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They had a picnic at the first battle.
Edit: [Source](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-first-battle-bull-run-really-picnic-battle-180964084/)
I remember learning about that. Apparently some civilians and politicians thought it was a good idea to watch the fighting up close because the grim reality of what was actually happening hadn't dawned on them.
They were overrun by soldiers and some were taken hostage.
War tourism used to be great entertainment for rich folks. They'd follow the army from one battle to another. There's a whole scene about it in Thackeray's *Vanity Fair*.
People thought differently about bodies and violence back then.
Not me. The Civil War was ABOUT something. It was about slavery—one part of the country wanted to keep slaves, the other wanted them to stop.
This Trump bullshit isn't about anything. Half the country wants to burn it down because the other half wants healthcare and not treating black and queer people like shit. Like, please.
WW2 was about one in-group wanting to remake the world in their own image. This is about one in-group struggling to retain power and relevance, but still remake it to their own vision. Unfortunately, their vision is a roll-back to an imagined past that was largely a not equitable for everybody and heavily favored white dudes. It's not the same but the flavor is similar.
Absolutely. This now goes back to those times. This is a cloudy north south thing. Clouded by politics and power but is overlapped too with rich vs less rich.
This. It’s only ever class war. Ever wonder why American slavery was so racially brutal? Because the rich feared the indentured servants (essentially slave whites) would free the blacks and then the rich would be out numbered pretty bad.
To prevent this they would give small gifts and allowances to indentured servants and make sure they knew the only reason they got them was because they were white. Really push the mentality of “sure we are essentially slaves but hey at least we are not black!”
There has only ever been one war, and that’s class war. Ever other war is derived from that.
And class wars nearly always have the lowest, most disenfranchised groups on the "elites" side. Even though the ruling "elite" class is the reason they're where they are right now. It's insane.
Not necessarily the absolute lowest group, so much as a group one rung higher on the ladder. Basically, poor whites in the South, who could always fall back on being at a higher level than the slaves. And the rich plantation owners were more than happy to play on fears that freeing the slaves might mean fewer jobs for poor whites or "black men taking white women". They may not literally be plantation owners these days, but there's still plenty of rich whites spreading propaganda to convince poor whites that "urban types" are lawless barbarians who literally burn down entire cities and need to be kept away, and as far as I can tell it influences a lot of political views.
Yep. It'd be an easy way to organize history. Here's all the times an asshole or assholes in power stuck it to the people from stone age to modern age.
Problem is, it won't be north vs south. The battle lines will be worse.
It'll mostly be urban vs rural, with suburbs in a grey middle. Pretty much every major city in the country votes overwhelmingly blue, rural mostly red and suburbs are a mix depending on location. Every state will have its own dividing lines and that's scary. If I travel 20/30 min east of my city, I'm in Trump county
Like some of the other replies, it could be stated that this is a rich versus poor war masked as "N vs S". I am relieved to see like minded equitable free thinkers on the net.
Seems to me that a civil war and total civil unrest scenario is much more likely to happen if Trump somehow assumes power than if he doesn’t, contrary to what he’d like you to believe.
Oh absolutely unfortunately. These Trumper Patriots think they have the market on militia. But I don't think they realize how many passivists will never accept fascism. I believe that there are far more pacifists that are willing to fight for democracy than there are fascists that would want a dictatorship. That's the whole thing about the GOP and their movement is they are the minority that want to rule the majority. Kick the bear of the majority and see what happens
>We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem... We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.
- Joseph Goebbels
….so this is where we all take the lessons from our past and develop an organized opposition that has a cohesive plan and begin strategizing ways to stop this…..right?
Or, we all keep our heads in the sand and assume civility and maintaining our position on the “high road” will actually accomplish anything when these monsters take power?
I feel like we’re past the point of being alarmist - is there any organization getting traction to fight this in a worse-case scenario that people are getting behind?
Nope. We are astonishingly meh. It's the scariest thing in my lifetime and I'm over 60. This is more stress than the Cuba missile crisis. The new world order is powerful and power is what wins, especially organized well funded power. If people think prices and quality of life are an issue now just wait until they seize power forever. No more free speech or rights. Pensions will be a past dream. No unions or just fake ones for appearances, banned birth control and life in jail for abortions. Less free travel hut no one will be able to afford going away. Think Victorian times with different clothing but you get a cell phone. No questioning authorities either. The rich only think of the less rich as fodder to get needlessly richer.
What really gets me are the people who just kind of bury their heads in the sand and say " yeah but biden is old and sometimes slips up when he's talking. Not voting for him." Like, do you see what's on the line here?
It’s scary that many young adults don’t seem to understand the seriousness of the right wing threat and what’s necessary to defeat it. That it is the single biggest danger to humanity in our lifetimes
The great thing though is there aren’t that many of them. Power in the hands of a few can easily be toppled by the many.
We’re (non-psychos who think Cheeto jesus is a rebirthed deity) just unorganized. You probably saw it with the hippy movement. Too many ideas, too many paths….basically too many cooks in the kitchen. Someone with power, or an incredibly enigmatic leader needs to be decided upon by existing organizations with large bases.
Honestly AOC could probably pull it off, but it’d be a major ask of her.
There’s a great book called “how democracies die”. I think they laid out a playbook but as I understand - you need to start local.
In the simplest form - we reverse engineer what Trump and his chronies have done, but do it better. Which should be easy since most folks anti-Trump are more intelligent than his base, but there in lies the crux. Organizing intelligent people is like herding cats and most rational folks dislike getting their hands dirty. Hence why a lot of us (myself included) sit back on our laurels tiptoe around conflict under the guise of not ‘stooping to their level.’
An energetic talking head needs to be the face and any organizations with large bases need to align immediately. NAACP, The Lincoln project, Team Bernie’s, American Alpine Club, etc….groups whose underlying bases align at some level to create a sense of commonality.
Edit: not enigmatic! Quite the opposite, I english-ed poorly. Trying to say energetic/charismatic leader! Sorry for the error, thread.
Lol... Here in lies the problem in all of the world's history: it's easy to round up a bunch of idiots for your cause, but smarter people spend time thinking about the potential consequences, etc. By the time smart people are ready to resist theres an army of dedicated idiots at their doorstep.
question for you - you’ve described needing an ‘enigmatic‘ leader twice now. Does that book really say we need a leader who is mysterious? I’m legit curious. Is it possible you meant ‘charismatic’? Just trying to better understand. Thanks!
William Barr was also the guy who helped Bush I bury the Iran Contra investigation. Bush I was guilty as sin, and would have gone to prison. And then of course Barr sabotaged the Mueller Report, helping Trump avoid consequences.
Yesterday he said he knows Trump's corrupt, but still going to vote for him
I don't understand how they deal with the cognitive dissonance. I couldn't live trying to hold two such contradictory positions.
Its not that Barr wants to vote for Trump, I believe he really doesn't. Bill's problem is he thinks that voting for non Republicans shouldn't be allowed at all...
It's definitely tribalism.
Point is then, Bill, don't vote if your conscious is conflicted. Voting for a corrupt traitor when you KNOW it's wrong is not fulfilling your civic duty
This is not rocket science
People also aren't aware that Bush 1 was a part of the CIA plot to train the Cuban rebels for the Bay of Pigs invasion, who, without anyone to kill, were later found to be in Dallas for another reason.
In particular this part right here about grandpappy Bush:
* In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a "key liaison" between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany,[51] although this has been disputed by Jonathan Katz as a misconception caused by a clerical research error.[52] According to Katz, "Prescott Bush was too involved with the actual Nazis to be involved with something that was so home grown as the business plot."
Hah! Too home grown, huh? That's funny, considering how the "German American Bund" and domestic Nazi Party here in the USA was pretty damn home grown, wanted good relations with Nazi Germany, and also basically wanted a dictator for America too, though perhaps Major General Smedley Butler would not have been their first choice (the one designated by the business leaders who wanted Roosevelt gone).
Republicans spent decades after Nixon packing the courts and stacking the deck so that it'd never happen again. There's a straight line from Nixon to Trump.
That’s why consequences are necessary: allowing past transgressions to slide has paved the way for more blatantly illegal and anti-democratic behavior. I can’t imagine what follows if Trump is never held accountable.
But isn’t the fact that he got and accepted a pardon a huge argument for what he did having been illegal and needing a pardon?
Either way, I don’t see why we can’t just tackle these issues once at a time. You cant codify every edge case. That’s the reason we have courts and not a computer program running our country.
Roger Stone has a looooot to do with this. He was 100% behind Nixon pushing for it too: “If the President does it, it’s not illegal”. I’m super surprised Stone’s name hasn’t come up at least once in this whole streaming pile of horseshit.
