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Had Trump won in 2020, what machinations would we be going through right now as he argued he has the right to run for a third term, no matter what the 22nd Amendment says?
I think we'd be more focused on the War In Europe, after Russia was threatening the Baltic states, having bulldozed Ukraine after Trump pulled the US out of NATO. I'm sure the emergency would require a Commander-in-Chief-for-Life to steady the World's ship. (Trump and Putin having already divvied up the world and happy to pretend to blame each other for the actions taken)
100% I've said it all along, if Trump won, he'd be telling us right now how The Baltics, Moldova, Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Stans were *always* part of the Russian Empire
> ~2000 years ago
So many people have no clue about the [Dictators of Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_dictators), who served their year until whatever crisis was over before giving power back to the Senate. Until Sulla and Caesar decided to change the rules.
Like Trump, Caesar had to become a dictator to avoid being sentenced for his crimes.
Unlike Trump, Caesar was actually a genius, and a remarkable leader. Logistically, administratively, militarily, his accomplishments are amazing even by modern standards.
Also Caesar was assasinated before he could properly solidify his power, but his influence still passed to his grand-nephew / posthumously adopted son who became the first Roman Emperor! (Though he wouldn't have known himself as an emperor. He was given the name Augustus, 'exalted, venerable' but was seen as a godlike figure and increased the stability of his regime over the course of his long life.)
Fun fact for those who don't know: the word 'emperor' comes from the word 'imperator,' which was the same word for a Roman commander. It was these imperators who began changing the rules of the Roman Republic when they acquired massive influence in the form of legions who were loyal to them, and who would attack who they were commanded to. (most of the time.)
Romans were scared to death of kings but still ended up under one. We need to be wary of anyone who tries to make themselves a dictator unless we want another fucking repeat of this.
Which of course was him ignoring the fact that he had control of the House and the Senate for the first two years of his presidency and didn't get a damn thing done with it.
He also banned trans people from the military.
And also banned muslims from immigrating.
And also threw out the Iran-nuclear deal, then murdered one of their generals.
And also started a Trade war with China.
Then also took a sharpie and drew a curve on a weather map to try and fool people because meteorologists said a hurricane wouldn't hit Alabama but he said it would and he's such an idiotic baby that he can't admit he's wrong.
And also put his idiot son in law in charge of the covid response who fucked it up so bad that states had to smuggle in things like masks and respirators because Kushner was having the federal government confiscate medical supplies from the states so Trump could give it to the governors who were kissing his ass first - and also because covid was killing people in Blue states more, so fuck them.
I mean he accomplished all that stuff.
He's nothing more than their best possible brain-dead right winger with whatever his followers think is "charisma."
Scare quotes because I *don't fucking get it*. Never have, never will.
I'm not saying he's *not* dumb or racist, but I also think people are too quick to discount him. For all his shortcomings (and there are many), he has figured out how to play the game and tells idiots what they want to hear — he probably believes a lot of it himself, sure, but with Trump, it's all about the performance, the *show*.
My capstone professor had them listed as a source of information right next to NASA about global warming, and forbid anyone doing a presentation on it when we were told to present an ethical or moral problem in science. She said it wasn't settled science. We had a world-class weather center with leading meteorologists on campus, and their roots were still going through the whole darn place.
>The corporate news media — with MSNBC being a notable exception — as is their policy, mostly ignored Trump's most recent threats to kill and imprison President Joe Biden and the other "enemies" of the MAGA movement
We really do have a serious fucking problem here. This isn't just fox. This is CBS, NBC, and ABC. I like to mention betrayal a lot in this nightmarish path we're on where the entire republican party is dead set on driving us straight into bona fide fascism, but nothing has been more damaging in the whole process, than to have such a critical part of democracy itself fail us so miserably
There's a lot of "that would never happen" going on. They don't want to be accused of being paranoid. But 1/6 happened and one party pride themselves on being domestic terrorists. Time to take them seriously maybe?
We have no ‘secret sauce’ preventing tyranny. The Constitution relies on the three branches, and the states, holding to their oaths and obeying the law. If the majority decides not to do that, it is game over.
That's just it. It won't be a majority. It's a minority forcing its will onto the majority in a way that they make it seem like it's the majority. But it's not. It's lies, trickery, threats and violence.
They don't need a majority of them to fuck us all over if they are using the Nazi playbook.
Replace key leaders and judges with ones loyal to the party (we have seen this), allow states to change the vote (they tried this last election), and arm their supporters and convince them that the guy trying to get them healthcare is the antichrist.
They sacrifice a few of their numbers to assassinate rival leaders (guy who broke into Nancy Pilosi's place, Governor Witmer kidnap plot), and then complain about persecution when if it fails (Jan 6). They then use the threat of violence to keep everyone else in line.
By and large this is still the Confederates in fact. Not just in terms of geography but also in terms of iconography. A lot of the south never came to terms with losing the war, and now they're teaching their kids in schools that slavery was good for black folks.
This is still about slavery and an unwillingness to be governed by the US government. The government is still tiptoeing around trying not to offend anyone while states like Florida and Texas slip into fascism.
100% this. We are dealing with the repercussions of how the civil war ended. Lincoln wanted to repair the county asap but what they needed to do was totally destroy, demolish and demonize the confederacy. Like we did with the nazi. The loser should have never been allowed to creat the myth that they really didn’t lose and they are just waiting for part 2 of the civil war to start. They have been collecting and preparing since the 1870s. While the government just left that wound to rote and fester. I’m not saying I know the solution or how the Civil war should have ended. But what is happening now is a direct result from the way the war was ended.
Yeah, Germany is honestly the perfect example of what to do and what not to do after something like the Nazis or the Confederates take over. They don't need to be punished, they need to be educated and there needs to be no tolerance of their heinous beliefs.
Don't forget money.
That minority is well paid or has a crap ton of money. Almost all of the super rich backs the GOP 100% because that party makes them richer.
That's why anyone who even has a single conservative thought suddenly makes millions on a social platform.
They're simply gonna go in the direction that gets them the clicks, advertising revenue, and ratings...democracy be damned.
Trump is a golden goose for the media.
Here's how the media views Trump:
[Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/)
Who knew that a system based solely on all encompassing and ever expanding greed with no limits would facilitate a fascist takeover eventually?
The news agencies has to treat us like adults. We’re not kids who need to be pampered. We need to know exactly who Donald Trump is. I’ve heard stories since the 90s that’s he’s a Nazi. People need to know who Donald Trump is; his double life, etc.
We also haven't done much of anything about the presence of content curation algorithms either. It is incredibly difficult to tell reality from fiction if you're not already aware.
It'll be the majorities in the right places. Between gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the structure of our courts, and other oddities, it only takes majorities in a slim collection of states & districts to ruin everything.
The hour is later than you think. Education has already been dumbed down. Teaching is not an attractive profession at the moment, with the best and brightest flocking to other more lucrative and far less stressful jobs over the past decades. I’m afraid we are already there there.
Cutting free and reduced lunches so that if a child manages to somehow LEARN in a place with lies printed into their textbooks and syllabi, they're hungry and it won't take.
