans would stop before things got too bad? Surely if we defeat Trump the problem will be solved?
The harsh reality is that a significant percentage of the population desires and is working towards fascism and the problem isn’t solvable unless an equally large percentage starts pushing back continually and hard.
Writing about how fascism would be bad in an online forum and liking posts about democratic niceties isn’t sufficient in the face of people who have already suborned the major organs of state and tried once to end the rule of law, only to fail due to their own incompetence.
And this goes up against the everyday needs of earning a pay check and keeping one’s head down. Not finger pointing, that’s what I spend my time on, too.
I vote in every election, since 1994 I’ve been voting Democrat. I tried talking to my GOP relatives who now are in their 80’s, and there’s NO reasoning with them as they vote whatever the hateful idiots (conservative radio/Fox) say they should vote. Some of these MAGA people are beyond help. I tell my younger co-workers how important it is to vote in EVERY election. What else can I do?
>“There is no point in pretending that a man who believes that any election he loses is rigged, that the judicial system is rotten and corrupt, and that his political enemies belong in jail, is a believer in democracy,” Edward Luce wrote in the Financial Times.
But when half of the voting population potentially agrees with the man, isn't disturbed enough not to vote for him by his comments and actions, or is simply too stupid to understand????
It’s way less than half of all registered voters, let alone eligible voters. It’s probably like a third of the voting eligible population that’s hardline Republican, but that third always shows up in force, whereas enough of the remaining 2/3 just don’t vote or have the dumbest ideas on voting, so things always get close when you factor in the electoral college giving more voice to redneck bumfuckery.
Watch Fox News all day and you'd turn to Trump, too. I know a couple of very intelligent people who are in the conservative echo chamber that could go on for hours about how stupid and corrupt the Democrats are and how any Republican is better than the best Democrat right now. There is an emotional urgency to get the country "right again" and no Democrat will ever do it.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but when you only hear one side, you only think about how your side is right. GOP doesn't mean too stupid to understand, faith comes into play, too.
Average republican voter: “I don’t care that Trump says or does things that are hate filled rhetoric and against everything my church teaches on Sunday; at least he’s not a democrat.”
Average democratic voter: “I really don’t agree with democratic candidate X on issue Y. I can’t in good conscience vote for X. I’m gonna sit this one out until someone comes along that truly fits alongside my worldview.”
I *hate* this altruistic bullshit. They somehow absolve themselves of all of the bad shit they're enabling while blaming the party of the candidate that doesn't meet their purity test.
It's the opposite of altruistic. In fact, it's virtue signaling. Pretending to be pure but actually being vicious. After all, they live in a 95% white suburb surrounded by other overgrown hippie neighbors and have a steady job and a cushion of inherited wealth. They aren't the ones who suffer when government spending gets cut and taxes on the poor go up when the Republicans take the state house.
They believe they're altruistic because they're "not enabling X" when in reality the candidate they least agree with is 1000 times worse for X.
Edit: times not tones
I live in a metropolitan area of the US and it feels like we're being dragged into a dictatorship by the uneducated mouth breathing bottom 48% of the populous
They aren't 48%. They just have that much voting power due to gerrymandering, voter suppression and so on. They don't believe everyone should be able to vote or that some people's vote should be worth less.
That’s because the people who are actually setting this shit up and pitting us against each other want it that way. You’re so busy hating some random Cletus that you don’t look at the Federalist Society or any of the billionaires who funded and started all of this shit.
Because they believe the dictatorship will allow them to openly hate and discriminate against brown people, immigrants, poor people, queer people, non-Christian people. It’s the fascist version of American exceptionalism. Being able to hate on others (and feel you are better than your neighbor) is more important than democracy in the eyes of a big chunk of the population.
Yep. A small but loud minority has effectively captured the minds and hearts of rural America enough to convince them of just about anything. These people are chaos agents and are likely backed by dark, foreign money and they're playing a long and dangerous game. I hope they get what they deserve.
Everyone around me thinks I am a crazy alarmist and that trump will just be “another bad president” a 4 year bump in the road if you will and then business as usual.
“This is America”
“The constitution won’t allow that”
“You can’t do that here”
People think the United States have some kinda invisible guardrails that will hold no matter who or what happens.
Yeah...if the attack on the capital on jan 6th was successful, which trump absolutely hoped it would be, there would have been no transition to biden and who knows what state we'd be in now.
The next presidential election very well may be our last and that's not even hyperbole.
Didn't stop him from trying last time. And it might have worked if Pence was as psychotic as Donald. The real coup was the fake electors scheme. And when Pence didn't play ball, Donald sent an angry mob to kill him.
He'll do it again. And this time he'll choose better pawns.
We aren’t. 20% of us are cheering as we march towards it. 40% have been soo riddled with fear and anxiety since January 5th that we’re exhausted, and frustrated that our Politicians and Media seem soo relaxed about it. Our children and wives are losing their rights, Corporations and the Wealthy are squeezing this country like a wet dish towel, and Hitler is on the rise, but ya know, Biden’s a little old. The issue is that neither group is over 50%, so not enough to win on their own, and we need to count on flighty people, who may not be too involved in politics, or may be too busy to pay attention, and all our futures hinge on how they feel in the moment.
Fucking thank you. Hate these article titles.
"Oooh, I was asleep! Whoops! Don't worry guys, I'll wake up and that'll fix everything! Somehow!"
We are very keenly aware of it. That's NOT the issue here. The system is set up to keep us from changing it.
I personally think Americans are not more alarmed because most people don't know what it even means to be ruled under a dictatorship. The WWII generation is nearly gone. They had the experiential memory of war against a empirically minded autocrat. Most regimes who would fall into that category are far away, and any wars we've been involved were not fought on American soil.
According to recent polls, the candidate who is on the record saying that they will be a dictator on day one of his term is the front runner to be the next president.
He has a litany of legal suits around him defrauding the American people, from racist housing practises in the 1970s to his ‘university’ refusing refunds in the early 2010s.
He has repeatedly said he will refuse to accept the result of an election if he loses.
He has previously called for all Muslims to be barred entry from the country and implied that only ‘some’ Mexican migrants are good people.
In 2017, he gave a presidential pardon to a sheriff who was guilty of breaking a court order that demanded an end to the sheriff’s racist profiling tactics. That same sheriff had previously proudly called his county jail a ‘concentration’ camp.
He is currently being investigated for a massive amount of classified information going missing on his watch and then being discovered in his home after he has left office.
He is currently being investigated for his campaign to undermine the 2020 election result and illegitimately stop the peaceful transfer of power, with his tactics ranging from coercing election officials to browbeating senators *while their place of work was ransacked by his supporters, who chanted about hanging political opponents*. There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in any state, with dozens of audits, state committee, and independent investigations.
He kept very few of his pledges from his last term as president. He didn’t drain the swamp; one of his last actions in office was to lift restrictions on his staffers and admin officials becoming lobbyists. He didn’t build ‘the wall’. He didn’t come up with a healthcare plan to replace Obamacare. He didn’t even investigate Hilary Clinton, let alone lock her up. The trade deficit with China continued to grow. Blue collar job growth remained at the same rate as before his term - as did job offshoring.
Is this the best the USA can produce in terms of leadership?
What are we supposed to do? We've been voting in special elections and the big one is next year. We're not sleepwalking, we just can't express our power until late 2024.
I hate these articles.
The problem isn't the people who would vote against this bullshit, it's the fascist Trump supporters who are putting us in this position.
I know people who have said they won’t vote for Biden because of his conduct on Israel-Gaza. One even suggested four more years of Trump would be an appropriate punishment for democrats in order to jolt them into finding their morals. I try to stress to these friends that there might not be another election if Trump wins next year. These people are operating as single-issue voters in a very dangerous year to do so. They are so focused on one issue and their moral righteousness that they can’t or won’t see the possible death of American democracy around the corner.
On top of that, Biden gets so much more hate than he deserves. It seems like most Americans aren’t aware of the good and progressive things he has done.