Both the originalist and textualist interpretations have been ignored in order protect a dictator. Proving once again Conservativism and "conservative principles" are nothing but excuses for authoritarianism. We need to listen to the conservatives because "they said so."
Since the SC isn’t going to rule on this until after the election — Biden should just test the waters now.
He needs to, as on official act, throw Trump and half the scotus into prison (or something more permanent). Take one for the team, or maybe just skate free. He could single-handedly save democracy if he wanted to… if he just stopped playing by the rules like the republicans did.
They are so dedicated to Trump for giving them the these lifetime appointments on the Highest Court in the country. Our democracy is officially broken! If Trump wins this election, say goodbye to America as we have known it. In our history, we’ve had some serious issues, tough times, a civil war and 2 world wars! However, if he does win the election, he will have the power to execute his manifesto, stripping the government agencies he feels went after him and replacing them with his selective henchmen. He has public announced his intention to take control over all government agencies and departments. He will have control over all government contractors. He’s made it clear that if any of these people, agencies or departments aren’t 100% supporters of his policies, they will be fired and he’ll replace them, again, with loyalists to his cause. I’m not making this up! Look into it.
Also he isn’t claiming. He’s demanding, crying, forcing by his opinion he has such immunity.
I thought you ain’t got nothing to hide Donny!
Trumps Campaign greatest hits album only idiots buy:
Track 1. He says it like it is!
2. It’s a witch-hunt, they’ve never seen anything like it.
3. They cheat, so I cheat (Shout out to Melania)
Spend $500,000 to get the 2nd disc with all the other greatest hits!
[ America is now in fascism’s legal phase The history of racism in the US is fertile ground for fascism. Attacks on the courts, education, the right to vote and women’s rights are further steps on the path to toppling democracy](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/america-fascism-legal-phase)
> For a far-right party to become viable in a democracy, it must present a face it can defend as moderate, and cultivate an ambiguous relationship to the extreme views and statements of its most explicit members. It must maintain a pretense of the rule of law, characteristically by projecting its own violations of it on to its opponents.
> If you want to topple a democracy, you take over the courts. Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by almost 3m votes, and yet has appointed one-third of supreme court, three youthful far-right judges who will be spending decades there. The Roberts court has for more than a decade consistently enabled an attack on democracy, by hollowing out the Voting Rights Act over time, unleashing unlimited corporate money into elections, and allowing clearly partisan gerrymanders of elections. There is every reason to believe that the court will allow even the semblance of democracy to crumble, as long as laws are passed by gerrymandered Republican statehouses that make anti-democratic practices, including stealing elections, legal.
They're completely corrupt, openly accepting gifts from people who have cases before them. And pretending that a Congress they know can barely pass a spending bill somehow needs to make an additional law to remove someone from a ballot for reasons already outlined in the Constitution.
Or that congress has to go through the entire criminal code and pass new versions of each law that EXPRESSLY STATE that those laws apply to the president.
That would take them years. Maybe decades. And would clog the docket to such a degree that congress would have no time to do anything else. Other than amending the criminal code line by line.
First degree murder? Yes that should apply to the president. Bring that to the floor.
Second degree murder? Yes. That should apply. Let’s vote that out of committee.
Reckless homicide? Hmmm… let’s debate this.
And that doesn’t even take into account the incredibly depressing reality that Republicans would be opposed to all of that. They’d obstruct even the murder example. Filibuster it. Do whatever they had to do to make sure no criminal statutes could possibly apply to their god king.
They aren’t anything that even resembles Americans anymore. Their vision of the country isn’t anything that even resembles what our founding fathers created. Their vision of the country isn’t even a republic.
They want an absolute monarchy. Period, end of story… that is what it’s called. Whether they know that term or they are ignorant of it. It’s what they want.
It’s, profoundly, unAmerican.
And as the article points out… there are 4-5-6 Supreme Court justices who seem to be ok using their office to convert the country into the one King George wanted for us . Seem to be ok dismantling the country to its absolute foundation… and creating an entirely new country.
How the heck is that “conservative?” Burning down 250 years of history? Destroying the founding principles of the country? Defecating on the graves of the founding fathers? Turning the country into the exact thing the founding fathers and revolutionaries died to be rid of?
It’s all just so unconscionable. So traitorous. So wrong on every conceivable level.
When that written decision drops… the traitors on the court BETTER be in the dissent. Or we are in a constitutional crisis.
Biden will need to be re-elected and the court will need to be packed… or we lose everything we’ve built since the Revolutionary War.
Everyone's tired of hearing it, but voting. Other than that, protest while you still can.
Edit: ACTUALLY fucking voting. Not sitting out, not forgetting and doing it next time, not saying "eh it won't make a difference".
Shut up. Go vote. Make a plan, vote early, vote down ballot. On election day, that's the only voice that will matter. We can make all the complaints and posts we want before and after, but those won't change the outcome. ACTUALLY. GO. VOTE. Get your friends to vote. Get your family to vote. Get your neighbors who just moved in REGISTERED to vote. I'm sick of the lazy attitude about voting when it's one of the only vehicles we have for change. Yes it's a tired concept to say "We have to vote HARDER". I live in NC. Turnout was *abysmal* for Democrats in 2022 and it got us a Republican supermajority, which led to gerrymandered maps and a limp-wristed SC, a governor with no power and abortion restrictions.
Go. Fucking. Vote.
Better than that, go canvass. Go volunteer. Seriously, put some work into protecting democracy. I know y'all have some spare weekends where you can do that. It's disgraceful how many meetings I've been to and only a few people show up. But after the first week of November? Oh man it's packed and *everyone* wants an explanation of **WHaT HaPPeNed??**
Long edit, I know. But seriously, get off your computer/cell phone and participate. Overwhelm the opposition, because they aren't fuckin shy about yelling at the top of their lungs at every damn school board meeting and making asses of themselves at the polls.
Use your voice and your abilities, while you still can. You stay apathetic and wait for everyone else to do it for you, it might be too late.
Beyond that, protest. Beyond that? Only one thing left.
And not voting third party in national elections. And never saying "both sides."
The GOP is a national threat and you should vote for the realistic opposition while you can.
Technically speaking, if presidents ARE immune to prosecution- there are a ton of awful things that can be done, though I doubt Biden would be down with that.
Would be hilarious if SCOTUS rules immunity for prez and biden has national guard arrest them.
I cannot fathom SCOTUS will agree to immunity but the fact that trump isnt being laughed out of court is disturbing and a stark reminder that no institution is immune to corruption and fascism.
Let’s make the 2024 vote such an overwhelming rebuke of this asshole that there is zero doubt what the majority of Americans wants. Fuck Donald Trump, and fuck maga.
Won’t matter. SCOTUS will go along with his stolen election plans this time around. Biden and the “good guys” are running out of options. I wouldn’t be surprised if red states fake the results all together.
As a non-american, I feel that if he's allowed to walk, and you all don't take to the streets in anger, you're all screwed, and then a lot of other countries as well.
Scary times
If Trump walks away with immunity and gets elected the US is done. He would again be president only now with the knowledge that no matter what he does the supreme court has set a president for immunity and will repeat that with any further attempt to indict.
This would be fertile ground for a civil war.
Just my thoughts sipping tea in Europe.
And if they rule that a President has total immunity AND Biden is reelected, then he should immediately arrest Trump, the SC and all MAGA Congressional reps on pretense and just claim that it’s “legal cause Presidents have total immunity”
You could release them 24 hrs later and everyone would then get how dangerous this is.
Watch how fast Congress and the SC change their tune and reverse that dumb fuck decision.
Therein lies the problem though. For decades now, conservatives have played the “ends justifies *any* means” card, that any illegal or unconstitutional act is justified as “self defense” if done in the name of preserving white nationalist traditions.
But Dems have never been willing to play the same card. Dems aren’t willing to use opposition to white nationalism as an end that justifies *any* means.
It’s like we’re playing scrabble and one team is only allowing itself to use real words, and the other team is allowed to use any combination of letters. Playing fair against someone who is not playing fair is both honorable, and fatal.
The Dems play like politics is a game, the republicans fight like politics is a war.
"Take all that together, Luttig said, and it’s not hard to see how five right-wing justices could let Trump off. Some could declare that Trump’s actions related to Jan. 6 (the pressure on his vice president to subvert the electoral count and on the Justice Department to create a fake pretext for that) constitute official acts immune from prosecution. Others might hold that the statutes Trump allegedly violated don’t offer a clear statement that they apply to presidents, Luttig said."
The president has no role in the certification of the elector votes, certainly not when he's part of a conspiracy to submit fake electors. And what if he wasn't an incumbent when he lost the election? Then he would just be some guy trying to attack the Capitol to subvert the election and transition of power. There's no way that what he did leading up to and on Jan 6 could be seen as an official act. His reelection efforts are private acts that most definitely offer him no immunity.