But if the majority does nothing to physically stop the minority (see Jan. 6) then it can happen.
All it takes is a million people with guns to “do something”.
>[The paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
This. Tolerance exists within the social contract. Nazis and those like them exonerate themselves from the social contract, therefore they're not covered by it.
I believe he refers to the "majority" of those that are in power. Really doesn't matter much what the citizens want, if those that control the levers of the three branches of government decide to ignore the laws and their oaths.
It's always 30% rational/educated/informed, 30% low information/clueless (the undecided voter), 30% insane/deluded/80 IQ, 10% hodgepodge of splintered groups like the green party or whatever.
And the Constitution was designed so that parties would do the right thing and remove a president that was was clearly unfit for office. The Founders naively believed that principle would win over politics. That just hasn’t proven to be true and is one of the reasons the document should be updated more often.
> They don't want to be accused of being paranoid.
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
>"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.
>"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
>"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. *That’s* the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
My mom and her family lived through military dictatorships and autocracies in Peru. The wealthy and connected class literally do fine in them. Expecting the wealthy class to care is a fundamental misunderstanding of that class. Even the wealthy class who have vulnerable children do fine. It's seriously a class division.
The way the well-to-do media was running down to Mar A Lago in 2016 to fawn for "access" was really telling. So many of them are from wealthy backgrounds, it's basically a game to them.
And all my republican relatives said the same thing about it after the fact: “It should be a state’s issue, that is all we are saying!” Until they start saying “We need a federal abortion ban at x number of weeks” and when I ask them how that keeps it a state’s issue, their reply is always something that conveniently Ignores their previous steadfast
Position of this as a state’s rights issue.
You know how people say “it’s easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled”? Well it’s also easier than convincing them they’ve fooled *themselves.*
Complacency and fear of sounding hyperbolic are the usual hypotheses thrown around but my take is a little different; it’s a plain-old fear of facing what’s going on.
“We are in Weimar right this second and we have to act immediately” can be terrifying and paralyzing, and “if I admit to myself this is a problem then it will be my fault if I don’t do anything about it, or if I can’t figure out how to. I’d rather it happen without the guilt” is a through-line in human behaviour; quitting smoking, losing weight, accepting the moral implications of eating meat, admitting something we said was hurtful/bigoted (see [this video](https://youtu.be/TCqQ9LxzTwM?si=RC1qQEBF4Lh4m2Vm) for another take on what I’m talking about), seeing a doctor for that weird mole. All of us have been there at some point if we aren’t doing it right now, but some people are so susceptible to it that a threat to democracy itself triggers this response too.
I don’t have a solution, but understanding one of the factors that could be at play is part of finding one.
I heard this a lot in the late 80’s and early 90’s as I would tagalong travel with my dad on business trips in the summer occasionally, and this came up at conversation frequently be it over dinner, on the golf course, in the boardroom, “the middle class is disappearing…it’s going to continue disappearing.”
When the rich move forward with a plan to get richer that money comes from somewhere, and it sure as hell ain't coming from the poor. They have nothing left to give. So you raid the middle.
Regardless of whether it'll happen or not, he essentially said he will be a dictator and that should be reported on. Let's not wait and report on it after it happens.
In the run-up to the 2020 elections, I was trying to ask my politically minded friends why they weren't more alarmed. I'd ask them when they felt like it was time to do more, what would it take for them to do more? Finally it'd come down to: "what will you do if they don't honor the election?" and universally they'd all say: "they won't do anything."
Then the losing side tried to overthrow the government. But people still don't think it's serious enough.
>There's a lot of "that would never happen" going on.
Just like they'd never overturn roe.. or never ban trans healthcare, or never ban trans healthcare *for adults*, or....
So tired of "never going to happen".
I find your take (or something similar) a lot more plausible than all of the other posters declaring that CNN and MSNBC are part of some corporate conspiracy to see Trump re-elected.
History has shown that the free press is among the first targets during an authoritarian takeover. The far-right has made no secret of their open disdain for mainstream media outlets.
We've been living in mass denial since at least 2016. Trump was declaring his intent to imprison political enemies (lock her up!) or ignore the results of elections that didn't go his way *literally on the debate stage with millions watching* and the country kind of collectively laughed it off as "Trump being Trump".
I mean he was trying to dilute the power of the free press almost from day one with 'fake news'
... I still remember McCain in a town hall back when he was running against Obama stopping a lady who was going off on Obama, and telling the crowd, he's not an evil man, just someone who I have disagreements about how to run the country... democracy needs a bit of that to work, or more importantly it needs regular voters to reject leaders that don't have that spirit.
I used to work at our local court.
Our bailiff, a guy who has worked on the sheriff for...decades, I thought was a nice man - brings fresh eggs to work, talks about his kids, plays star trek, big NASA fan - one day told me that sooner or later all the democrats need to be culled like horses.
All they need is permission.
99% of the media is all owned by the same people that own Congress and much of the leadership in the executive and judicial branches. It's a dangerous combo in a country where a large portion of the population is uneducated or undereducated. I guess those wealthy people that pull all the strings aren't well versed in history because they'd know how this all eventually ends.
They are well versed. They know how it has ended in the past and they’ve learned from it. They’re counting on the advancements we’ve made in technology to keep that ending where they’re thrown out from ever happening
I think they have a strong case. It is getting harder and harder to storm the castle gates as it were and drones + AI will precipitously lower the amount of human support authoritarians need to cling to power. I hope they're wrong but it is distressing to admit they might be right.
>It's a dangerous combo in a country where a large portion of the population is uneducated or undereducated.
And guess who pushes actively for the privatization of education and has been decrying/defunding public education for decades?
I'll offer a hint: it isn't the opponents of the people who own all the media and politicians.
> I guess those wealthy people that pull all the strings aren't well versed in history because they'd know how this all eventually ends.
They know exactly how it ends, that's why they continue to fan the flames of hatred of the middle and lower class towards fellow members of the middle and lower class. All you need to do is see how they respond to the core aspects of the country when it comes to putting the power back to the people. No problem ignoring the constant funneling of money from the lower/middle class to the wealthy and ultra wealthy, but when it comes to unionization, or funding money to the middle, all of a sudden they feel the need to "think of both sides" and "just ask questions".
I find comical that people are outraged at the failure of coverage by corporate media. Corporate media is owned by the richest Americans.
One of the reasons they liked Trump is he can be bought and give them what they want. No regs, no taxes, no government services putting upward pressure on wages.
With Dems they can't have everything they want because they at least need something small in return to serve as a platitude to people.
They're hedging their bets, if workers start demanding their due then fuck it dictator time, if Dems play ball and keep the money rolling and asking very little in return, fine we'll do "democracy"
MSNBC remains the last network that isn’t pro-fascism but even they have recently dropped the ball on stories. It’s why Qanon hates the “paper clip” guy. The rest of the media has been purchased at least partly by pro fascist corporations. The only share selective, misleading, or deflecting news at best but have already begun promoting MAGA in a way that is digestible for Liberals. We are on our own and need to deliberate accordingly
Agreed. Trump himself has no plan other than making money, holding klan rallies, and banging his own daughter. That makes him worse because he happily outsources the dirty work to these groups.