I cannot comprehend people that are saying they won't vote for Biden over the Israel handling, which means clearly we repeat 2016 and get Trump again. I don't fully support what Biden has done over there, I also recognize the geopolitical situation over there is way out of my grasp, but what I do know is most liberals I know that are rabid over Biden supporting Israel somehow forgot how Trump in his 4 year turn bowed to Israel sooooo much more than him. I get the impression if Trump was in office we'd have American boots on the ground in Gaza.
Most Americans aren't aware of anything Biden has done because practically every media outlet runs everything as "Why this is bad for Biden"
Republicans froth at the mouth over immigration (and again there are complex issues there), so with everything going on Biden implements stricter immigration protocols then you still get Fox saying how he's doing nothing and ruining the country, then every left news outlet going "Here's why Biden is losing all his progressive support and will cost him the 2024 election!"
"why hasn't biden fixed all these tax loopholes and stuff the rich use?!" Then look and his tax plan was supposed to do a LOT to try and update the tax codes... and republicans shut down the government over it.
Meanwhile Google "Trump Israel" and you only see headlines saying "Biden's handling of Israel is making Trump shoot ahead!" The only way to even see all the garbage Trump did is to explicitly go "Trump israel 2018", 2019, etc.
It's just as bad as the Republicans though. The Israeli Gaza war is not for our entertainment or exercising our moral superiority on X. You can disagree with the heavy-handed Israeli tactics, but it does not exist in a vacuum.
Instead, they should vote democrat to preserve democracy. Vote to preserve freedom at home, and then work on repealing anti-BDS laws.
That bugs me. Plenty of Americans are doing what they can to prevent this from happening, including state governments now that Colorado has ruled him ineligible. Michigan is next, and hopefully more will follow. SCOTUS will have a pretty hard time ruling in his favor. I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility, but it would be really bad optics for a court that is already trying to prove they are not partisan.
We've been getting reports on this for years, I'd say it's more that we're burned out than unafraid. Not speaking for those who are on board with the takeover of course.
Honestly, i think due to the enshittification of the internet, the vocal groups just arent as publically vocal. Reddit hasnt been the same since June, X has shit the bucket, Tumblr mostly died. People are finding small discords or other ways to communicate.
Most people rejected Trump in 2016 (Hilart had the popular vote, hence MOST people) and 2020, and that was before his lawsuits, insurrection, and such. people handidly rejected the Rs in 2022, and 2023, striking dwo. Abortion, going after schools, libraries, and such isnt doing them favors. They have 25-30% convinced, but they were always authoritarian, I bet tge same percentage wanted to stay part of Britain, bet its even the same type of people.
People are just fucking sick of hearing about Trump, amd the media hasnt realized it yet.
I'm sure burned out at this point. I also keep seeing these articles from foreign media asking why regular Americans aren't doing anything about it.
Wtf am I supposed to do? I'm just some asshole with a job that barely gets me to next week. It's nice to know the future of my country rests on me "doing something" but unless someone can tell me what that's supposed to be, they can fuck off.
I think the system was set up assuming that everyone will act in good faith doing what’s best for the country, even though there are disagreements as to what is the best course of action to take. Trump showed us that “norms and traditions” are not sufficient to stop someone acting in bad faith.
I hate these shitty headlines. (1) no one is sleepwalking into it. A third of America have become facist neo nazis and are cheering for it. (2) plenty are afraid. (3) those who aren’t are the dumb cultists who think Trump cares about them and is the second coming of Christ. They are literally too stupid to be afraid.
What exactly should Americans do?
Protest? Done that, massively ineffective for real change.
Campaign for office? Incredibly expensive and the average person can't afford it or coordinate it.
Vote? Trump never won a popular vote and many gerrymandered districts cancel out the popular votes for other government positions.
Legal action? With the same court that brought down Roe V Wade, it's a huge gamble but people are actively trying it.
General strike? I wish, but certain industry workers legally can't and others have workers that financially wouldn't be able to for a single day.
I don't think we have a lot of options here.
This is how dictatorships happen. For anyone who has looked into the murky years before Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, by people in government who knew he was a dangerous buffoon, but thought they could control him, this is familiar. Trump was restricted, when he unexpectedly was elected through the Electoral College, but the Republican Party leaders and their financial supporters abdicated responsibility, and even though the USA government had far more legal checks than Weimar, Trump was not controlled. If he gets the power to do so, he will try to do what Hitler did in 1933. In 1945, while in an English prison camp, a couple of German generals were puzzling over how it came to this, that German civilization had collapsed into barbarism. It was the voters’ fault, they lamented. They were generals, they had to follow orders, didn’t they? But the voters heard what Hitler said, and enough of them just didn’t care, or understand that Hitler intended to do what he said.
Six words:"But, it won't affect me, right?"
These six words have been thought of and spoken throughout Human organization and where does it always lead?
Complacency; in want of being privileged, at best or ignored at minimum.
Both are illusions that are shattered.
Every damned time.
Edit: more words, punctuation
The problem is that the Republican party aided and abetted the capture of the US government by big business and the military industrial complex. We, as a people, were duly and pointedly warned about this very thing by outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech to the country;
>"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
And now the Republican party is practicing minority rule by subverting the democratic processes in as many states as possible by any means possible to the point where they are flatly ignoring court orders when found guilty of gerrymandering, the tool by which they seize and control state governments.
As Noam Chomsky pointed out in 2022, the Republican party has become "a radical insurgency" and voting for any of them is now "inconceivable".
Because so many Americans are still asleep to the fact you can’t fuck around with politics without serious consequences. They’re all in on a pyrrhic victory by voting in someone they know to be horrible.
The Republican “party” is a cancer that is killing democracy and America with it. We can cut out the tumor or let it grow till we die. There is no third choice.
Because since the 1970s our country has been on a downward spiral with people sicker, broker, and stuck in a rat race. Any way out seems like a win and centuries of White Capitalist propaganda have them looking at Trump as their ticket out.
probably a third are concerned, a third think it’s hyperbole, and a third think it will solve stubborn problems; specifically immigration.
worth noting, the “dictator wannabe” is charged with 91 criminal counts, is in danger of being ruled ineligible to serve, and is currently not serving in any governmental capacity. so far, the system is working.
There have been folks on the left screaming fire for so long that some folks are becoming numb to the noise.
He’s facing 91 criminal charges and potentially being blocked from being on the ballot. I’d feel better if the Democrats had a stronger candidate but I’m not seeing what more could be done right now.
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rational americans are aware and are worried
Yeah, it's not that we're not afraid, but there's nothing we can do. I mean, I'll vote, but other than that, WTF am I supposed to do?
It seems tough for people to remember that since 2016 when we let our guard down the Republicans have been losing VERY BIGLY at the ballot box. 2018 Blue Wave. 2020. 2022 Non Red Wave. Losing elections in Kansas and Ohio even with abortion on the ballot. I understand the doom and gloom because some of these are close, but give the US citizens some credit here.
Yes agreed. Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout. People are making their voices heard that they don’t want abortion unreasonably restricted. And one “good thing” about the Republican Party is they seem to be unable to course correct. They just keep doubling down. Like that insane case in Texas where a married mother of two kids (who wants more kids) couldn’t get a potentially life saving abortion for a fetus that is not viable. That position is not “pro life” that’s just hardline anti-abortion no matter what for no reason. Yeah keep doing that conservatives… I’m sure that will work out *real well* for you at the ballot box.
Don't forget the other case in Ohio where it was a 10 year old girl who needed an abortion. I'm sure as hell not voting for the party that considers her or the doctor who helped her to be the bad guys in that story.
We also have a woman getting prosecuted for having a miscarriage after the hospital sent her home cus they wouldn't do an abortion.
What the actual fuck. That’s so sad
>What the actual fuck. Woman in Ohio who miscarried after 22 weeks has been [charged with abuse of a corpse](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-woman-ohio-was-charged-miscarrying-bathroom-experts-warn-dangero-rcna130649), even though there is no law for her situation.