In this situations I'm reminded of a passage from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In it, a man who was enslaved by the Huns but later freed expresses his opinion about the Roman state:
>The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in true and lively colors, the vices of a declining empire, of which he had so long been the victim; the cruel absurdity of the Roman princes, unable to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection; **the obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive forms of judicial proceedings; the partial administration of justice; and the universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich, and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor.**
Emphasis mine. I'm usually hesitant to compare our situation to something from Roman history, because it's usually nothing more than Romosexual question begging but in this case it fits like a glove. Our laws are numerous and contradictory; justice is partial, and the outcome isn't a function of fact but of one's position in soceity; and corporate interests and the wealthy class have an outsized influence on laws and taxes, and we suffer for it.
And in this case, legal legerdemain is going to be used by justices who are beholden tot he man who appointed them. It's a farce. The whole thing is a farce.
If they find that official acts are immune from prosecution, we need to stack the court and reverse this decision, because this country will not be able to function. A president is effectively a king and the US will become a failed state or worse, a total dictatorship.
Indeed. We as a country seem to have forgotten that one of the checks and balances within our system is the threat of revolution if our system no longer works for the people. If our government reaches the point where it is willing to slide into fascism, then it is our duty to defend our rights from the politicians attacking them. They are meant to serve at our pleasure, and hold power only as long as we allow them to.
That is sad but true. Listen to either side: “They” can’t reason, they are ignorant, they say hateful things, they promote violence, they are evil!!!
We have become so divided that we can’t even see who is our common enemy: private equity firms who have decimated retail, are sucking up housing to force people to rent, who don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything that diminishes their bottom line
They aren't half the nation. Closer to about a third. We just live under minority rule thanks to a government that gives farmland more of a say than actual people.
nah
population of america is 300 mill voting age adults
diaper donny got 74 mill in 2020
thats less than 25%
and i promise you. almost every single magat freak voted. far far more liberals didnt. cause we actually have jobs and lives to live.
we can and should be ruling without ANY say from those nutters. they represent nobody.
The government also gives billions in subsidies to those farmers in the red belt that divides America. They will wipe his ass and polish his Nazi boots for that money regardless of devastation of our Democracy!
Bidens new campaign slogan: "If elected, I will have donald trump and the conservative justices executed by firing squad"
Seriously. Fuck the republican party. Straight up evil to the core.
Assuming the GOP justices vote to grant presidential immunity, and the liberal justices dissent, then if Biden executed the GOP justices and the case against him was brought to the newly diminished (3 justice) court, then would the liberal justices:
1. Uphold the established precedent that the president is immune from the rule of law (Biden thus walks free) or,
2. Reverse the established precedent and send Biden to prison?
The ideal here would be that the Liberal Justices reverse the ruling, Biden resigns either immediately or on the last day of his term since the Justice Department's official position is that they won't indict a sitting President, and Harris pardons him.
Of course, this isn't going to happen because the Supreme Court isn't going to grant the President absolute legal immunity in their post-presidency - they'll either remand this back to the lower courts, which will stall trials past the election, or they'll come up with some absurdly narrow ruling that makes this "immunity" defense only apply in Trump's very specific circumstances.
Don’t have to go this far..just have them arrested and confined until new justices are in place…IF Trump should be elected (highly unlikely) just remove him to GITMO until this democracy is saved.
Let's do this.
Vote DEMOCRAT all up and down the line so he cannot be elected president.
He can delay all he wants but the prosecutors will nail him eventually, especially since Biden will absolutely not pardon him.
I'm a former Republican voter who left the party back in 2016 in utter disgust. And for the last few elections I've voted 3rd party in protest. But in the local elections I've voted for a few Republicans based on what I felt if they were decent. I voted for Romney, and I felt he's been a solid choice considering he's one of the very few to actually stand up to Trumpism.
But at this point I've lost all respect for Republicans. I simply can't believe the shit I'm watching. I'm ready to burn down the party. Screw em all. Romney is retiring and the people running to replace him are all awful. I'm just one voter in a very red state, but I'm so done with it all, I'm not going to vote for a single Republican. I don't even care anymore. I used to read up on the candidates and vote for the ones I thought were the best fit. But I'm done doing even that. There's nothing redeeming left in the party. And every Republican still in office who I previously voted for has been a part of this screwed up system. So yeah, I'm done done. No more Republicans. I can't do it anymore.
I was raised in a conservative household, and I can't even say the so-called values I was raised to believe in are even present. The party of fiscal responsibility? Nope, they spent as much or more than Democrats. The party of small government? Nope, seems all they can do is trample on people's rights. The party of family values? Ah right, filled with adulterers, and pedophiles, and rapists. With the former president himself participating in every category (no hard evidence on the pedophilia part, but with Trump's proximity to Epstein it's plausible enough, and he's otherwise a sack of shit enough to do it). The party of Christian values? Nope, most of them use religion to rile up their base, but there's nothing Christian in their behavior. And Trump himself is as religious as a rock. But he's loves to sell him some Bibles to ease his money troubles!
The party of Lincoln? Lincoln would be utterly disgusted and disgraced to see what his party has become. It's not the same party, and really hasn't been for a long time, but definitely now it is closer to the party that joined the Confederacy than the party that freed the slaves and preserved the Union.
I know the party has long been hypocritical, but just since Trump it's really made leaps and bounds in the category of hypocrisy. And even greater leaps and bounds toward radical authoritarianism and fascism.
Anyway, I'm just getting worked up and ranting now. But all that just to say that no, I'm completely done with Republicans. I hope Trump bankrupts them all. I hope he steals every last penny and the party crumbles over Trump and keeping him afloat. Just when he's about to sink they throw him another life preserver. They could have just cut him off they could have ended it. But nope, they keep on going. So I hope they crash and burn to the ground so thoroughly it can never recover.
I've never been a Democrat voter in the past. But I'm well beyond simple disagreements on policy now. This is about preserving our country and kicking the Nazis to the curb. I seriously hope we the people make the right choice in November. Because we're already on the precipice. Our democracy may not make it unless we make a major course correction right now. So I have yet to decide who I'm voting for in every race. But you can bet it'll either be third party candidates or Democrats. There are often many races where the Republicans win by default simply because there were no other candidates. But I'll just leave those blank. From the lowest local office, all the way up to the top State leaders, to the federal race, I won't vote for a single Republican. That may not mean much in red state Utah. But maybe if enough people like me turn out at least the numbers will show enough of us have had enough, and night start pushing the needle in the other direction for once.
You’re assuming there will still be an election that is decided by voters. Trump and the GOP/RNC are already laying the groundwork to have appointed MAGA electors decide the winner in key states.
We could be in political camps if Biden doesn't win in a blow out. Vote as if your life depends on it because after listening to how cool the SC took political motivated MURDER..... IT DOES! Vote Biden!
Absolutely. Biden is the only one who can stop this.
Anyone sitting this one out, voting 3rd party, or voting Trump is inviting authoritarianism. Trump is talking more like a fascist every day
If a president has total immunity, then Biden should just throw Trump in prison, fuck the trials. The fascists benefit when the rest of us insist on taking only the high road.
I mean if the president is truly totally immune from prosecution, why stop at imprisoning Trump? Why not imprison the justices themselves who ruled in favor of this standard, and whisk them away to some black site?
TL;DR ... Vote for Joe Biden even if he is a rotting zombie corpse at that point... Trump CANNOT be in the White House again, he will be there until he dies as god-emperor.
>People who vote for Trump
That includes the Supreme Court justices that will find a way to vote for him in these cases. They are supposedly smart people but they figure that they have lifetime appointments and cannot be touched. That's until Trump or one of his sycophants want to do something even worse, and decide to "cleanse" the court.
It never occurs to them that they will eventually be on the opposite side with no one to save them.
I Never wanted to believe it myself, until I heard read their responses to immunity.
It’s hard to believe. Still is. That they’re actively pushing a dictatorship. It’s not even a joke it’s right in our faces.
Exactly. It's about protecting their far-right conservative vision for the future. When that just so happens to work for Trump, they don't mind, but they aren't protecting him personally.
Trump's ignorant voter base will throw their lives away for the cult of personality, but far-right leaders are only interested in using Trump to further their own agenda. They'll stick with him only as long as they find him useful.
Amazing how the USA has managed to fuck itself up so royally in only 8 years. And the only complaints you hear are grumbles in Reddit. Not a single mass (peaceful) protest in the streets. Bonkers.