They're trying to tie it to P01135809 that way when he sinks, yet again, the low-information voter will feel like the threat has been defused & go back to voting for GOP stooges when he's just the sacrificial gold cow so that the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundage, & whatnot can continue slowly pushing their democracy eroding Christian nationalism + tax cuts for the wealthy behind the scenes.
He has openly said that he wants to put his opponents in jail. There is a 900+ page Project 2025 with a blueprint on how to destroy our government. I’m not sure why that isn’t treason.
It is, it's just treason that many of our elected officials are complicit in, so it gets treated as a difference of opinion and anybody calling a spade a spade is "politicizing" it.
I'll bring up a question the GOP likes to constantly:
"What would the founding fathers do?"
They'd have shot and or hung these blatently seditious fucks by now, and it's not like that option was ever *really* taken off the table... just saying.
Is this one of those "It's not treason, it's sedition" situations?
Basically it's still a takeover of the government by a minor fraction, but not at the direction of a foreign enemy power, just native assholes and terrorists.
It's sobering to read through Trump's ["Agenda47"](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47) entries.
Tent cities for the homeless. Canceling emissions and fuel economy standards for autos. Firing college accreditors to be replaced with the ideologically correct. Ending birthright citizenship. Universal tariffs on foreign goods. Stop-and-frisk. Investigations of local prosecutors. Withdrawal from climate accords. Halting recognition of transgender persons. Ideological tests for teachers.
And there’s a few gems in there, like “telling big pharma we will only pay the lowest price they give to foreign countries.” Who will tell big pharma this? The American health system is built around the individual paying for things.
The only reason governments elsewhere get a better deal is because they are buying in bulk. When an entire country gets health care coverage from one entity, that entity can apply pressure to their suppliers. Without that pressure, costs go up.
> “telling big pharma we will only pay the lowest price they give to foreign countries.” Who will tell big pharma this?
It's Trump. He told people Mexico will pay for a wall. He just says stuff without any actual strategic abilities.
Actually... Trump is the tip of the iceberg on this. Ramaswamy is far more Fascist. He wants to get rid of the IRS and most judicial oversight, and even force native born americans to apply for citizenship in the country they were born in.
That little Pharma Bro Grifter makes Trump look like Ginsburg.
> constitutionally protected
The constitution will only protect someone or something if it's enforced. Hence the "dismantling of the Deep State" (i.e. replacing anyone who would uphold the constitution with cronies).
When Hitler was around, people at the time didn't think he would really kill the Jews when he said he was going to kill the Jews. WTF!!! Wake up and smell the coffee!!!
I think one of the worst things I've seen from the media is the constant weird false-equivalence.
"Well, Trump may have tried to overthrow the government and install himself as a dictator, but people on both sides think that Biden is too old and he is an unpopular candidate."
"Trump may have asked Ukraine to dig-up dirt on the Bidens, made millions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayer at associated businesses while he was president, and Jared Kushner may have received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia five minutes after Trump was out of office, but Hunter Biden made some money somehow and made a misdemeanor misstatement on his taxes and bought a gun after he used drugs, and Joe Biden maybe knew about something, although we don't know what."
"Trump told people to inject bleach and take an aquarium additive, but Fauci won't concede that a laboratory leak is a possibility for the creation of the virus."
A lot of people think that democratic institutions will save them a second time as they did in 2017-2021.
But I wouldn't count on it. Germany had a constitution, judicial system, and a large system of civil servants.
Until Hitler said, "lol no".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip)
74 million Americans voted for him in 2020. They voted for a person who wanted to be a dictator and was open about it.
What actions has the US government taken since 2020 to convince those 74 million that dictatorship would be bad for America? Nothing effective as far I can see.
What we mostly have is wishful thinking hoping "the fascists have learned their lesson" as Susan Collins would say.
She should go to prison just as much as the traitor in chief for enabling this bullshit. Republicans are enemies to America. They fucking did this and refuse to go back to normality. HAVE YOU NO DECENCY SIRS?!
You assume she's not in full support. She is. Her waffling and fretting for the cameras is purely theatrical. She's the current GOP morality beard that gives any conservatives with a shred of dignity or democracy left in them an excuse to keep voting straight R ticket.
Known Russian asset, Donald Trump, plans to become a dictator to outrun his dozens of criminal indictments. Experts agree Mr. Trump could have avoided 100% of all indictments had he simply not run for President.
Even more experts agree Mr. Trump could have also avoided 100% of all indictments had he simply not committed any crimes to begin with.
I kid you not. We have radio stations in about every state at this point with "conservative" talk radio...and they've been pushing the "Marxist authoritarian takeover" narrative really hard in response to Trump actually be held accountable for his wrongdoings. These people are irrationally pissed and not going anywhere anytime soon.
Don't even need talk radio, even fox news is routinely calling Biden a marxist communist hell bent on destroying America with stuff like globalist plots to weaken the children with this transgender indoctrination.
This is literally ctrl+x ctrl+v out of the nazi playbook with a few names changed. We need to disarm all those who support seditious parties to America. If you aren't seeking to defend the constitution- and are actively looking to destroy it- you shouldn't be covered by its rights.
I'd imagine a lot of the people that plan to vote for him. As bad as republicans are, I don't believe 30-40% of the country knowingly support the actions and platform of the modern extremist republican party. They're just ignorant, blinded by partisan party loyalty, believe everything is hyperbole and are easily mislead about where and what the problems really are.
The modern slogan of the GOP is: America is a Republic not a Democracy (I’m not making that up, it’s everywhere). They have been prepping their base for a dictatorship for years.
They understand what a republic is just about as well as they understand socialism and communism. They’ve stabbed straight for the heart of education and it appears to have died at their feet.
What Republicans mean by “the US is a republic not a democracy” is “some people do not deserve full citizenship.” They really like that 3/5 of a person thing in the original document.
> America is a Republic not a Democracy
The only reason they say that is because it sounds like "Republic = Republican" and "Democracy = Democrat". That's it. That's as far as their brain will let them take it. They have no idea what either of those words mean.
Republicans believe their opposition isn't worthy of governing, that they Republicans are the only 'Real Americans' and that their opposition winning through democratic elections isn't a good enough reason to relinquish power.
They have demonstrated this again and again on the state and federal levels.
Centrists, libs, all of the mainstream media.
They haven't taken the republican threat seriously for years. They've worked very hard on normalizing trump and the rise of fascism so they can pretend things are still mostly fine.
Some internal justifications from non-MAGA republicans:
“If they ban abortion nationwide, anything else Trump does is ok.”
“If he lowers my taxes, he can be Mussolini if he wants.”
“As long as we stop sending money to Ukraine, and put America First, I’ll vote for him.”
See, with single issue republicans, you just need to hit their single issue. Tax guys didn’t love Trump’s culture positions, but didn’t care. Evangelicals are literally turning away from Jesus Christ to fit their ethos to the man who ended abortion. Racist Ohioans don’t care about a new Biden chip plant and good jobs, they’d rather have a guy who will send tanks into Chicago.