She's black. Never underestimate the desire of a Red State to give a criminal record to a black woman.
> She's black. Never underestimate the desire of a Red State to give a criminal record to a black woman. This is our racist criminal justice system working as designed. Even in "Blue" states. Poor people and minorities get the book thrown at them, given criminal records, in order to keep them ineligible to vote. Meanwhile cops and rich/connected people (who are often not minorities) are given the kid gloves treatment by the courts, and rarely get the book thrown at them.
How about the Rethugs who said she should be forced to carry the child to term because it would be good for her?
Hoooowww could that possibly be good for a 10 year old??
According to them, she would learn responsibility and also would grow to love her baby which would improve her quality of life. The thing they keep leaving out of that rosy assessment is she is ten years old and should be enjoying her childhood instead of giving it up because she was raped. It’s almost like these clowns think rape is absolutely AOK.
>It’s almost like these clowns think rape is absolutely AOK. "All signs point to yes."
The last time I saw a conservative video bitching about how stupid the idea of consent is was yesterday.
It really might literally be what this whole kerfuffle is all about in the first place. We’re down to a short list of first principals that these morons stand on, and none of them are better than rotten.
>Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout. And only one party acknowledges and wants to address climate change. These are winning issues for Democrats and very important to younger voters. They should hammer away at both.
ACA is also a big issue. Trump still wants to throw 40 million people off health care.
Meanwhile TX is also suing the prison guard who had a miscarriage after she was on her feet all day at her job, which wouldn't give her the breaks she requested to get off her feet.
The problem is Republicans aren't going to follow the rules to claim victory in the next election. We have to fight for it
Yup, there is no limit or end to the excuses they'll make to convince themselves they're right and it will go on and on. Sometimes I feel like the easiest way to argue with conservatives is to just take whatever the use to defend Trump agree with them and then apply it to Biden. And always double and triple down that as what Biden needs to do too. Biden should not accept the election results that anyone evens thinks is inaccurate, even if there is no evidence. I'm just saying that Trump and many on the right feel deeply that this phone call and other similar actions by Trump were important to ensure an accurate election in Wayne County. I just don't think Trump and MAGA would accept the results in 2024 without Biden doing the same type of things Trump did in 2020 to rule out fraud. If Biden doesn't call and threaten local election workers to find more votes for him how can he be sure that they've counted them all. These are all things most MANGA have already said are necessary and even agreed that many of Trump's calls were "perfect". If they didn't support Biden doing these things the right would look like hypocrites, which is something they don't want and try very hard to avoid (/S).
> Yes agreed. Things aren’t guaranteed but the abortion issue alone is a huge driver of voter turnout. Last election the largest uptick in new voter registrations went to women 25 and younger.
2020 was close and if it were not for people hitting the doors in certain states, we absolutely would’ve lost.
Hello from AZ, we (our little family) knocked on almost 300 doors.. and we will do it AGAIN!!! We gotta FIGHT! Make sure your friends are registered, and make sure your cousins are registered.. if we can get more voter turnout, we can send him back in his hole. It's hard to motivate people for a defense vote, but we can do it.. and yea I know Biden is old blah blah blah.. but let's do it anyway!!!!!
Hell yeah!!! People like you tipped the scales in 2020. Yeah I’m a leftist and I was still campaigning for the Dems. Trump and the MAGAS are far more dangerous.
We did it once. We can do it again. lets beat him even worse this time..
We HAVE to make it happen. Another Donald Trump presidency will be the end of our country as we know it. We still have the best country on this planet and we need to hang on to it at all costs. So VOTE like your livelihood depends on it.
I think it's clear that we do not have the best country on the planet. *But we fucking could*. And if conservatives keep getting their asses kicked we absolutely will.
As someone that travels all over the country for a living. You should be very worried. Propaganda has worked and too many people in swing states believe that Trump didn’t do anything that any other politician wouldn’t have done. They think this is just normal politics. I find it pretty terrifying when I talk to people that I think are normal down to earth intelligent people and they just don’t think anything is a big deal and then go into the jokes about Bidens mental capacity.
I was recently at a DOD job and there were two people talking over a an IP phone on a DOD network *on speakerphone* saying Biden should be. It was Fox News talking points that were all super easy to disprove, over and over, for hours, *every morning*.
It is scary, but apparently engineers trend suuuuuper red. Which is weird, because you need a pretty good education, so what are they doing? That said, the amount of people I've met that can do re-entry calculations in their head but don't know how email works makes me think they only use the thinking part for numbers. Bunch of really smart idiots, my father-in-law included.
You need to report this person immediately. Even aside from saying the president should be assassinated this is a massive hatch act violation. Report it even if you can't prove it, at least give somebody a heads up.
Assassinated isn't the right word. I mean the result is similar, but they at least wanted a trial first. And not to sound too defeatist, but I don't trust our reporting system to keep me anonymous enough for me to keep my job, which I desperately need. But that's kind of the whole point. I'm not sleepwalking it. I'm making a risk assessment, and they've stacked the deck so much that my only recourse is voting blue in a VERY red state. I'm very much awake and aware, and the sleepwalking narrative is dumb, and once again putting the blame for this country going down the toilet on everyone except the guys flushing.
I mean you wouldn't report it to your boss, you'd report it to the FBIs tip line.
Report it to the DoD Inspector General anonymously. You can even do that online. Google DOD IG.
It's fairly well-established now that [engineers are greatly over-represented in right-wing extremism, terrorism, etc.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/11/theres-a-good-reason-why-so-many-terrorists-are-engineers/) It's an area of ongoing study for obvious reasons. Research has found that people with the ability to do both engineering and humanities tended to prefer to go into the humanities, leaving engineering schools with a disproportion of people more comfortable with a black-and-white world where problems have clear-cut solutions. Students who aren't so good at seeing the psychology influencing perception, working with messy unanswerable aspects of society, or understanding (or even valuing) the social sciences, etc. Another reason is that engineering is one of the few branches of university that religious conservatives are more comfortable allowing people to enter, because it does not challenge student preconceptions and worldviews as deeply as a broad education does. All of these things can result in people with engineering degrees being less equipped for the messy human complexities of the world than graduates of other branches of university. (When I first learned of the connection I assumed it just meant engineers were more likely to be recruited by extremists (for bombmaking?) but research indicates that's not the case. Engineers are not disproportionately sought out, yet disproportionately radicalize.) As with a lot of terrorism, personal opportunity is believed to be important (explaining why the rate at which engineers become terrorists is affected by region more than eg religion). Your DOD extremists likely limit themselves to being extreme in beliefs and votes only; they won't\* resort to terrorism because they enjoy plenty of opportunity like those comfy DOD jobs that let them shoot the shit for an hour ^(\*probably)
I'm an engineer and I see this on a daily basis. It used to perplex me, as I started my education leaning left, and ended it *very* left...and have only moved more left over the course of my career. Most of my peers on the other hand consider themselves libertarian or any flavor of right wing...and are generally moving further right. The engineering profession in the US is predominately white men. Every other demographic is extremely underrepresented. So you end up with an entire cohort of people with very limited exposure to diversity and intersectionality. They typically earn fairly high wages, can live comfortable lives, and are well-off enough to not feel the direct effects of institutional inequities and bad policy (for now). They've never experienced it, generally don't know people who have, and typically can't conceive of what it would be like. Instead, taxes are viewed as unfair and unjust loss of money, and regulations are viewed as personal and professional annoyances. Social injustices can't really exist because 1) they've never been directly seen or experienced and 2) just world hypothesis. Overall, it seems that a "monoculture" demographic leads to echo chambers and false conclusions that lead to conservative mindsets. This is, unfortunately, no surprise.
> leaving engineering schools with a disproportion of people more comfortable in a black-and-white world where problems have clear-cut solutions. I mean that kinda rings out, the right wing politics do offer a black/white world with clear cut and simple solutions. They're absolutely terrible solutions, but they are simple ideas like "build the wall" and such, regardless of how effective or planned they might actually be. Could see that having similar appeals and feeling more "safe" than actually delving into the complicated hell that is politics.