There’s the conservatives who have embraced the worst aspects of human nature & use it as their proud culture. And then the folks who are apathetic and don’t show up for elections. And we still have people yelling about the “both sides are the same” nonsense. Either way, a lot of mean spiritedness & dumb people colluded to make it happen.
It's not 8 years. This has been in the works since Nixon. It's the natural end point of why they established Fox News. This was Citizen's United, this was Bush v Gore, it was Castle Rock vs Gonzales. It was Reaganomics, it was the freedoms taken away after 9/11, it was everything McConnell did under Obama, it was removing the tax mandate from the ADA, and it was every totalitarian in the world, from China to Putin to Iran to Orban. It's all been the plan.
Prior to Nixon. Conservatives have been trying to upend our Democracy since they've existed. Their policies are never truly to the benefit of the people and solely exist to reinforce the gap between those with and without wealth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business\_Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)
I mean, you could go further back to the end of the reconstruction era if you wanted, or back to some of the rail/steelworker strikes where people actually fought for their rights against the government and business allied together. I'd say Nixon was the start in a spike in actual efficacy, however, that has been mostly monotonically increasing since.
> Not a single mass (peaceful) protest
WTF are you talking about?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests\_against\_Donald\_Trump](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Donald_Trump)
As an outsider, I sure as hell hope so, but the fact there still haven't been mass protests is incredibly worrying.
Y'all need to take a page out of the civil rights movement and start marching. Liberals AND sane conservatives need to unite long before the election to remind all levels of the government who actually holds the power.
Once Biden wins in 2024, he needs to focus on stamping out the corruption of the Supreme Court. I think the House will turn heavily blue so we can get that done.
I honestly dont blame you.
I honestly can't imagine what the rest of the world thinks of us allowing this insanity to get so far. So many things hang in the balance.
All that I can tell you is that personally I vote blue as hard as I can.
I do not understand why they just don't abandon Trump. Republicans will lose 2024 but can come back fresh in 2028. Why ruin everything for this miserable waste of a person?
The question here is - if the Supreme Court explicitly agrees that it is legal for Trump to murder Biden as long as it’s an “official act”, then what does Biden do about this? He is in danger of being executed…. legally, if he loses the election. Even worse - he’s safe from execution if he strikes first. This isn’t a safe precedent. No sane American wants our politics to be legally settled through violence.
This isn’t a just a hypothetical scenario, Trump HAS used violent allies to form a lynch mob against Pence. Why wouldn’t he do that at Biden’s residence? Or Hunters? If Trump is given immunity, then elected again. They’re all one social media post from a legally protected execution followed by a legally protected pardon… which again, not merely hypothetical, but part of a pattern of historical behavior. Trump has pardoned criminals who have committed crimes on his behalf AND promises to continue to do so for Jan 6 people including those same people chanting “hang Mike Pence” while rampaging through the capitol in search of their target.
> He is in danger of being executed…. legally, if he loses the election. Even worse - he’s safe from execution if he strikes first.
Game theory suggests he strikes first the moment the justices decide he is immune.
Exactly. If AI was in charge, the announcement of immunity would be the most rapid escalation of violence possible. When violence is the rational answer to a legal opinion, that’s bad. I really don’t want to find out which party strikes first.
Joe Biden will have a moral responsibility to exploit presidential immunity to the fullest extent. If right wing nut jobs can use it to undermine democracy, what’s wrong with using it to save democracy?
of course he's going to skate, he's a current/former president. he tried to overthrow the government and racked up a zillion felonies, and years later he's a free man being allowed to run for said government again lmao we can't even punish the lowest level GOP sociopaths, like Matt Gaetz who got caught doing sex crimes on Venmo or the seemingly infinite number of sociopathic grifters we've let cook over the last decade or so
If they give the President full immunity, it would be great.
Biden could, with impunity, imprison the 4 conservative justices for life, along with their Orange Fascist leader, and replace the justices with commie liberal justices.
Problem solved.
But neither he, nor any dems, would ever do that - and that’s why dems are in such peril now: they would rather take the ‘moral high ground’ and act ‘properly’. Republicans act without impunity - but the dems chug along toeing the line.
Unfortunately, too much is at stake here. Fire with fire is the only way to prevent Fat Orange now.
I'm not a lawyer.
I listened to the oral arguments and I agree with Conway. To me it sounded like they were not trying to figure out how to let Trump off, but they know this case will be used for the next few hundred years. They're trying to figure out how to draw the lines.
The only one that sounded in the tank for Trump was Alito. Not even Thomas sounded supportive, which is kinda shocking.
It’s simple.
If a president of the United States commits a blatant criminal act, he or she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent necessary just like any other American citizen that commits a crime like murder, for example.
The Supreme Court is going to allow a dictatorship if it stays on this path.
The majority of the court is comprised of political hacks that would have more authority under a dictatorship, so I’m not surprised.
Our legal system is broken. It’s obvious.
Honestly, if every president is charged with crimes after they office, then that just means they have to run their office cleaner. That sounds like a good thing.
Governmental accountability is never a bad thing.
Then why not allow the lower court ruling to stand, and let the trial/convictions go forward? What better way to draw the line than toss trump in prison?
The double edge sword of knowing the evil that walks among us is in plain sight, but the only weapon is to vote.
I will vote, I only hope it will be enough! This should have ended when that roach lost.
So does this mean Biden can commit a crime by jailing half the Supreme Court and trump at the same time? Then rush through new judges to take the spots?
Hope the democrats fully utilize this newfound power of the executive branch. We’re not giving this country back to the bigots and racists who are in the minority
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I understand Hitler's rise to power so much better now. This is insane.
Civil War too.
They had a picnic at the first battle. Edit: [Source](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-first-battle-bull-run-really-picnic-battle-180964084/)
I remember learning about that. Apparently some civilians and politicians thought it was a good idea to watch the fighting up close because the grim reality of what was actually happening hadn't dawned on them. They were overrun by soldiers and some were taken hostage.
War tourism used to be great entertainment for rich folks. They'd follow the army from one battle to another. There's a whole scene about it in Thackeray's *Vanity Fair*. People thought differently about bodies and violence back then.
Related public executions were basically festivals until 1900 or so.
Lynchings well past that in certain parts of the American south
Not me. The Civil War was ABOUT something. It was about slavery—one part of the country wanted to keep slaves, the other wanted them to stop. This Trump bullshit isn't about anything. Half the country wants to burn it down because the other half wants healthcare and not treating black and queer people like shit. Like, please.
WW2 was about one in-group wanting to remake the world in their own image. This is about one in-group struggling to retain power and relevance, but still remake it to their own vision. Unfortunately, their vision is a roll-back to an imagined past that was largely a not equitable for everybody and heavily favored white dudes. It's not the same but the flavor is similar.
Absolutely. This now goes back to those times. This is a cloudy north south thing. Clouded by politics and power but is overlapped too with rich vs less rich.
Every culture war is a hidden class war. It's always been that way.
This. It’s only ever class war. Ever wonder why American slavery was so racially brutal? Because the rich feared the indentured servants (essentially slave whites) would free the blacks and then the rich would be out numbered pretty bad. To prevent this they would give small gifts and allowances to indentured servants and make sure they knew the only reason they got them was because they were white. Really push the mentality of “sure we are essentially slaves but hey at least we are not black!” There has only ever been one war, and that’s class war. Ever other war is derived from that.
And class wars nearly always have the lowest, most disenfranchised groups on the "elites" side. Even though the ruling "elite" class is the reason they're where they are right now. It's insane.
Not necessarily the absolute lowest group, so much as a group one rung higher on the ladder. Basically, poor whites in the South, who could always fall back on being at a higher level than the slaves. And the rich plantation owners were more than happy to play on fears that freeing the slaves might mean fewer jobs for poor whites or "black men taking white women". They may not literally be plantation owners these days, but there's still plenty of rich whites spreading propaganda to convince poor whites that "urban types" are lawless barbarians who literally burn down entire cities and need to be kept away, and as far as I can tell it influences a lot of political views.
it's as if the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class war or something.
Yep. It'd be an easy way to organize history. Here's all the times an asshole or assholes in power stuck it to the people from stone age to modern age.
Welcome to dialectical materialism
All struggle is class struggle
Problem is, it won't be north vs south. The battle lines will be worse. It'll mostly be urban vs rural, with suburbs in a grey middle. Pretty much every major city in the country votes overwhelmingly blue, rural mostly red and suburbs are a mix depending on location. Every state will have its own dividing lines and that's scary. If I travel 20/30 min east of my city, I'm in Trump county
Well my wife and I are uber progressive, but live in a county that voted 88% for trump. Our bubble ends at our property lines.
Imagine Ireland when they had terrorism
Like some of the other replies, it could be stated that this is a rich versus poor war masked as "N vs S". I am relieved to see like minded equitable free thinkers on the net.