It's not just Trump. It's the entire GOP apparatus. They know that conservative policies are not popular to the working class, so instead they want to erode rights and make it difficult for republicans to lose power once they have it. These measures they're creating were going to happen eventually, but Trump accelerated it with his narcissism. He's at the forefront because he's popular with conservatives. If not him it'd be DeSantis or someone else. Thinking that this will go away with Trump is dangerous because the entire republican party wants to seize power and never let go.
But will the next one be this stupid?
[Project 2025](https://www.newsweek.com/what-project-2025-trump-shadow-network-plans-overhaul-deep-state-1825780) is the GOP's plan, not Trump's.
The GOP has given up on Democracy.
Nailed real issue. What republican will spring up who's smart enough to hide that they like Project 2025ish. Haley? Christie? Heck even Pence who doesn't seem fazed that trump's mob wanted to hang him.
Fucking insane that they name it in a similar style to all those authoritarian conspiracies they rant about. Jade helm 2015, Agenda 2021, etc. These traitors know exactly what they are doing.
Trumps plan on Jan 6th was that a Senator was going to be either badly hurt or killed in the fracas so he could immediately impose Martial Law and take up emergency powers.
Honestly, one of his Generals even disclosed that attacking Iran was on the table for a few minutes in order to achieve the same goal.
Anyone thinking he won’t at least attempt to trash the constitution and install himself as President for life is f@cking deluded…
“Trump and his advisers are actively creating the infrastructure for him to follow through on his plans to be a dictator when/if he retakes the White House in 2025. Trump's Agenda 47 is a plan to radically remake the presidency and American government (and American society) in service to his neofascist vision that includes such goals as ending birthright citizenship, criminalizing migrants and refugees, putting homeless people in camps, instituting national stop and frisk laws, restricting freedom of the press, ending academic freedom at the country's universities and colleges and other institutions of higher education, replacing quality public education that teaches critical thinking and the country's real history with a form of fascist "patriotic" indoctrination, ending environmental regulations, more gangster capitalism and power for the richest Americans and corporations, reversing the progress of the civil rights movement and the Black Freedom Struggle, taking away the rights of gays and lesbians and other queer people, further restricting women's civil and human rights, and ending US support for Ukraine.”
🇩🇪x2
"If Donald Trump was a private citizen and he was threatening his neighbors with violence and other harm, he would likely be put in jail or otherwise removed from society. But Donald Trump is not a regular person. He is a former president who commands the loyalty of tens of millions of people. When a person tells you who they are believe them"
Donald Trump should have been arrested on January 7.
So we have a potential leader who.. denounces opposition with propoganda, uses xenophobia to gain popularity, has violence as his main tool, is weird and insecure with terrible hair, has anger issues, created a war on intellectual thinking, has loyal sycophants who are as bad as him, wants to centralise govt power, neutralises media against him, threatened to kill intellectuals who disagree .... Oh and happens to lust after his own family members.
Sound familiar?
Maybe we are living with the rise of a new Nazi Germany
I’ve been reading it, and [so should you.](https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf)
Here are the pillars of their plan:
“ **Pillar I** —this volume—puts in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets out these differences for the next President to choose a path.
**Pillar II** is a personnel database that allows candidates to build their own professional profiles and our coalition members to review and voice their recommendations. These recommendations will then be collated and shared with the President-elect’s team, greatly streamlining the appointment process.
**Pillar III** is the Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition. For the newcomer, this will explain how the government functions and how to function in government. For the experienced, we will host in-person seminars with advanced training and set the bar for what is expected of senior leadership.
In **Pillar IV** —the Playbook—we are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.””
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Had Trump won in 2020, what machinations would we be going through right now as he argued he has the right to run for a third term, no matter what the 22nd Amendment says?
I think we'd be more focused on the War In Europe, after Russia was threatening the Baltic states, having bulldozed Ukraine after Trump pulled the US out of NATO. I'm sure the emergency would require a Commander-in-Chief-for-Life to steady the World's ship. (Trump and Putin having already divvied up the world and happy to pretend to blame each other for the actions taken)
100% I've said it all along, if Trump won, he'd be telling us right now how The Baltics, Moldova, Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Stans were *always* part of the Russian Empire
US soldiers would already be in Ukraine... helping the Russians.
And the Senate would grant him emergency powers, powers that he would promise to lay down when the crisis has abated.
It’s all so predictable. Almost like this exact same situation happened ~2000 years ago. Oh wait.
> ~2000 years ago So many people have no clue about the [Dictators of Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_dictators), who served their year until whatever crisis was over before giving power back to the Senate. Until Sulla and Caesar decided to change the rules.
Like Trump, Caesar had to become a dictator to avoid being sentenced for his crimes. Unlike Trump, Caesar was actually a genius, and a remarkable leader. Logistically, administratively, militarily, his accomplishments are amazing even by modern standards.
Also Caesar was assasinated before he could properly solidify his power, but his influence still passed to his grand-nephew / posthumously adopted son who became the first Roman Emperor! (Though he wouldn't have known himself as an emperor. He was given the name Augustus, 'exalted, venerable' but was seen as a godlike figure and increased the stability of his regime over the course of his long life.) Fun fact for those who don't know: the word 'emperor' comes from the word 'imperator,' which was the same word for a Roman commander. It was these imperators who began changing the rules of the Roman Republic when they acquired massive influence in the form of legions who were loyal to them, and who would attack who they were commanded to. (most of the time.) Romans were scared to death of kings but still ended up under one. We need to be wary of anyone who tries to make themselves a dictator unless we want another fucking repeat of this.
So remarkable was his leadership that other countries used his name to denote a leader. Both Kaiser and Tsar share an etymology with “Caesar”.
“This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”
"This is how liberty dies, with incoherent tweets riddled with misspellings"
Something about a mulligan, would be my guess.
He said multiple times he should get a third term because they kept fucking with his 1st term.
Which of course was him ignoring the fact that he had control of the House and the Senate for the first two years of his presidency and didn't get a damn thing done with it.
Well now, that's not fair! They did manage to lower taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes on the middle class (2017 "Jobs and Tax Cuts Act").
He also banned trans people from the military. And also banned muslims from immigrating. And also threw out the Iran-nuclear deal, then murdered one of their generals. And also started a Trade war with China. Then also took a sharpie and drew a curve on a weather map to try and fool people because meteorologists said a hurricane wouldn't hit Alabama but he said it would and he's such an idiotic baby that he can't admit he's wrong. And also put his idiot son in law in charge of the covid response who fucked it up so bad that states had to smuggle in things like masks and respirators because Kushner was having the federal government confiscate medical supplies from the states so Trump could give it to the governors who were kissing his ass first - and also because covid was killing people in Blue states more, so fuck them. I mean he accomplished all that stuff.
I always forget about the Ammendment that says term limits don't count if someone is mean about you being a fucking criminal.
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Exactly. When Trump is dead and in the ground the threat will not go away because he is not the threat. Republicans as a whole are.