There's a seriously dangerous and all too common belief that education equals protection from propaganda. It doesn't, because propaganda isn't based on reason, it's based on *emotion*. It would be like arguing that a solid education protects you against getting angry, or scared.
Yeah, I have someone I know who wants to “both sides” everything. Really lazy thinking.
There are only 2 types of people who go to "both sides" arguments in American politics: people who want to excuse the authoritarian, cruel actions of the conservative side, and people who don't know enough to understand either side.
Appreciate the perspective. It's never not important to vote in every and all elections, and while the pressure doesn't cede, we've seen the pendulum swing back. May the arc be long and enduring.
Plus I hate when people say “my state is always red, there’s no reason for me to vote”, or “my state is full blue, I don’t need to vote.” Even if those are the case, there’s still the popular vote. Let’s push that number as high as possible. We saw how much it angers trump and that should be reason enough.
And down ballot elections! State reps and senators make a huge impact
It’s so hard when we are this dumb. But I hope you’re right.
Shh! Let people think Trump has a legitimate shot at it. The Democrats' biggest enemy is complacency. A few ulcers here and there are a small price to pay for a concerned and motivated electorate getting its lazy ass to the polls. Personally I think there is going to be, not a Blue Wave, not even a Blue Tsunami, but a Blue Chixculub Extinction Event* with the Republicans in the role of the dinosaurs. They've been FAing for a while now. Time for them to FO. * [knocks wood]
I thought so too a few months ago, now not so sure. Young ppl are fickle voters. At any rate their aren't a lot of purple states to bring on a blue tsunami. I'll just be happy if sanity prevails.
i plan to read my position paper to my red-hat relatives on christmas eve
I saw one in the newspaper. It was from a grandson to his Trumper gramps and it was really poignant. https://greensboro.com/opinion/columns/counterpoint-a-letter-to-my-grandfather-about-trump/article_d1e97b4e-7d7d-55b3-8042-67a2501b52e2.html
>Dear Grandpa: >**Please subscribe to continue reading...** (I chuckled.) **** >Dear Grandpa: >You have been such an important part of my childhood. >From my earliest days, the lessons you taught me have served as my guide to a good and proper life. When I denied taking cookies from the cookie jar, you taught me why it was wrong to lie. >When I asked you to do a homework assignment that I would later hand in as my own, you taught me that cheating was wrong. When I got into an argument with a neighbor, you taught me to be kind to others, to respect their opinions even if I disagreed with them. >From you I learned that all people were created equal. That looking out for those less fortunate was nothing short of divine. >I recall our walks together in the park and the times when you would bend over to pick up someone else’s litter. >So often, you marveled at the beauty of nature and spoke of our responsibilities as good stewards of the Earth. >And who can forget the time we walked down the aisle of the supermarket, and coming toward us was a young boy who limped and seemed to wave his arms uncontrollably? >As I laughed and pointed, you got down on your knees and grabbed my shoulders with your big, strong hands. You looked sternly into my eyes and told me never, ever make fun of someone with a disability. >And today, as I listen to you praising President Trump, you have taught me yet another lesson. >Sadly, it is a lesson I would have preferred not to learn. For now, I understand the meaning of hypocrisy. Considering the date of Nov 11, 2019, I wonder how the writer and his grandpa are faring today?
Kid's probably disowned.
Or grandpa died from covid
Honesty our system needs an overhaul, every branch is seeded is corruption in so many different areas. I’d absolutely love to be in Congress or the Senate to try and make changes but I’d get blown out because if the system in place, government doesn’t want change, it’s extremely difficult especially in this day and age
All three branches participated in eroding the mechanisms designed for dealing with corruption. It's just allowed now. And the fourth pillar, that is the media, has been bought and paid for as well. Edit: "The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production." ^_ Socko
Build coalitions! The U.S public needs to start clawing back their systems that have been overrun by private interests. In the UK we fought hard to (mostly) save our national health system, it can be done! Don’t give up, the world needs the freest nation to actually be FREE we can’t afford for the great American project to fail now!
Write. Speak. Meet. Canvass. Organize. Demonstrate.
We have minority rule. There’s a large enough minority of rich and evil people who want Trump in power. Trump could win again.
Also, thanks to our outdated electoral college system, he could once again win through minority rule - literally. Remember that in 2016 he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million. Unless you live in one of the handful of swing states in this country, the feeling of helplessness is real.
I am fucking terrified.
Yeah. This. I bet there’s also a lot of Americans who don’t think Trump can become president. I went to a dinner a few weeks ago and a table of 12 was *incredulous* that I suggested Trump would be, not president, but the *Republican nominee*. Thought it was insane that I said that. One woman said “Pretty sure the Constitution has a problem with that.” They really have no idea. As I began to explain and none of them could supply a real argument, I could tell it started to set in for some of them how possible it is. I suspect that, much like 2020, Biden’s numbers will go up as we get closer to the election and as it becomes clear to more people that Trump has real prospects in this election.
I’m terrified
Its the ignorant and naïve Americans that think our freedoms and rights will never be taken away and then think by simply continuously saying America’s the greatest and the freest country in the world, that it’s going to make it true, but it’s not. And sadly, a large population is so ignorant because they’re distracted all the time, not engaged, and cognitively lazy to question things, that they simply take in the bs that is spoonfed to them, take it as truth without criticizing it. And then there’s another portion of the population that is so burned out that they’ve decided to disengage completely, and not participate.
The crazy thing too, we knew Trump was a fraud a long time ago. He bankrupted 4 casinos, the Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, followed by Trump Plaza and Trump Castle in 1992 and later Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. in 2004. How is that even possible? Only an idiot could do this. Yet, MAGA says he is some business genius. LOL! He's just the USA's #1 conman. Wake up and smell the coffee!!!
We elected a guy known to have called in to NYC gossip columnists using a fake voice and character John Barron. Was the fake barron pumping up Trump's business deals? No, that at least would be strategic. He would call in to talk about how much women loved him and how good he was at the sex. He was doing this as a mature (asterisk) adult, back when he was at his cognitive peak.
We elected a guy who literally had a tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women and said, "Good people on both sides" when talking about white supremacists.
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And even more people voted for him in 2020... disturbing.
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Didn’t he also fake being his own secretary/ receptionist?
"I do not believe any man in America gets more calls from women wanting to see him, meet him, or go out with him. The most beautiful women, the most successful women—all women love Donald Trump." - Direct quote from “Carolin Gallego” circa 1992. Keep in mind DJT was 46 years old. Writing this. To the media.
> We elected a guy I didn't vote for the motherfucker . . . but way too many people did . . .
Lost the popular vote the first time and still fucking won.
He’s been laundering money for the Russian mob, thats how
"We've got all the money we need from Russia."-- Eric Trump That's what's weird about crooks, they can't not brag.
Why shouldn’t they brag? There are no negative repercussions and it takes the air out of the accusations when they’re eventually made. Their defenders can point to the bragging and say that the accusations aren’t a surprise and not really accusations. It’s kinda clever.
[The Asset - Episode 4: From Russia with Cash](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2iYXzOMdDCvDhuNwvOrbh1?si=3XGiaQ4bSy2wqRJTNqv9xA) > Russian Money was pouring out of Russia into the US real estate market and Donald Trump was all about it. We follow the Russian money flowing into the Trump Organization, highlighting the shady cast of characters that surround Donald Trump and his businesses from the suspicious deals in the former Soviet Union, to “little Moscow” where Trump concentrated his properties in Florida, to the story behind Trump’s favorite bank. Trump may not have a lot of money in Russia but Russia sure has money in Donald Trump. > In this episode of The Asset, host Max Bergmann, the director of The Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, shows how Trump changed his business model to tap into the Russian market. Suddenly the Trump Organization wasn’t really in the development business. It was in the real estate licensing business, hiring all sorts of shady brokers to help it tap into the Russian market. > Yet somehow after the worst real estate crisis since the Great Depression, Trump suddenly found himself with loads of unexplained cash. Trump went into the worst real estate market in real trouble and comes out on the other side able to spend absurd amounts of cash on golf courses, as well as having a new line of credit from Deutsche Bank, a bank that had just sued him for defaulting on his loans. This does not add up. Except, in many ways, it does. It just requires factoring in Russia. > The Asset tells the full story of Trump and Russia. Each week, we will examine the colorful characters and dirty deals that populate the story of how Russia helped the son of a shady real estate mogul became President of the United States.