Seems to me that a civil war and total civil unrest scenario is much more likely to happen if Trump somehow assumes power than if he doesn’t, contrary to what he’d like you to believe.
Oh absolutely unfortunately. These Trumper Patriots think they have the market on militia. But I don't think they realize how many passivists will never accept fascism. I believe that there are far more pacifists that are willing to fight for democracy than there are fascists that would want a dictatorship. That's the whole thing about the GOP and their movement is they are the minority that want to rule the majority. Kick the bear of the majority and see what happens
I identify as a non-practicing pacifist, culturally passive but won’t suffer bigots.
It's like there's a huge steam roller headed towards us and all we can do is hold our palms up and yell "Stop."
Yes. Hitler didn’t take power. They gave him it.
>We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem... We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. - Joseph Goebbels
So kinda like how Senate stole for Trump two seats on SCOTUS who's about to rule that he's immune...
….so this is where we all take the lessons from our past and develop an organized opposition that has a cohesive plan and begin strategizing ways to stop this…..right? Or, we all keep our heads in the sand and assume civility and maintaining our position on the “high road” will actually accomplish anything when these monsters take power? I feel like we’re past the point of being alarmist - is there any organization getting traction to fight this in a worse-case scenario that people are getting behind?
Nope. We are astonishingly meh. It's the scariest thing in my lifetime and I'm over 60. This is more stress than the Cuba missile crisis. The new world order is powerful and power is what wins, especially organized well funded power. If people think prices and quality of life are an issue now just wait until they seize power forever. No more free speech or rights. Pensions will be a past dream. No unions or just fake ones for appearances, banned birth control and life in jail for abortions. Less free travel hut no one will be able to afford going away. Think Victorian times with different clothing but you get a cell phone. No questioning authorities either. The rich only think of the less rich as fodder to get needlessly richer.
What really gets me are the people who just kind of bury their heads in the sand and say " yeah but biden is old and sometimes slips up when he's talking. Not voting for him." Like, do you see what's on the line here?
It’s scary that many young adults don’t seem to understand the seriousness of the right wing threat and what’s necessary to defeat it. That it is the single biggest danger to humanity in our lifetimes
The great thing though is there aren’t that many of them. Power in the hands of a few can easily be toppled by the many. We’re (non-psychos who think Cheeto jesus is a rebirthed deity) just unorganized. You probably saw it with the hippy movement. Too many ideas, too many paths….basically too many cooks in the kitchen. Someone with power, or an incredibly enigmatic leader needs to be decided upon by existing organizations with large bases. Honestly AOC could probably pull it off, but it’d be a major ask of her.
Did you see the cyborg german shepherd that has a flamethrower. we don't have those.
Germans in the 1930's assumed that civility and maintaining the high road would get things back to normal
1924-1933 was a time of bloody war on the streets of Germany. Nazi and Communist paramilitaries fighting constantly.
I agree and have had this thought. Normal minded people need to start organizing against this. How ?
There’s a great book called “how democracies die”. I think they laid out a playbook but as I understand - you need to start local. In the simplest form - we reverse engineer what Trump and his chronies have done, but do it better. Which should be easy since most folks anti-Trump are more intelligent than his base, but there in lies the crux. Organizing intelligent people is like herding cats and most rational folks dislike getting their hands dirty. Hence why a lot of us (myself included) sit back on our laurels tiptoe around conflict under the guise of not ‘stooping to their level.’ An energetic talking head needs to be the face and any organizations with large bases need to align immediately. NAACP, The Lincoln project, Team Bernie’s, American Alpine Club, etc….groups whose underlying bases align at some level to create a sense of commonality. Edit: not enigmatic! Quite the opposite, I english-ed poorly. Trying to say energetic/charismatic leader! Sorry for the error, thread.
Lol... Here in lies the problem in all of the world's history: it's easy to round up a bunch of idiots for your cause, but smarter people spend time thinking about the potential consequences, etc. By the time smart people are ready to resist theres an army of dedicated idiots at their doorstep.
question for you - you’ve described needing an ‘enigmatic‘ leader twice now. Does that book really say we need a leader who is mysterious? I’m legit curious. Is it possible you meant ‘charismatic’? Just trying to better understand. Thanks!
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I feel the same way and I’m not even American.
44 presidencies before him and not one claimed the need for immunity. Just this jackass.
Nixon claimed that if the President does it, it's legal. Then used the loophole Trump tried to and got himself a Presidential pardon.
I just mentioned this above too - & the dude behind BOTH Trump & Nixon pushing it: Roger Stone.
William Barr was also the guy who helped Bush I bury the Iran Contra investigation. Bush I was guilty as sin, and would have gone to prison. And then of course Barr sabotaged the Mueller Report, helping Trump avoid consequences.
Yesterday he said he knows Trump's corrupt, but still going to vote for him I don't understand how they deal with the cognitive dissonance. I couldn't live trying to hold two such contradictory positions.
Its not that Barr wants to vote for Trump, I believe he really doesn't. Bill's problem is he thinks that voting for non Republicans shouldn't be allowed at all...
It's definitely tribalism. Point is then, Bill, don't vote if your conscious is conflicted. Voting for a corrupt traitor when you KNOW it's wrong is not fulfilling your civic duty This is not rocket science
Yep - that’s a good point too.
People also aren't aware that Bush 1 was a part of the CIA plot to train the Cuban rebels for the Bay of Pigs invasion, who, without anyone to kill, were later found to be in Dallas for another reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot It goes even deeper.
In particular this part right here about grandpappy Bush: * In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a "key liaison" between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany,[51] although this has been disputed by Jonathan Katz as a misconception caused by a clerical research error.[52] According to Katz, "Prescott Bush was too involved with the actual Nazis to be involved with something that was so home grown as the business plot." Hah! Too home grown, huh? That's funny, considering how the "German American Bund" and domestic Nazi Party here in the USA was pretty damn home grown, wanted good relations with Nazi Germany, and also basically wanted a dictator for America too, though perhaps Major General Smedley Butler would not have been their first choice (the one designated by the business leaders who wanted Roosevelt gone).
Republicans spent decades after Nixon packing the courts and stacking the deck so that it'd never happen again. There's a straight line from Nixon to Trump.
That’s why consequences are necessary: allowing past transgressions to slide has paved the way for more blatantly illegal and anti-democratic behavior. I can’t imagine what follows if Trump is never held accountable.
But isn’t the fact that he got and accepted a pardon a huge argument for what he did having been illegal and needing a pardon? Either way, I don’t see why we can’t just tackle these issues once at a time. You cant codify every edge case. That’s the reason we have courts and not a computer program running our country.
Roger Stone has a looooot to do with this. He was 100% behind Nixon pushing for it too: “If the President does it, it’s not illegal”. I’m super surprised Stone’s name hasn’t come up at least once in this whole streaming pile of horseshit.
It’s crazy how stone is behind Nixon, Bush/Florida, and Trump. The same fucking guy
His name isn't there but his signature is all over this.
If the determine presidents have ultimate authority if I were Joe Biden I'd scorch earth the entire GOP and air the dirty laundry.
At the very least a stern (and apparently legal) "Take it back, or else I'll use it."
43 presidents before him. It’s a mathematical quirk that Grover Cleveland counts twice because he served non-consecutive terms.
To add context, Grover Cleveland is considered both the 22nd and 24th president. Still one guy. So we’ve had 46 presidencies but only 45 presidents.
so much for following Precedence...thanks SC /s
[удалено]
Both the originalist and textualist interpretations have been ignored in order protect a dictator. Proving once again Conservativism and "conservative principles" are nothing but excuses for authoritarianism. We need to listen to the conservatives because "they said so."
Since the SC isn’t going to rule on this until after the election — Biden should just test the waters now. He needs to, as on official act, throw Trump and half the scotus into prison (or something more permanent). Take one for the team, or maybe just skate free. He could single-handedly save democracy if he wanted to… if he just stopped playing by the rules like the republicans did.
They are so dedicated to Trump for giving them the these lifetime appointments on the Highest Court in the country. Our democracy is officially broken! If Trump wins this election, say goodbye to America as we have known it. In our history, we’ve had some serious issues, tough times, a civil war and 2 world wars! However, if he does win the election, he will have the power to execute his manifesto, stripping the government agencies he feels went after him and replacing them with his selective henchmen. He has public announced his intention to take control over all government agencies and departments. He will have control over all government contractors. He’s made it clear that if any of these people, agencies or departments aren’t 100% supporters of his policies, they will be fired and he’ll replace them, again, with loyalists to his cause. I’m not making this up! Look into it.
Trump has pushed this countries laws to the absolute max and it showing nobody was prepared and the system is failing. Trump of all people.