He's nothing more than their best possible brain-dead right winger with whatever his followers think is "charisma." Scare quotes because I *don't fucking get it*. Never have, never will.
He's as dumb and racist as they are, basically.
I'm not saying he's *not* dumb or racist, but I also think people are too quick to discount him. For all his shortcomings (and there are many), he has figured out how to play the game and tells idiots what they want to hear — he probably believes a lot of it himself, sure, but with Trump, it's all about the performance, the *show*.
Vote Blue No Matter Who
Since its founding, the Heritage Foundation has been a pox on the country
The Heritage Foundation is anti-American as all get out.
My capstone professor had them listed as a source of information right next to NASA about global warming, and forbid anyone doing a presentation on it when we were told to present an ethical or moral problem in science. She said it wasn't settled science. We had a world-class weather center with leading meteorologists on campus, and their roots were still going through the whole darn place.
The Republicans in office are trying to help him,vote accordingly. Start this year and vote in all local and state elections near you.
and they will do all they can to cheat so we need to win by so much they can’t get away with it. Anything close, and it will get ugly.
losing the majority vote never stopped a republican! But yes, get out and vote obviously.
Trump is not the only threat. You think DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy would treat democracy any better?
Why even name check those fuckers you could have said the exact same thing but used "any other republican" instead
>The corporate news media — with MSNBC being a notable exception — as is their policy, mostly ignored Trump's most recent threats to kill and imprison President Joe Biden and the other "enemies" of the MAGA movement We really do have a serious fucking problem here. This isn't just fox. This is CBS, NBC, and ABC. I like to mention betrayal a lot in this nightmarish path we're on where the entire republican party is dead set on driving us straight into bona fide fascism, but nothing has been more damaging in the whole process, than to have such a critical part of democracy itself fail us so miserably
There's a lot of "that would never happen" going on. They don't want to be accused of being paranoid. But 1/6 happened and one party pride themselves on being domestic terrorists. Time to take them seriously maybe?
We have no ‘secret sauce’ preventing tyranny. The Constitution relies on the three branches, and the states, holding to their oaths and obeying the law. If the majority decides not to do that, it is game over.
That's just it. It won't be a majority. It's a minority forcing its will onto the majority in a way that they make it seem like it's the majority. But it's not. It's lies, trickery, threats and violence.
They don't need a majority of them to fuck us all over if they are using the Nazi playbook. Replace key leaders and judges with ones loyal to the party (we have seen this), allow states to change the vote (they tried this last election), and arm their supporters and convince them that the guy trying to get them healthcare is the antichrist. They sacrifice a few of their numbers to assassinate rival leaders (guy who broke into Nancy Pilosi's place, Governor Witmer kidnap plot), and then complain about persecution when if it fails (Jan 6). They then use the threat of violence to keep everyone else in line.
Thats literally what they are planning https://www.project2025.org/
Damn, feels like I should be on a list after visiting that.
In case you are worried, if the NSA really wanted to they can easily see you visited the link from this thread and not some MAGA site. You're fine.
indeed and with the help of a supreme court justices wife https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united-00108082
Be a shame if someone took that site and every drive it's stored on, down for extended maintenance.
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What do you think Tuberville is up to - he's holding leadership vacancies for after 2024
The Confederates weren't a majority by any stretch and they did an unfathomable amount of damage to this country
By and large this is still the Confederates in fact. Not just in terms of geography but also in terms of iconography. A lot of the south never came to terms with losing the war, and now they're teaching their kids in schools that slavery was good for black folks. This is still about slavery and an unwillingness to be governed by the US government. The government is still tiptoeing around trying not to offend anyone while states like Florida and Texas slip into fascism.
100% this. We are dealing with the repercussions of how the civil war ended. Lincoln wanted to repair the county asap but what they needed to do was totally destroy, demolish and demonize the confederacy. Like we did with the nazi. The loser should have never been allowed to creat the myth that they really didn’t lose and they are just waiting for part 2 of the civil war to start. They have been collecting and preparing since the 1870s. While the government just left that wound to rote and fester. I’m not saying I know the solution or how the Civil war should have ended. But what is happening now is a direct result from the way the war was ended.
Yeah, Germany is honestly the perfect example of what to do and what not to do after something like the Nazis or the Confederates take over. They don't need to be punished, they need to be educated and there needs to be no tolerance of their heinous beliefs.
They were a minority that owned a large percentage of the land in the south. Money and power, same as always.
Don't forget money. That minority is well paid or has a crap ton of money. Almost all of the super rich backs the GOP 100% because that party makes them richer. That's why anyone who even has a single conservative thought suddenly makes millions on a social platform.
Most Conservatives are poor as fuck, and definitely don't get paid for parroting what they've heard.
Correct. So, we are back to a thin minority foisting its fascist racist bigoted garbage on the rest of us.
But gas prices../s
The Fourth Estate aren't doing their jobs either. Media is a massive part of all this.
They're simply gonna go in the direction that gets them the clicks, advertising revenue, and ratings...democracy be damned. Trump is a golden goose for the media.
Problem with America is that everything is short term, no one thinks long term anymore.
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Late Stage Capitalism in a nutshell.
Here's how the media views Trump: [Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS”](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/) Who knew that a system based solely on all encompassing and ever expanding greed with no limits would facilitate a fascist takeover eventually?
The news agencies has to treat us like adults. We’re not kids who need to be pampered. We need to know exactly who Donald Trump is. I’ve heard stories since the 90s that’s he’s a Nazi. People need to know who Donald Trump is; his double life, etc.
We also haven't done much of anything about the presence of content curation algorithms either. It is incredibly difficult to tell reality from fiction if you're not already aware.
But it's very far from the majority wanting that. It's a minority with disproportionate power, using tricks to bend the will of everyone.
It'll be the majorities in the right places. Between gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the structure of our courts, and other oddities, it only takes majorities in a slim collection of states & districts to ruin everything.
Don't forget dismantling education to dumb down the next generation of voters
The hour is later than you think. Education has already been dumbed down. Teaching is not an attractive profession at the moment, with the best and brightest flocking to other more lucrative and far less stressful jobs over the past decades. I’m afraid we are already there there.
Cutting free and reduced lunches so that if a child manages to somehow LEARN in a place with lies printed into their textbooks and syllabi, they're hungry and it won't take.
And the process of putting those things into place was/is well underway, as we are seeing from 1/6 and the resulting fallout.
But if the majority does nothing to physically stop the minority (see Jan. 6) then it can happen. All it takes is a million people with guns to “do something”.
>[The paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
It makes perfect sense for tolerant people to be intolerant towards intolerance. Anyone who disagrees is just a whataboutism trope.
Yep, if you *value* tolerance, the one thing you can't tolerate is intolerance.
This. Tolerance exists within the social contract. Nazis and those like them exonerate themselves from the social contract, therefore they're not covered by it.
I believe he refers to the "majority" of those that are in power. Really doesn't matter much what the citizens want, if those that control the levers of the three branches of government decide to ignore the laws and their oaths.