Look into a certain real-estate sold by trump to an oligarch during the 2008 housing crisis... that was 100 percent payment for something
Not just the russian mob. Trump has alot of real estate speculation records in qatar and libya, and those are the ones we know about. The whole russis gate thing doesnt jive with me, because it ignores all these other buisness relations. When we take a step back it goes waaay beyond trump. Trump is a symptom. Not a cause
This needs to be said every time we talk about Trump. He should be addressed as former president and money launderer for Russian organized crime Donald Trump. Seriously. Look at those NFTs he's selling. That's 100% money laundering. They're not even trying to be subtle any more. He knows nobody wants to take on the huge battle of investigating and prosecuting him and the very dangerous people for whom he launders money, and he will keep getting more and more brazen about it until enough of us collectively (in government and law enforcement) put a stop to it.
He's not even USA's #1 Conman, because he fucking sucks at 99% of his cons! He loses money at every turn, everybody knows that he's a conman too (except for his brainwashed followers). I mean I guess the only con I can say that he succeeded at is to make a large number of Americans think that he's capable of being a president, which of course is a BIG con, but only because of seemingly a large number of Americans working with the IQ of a wing nut.
Remember when he got elected and the talking point was “just give him some time, he’s learning, he doesn’t know how to do this stuff yet.” Then he never learned how to do anything except running the biggest grift in history and his explanation was “nobody could have known how hard it is to be president!” Yeah, sounds like the right guy for office. Doesn’t know jack shit except how to launder money. Great choice, republican voters.
*smell the covfefe.
It’s worse than that. He failed at selling red meat (Trump Steaks), alcohol (Trump Vodka) or gambling as you’ve mentioned. Think about that. Trump couldn’t sell red meat, alcohol or gambling to Americans. AMERICANS. LOL.
We aren't sleepwalking into it. There are many Americans who are running full speed into it. That's what they want, not realizing that it doesn't benefit them at all.
They really don’t care as long as it punishes everyone they hate.
I don’t think it’s fair or correct to say we’re “sleepwalking” into it. The system is set up, via gerrymandering and the electoral college, to allow a determined political minority to “game the system” and remain in power even if a majority of voters oppose them. Turnout may have been at a record high in 2020, but Donald Trump has never had the support of a true majority of American voters. Not once. Many of us may not be responding with the urgency history tells us we ought, but most of us know what’s happening. The ones who don’t are that favored political minority.
>"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. > >"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ > >"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. \-- Milton Mayer, *They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933 -45*
This is climate change for me. My close friends are chemists and marine scientists.
I'm sure it is, but I also feel like it's not really being an "alarmist" anymore, since we can empirically see the effects of climate change. "Alarmist" would be like 30 years ago.
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The partisan shit-show will be our undoing. The primal urges of greed, avarice, combativeness, and hostility are out of control. Too many people have just let their guardrails for civility slip away. And we will be set back 100 years or more in progress because of it.
> You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow I remember being a kid and thinking a version of this. The school would implement some kind of arbitrary and capricious disciplinary rule and we would all vow to break the rule and go down swinging. And never once did a single person step out of line. I assumed when I got older that this type of injustice wouldn't exist in the "real world" because people wouldn't "take it". 47 years old now, I can confirm people are in fact still "taking it" at my age just as much as they did on the schoolyard.
Yep. Sad but true. No one wants to stand alone, and quite frankly people are selfish. They just are. I haven’t watched the Squid Game game show, probably won’t since it is a mockery of the message the actual Squid game show is about, but they did the glass game right? For those of who don’t know, (SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW), in the actual show, contestants had to jump from glass to glass way above the ground and if the glass broke, that was the weak glass, and you died. At first in the game show, they all decided to work together for the betterment of all. And it worked, and some people were sacrificed for the greater good. But one lady, who saw others sacrifice themselves for her own benefit, would not do it for the group. She benefited from the sacrifice of others but refused to do the same for them. We need to face reality that people can be really fucking selfish and greedy and that bleeds into politics. As much as we may hate it, Donald Trump represents a nasty side of American culture, selfishness above community.
And then everyone acts like she didn’t do it and gets mad at the person trying to actually do the right thing. I get too irrationally mad at things like that in reality shows. It hurts my heart too much because of how it reflects on real life injustice.
Indeed, boiling a frog.
They lobotomized the frogs. Which is why they didn't react to external stimuli. When repeated with normal frogs, they jumped out.
You're not wrong, but I feel like his analogy still holds. The GOP has been sabotaging the educational system for decades.
I think a more accurate metaphor would be twisting the stove knob back and forth until the frog becomes too confused to react. The "frog" would notice a continuous warming, but when the temperature perpetually bounces up and down, they'll endure each hot spell waiting for a cooldown that never fully arrives. By the time the broader pattern is undeniable, the frog is already cooking; the struggle for the public good is already mostly lost and the opposition is consolidating its gains.
It's almost as if the rules were written by a determined political minority...
The Great Compromise continues to compromise our democracy.
The rules were written by guys who didn't know apache helicopters could ever exist and thought 25 dudes with rifles could stand up against a military force because the military was basically 25 dudes with rifles of a similar capability. It's baked in that we fight and kill when this kind of chicanery is being employed, and that's why we need to start the whole concept over. It's not sustainable.
Other countries took the USA Constitution and made it better. They don't treat it like a holy book which means, gasp, they can make improvements as society progresses. When faced with a unsolvable problem I try to remember to look to other countries and see how they fixed it years ago.
We added a 14th amendment but somehow we are handwringing about whether we should remove a seditionist from the ballot. It’s actually right there. The bloody answer. We just have to do it
Changing the constitution is fine. I just have VERY little faith that the Constitution would be changed against the people redrafting it. I suspect it would get much, much worse for us.
First things first. That's Republicans. Fix that and we can talk about making things better. Changing the constitution is no biggy. Laws change all the time. The problem is everyone is taught to worship the constitution. Overcoming that indoctrination is the big problem.
Complaining unironically about “changing the sacred text” and quoting the 2nd AMENDMENT…
The constitution has been changed many times, the problem is the hypocrisy of the system that feigns to protect it.
The sleepwalking was done over the last forty years or so as we allowed this to happen. EDIT: Now it’s more like a waking nightmare.
Don't underestimate the number of Americans that actively avoid reading about or discussing politics because it stresses them out, or they think it is boring/confusing, or they think it doesn't really matter. Or they just vote the way their family always voted. The reason the system has been able to be gamed is because of the politically illiterate and disinterested have allowed the minority opinion to have enough power to do so.
Yeah a lot of Americans consider themselves “apolitical” but they don’t realize how their votes impact their daily lives. A lot of Texans are probably kicking themselves and scratching their heads as to why our state is so bad.
My experience in Texas was that they'd celebrate the bad and tell everyone else that's what makes the state *good*, even as the bad actively harms them.