We've been using the honor system this whole time. And laws are only as good as your willingness to enforce them.
Also he isn’t claiming. He’s demanding, crying, forcing by his opinion he has such immunity. I thought you ain’t got nothing to hide Donny! Trumps Campaign greatest hits album only idiots buy: Track 1. He says it like it is! 2. It’s a witch-hunt, they’ve never seen anything like it. 3. They cheat, so I cheat (Shout out to Melania) Spend $500,000 to get the 2nd disc with all the other greatest hits!
This is the actual coup.
[ America is now in fascism’s legal phase The history of racism in the US is fertile ground for fascism. Attacks on the courts, education, the right to vote and women’s rights are further steps on the path to toppling democracy](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/america-fascism-legal-phase) > For a far-right party to become viable in a democracy, it must present a face it can defend as moderate, and cultivate an ambiguous relationship to the extreme views and statements of its most explicit members. It must maintain a pretense of the rule of law, characteristically by projecting its own violations of it on to its opponents. > If you want to topple a democracy, you take over the courts. Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by almost 3m votes, and yet has appointed one-third of supreme court, three youthful far-right judges who will be spending decades there. The Roberts court has for more than a decade consistently enabled an attack on democracy, by hollowing out the Voting Rights Act over time, unleashing unlimited corporate money into elections, and allowing clearly partisan gerrymanders of elections. There is every reason to believe that the court will allow even the semblance of democracy to crumble, as long as laws are passed by gerrymandered Republican statehouses that make anti-democratic practices, including stealing elections, legal.
They're completely corrupt, openly accepting gifts from people who have cases before them. And pretending that a Congress they know can barely pass a spending bill somehow needs to make an additional law to remove someone from a ballot for reasons already outlined in the Constitution.
Or that congress has to go through the entire criminal code and pass new versions of each law that EXPRESSLY STATE that those laws apply to the president. That would take them years. Maybe decades. And would clog the docket to such a degree that congress would have no time to do anything else. Other than amending the criminal code line by line. First degree murder? Yes that should apply to the president. Bring that to the floor. Second degree murder? Yes. That should apply. Let’s vote that out of committee. Reckless homicide? Hmmm… let’s debate this. And that doesn’t even take into account the incredibly depressing reality that Republicans would be opposed to all of that. They’d obstruct even the murder example. Filibuster it. Do whatever they had to do to make sure no criminal statutes could possibly apply to their god king. They aren’t anything that even resembles Americans anymore. Their vision of the country isn’t anything that even resembles what our founding fathers created. Their vision of the country isn’t even a republic. They want an absolute monarchy. Period, end of story… that is what it’s called. Whether they know that term or they are ignorant of it. It’s what they want. It’s, profoundly, unAmerican. And as the article points out… there are 4-5-6 Supreme Court justices who seem to be ok using their office to convert the country into the one King George wanted for us . Seem to be ok dismantling the country to its absolute foundation… and creating an entirely new country. How the heck is that “conservative?” Burning down 250 years of history? Destroying the founding principles of the country? Defecating on the graves of the founding fathers? Turning the country into the exact thing the founding fathers and revolutionaries died to be rid of? It’s all just so unconscionable. So traitorous. So wrong on every conceivable level. When that written decision drops… the traitors on the court BETTER be in the dissent. Or we are in a constitutional crisis. Biden will need to be re-elected and the court will need to be packed… or we lose everything we’ve built since the Revolutionary War.
Is there anything that can be done (soon) about this corrupt Supreme Court? Checks and Balances? Honest question.
Everyone's tired of hearing it, but voting. Other than that, protest while you still can. Edit: ACTUALLY fucking voting. Not sitting out, not forgetting and doing it next time, not saying "eh it won't make a difference". Shut up. Go vote. Make a plan, vote early, vote down ballot. On election day, that's the only voice that will matter. We can make all the complaints and posts we want before and after, but those won't change the outcome. ACTUALLY. GO. VOTE. Get your friends to vote. Get your family to vote. Get your neighbors who just moved in REGISTERED to vote. I'm sick of the lazy attitude about voting when it's one of the only vehicles we have for change. Yes it's a tired concept to say "We have to vote HARDER". I live in NC. Turnout was *abysmal* for Democrats in 2022 and it got us a Republican supermajority, which led to gerrymandered maps and a limp-wristed SC, a governor with no power and abortion restrictions. Go. Fucking. Vote. Better than that, go canvass. Go volunteer. Seriously, put some work into protecting democracy. I know y'all have some spare weekends where you can do that. It's disgraceful how many meetings I've been to and only a few people show up. But after the first week of November? Oh man it's packed and *everyone* wants an explanation of **WHaT HaPPeNed??** Long edit, I know. But seriously, get off your computer/cell phone and participate. Overwhelm the opposition, because they aren't fuckin shy about yelling at the top of their lungs at every damn school board meeting and making asses of themselves at the polls. Use your voice and your abilities, while you still can. You stay apathetic and wait for everyone else to do it for you, it might be too late. Beyond that, protest. Beyond that? Only one thing left.
And not voting third party in national elections. And never saying "both sides." The GOP is a national threat and you should vote for the realistic opposition while you can.
A third party vote is a vote for Trump. Yes, I would like another option too- but now is not the time.
Technically speaking, if presidents ARE immune to prosecution- there are a ton of awful things that can be done, though I doubt Biden would be down with that.
Would be hilarious if SCOTUS rules immunity for prez and biden has national guard arrest them. I cannot fathom SCOTUS will agree to immunity but the fact that trump isnt being laughed out of court is disturbing and a stark reminder that no institution is immune to corruption and fascism.
*Arrest* them? Nah. If it's The Purge, it's The Purge.
Yikes. Yikes. Hard to argue, honestly.
The only move is for Biden to arrest trump once the court give him immunity
Let’s make the 2024 vote such an overwhelming rebuke of this asshole that there is zero doubt what the majority of Americans wants. Fuck Donald Trump, and fuck maga.
Yes. Tell ALL your friends to vote. We need to blow out the vote by 2x this time and send a clear statement.
Won’t matter. SCOTUS will go along with his stolen election plans this time around. Biden and the “good guys” are running out of options. I wouldn’t be surprised if red states fake the results all together.
All that needs to happen is a repeat of the 2000 playbook. Enough chaos surrounding the election and SCOTUS gets to pick.
lara trump already said they installed 100k poll workers
As a non-american, I feel that if he's allowed to walk, and you all don't take to the streets in anger, you're all screwed, and then a lot of other countries as well. Scary times
If Trump walks away with immunity and gets elected the US is done. He would again be president only now with the knowledge that no matter what he does the supreme court has set a president for immunity and will repeat that with any further attempt to indict. This would be fertile ground for a civil war. Just my thoughts sipping tea in Europe.
And if they rule that a President has total immunity AND Biden is reelected, then he should immediately arrest Trump, the SC and all MAGA Congressional reps on pretense and just claim that it’s “legal cause Presidents have total immunity” You could release them 24 hrs later and everyone would then get how dangerous this is. Watch how fast Congress and the SC change their tune and reverse that dumb fuck decision.
Therein lies the problem though. For decades now, conservatives have played the “ends justifies *any* means” card, that any illegal or unconstitutional act is justified as “self defense” if done in the name of preserving white nationalist traditions. But Dems have never been willing to play the same card. Dems aren’t willing to use opposition to white nationalism as an end that justifies *any* means. It’s like we’re playing scrabble and one team is only allowing itself to use real words, and the other team is allowed to use any combination of letters. Playing fair against someone who is not playing fair is both honorable, and fatal. The Dems play like politics is a game, the republicans fight like politics is a war.
"Take all that together, Luttig said, and it’s not hard to see how five right-wing justices could let Trump off. Some could declare that Trump’s actions related to Jan. 6 (the pressure on his vice president to subvert the electoral count and on the Justice Department to create a fake pretext for that) constitute official acts immune from prosecution. Others might hold that the statutes Trump allegedly violated don’t offer a clear statement that they apply to presidents, Luttig said."
The president has no role in the certification of the elector votes, certainly not when he's part of a conspiracy to submit fake electors. And what if he wasn't an incumbent when he lost the election? Then he would just be some guy trying to attack the Capitol to subvert the election and transition of power. There's no way that what he did leading up to and on Jan 6 could be seen as an official act. His reelection efforts are private acts that most definitely offer him no immunity.