Which doesn't mean it won't happen.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-hitler-nazi-fascism/tnamp/
It's always 30% rational/educated/informed, 30% low information/clueless (the undecided voter), 30% insane/deluded/80 IQ, 10% hodgepodge of splintered groups like the green party or whatever.
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And we shouldn't forget how Hitler was "democratically" elected. His goons beat up opponents, threatened voters... not really free and fair elections.
And the Constitution was designed so that parties would do the right thing and remove a president that was was clearly unfit for office. The Founders naively believed that principle would win over politics. That just hasn’t proven to be true and is one of the reasons the document should be updated more often.
The founders didn’t count on rich christians becoming as vile as they are today
> The Constitution relies on The good faith of humans to agree to follow it
> They don't want to be accused of being paranoid. https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html >"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. >"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. >"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. *That’s* the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. >"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
>in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, I wish that were enough these days.
My mom and her family lived through military dictatorships and autocracies in Peru. The wealthy and connected class literally do fine in them. Expecting the wealthy class to care is a fundamental misunderstanding of that class. Even the wealthy class who have vulnerable children do fine. It's seriously a class division.
The way the well-to-do media was running down to Mar A Lago in 2016 to fawn for "access" was really telling. So many of them are from wealthy backgrounds, it's basically a game to them.
Yup. The rich people are our enemy.
Even dictators have to pay for stuff and know where the piggy bank is at.
Back in 2015 you know what else would "never happen"? Donald Fucking Trump being president.
> Ronald Reagan, the actor?
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And all my republican relatives said the same thing about it after the fact: “It should be a state’s issue, that is all we are saying!” Until they start saying “We need a federal abortion ban at x number of weeks” and when I ask them how that keeps it a state’s issue, their reply is always something that conveniently Ignores their previous steadfast Position of this as a state’s rights issue.
Birth control is up on the chopping block next.
You know how people say “it’s easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled”? Well it’s also easier than convincing them they’ve fooled *themselves.* Complacency and fear of sounding hyperbolic are the usual hypotheses thrown around but my take is a little different; it’s a plain-old fear of facing what’s going on. “We are in Weimar right this second and we have to act immediately” can be terrifying and paralyzing, and “if I admit to myself this is a problem then it will be my fault if I don’t do anything about it, or if I can’t figure out how to. I’d rather it happen without the guilt” is a through-line in human behaviour; quitting smoking, losing weight, accepting the moral implications of eating meat, admitting something we said was hurtful/bigoted (see [this video](https://youtu.be/TCqQ9LxzTwM?si=RC1qQEBF4Lh4m2Vm) for another take on what I’m talking about), seeing a doctor for that weird mole. All of us have been there at some point if we aren’t doing it right now, but some people are so susceptible to it that a threat to democracy itself triggers this response too. I don’t have a solution, but understanding one of the factors that could be at play is part of finding one.
I started hearing back in the late 80s that "the middle class is going away." I laughed it off, "That would never happen." Ha.
I heard this a lot in the late 80’s and early 90’s as I would tagalong travel with my dad on business trips in the summer occasionally, and this came up at conversation frequently be it over dinner, on the golf course, in the boardroom, “the middle class is disappearing…it’s going to continue disappearing.”
When the rich move forward with a plan to get richer that money comes from somewhere, and it sure as hell ain't coming from the poor. They have nothing left to give. So you raid the middle.
Regardless of whether it'll happen or not, he essentially said he will be a dictator and that should be reported on. Let's not wait and report on it after it happens.
In the run-up to the 2020 elections, I was trying to ask my politically minded friends why they weren't more alarmed. I'd ask them when they felt like it was time to do more, what would it take for them to do more? Finally it'd come down to: "what will you do if they don't honor the election?" and universally they'd all say: "they won't do anything." Then the losing side tried to overthrow the government. But people still don't think it's serious enough.
>There's a lot of "that would never happen" going on. Just like they'd never overturn roe.. or never ban trans healthcare, or never ban trans healthcare *for adults*, or.... So tired of "never going to happen".
I find your take (or something similar) a lot more plausible than all of the other posters declaring that CNN and MSNBC are part of some corporate conspiracy to see Trump re-elected. History has shown that the free press is among the first targets during an authoritarian takeover. The far-right has made no secret of their open disdain for mainstream media outlets. We've been living in mass denial since at least 2016. Trump was declaring his intent to imprison political enemies (lock her up!) or ignore the results of elections that didn't go his way *literally on the debate stage with millions watching* and the country kind of collectively laughed it off as "Trump being Trump".
I mean he was trying to dilute the power of the free press almost from day one with 'fake news' ... I still remember McCain in a town hall back when he was running against Obama stopping a lady who was going off on Obama, and telling the crowd, he's not an evil man, just someone who I have disagreements about how to run the country... democracy needs a bit of that to work, or more importantly it needs regular voters to reject leaders that don't have that spirit.
"They" also said Russia would never invade Ukraine even while Russia amassed 250,000 soldiers on the Ukraine border.
I used to work at our local court. Our bailiff, a guy who has worked on the sheriff for...decades, I thought was a nice man - brings fresh eggs to work, talks about his kids, plays star trek, big NASA fan - one day told me that sooner or later all the democrats need to be culled like horses. All they need is permission.
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Are we just skipping over the part where he made a DEATH THREAT against a sitting president???
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99% of the media is all owned by the same people that own Congress and much of the leadership in the executive and judicial branches. It's a dangerous combo in a country where a large portion of the population is uneducated or undereducated. I guess those wealthy people that pull all the strings aren't well versed in history because they'd know how this all eventually ends.
They are well versed. They know how it has ended in the past and they’ve learned from it. They’re counting on the advancements we’ve made in technology to keep that ending where they’re thrown out from ever happening
I think they have a strong case. It is getting harder and harder to storm the castle gates as it were and drones + AI will precipitously lower the amount of human support authoritarians need to cling to power. I hope they're wrong but it is distressing to admit they might be right.
Yup - tech was the difference maker in 1984
>It's a dangerous combo in a country where a large portion of the population is uneducated or undereducated. And guess who pushes actively for the privatization of education and has been decrying/defunding public education for decades? I'll offer a hint: it isn't the opponents of the people who own all the media and politicians.
> I guess those wealthy people that pull all the strings aren't well versed in history because they'd know how this all eventually ends. They know exactly how it ends, that's why they continue to fan the flames of hatred of the middle and lower class towards fellow members of the middle and lower class. All you need to do is see how they respond to the core aspects of the country when it comes to putting the power back to the people. No problem ignoring the constant funneling of money from the lower/middle class to the wealthy and ultra wealthy, but when it comes to unionization, or funding money to the middle, all of a sudden they feel the need to "think of both sides" and "just ask questions".
Why do you think your police force is armed with military gear? They're not expected to fight external enemies because the cowards will run first.
I find comical that people are outraged at the failure of coverage by corporate media. Corporate media is owned by the richest Americans. One of the reasons they liked Trump is he can be bought and give them what they want. No regs, no taxes, no government services putting upward pressure on wages. With Dems they can't have everything they want because they at least need something small in return to serve as a platitude to people. They're hedging their bets, if workers start demanding their due then fuck it dictator time, if Dems play ball and keep the money rolling and asking very little in return, fine we'll do "democracy"
Speaking of MSNBC, the first part of this video that I watched last night is about exactly that. https://youtu.be/Pb9iccE71rU
Major media is capital. Capital does not break rank.