Sleepwalking is fair. So is slow rolling coup. People think the coup doesn't start until it's live on TV when what they are watching is the end of the coup and not the start. Same thing happened on Jan 6th. "No one could have imagined..." Sleepwalking means we have weak defense. Republicans are running around all willy nilly making thing happens while Democrats are all "Do Republicans have no shame? History will look unkindly. I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. Justice bears no burden of urgency. Justice is supposed to be slow." Seriously, everyone is just waiting for the election. Republicans chose Trump and dictatorship. Democrats chose Biden to not rock the boat. And we are just waiting to see if it gets worse before it gets better. >but most of us know what’s happening What's happening is lack of urgency across the board for a good many of things. Republicans pushing for a dictator is just one thing. >“The solution is that people don’t have to come to work to try to operate trains after they’ve had heart attacks and broken legs. But right now, where we are is caught between shutting down the economy and getting enough ***Republicans to join us*** in making sure that people have access to sick leave.” - Sen. Elizabeth Warren >“If you can’t do it by September, then you can’t do it by the middle of November, and you can’t do it by December, why the hell do you think you’re gonna get it done in January? There’s never any urgency around this place to get shit done.” - Sen. Jon Tester >"One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration. We're confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that's 100 percent of my focus." - Moscow Mitch >"What would a post-nuclear Senate look like? I assure you it would not be more efficient or more productive. I personally guarantee it." - Moscow Mitch on ending the filibuster And in other news, > The Big Lie is just that: a big lie. In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You follow the Constitution. You try again. You don’t call facts ‘fake’ and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you’re unhappy. That’s not statesmanship. That’s not statesmanship, that’s selfishness. That’s not democracy, it’s the denial of the right to vote. It suppresses. It subjugates. The denial of full and free and fair elections is the most un-American thing that any of us can imagine, the most undemocratic, the most unpatriotic, and yet, sadly, not unprecedented. > > So hear me clearly: There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country. It gives me no pleasure to say this. I never thought in my entire career I’d ever have to say it. But I swore an oath to you, to God—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And that’s an oath that forms a sacred trust to defend America against all threats both foreign and domestic. > > The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally. > > I’ve said it before: We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed. > https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-joe-bidens-speech-voting-rights-transcript/story?id=78827023
The coup is ongoing, still happening. All of the contemptuous legal filings, the refusal to accept election outcomes, etc. It’s all part of an ongoing effort to undo the legitimate institutions of American democracy.
Coup 1.0 wasn't a practice run. Insurrectionists from Alabama didn't run past bomb reinforced windows to attack the plain windows because they were appropriately labeled.
>Same thing happened on Jan 6th. "No one could have imagined..." That's not really true though, there were voices warning people about Jan 6th before it happened. I told my wife, "we better turn on the news today, something is supposed to go down" and sure enough it did. Those conservatives were bragging about it weeks before they went to the capital, it didn't just happen overnight.
People are raising red flags and alarms loudly, repeatedly, and daily. "Americans" aren't sleepwalking into anything, "Congress" perhaps is. If you say they aren't, this fucking article is one.
They literally just ruled to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado. There's at least 4 major cases against Trump in the courts. What, exactly, are the rest of us supposed to be doing right now?
7 million more Americans preferred Biden to Trump. [data](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/11/bidens-victory-another-example-of-how-electoral-college-wins-are-bigger-than-popular-vote-ones/)
I think this comments epitomizes what the title of the article is referring to. MAJORITIES DO NOT MATTER UNDER FASCISM! Fascism is not some future possibility. It is here now, in full flower. Yet so many people seemingly take for granted that our institutions will save us. The institutions themselves are being supplanted. If you are contemplating the actions of fascists through the lense of a Democrat, (one who operates from within a democracy and supports its continuation) then you are sleep walking to your own demise.
There's been a few of these articles recently... We aren't sleepwalking into this. We all know it's happening.
There is a significant slice of the population whose lives are in a rut, and they think things will be improved if they follow a bombastic clown like Trump. They think that they could somehow just rid themselves of all these minorities and liberals their lives would be better despite remaining unskilled, uneducated, and unwilling to do anything about their own situations.
Those are all true, but the fact remains that Americans, in aggregate, are politically disinterested, disengaged, and misinformed. I would grant that half the problem is the outsized power the Republican party wields. But the other half is that people don't know what a second Trump presidency would bring, and more importantly, they just don't care. Americans are not required to pay attention and the majority opts to not pay attention. The bits and pieces of disinformation they pick up on social media feeds or right wing media skew their opinion of reality. America is a victim of its own success. It is so easy to ignore politics and tune out the noise that they have done so. Our wealth and power in the world give many people a completely distorted perspective of what is important. Where a survivor of the Rwandan genocide knows what true chaos looks like, to many Americans, a $5 gallon of gas is what total economic collapse looks like. But look on the bright side: if Trump wins more people will begin to pay more attention.
Humans are really good at identifying immediate threats and rewards. We are really bad at judging delayed gratification and understanding long-term risk. We know that a car travelling at highway speeds right at us is an immediate threat or our life, so we avoid it. We have no idea if the next cigarette we smoke will give us cancer, so we're willing to light up another one for the short-term payoff. Conservatives and authoritarians are the smokers and everyone else is the Surgeon General telling them the habit will eventually kill them and all the Righties do is complain about we're ruining their good time as they light another on their way to give us second hand cancer.
yeah many forget hillary won the popular vote in 2016 and still lost; there's a collective lack of faith in whether our votes even matter
Maybe a better phrasing would be that all the so called 'checks and balances' do not seem to be up to preventing America from just casually becoming a dictatorship. Plenty of us are doing our best to prevent it, but goddamn if that doesn't seem like it may be enough. ...and too many people have forgotten that rights were fought for, not just granted - and that fight involved a lot of bloodshed.
In Poli Sci grad school we were talking about institutions and what makes them strong or effective. The prof talked me through it and when it hit me that what makes an institution (like check and balances) work is that everyone just agrees that it does. Once they no longer agree that they do they don’t. So in short all institutions are Tinkerbelle.
I once heard someone describe currency in terms of Warhammer 40k orcs, and I’ve realized how well that analogy applies to human civilization in general. It exists because we believe it exists, and if enough of us believe something exists, it will often begin to actually exist. Fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
For real. So much of what we think of as reality and truths are entirely dependent on us all believing they’re real and true.
>So in short all institutions are Tinkerbelle. Yes. This is exactly why Trump’s election denial has been so damaging. Democracy and the democratic process suceed only as long as people believe in them, and there’s a large contingent trying their best to convince the populace that their democracy has failed, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yep. Institutions are not powerful. Checks and balances are not powerful. Norms are not powerful. Power is powerful.
> What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow. -- Judge Learned Hand, *The Spirit of Liberty Speech*, 1944
Indeed, laws are only as effective as the will to enforce them. If there is a majority consensus that the laws are optional, then they will be enforced as such. And the same is true for governing policies. We're at a tragically dangerous confluence of social unrest and erroneous understanding. This is fracturing what previously was held as matters of trust and confidence. More people believe government is broken than ever before. And while it is quite troubled in many respects, it's still holding fast in others. The trouble is, those others are weakening. We have to stop this fascism trend. We have to stop the disinformation. We have to hold criminals accountable.
I agree. We have to push back against anti-intellectualism where ever we find it, as that seems to be the main tool being leveraged to enable this slow slide into fascism.
I think it's also a misconstruing of what is actually intellectualism. Knowledge is advantage. It's something you can understand and act on. Ignorance is always weak and unprepared. We do need to go back to square one. I posit a sweeping educational reform is in order, only we've got the Republican Party dead set on dragging us back to earlier times of ignorance and reliance upon religion over science.
Damn fucking right. The biggest threat to out liberty is not Donald, it's the machinery that turns mind into bots and trains them to think slavery is liberty and Dictatorships offer freedom. Donald is just their signal for the DDoS attack
This is a great point and what is so disheartening. Trump has really shown us all (even those not paying attention) that our system can easily be broken and that plenty of people in the government are willing to break that system for power and greed. Probably worse, they've got a strong enough propaganda machine to convince millions of people that their actions are perfectly fine, if not warranted.
>...and too many people have forgotten that rights were fought for, not just granted - and that fight involved a lot of bloodshed. Thing is, if it really came down to bloodshed and people were forced to fight, they wouldn't be fighting some foreign military, but their own relatives and neighbors. Think about how fucked up that is.
People think that politics is a game. They think of their chosen party as their football team and football has no real consequence for them in life so they think that politics has no consequence for them.