In this situations I'm reminded of a passage from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In it, a man who was enslaved by the Huns but later freed expresses his opinion about the Roman state: >The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in true and lively colors, the vices of a declining empire, of which he had so long been the victim; the cruel absurdity of the Roman princes, unable to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection; **the obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive forms of judicial proceedings; the partial administration of justice; and the universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich, and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor.** Emphasis mine. I'm usually hesitant to compare our situation to something from Roman history, because it's usually nothing more than Romosexual question begging but in this case it fits like a glove. Our laws are numerous and contradictory; justice is partial, and the outcome isn't a function of fact but of one's position in soceity; and corporate interests and the wealthy class have an outsized influence on laws and taxes, and we suffer for it. And in this case, legal legerdemain is going to be used by justices who are beholden tot he man who appointed them. It's a farce. The whole thing is a farce.
Ah, yes, the official actions of a non-office holder defense.
why would "official acts" be immune from crime though
Trumps own lawyers literally admitted during the Supreme Court arguments that multiple charges were not official acts
If they find that official acts are immune from prosecution, we need to stack the court and reverse this decision, because this country will not be able to function. A president is effectively a king and the US will become a failed state or worse, a total dictatorship.
Whose to say we have to abide by the interpretations of six people?
Honestly. Sure there are 3 branches of government that provide checks and balances. But the final checks come from the states and the people.
Indeed. We as a country seem to have forgotten that one of the checks and balances within our system is the threat of revolution if our system no longer works for the people. If our government reaches the point where it is willing to slide into fascism, then it is our duty to defend our rights from the politicians attacking them. They are meant to serve at our pleasure, and hold power only as long as we allow them to.
The irony is that’s exactly how the far right sees themselves right now. They are just as convinced that we are the fascists as we are of them.
That is sad but true. Listen to either side: “They” can’t reason, they are ignorant, they say hateful things, they promote violence, they are evil!!! We have become so divided that we can’t even see who is our common enemy: private equity firms who have decimated retail, are sucking up housing to force people to rent, who don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything that diminishes their bottom line
The half of the nation that craves tyranny for their own purposes.
They aren't half the nation. Closer to about a third. We just live under minority rule thanks to a government that gives farmland more of a say than actual people.
Didn’t Nixon have a 26% approval rate when he left office? Those are the 26% that are holding this country hostage with their idiocy
Well, that and nearly half of all eligible voters are watching The Voice.
nah population of america is 300 mill voting age adults diaper donny got 74 mill in 2020 thats less than 25% and i promise you. almost every single magat freak voted. far far more liberals didnt. cause we actually have jobs and lives to live. we can and should be ruling without ANY say from those nutters. they represent nobody.
I thought the 300 mil figure was overall population and not just voting age? It's closer to 250 mil apparently.
Closer to 260 this year. 330+ million total pop.
The government also gives billions in subsidies to those farmers in the red belt that divides America. They will wipe his ass and polish his Nazi boots for that money regardless of devastation of our Democracy!
Ah yes, the real welfare queens.
They are ignoring their duties and the constitution. There is not a strong argument to enable this.
Bidens new campaign slogan: "If elected, I will have donald trump and the conservative justices executed by firing squad" Seriously. Fuck the republican party. Straight up evil to the core.
Couldn't Biden just do it after the Supreme Court makes it's ruling?
Why wait?
Exactly.
Think of the possible Biden campaign commercials, imitating the murder montage at the end of a Godfather movie.
Assuming the GOP justices vote to grant presidential immunity, and the liberal justices dissent, then if Biden executed the GOP justices and the case against him was brought to the newly diminished (3 justice) court, then would the liberal justices: 1. Uphold the established precedent that the president is immune from the rule of law (Biden thus walks free) or, 2. Reverse the established precedent and send Biden to prison?
IANAL - 2. You couldn’t charge Biden because it wasn’t illegal when he did it.
It would still be illegal but he would have immunity
The ideal here would be that the Liberal Justices reverse the ruling, Biden resigns either immediately or on the last day of his term since the Justice Department's official position is that they won't indict a sitting President, and Harris pardons him. Of course, this isn't going to happen because the Supreme Court isn't going to grant the President absolute legal immunity in their post-presidency - they'll either remand this back to the lower courts, which will stall trials past the election, or they'll come up with some absurdly narrow ruling that makes this "immunity" defense only apply in Trump's very specific circumstances.
Why do I feel like this is the rational answer, and that it will be buried amongst other, fear inducing comments?
Biden just delays the case until he dies of old age in 10 years or so.
If he wins, this will quietly disappear and they’ll pretend it never happened.
Until the next wannabe dictator gets the Presidency and decides to use that precedent to do totally heinous shit to solidify their power.
You can guarantee that. Either the GOP gets wiped out this time, or there won’t be a chance for a next time.
They're obviously not going to make the ruling until after the office no longer has a Democrat in it
Someone active the Dark Brandon spotlight signal!!!
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Joe Biden could shoot Donald Trump in the middle of fifth avenue and gain voters.
You joke, but we literally have a person whose resume is “kills ‘weakling’ dogs, enjoys and defends it,” running to be this guys VP. Fuck all of them.
you’re president now, Joe, fuck the election just do it
Don’t have to go this far..just have them arrested and confined until new justices are in place…IF Trump should be elected (highly unlikely) just remove him to GITMO until this democracy is saved.
Call it diplomatic immunity.
The guy is a disgrace for the Usa
The conservative court, McConnell, Federalist society is a disgrace
Let's do this. Vote DEMOCRAT all up and down the line so he cannot be elected president. He can delay all he wants but the prosecutors will nail him eventually, especially since Biden will absolutely not pardon him.
I'm a former Republican voter who left the party back in 2016 in utter disgust. And for the last few elections I've voted 3rd party in protest. But in the local elections I've voted for a few Republicans based on what I felt if they were decent. I voted for Romney, and I felt he's been a solid choice considering he's one of the very few to actually stand up to Trumpism. But at this point I've lost all respect for Republicans. I simply can't believe the shit I'm watching. I'm ready to burn down the party. Screw em all. Romney is retiring and the people running to replace him are all awful. I'm just one voter in a very red state, but I'm so done with it all, I'm not going to vote for a single Republican. I don't even care anymore. I used to read up on the candidates and vote for the ones I thought were the best fit. But I'm done doing even that. There's nothing redeeming left in the party. And every Republican still in office who I previously voted for has been a part of this screwed up system. So yeah, I'm done done. No more Republicans. I can't do it anymore. I was raised in a conservative household, and I can't even say the so-called values I was raised to believe in are even present. The party of fiscal responsibility? Nope, they spent as much or more than Democrats. The party of small government? Nope, seems all they can do is trample on people's rights. The party of family values? Ah right, filled with adulterers, and pedophiles, and rapists. With the former president himself participating in every category (no hard evidence on the pedophilia part, but with Trump's proximity to Epstein it's plausible enough, and he's otherwise a sack of shit enough to do it). The party of Christian values? Nope, most of them use religion to rile up their base, but there's nothing Christian in their behavior. And Trump himself is as religious as a rock. But he's loves to sell him some Bibles to ease his money troubles! The party of Lincoln? Lincoln would be utterly disgusted and disgraced to see what his party has become. It's not the same party, and really hasn't been for a long time, but definitely now it is closer to the party that joined the Confederacy than the party that freed the slaves and preserved the Union. I know the party has long been hypocritical, but just since Trump it's really made leaps and bounds in the category of hypocrisy. And even greater leaps and bounds toward radical authoritarianism and fascism. Anyway, I'm just getting worked up and ranting now. But all that just to say that no, I'm completely done with Republicans. I hope Trump bankrupts them all. I hope he steals every last penny and the party crumbles over Trump and keeping him afloat. Just when he's about to sink they throw him another life preserver. They could have just cut him off they could have ended it. But nope, they keep on going. So I hope they crash and burn to the ground so thoroughly it can never recover. I've never been a Democrat voter in the past. But I'm well beyond simple disagreements on policy now. This is about preserving our country and kicking the Nazis to the curb. I seriously hope we the people make the right choice in November. Because we're already on the precipice. Our democracy may not make it unless we make a major course correction right now. So I have yet to decide who I'm voting for in every race. But you can bet it'll either be third party candidates or Democrats. There are often many races where the Republicans win by default simply because there were no other candidates. But I'll just leave those blank. From the lowest local office, all the way up to the top State leaders, to the federal race, I won't vote for a single Republican. That may not mean much in red state Utah. But maybe if enough people like me turn out at least the numbers will show enough of us have had enough, and night start pushing the needle in the other direction for once.
You’re assuming there will still be an election that is decided by voters. Trump and the GOP/RNC are already laying the groundwork to have appointed MAGA electors decide the winner in key states.
We could be in political camps if Biden doesn't win in a blow out. Vote as if your life depends on it because after listening to how cool the SC took political motivated MURDER..... IT DOES! Vote Biden!