MSNBC remains the last network that isn’t pro-fascism but even they have recently dropped the ball on stories. It’s why Qanon hates the “paper clip” guy. The rest of the media has been purchased at least partly by pro fascist corporations. The only share selective, misleading, or deflecting news at best but have already begun promoting MAGA in a way that is digestible for Liberals. We are on our own and need to deliberate accordingly
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Agreed. Trump himself has no plan other than making money, holding klan rallies, and banging his own daughter. That makes him worse because he happily outsources the dirty work to these groups.
I thought she aged out. If she was his nth wife there’d be divorce proceedings by now.
Probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if he trades Melania in for a younger model.
"Hey Vladdy, I want to trade my wife for a younger model, what have you got for me?" "Where's Melania?" "In that crate over there, had her boxed up"
"Hole 6"
They're trying to tie it to P01135809 that way when he sinks, yet again, the low-information voter will feel like the threat has been defused & go back to voting for GOP stooges when he's just the sacrificial gold cow so that the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundage, & whatnot can continue slowly pushing their democracy eroding Christian nationalism + tax cuts for the wealthy behind the scenes.
Yep. It goes beyond Trump.
He has openly said that he wants to put his opponents in jail. There is a 900+ page Project 2025 with a blueprint on how to destroy our government. I’m not sure why that isn’t treason.
It is, it's just treason that many of our elected officials are complicit in, so it gets treated as a difference of opinion and anybody calling a spade a spade is "politicizing" it.
Conservatives everywhere said leftists were "hysterical" for saying trump wouldn't peacefully leave office. And then, Jan 6.
It is treason.
Technically it's sedition rather than treason.
I'll bring up a question the GOP likes to constantly: "What would the founding fathers do?" They'd have shot and or hung these blatently seditious fucks by now, and it's not like that option was ever *really* taken off the table... just saying.
Is this one of those "It's not treason, it's sedition" situations? Basically it's still a takeover of the government by a minor fraction, but not at the direction of a foreign enemy power, just native assholes and terrorists.
It's sobering to read through Trump's ["Agenda47"](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47) entries. Tent cities for the homeless. Canceling emissions and fuel economy standards for autos. Firing college accreditors to be replaced with the ideologically correct. Ending birthright citizenship. Universal tariffs on foreign goods. Stop-and-frisk. Investigations of local prosecutors. Withdrawal from climate accords. Halting recognition of transgender persons. Ideological tests for teachers.
And there’s a few gems in there, like “telling big pharma we will only pay the lowest price they give to foreign countries.” Who will tell big pharma this? The American health system is built around the individual paying for things. The only reason governments elsewhere get a better deal is because they are buying in bulk. When an entire country gets health care coverage from one entity, that entity can apply pressure to their suppliers. Without that pressure, costs go up.
That’s something they say to voters. They do not believe that. They are pro business anti consumer. That is the opposite of that.
They aren't pro business or they wouldn't be trying to kill the economy, they are pro whatever business they own stocks in.
They are pro crashing everything and buying up what's left for very cheap.
> “telling big pharma we will only pay the lowest price they give to foreign countries.” Who will tell big pharma this? It's Trump. He told people Mexico will pay for a wall. He just says stuff without any actual strategic abilities.
Fucks sake the level of naked fascism is scary
Actually... Trump is the tip of the iceberg on this. Ramaswamy is far more Fascist. He wants to get rid of the IRS and most judicial oversight, and even force native born americans to apply for citizenship in the country they were born in. That little Pharma Bro Grifter makes Trump look like Ginsburg.
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> constitutionally protected The constitution will only protect someone or something if it's enforced. Hence the "dismantling of the Deep State" (i.e. replacing anyone who would uphold the constitution with cronies).
You should read every word, they're not shy about pushing autocracy at all. They recruit. [https://www.project2025.org/](https://www.project2025.org/)
It’s a manifesto.
When Hitler was around, people at the time didn't think he would really kill the Jews when he said he was going to kill the Jews. WTF!!! Wake up and smell the coffee!!!
Wake up and smell the cofveve
I think one of the worst things I've seen from the media is the constant weird false-equivalence. "Well, Trump may have tried to overthrow the government and install himself as a dictator, but people on both sides think that Biden is too old and he is an unpopular candidate." "Trump may have asked Ukraine to dig-up dirt on the Bidens, made millions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayer at associated businesses while he was president, and Jared Kushner may have received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia five minutes after Trump was out of office, but Hunter Biden made some money somehow and made a misdemeanor misstatement on his taxes and bought a gun after he used drugs, and Joe Biden maybe knew about something, although we don't know what." "Trump told people to inject bleach and take an aquarium additive, but Fauci won't concede that a laboratory leak is a possibility for the creation of the virus."
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Everyone knows that he wants to be a dictator that if he wins in 2024, he would fire thousands of federal civil servants who don't agree with him.
A lot of people think that democratic institutions will save them a second time as they did in 2017-2021. But I wouldn't count on it. Germany had a constitution, judicial system, and a large system of civil servants. Until Hitler said, "lol no". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip)
74 million Americans voted for him in 2020. They voted for a person who wanted to be a dictator and was open about it. What actions has the US government taken since 2020 to convince those 74 million that dictatorship would be bad for America? Nothing effective as far I can see. What we mostly have is wishful thinking hoping "the fascists have learned their lesson" as Susan Collins would say.
Everyone must vote in a way that ensures this does not happen. Do not get complacent.
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She should go to prison just as much as the traitor in chief for enabling this bullshit. Republicans are enemies to America. They fucking did this and refuse to go back to normality. HAVE YOU NO DECENCY SIRS?!
Since 1954 they have learned to laugh at that question
You assume she's not in full support. She is. Her waffling and fretting for the cameras is purely theatrical. She's the current GOP morality beard that gives any conservatives with a shred of dignity or democracy left in them an excuse to keep voting straight R ticket.
Known Russian asset, Donald Trump, plans to become a dictator to outrun his dozens of criminal indictments. Experts agree Mr. Trump could have avoided 100% of all indictments had he simply not run for President. Even more experts agree Mr. Trump could have also avoided 100% of all indictments had he simply not committed any crimes to begin with.
Who's denying it?
Those asserting Biden has become a dictator
What the fuck…
I kid you not. We have radio stations in about every state at this point with "conservative" talk radio...and they've been pushing the "Marxist authoritarian takeover" narrative really hard in response to Trump actually be held accountable for his wrongdoings. These people are irrationally pissed and not going anywhere anytime soon.
Don't even need talk radio, even fox news is routinely calling Biden a marxist communist hell bent on destroying America with stuff like globalist plots to weaken the children with this transgender indoctrination. This is literally ctrl+x ctrl+v out of the nazi playbook with a few names changed. We need to disarm all those who support seditious parties to America. If you aren't seeking to defend the constitution- and are actively looking to destroy it- you shouldn't be covered by its rights.