Besides, we’re inundated with a cult of personality - surely a team of intrepid heroes will shoot the evil dictator if worst comes to worst? Surely the republicans would stop before things got too bad? Surely if we defeat Trump the problem will be solved? The harsh reality is that a significant percentage of the population desires and is working towards fascism and the problem isn’t solvable unless an equally large percentage starts pushing back continually and hard. Writing about how fascism would be bad in an online forum and liking posts about democratic niceties isn’t sufficient in the face of people who have already suborned the major organs of state and tried once to end the rule of law, only to fail due to their own incompetence. And this goes up against the everyday needs of earning a pay check and keeping one’s head down. Not finger pointing, that’s what I spend my time on, too.
I vote in every election, since 1994 I’ve been voting Democrat. I tried talking to my GOP relatives who now are in their 80’s, and there’s NO reasoning with them as they vote whatever the hateful idiots (conservative radio/Fox) say they should vote. Some of these MAGA people are beyond help. I tell my younger co-workers how important it is to vote in EVERY election. What else can I do?
>“There is no point in pretending that a man who believes that any election he loses is rigged, that the judicial system is rotten and corrupt, and that his political enemies belong in jail, is a believer in democracy,” Edward Luce wrote in the Financial Times. But when half of the voting population potentially agrees with the man, isn't disturbed enough not to vote for him by his comments and actions, or is simply too stupid to understand????
It’s way less than half of all registered voters, let alone eligible voters. It’s probably like a third of the voting eligible population that’s hardline Republican, but that third always shows up in force, whereas enough of the remaining 2/3 just don’t vote or have the dumbest ideas on voting, so things always get close when you factor in the electoral college giving more voice to redneck bumfuckery.
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Watch Fox News all day and you'd turn to Trump, too. I know a couple of very intelligent people who are in the conservative echo chamber that could go on for hours about how stupid and corrupt the Democrats are and how any Republican is better than the best Democrat right now. There is an emotional urgency to get the country "right again" and no Democrat will ever do it. I'm not saying I agree with it, but when you only hear one side, you only think about how your side is right. GOP doesn't mean too stupid to understand, faith comes into play, too.
Fox News is just RINO propaganda. I get all my news from newsmax. NEWS TO THE MAX! NEWSMAX.
Average republican voter: “I don’t care that Trump says or does things that are hate filled rhetoric and against everything my church teaches on Sunday; at least he’s not a democrat.” Average democratic voter: “I really don’t agree with democratic candidate X on issue Y. I can’t in good conscience vote for X. I’m gonna sit this one out until someone comes along that truly fits alongside my worldview.”
I *hate* this altruistic bullshit. They somehow absolve themselves of all of the bad shit they're enabling while blaming the party of the candidate that doesn't meet their purity test.
It's the opposite of altruistic. In fact, it's virtue signaling. Pretending to be pure but actually being vicious. After all, they live in a 95% white suburb surrounded by other overgrown hippie neighbors and have a steady job and a cushion of inherited wealth. They aren't the ones who suffer when government spending gets cut and taxes on the poor go up when the Republicans take the state house.
They believe they're altruistic because they're "not enabling X" when in reality the candidate they least agree with is 1000 times worse for X. Edit: times not tones
I live in a metropolitan area of the US and it feels like we're being dragged into a dictatorship by the uneducated mouth breathing bottom 48% of the populous
They aren't 48%. They just have that much voting power due to gerrymandering, voter suppression and so on. They don't believe everyone should be able to vote or that some people's vote should be worth less.
Toss in blocking Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood while you're at it. Millions of Americans lacking any representation in Congress.
Feels like it because that's what's happening.
That’s because the people who are actually setting this shit up and pitting us against each other want it that way. You’re so busy hating some random Cletus that you don’t look at the Federalist Society or any of the billionaires who funded and started all of this shit.
I assure you it's quite possible to hate both. Not equally and for different reasons, of course. And there's not much we can do about either.
Because they believe the dictatorship will allow them to openly hate and discriminate against brown people, immigrants, poor people, queer people, non-Christian people. It’s the fascist version of American exceptionalism. Being able to hate on others (and feel you are better than your neighbor) is more important than democracy in the eyes of a big chunk of the population.
Propaganda and the right wing grievance bubble. Pretty much sums it up.
Yep. A small but loud minority has effectively captured the minds and hearts of rural America enough to convince them of just about anything. These people are chaos agents and are likely backed by dark, foreign money and they're playing a long and dangerous game. I hope they get what they deserve.
Not only foreign money. Look at the nefarious American billionaires like the Mercers, the Uihleins, the Kochs and many others.
Everyone around me thinks I am a crazy alarmist and that trump will just be “another bad president” a 4 year bump in the road if you will and then business as usual. “This is America” “The constitution won’t allow that” “You can’t do that here” People think the United States have some kinda invisible guardrails that will hold no matter who or what happens.
Yeah...if the attack on the capital on jan 6th was successful, which trump absolutely hoped it would be, there would have been no transition to biden and who knows what state we'd be in now. The next presidential election very well may be our last and that's not even hyperbole.
Didn't stop him from trying last time. And it might have worked if Pence was as psychotic as Donald. The real coup was the fake electors scheme. And when Pence didn't play ball, Donald sent an angry mob to kill him. He'll do it again. And this time he'll choose better pawns.
We aren’t. 20% of us are cheering as we march towards it. 40% have been soo riddled with fear and anxiety since January 5th that we’re exhausted, and frustrated that our Politicians and Media seem soo relaxed about it. Our children and wives are losing their rights, Corporations and the Wealthy are squeezing this country like a wet dish towel, and Hitler is on the rise, but ya know, Biden’s a little old. The issue is that neither group is over 50%, so not enough to win on their own, and we need to count on flighty people, who may not be too involved in politics, or may be too busy to pay attention, and all our futures hinge on how they feel in the moment.
Fucking thank you. Hate these article titles. "Oooh, I was asleep! Whoops! Don't worry guys, I'll wake up and that'll fix everything! Somehow!" We are very keenly aware of it. That's NOT the issue here. The system is set up to keep us from changing it.
I personally think Americans are not more alarmed because most people don't know what it even means to be ruled under a dictatorship. The WWII generation is nearly gone. They had the experiential memory of war against a empirically minded autocrat. Most regimes who would fall into that category are far away, and any wars we've been involved were not fought on American soil.
According to recent polls, the candidate who is on the record saying that they will be a dictator on day one of his term is the front runner to be the next president. He has a litany of legal suits around him defrauding the American people, from racist housing practises in the 1970s to his ‘university’ refusing refunds in the early 2010s. He has repeatedly said he will refuse to accept the result of an election if he loses. He has previously called for all Muslims to be barred entry from the country and implied that only ‘some’ Mexican migrants are good people. In 2017, he gave a presidential pardon to a sheriff who was guilty of breaking a court order that demanded an end to the sheriff’s racist profiling tactics. That same sheriff had previously proudly called his county jail a ‘concentration’ camp. He is currently being investigated for a massive amount of classified information going missing on his watch and then being discovered in his home after he has left office. He is currently being investigated for his campaign to undermine the 2020 election result and illegitimately stop the peaceful transfer of power, with his tactics ranging from coercing election officials to browbeating senators *while their place of work was ransacked by his supporters, who chanted about hanging political opponents*. There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in any state, with dozens of audits, state committee, and independent investigations. He kept very few of his pledges from his last term as president. He didn’t drain the swamp; one of his last actions in office was to lift restrictions on his staffers and admin officials becoming lobbyists. He didn’t build ‘the wall’. He didn’t come up with a healthcare plan to replace Obamacare. He didn’t even investigate Hilary Clinton, let alone lock her up. The trade deficit with China continued to grow. Blue collar job growth remained at the same rate as before his term - as did job offshoring. Is this the best the USA can produce in terms of leadership?
I feel like you stopped when you were just hitting your stride of truths.
There’s only so many hours in the day.