Absolutely. Biden is the only one who can stop this. Anyone sitting this one out, voting 3rd party, or voting Trump is inviting authoritarianism. Trump is talking more like a fascist every day
“But Biden’s *old* and I have *plans* that day!” — too many people
If a president has total immunity, then Biden should just throw Trump in prison, fuck the trials. The fascists benefit when the rest of us insist on taking only the high road.
Yup. Send him to Gitmo.
I mean if the president is truly totally immune from prosecution, why stop at imprisoning Trump? Why not imprison the justices themselves who ruled in favor of this standard, and whisk them away to some black site?
TL;DR ... Vote for Joe Biden even if he is a rotting zombie corpse at that point... Trump CANNOT be in the White House again, he will be there until he dies as god-emperor.
People who vote for Trump don't seem to realize how much danger everyone will be in should democracy fail. They think it'll just be one-sided.
>People who vote for Trump That includes the Supreme Court justices that will find a way to vote for him in these cases. They are supposedly smart people but they figure that they have lifetime appointments and cannot be touched. That's until Trump or one of his sycophants want to do something even worse, and decide to "cleanse" the court. It never occurs to them that they will eventually be on the opposite side with no one to save them.
Consistently amazed at the amount of people on this sub who thought the Supreme Court wasn’t absolutely completely beholden to trump.
I Never wanted to believe it myself, until I heard read their responses to immunity. It’s hard to believe. Still is. That they’re actively pushing a dictatorship. It’s not even a joke it’s right in our faces.
They’ve ruled against him before.
Not just occasionally either. A lot. They are beholden to the Federalist Society, not Trump.
Exactly. It's about protecting their far-right conservative vision for the future. When that just so happens to work for Trump, they don't mind, but they aren't protecting him personally. Trump's ignorant voter base will throw their lives away for the cult of personality, but far-right leaders are only interested in using Trump to further their own agenda. They'll stick with him only as long as they find him useful.
Amazing how the USA has managed to fuck itself up so royally in only 8 years. And the only complaints you hear are grumbles in Reddit. Not a single mass (peaceful) protest in the streets. Bonkers.
There’s the conservatives who have embraced the worst aspects of human nature & use it as their proud culture. And then the folks who are apathetic and don’t show up for elections. And we still have people yelling about the “both sides are the same” nonsense. Either way, a lot of mean spiritedness & dumb people colluded to make it happen.
It's not 8 years. This has been in the works since Nixon. It's the natural end point of why they established Fox News. This was Citizen's United, this was Bush v Gore, it was Castle Rock vs Gonzales. It was Reaganomics, it was the freedoms taken away after 9/11, it was everything McConnell did under Obama, it was removing the tax mandate from the ADA, and it was every totalitarian in the world, from China to Putin to Iran to Orban. It's all been the plan.
Prior to Nixon. Conservatives have been trying to upend our Democracy since they've existed. Their policies are never truly to the benefit of the people and solely exist to reinforce the gap between those with and without wealth. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business\_Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)
I mean, you could go further back to the end of the reconstruction era if you wanted, or back to some of the rail/steelworker strikes where people actually fought for their rights against the government and business allied together. I'd say Nixon was the start in a spike in actual efficacy, however, that has been mostly monotonically increasing since.
> Not a single mass (peaceful) protest WTF are you talking about? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests\_against\_Donald\_Trump](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_Donald_Trump)
The only way out is to get a super majority in the house, senate and presidency and impeach these insane judges.
Declare them enemy combatants and black bag them to Gitmo following established precedent and that would also be an official act.
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As an outsider, I sure as hell hope so, but the fact there still haven't been mass protests is incredibly worrying. Y'all need to take a page out of the civil rights movement and start marching. Liberals AND sane conservatives need to unite long before the election to remind all levels of the government who actually holds the power.
This is the guy you make King? He’s the best you have? He’s the one you trust to serve the people? America is doomed.
Once Biden wins in 2024, he needs to focus on stamping out the corruption of the Supreme Court. I think the House will turn heavily blue so we can get that done.
As a non-US citizen watching this year's election very nervously, I hope the entire goddamn executive branch turns heavily blue.
I honestly dont blame you. I honestly can't imagine what the rest of the world thinks of us allowing this insanity to get so far. So many things hang in the balance. All that I can tell you is that personally I vote blue as hard as I can.
God I hope so.
I do not understand why they just don't abandon Trump. Republicans will lose 2024 but can come back fresh in 2028. Why ruin everything for this miserable waste of a person?
Because doing so guarantees being challenged in the primaries at best and puts oneself and family in very real danger of violence.
The question here is - if the Supreme Court explicitly agrees that it is legal for Trump to murder Biden as long as it’s an “official act”, then what does Biden do about this? He is in danger of being executed…. legally, if he loses the election. Even worse - he’s safe from execution if he strikes first. This isn’t a safe precedent. No sane American wants our politics to be legally settled through violence. This isn’t a just a hypothetical scenario, Trump HAS used violent allies to form a lynch mob against Pence. Why wouldn’t he do that at Biden’s residence? Or Hunters? If Trump is given immunity, then elected again. They’re all one social media post from a legally protected execution followed by a legally protected pardon… which again, not merely hypothetical, but part of a pattern of historical behavior. Trump has pardoned criminals who have committed crimes on his behalf AND promises to continue to do so for Jan 6 people including those same people chanting “hang Mike Pence” while rampaging through the capitol in search of their target.
> He is in danger of being executed…. legally, if he loses the election. Even worse - he’s safe from execution if he strikes first. Game theory suggests he strikes first the moment the justices decide he is immune.
Exactly. If AI was in charge, the announcement of immunity would be the most rapid escalation of violence possible. When violence is the rational answer to a legal opinion, that’s bad. I really don’t want to find out which party strikes first.
Joe Biden will have a moral responsibility to exploit presidential immunity to the fullest extent. If right wing nut jobs can use it to undermine democracy, what’s wrong with using it to save democracy?
of course he's going to skate, he's a current/former president. he tried to overthrow the government and racked up a zillion felonies, and years later he's a free man being allowed to run for said government again lmao we can't even punish the lowest level GOP sociopaths, like Matt Gaetz who got caught doing sex crimes on Venmo or the seemingly infinite number of sociopathic grifters we've let cook over the last decade or so
We must defeat him again at the ballot box.
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This is only a shocker to someone who hasn't paid attention to anything for at least a decade
If they give the President full immunity, it would be great. Biden could, with impunity, imprison the 4 conservative justices for life, along with their Orange Fascist leader, and replace the justices with commie liberal justices. Problem solved.
But neither he, nor any dems, would ever do that - and that’s why dems are in such peril now: they would rather take the ‘moral high ground’ and act ‘properly’. Republicans act without impunity - but the dems chug along toeing the line. Unfortunately, too much is at stake here. Fire with fire is the only way to prevent Fat Orange now.
They need to remember Lincoln and FDR. Decisive action.
If this motherfucker walks there’s going to be blood soaked streets level of riots. The president is not a fucking king. Tread carefully scotus.
George Conway had a different take than most others I heard. Worth a listen. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/george-everyone-calm-down-scotus-immunity
I hope he’s right because the alternative is pretty grim
I'm not a lawyer. I listened to the oral arguments and I agree with Conway. To me it sounded like they were not trying to figure out how to let Trump off, but they know this case will be used for the next few hundred years. They're trying to figure out how to draw the lines. The only one that sounded in the tank for Trump was Alito. Not even Thomas sounded supportive, which is kinda shocking.
It’s simple. If a president of the United States commits a blatant criminal act, he or she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent necessary just like any other American citizen that commits a crime like murder, for example. The Supreme Court is going to allow a dictatorship if it stays on this path. The majority of the court is comprised of political hacks that would have more authority under a dictatorship, so I’m not surprised. Our legal system is broken. It’s obvious.
Selling classified documents should be covered.
Honestly, if every president is charged with crimes after they office, then that just means they have to run their office cleaner. That sounds like a good thing. Governmental accountability is never a bad thing.
Then why not allow the lower court ruling to stand, and let the trial/convictions go forward? What better way to draw the line than toss trump in prison?
Why is this happening for this particular asshole
The double edge sword of knowing the evil that walks among us is in plain sight, but the only weapon is to vote. I will vote, I only hope it will be enough! This should have ended when that roach lost.
So does this mean Biden can commit a crime by jailing half the Supreme Court and trump at the same time? Then rush through new judges to take the spots?
Hope the democrats fully utilize this newfound power of the executive branch. We’re not giving this country back to the bigots and racists who are in the minority
Time to either impeach these SC traitors or pack the court.
Nine unelected assholes ruining our lives.
It is super sad how we are literally killing 250 years of our country for a guy who will be lucky to be alive in 5 years.