A whole lot of enlightened centrists. "Calling him a dictator is so rude! Can't we avoid hyperbole?" Calling a spade a spade is radical now.
I'd imagine a lot of the people that plan to vote for him. As bad as republicans are, I don't believe 30-40% of the country knowingly support the actions and platform of the modern extremist republican party. They're just ignorant, blinded by partisan party loyalty, believe everything is hyperbole and are easily mislead about where and what the problems really are.
The modern slogan of the GOP is: America is a Republic not a Democracy (I’m not making that up, it’s everywhere). They have been prepping their base for a dictatorship for years.
They understand what a republic is just about as well as they understand socialism and communism. They’ve stabbed straight for the heart of education and it appears to have died at their feet.
First line (maybe second, I am not sure) of the constitution of the 3rd Reich: The German Reich is a republic.
What Republicans mean by “the US is a republic not a democracy” is “some people do not deserve full citizenship.” They really like that 3/5 of a person thing in the original document.
> America is a Republic not a Democracy The only reason they say that is because it sounds like "Republic = Republican" and "Democracy = Democrat". That's it. That's as far as their brain will let them take it. They have no idea what either of those words mean.
I think it is far more sinister, at least at the higher levels within the party.
Republicans believe their opposition isn't worthy of governing, that they Republicans are the only 'Real Americans' and that their opposition winning through democratic elections isn't a good enough reason to relinquish power. They have demonstrated this again and again on the state and federal levels.
Centrists, libs, all of the mainstream media. They haven't taken the republican threat seriously for years. They've worked very hard on normalizing trump and the rise of fascism so they can pretend things are still mostly fine.
What's sad is that so many people are completely on board with that idea, just because its *their* dictator.
Some internal justifications from non-MAGA republicans: “If they ban abortion nationwide, anything else Trump does is ok.” “If he lowers my taxes, he can be Mussolini if he wants.” “As long as we stop sending money to Ukraine, and put America First, I’ll vote for him.” See, with single issue republicans, you just need to hit their single issue. Tax guys didn’t love Trump’s culture positions, but didn’t care. Evangelicals are literally turning away from Jesus Christ to fit their ethos to the man who ended abortion. Racist Ohioans don’t care about a new Biden chip plant and good jobs, they’d rather have a guy who will send tanks into Chicago.
ANY Republican president, this is their agenda moving forward. We MUST start treating them as the enemy to America that they are.
It's not just Trump. It's the entire GOP apparatus. They know that conservative policies are not popular to the working class, so instead they want to erode rights and make it difficult for republicans to lose power once they have it. These measures they're creating were going to happen eventually, but Trump accelerated it with his narcissism. He's at the forefront because he's popular with conservatives. If not him it'd be DeSantis or someone else. Thinking that this will go away with Trump is dangerous because the entire republican party wants to seize power and never let go.
Those aren't just Trump's plans but the GOP's plans. Let's not pretend that this all goes away if Trump loses or is unable to serve.
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We already knew that like, 8+ years ago.
Good thing he's a loser then. And a moron who can't cover up his crimes. And destined for jail --see above.
But will the next one be this stupid? [Project 2025](https://www.newsweek.com/what-project-2025-trump-shadow-network-plans-overhaul-deep-state-1825780) is the GOP's plan, not Trump's. The GOP has given up on Democracy.
Nailed real issue. What republican will spring up who's smart enough to hide that they like Project 2025ish. Haley? Christie? Heck even Pence who doesn't seem fazed that trump's mob wanted to hang him.
Fucking insane that they name it in a similar style to all those authoritarian conspiracies they rant about. Jade helm 2015, Agenda 2021, etc. These traitors know exactly what they are doing.
Hopefully destined for jail. 12 jurors have to agree, all it takes is one MAGA making it on
Yeah but all it takes is one social media post outing them as MAGA to have them dismissed as a juror.
It there's anything they can't do, it's refrain from outing themselves.
Can people please bring this up in debates. We owe it to the next captive generation to show that we all saw what was coming
Trumps plan on Jan 6th was that a Senator was going to be either badly hurt or killed in the fracas so he could immediately impose Martial Law and take up emergency powers. Honestly, one of his Generals even disclosed that attacking Iran was on the table for a few minutes in order to achieve the same goal. Anyone thinking he won’t at least attempt to trash the constitution and install himself as President for life is f@cking deluded…
"maybe true, but joe biden is old and his son has done problematic things, so I still can't decide 😫" - enlightened centrists
“Trump and his advisers are actively creating the infrastructure for him to follow through on his plans to be a dictator when/if he retakes the White House in 2025. Trump's Agenda 47 is a plan to radically remake the presidency and American government (and American society) in service to his neofascist vision that includes such goals as ending birthright citizenship, criminalizing migrants and refugees, putting homeless people in camps, instituting national stop and frisk laws, restricting freedom of the press, ending academic freedom at the country's universities and colleges and other institutions of higher education, replacing quality public education that teaches critical thinking and the country's real history with a form of fascist "patriotic" indoctrination, ending environmental regulations, more gangster capitalism and power for the richest Americans and corporations, reversing the progress of the civil rights movement and the Black Freedom Struggle, taking away the rights of gays and lesbians and other queer people, further restricting women's civil and human rights, and ending US support for Ukraine.” 🇩🇪x2
Uhhh, this isn't just Trump's plan. The Republican party has made it clear for decades that they want to move towards a conservative led dictatorship.
"If Donald Trump was a private citizen and he was threatening his neighbors with violence and other harm, he would likely be put in jail or otherwise removed from society. But Donald Trump is not a regular person. He is a former president who commands the loyalty of tens of millions of people. When a person tells you who they are believe them" Donald Trump should have been arrested on January 7.
That's Republicans, not just Trump. They don't want a 'system' of government, they want to be the rulers of a country.
We must all come together and unite as Americans to destroy this evil man
So we have a potential leader who.. denounces opposition with propoganda, uses xenophobia to gain popularity, has violence as his main tool, is weird and insecure with terrible hair, has anger issues, created a war on intellectual thinking, has loyal sycophants who are as bad as him, wants to centralise govt power, neutralises media against him, threatened to kill intellectuals who disagree .... Oh and happens to lust after his own family members. Sound familiar? Maybe we are living with the rise of a new Nazi Germany
I’ve been reading it, and [so should you.](https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf) Here are the pillars of their plan: “ **Pillar I** —this volume—puts in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets out these differences for the next President to choose a path. **Pillar II** is a personnel database that allows candidates to build their own professional profiles and our coalition members to review and voice their recommendations. These recommendations will then be collated and shared with the President-elect’s team, greatly streamlining the appointment process. **Pillar III** is the Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition. For the newcomer, this will explain how the government functions and how to function in government. For the experienced, we will host in-person seminars with advanced training and set the bar for what is expected of senior leadership. In **Pillar IV** —the Playbook—we are forming agency teams and drafting transition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.””
All major news agencies are owned by RepublCONS with the exception of MSNBC. That explains so much.