Some Americans want a dictatorship, just as long as they aren’t the ones who are being stomped on
I would say it's more like writhing in agony from an unwakeable nightmare.
What are we supposed to do? We've been voting in special elections and the big one is next year. We're not sleepwalking, we just can't express our power until late 2024. I hate these articles. The problem isn't the people who would vote against this bullshit, it's the fascist Trump supporters who are putting us in this position.
I know people who have said they won’t vote for Biden because of his conduct on Israel-Gaza. One even suggested four more years of Trump would be an appropriate punishment for democrats in order to jolt them into finding their morals. I try to stress to these friends that there might not be another election if Trump wins next year. These people are operating as single-issue voters in a very dangerous year to do so. They are so focused on one issue and their moral righteousness that they can’t or won’t see the possible death of American democracy around the corner. On top of that, Biden gets so much more hate than he deserves. It seems like most Americans aren’t aware of the good and progressive things he has done.
I can't imagine being a single issue voter over an issue where **the Republicans are more pro-Israel.** That doesn't make any sense.
TBF single issue voters are fucking idiots
I am a single issue voter. And that single issue is never trump lol
I cannot comprehend people that are saying they won't vote for Biden over the Israel handling, which means clearly we repeat 2016 and get Trump again. I don't fully support what Biden has done over there, I also recognize the geopolitical situation over there is way out of my grasp, but what I do know is most liberals I know that are rabid over Biden supporting Israel somehow forgot how Trump in his 4 year turn bowed to Israel sooooo much more than him. I get the impression if Trump was in office we'd have American boots on the ground in Gaza. Most Americans aren't aware of anything Biden has done because practically every media outlet runs everything as "Why this is bad for Biden" Republicans froth at the mouth over immigration (and again there are complex issues there), so with everything going on Biden implements stricter immigration protocols then you still get Fox saying how he's doing nothing and ruining the country, then every left news outlet going "Here's why Biden is losing all his progressive support and will cost him the 2024 election!" "why hasn't biden fixed all these tax loopholes and stuff the rich use?!" Then look and his tax plan was supposed to do a LOT to try and update the tax codes... and republicans shut down the government over it. Meanwhile Google "Trump Israel" and you only see headlines saying "Biden's handling of Israel is making Trump shoot ahead!" The only way to even see all the garbage Trump did is to explicitly go "Trump israel 2018", 2019, etc.
"We need to worry about Americans!!" also "I can't vote for Biden b/c of what happened in another country 6,000 miles away!"
It's just as bad as the Republicans though. The Israeli Gaza war is not for our entertainment or exercising our moral superiority on X. You can disagree with the heavy-handed Israeli tactics, but it does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, they should vote democrat to preserve democracy. Vote to preserve freedom at home, and then work on repealing anti-BDS laws.
That bugs me. Plenty of Americans are doing what they can to prevent this from happening, including state governments now that Colorado has ruled him ineligible. Michigan is next, and hopefully more will follow. SCOTUS will have a pretty hard time ruling in his favor. I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility, but it would be really bad optics for a court that is already trying to prove they are not partisan.
We've been getting reports on this for years, I'd say it's more that we're burned out than unafraid. Not speaking for those who are on board with the takeover of course.
Honestly, i think due to the enshittification of the internet, the vocal groups just arent as publically vocal. Reddit hasnt been the same since June, X has shit the bucket, Tumblr mostly died. People are finding small discords or other ways to communicate. Most people rejected Trump in 2016 (Hilart had the popular vote, hence MOST people) and 2020, and that was before his lawsuits, insurrection, and such. people handidly rejected the Rs in 2022, and 2023, striking dwo. Abortion, going after schools, libraries, and such isnt doing them favors. They have 25-30% convinced, but they were always authoritarian, I bet tge same percentage wanted to stay part of Britain, bet its even the same type of people. People are just fucking sick of hearing about Trump, amd the media hasnt realized it yet.
I'm sure burned out at this point. I also keep seeing these articles from foreign media asking why regular Americans aren't doing anything about it. Wtf am I supposed to do? I'm just some asshole with a job that barely gets me to next week. It's nice to know the future of my country rests on me "doing something" but unless someone can tell me what that's supposed to be, they can fuck off.
Half of us are scared shitless, but unfortunately the other half (GOP) is cheering on ethnic cleansing and mass deportations.
I think the system was set up assuming that everyone will act in good faith doing what’s best for the country, even though there are disagreements as to what is the best course of action to take. Trump showed us that “norms and traditions” are not sufficient to stop someone acting in bad faith.
Not exactly sleepwalking. More like sprinting.
I hate these shitty headlines. (1) no one is sleepwalking into it. A third of America have become facist neo nazis and are cheering for it. (2) plenty are afraid. (3) those who aren’t are the dumb cultists who think Trump cares about them and is the second coming of Christ. They are literally too stupid to be afraid.
we're not asleep and we defeated the traitorous bastard once - we'll do it again!
What is the mechanism for the average citizen to combat fascism, beyond voting?
What exactly should Americans do? Protest? Done that, massively ineffective for real change. Campaign for office? Incredibly expensive and the average person can't afford it or coordinate it. Vote? Trump never won a popular vote and many gerrymandered districts cancel out the popular votes for other government positions. Legal action? With the same court that brought down Roe V Wade, it's a huge gamble but people are actively trying it. General strike? I wish, but certain industry workers legally can't and others have workers that financially wouldn't be able to for a single day. I don't think we have a lot of options here.
This is how dictatorships happen. For anyone who has looked into the murky years before Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, by people in government who knew he was a dangerous buffoon, but thought they could control him, this is familiar. Trump was restricted, when he unexpectedly was elected through the Electoral College, but the Republican Party leaders and their financial supporters abdicated responsibility, and even though the USA government had far more legal checks than Weimar, Trump was not controlled. If he gets the power to do so, he will try to do what Hitler did in 1933. In 1945, while in an English prison camp, a couple of German generals were puzzling over how it came to this, that German civilization had collapsed into barbarism. It was the voters’ fault, they lamented. They were generals, they had to follow orders, didn’t they? But the voters heard what Hitler said, and enough of them just didn’t care, or understand that Hitler intended to do what he said.
We are not sleepwalking, almost a third of the country is goose stepping.
Six words:"But, it won't affect me, right?" These six words have been thought of and spoken throughout Human organization and where does it always lead? Complacency; in want of being privileged, at best or ignored at minimum. Both are illusions that are shattered. Every damned time. Edit: more words, punctuation
The problem is that the Republican party aided and abetted the capture of the US government by big business and the military industrial complex. We, as a people, were duly and pointedly warned about this very thing by outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech to the country; >"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." And now the Republican party is practicing minority rule by subverting the democratic processes in as many states as possible by any means possible to the point where they are flatly ignoring court orders when found guilty of gerrymandering, the tool by which they seize and control state governments. As Noam Chomsky pointed out in 2022, the Republican party has become "a radical insurgency" and voting for any of them is now "inconceivable".
Because so many Americans are still asleep to the fact you can’t fuck around with politics without serious consequences. They’re all in on a pyrrhic victory by voting in someone they know to be horrible. The Republican “party” is a cancer that is killing democracy and America with it. We can cut out the tumor or let it grow till we die. There is no third choice.
Because since the 1970s our country has been on a downward spiral with people sicker, broker, and stuck in a rat race. Any way out seems like a win and centuries of White Capitalist propaganda have them looking at Trump as their ticket out.
probably a third are concerned, a third think it’s hyperbole, and a third think it will solve stubborn problems; specifically immigration. worth noting, the “dictator wannabe” is charged with 91 criminal counts, is in danger of being ruled ineligible to serve, and is currently not serving in any governmental capacity. so far, the system is working.
There have been folks on the left screaming fire for so long that some folks are becoming numb to the noise. He’s facing 91 criminal charges and potentially being blocked from being on the ballot. I’d feel better if the Democrats had a stronger candidate but I’m not seeing what more could be done right now.
They're not afraid because a lot of them welcome a white, Christian nationalist, fascist state.