It should be noted that through all this people fought for those rights. So don't fall asleep, dear America, because organizing even within small communities will make a difference.
If done correctly, massive change can happen. Dream big so that those who fear negotiate back down to the levels you'll accept.
I feel like a lot of people online need to read this comment, go outside, and live their life. This is not defeatist, and it's not unreal optimism. Thank you for this.
I think the problem here is the concurrent effects of climate change. The US couldn't have picked a worse time to move from flirting with facism to full-on marrying it.
You can deal with one crisis if you're coordinated enough but the chaos that's already occurring with the climate - and is set to become exponentially worse - doesn't give me much hope for a harmonious conclusion to this. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong and you're right.
The part about our history you're forgetting is that we never, through any of that, gleefully elected a guy that has made it abundantly clear he doesn't give a fuck about democracy and will work to subvert or destroy it if it doesn't suit him.
This is new territory.
And we're about to experience the deconstruction of things that will be very difficult to build back.
Your point is that we've been around for a few hundred years, so we can bounce back. But history would like to point out that nations that were around much longer than us have ceased to exist many times over.
On the other hand, do keep in mind that mighty empires have fallen. We cannot say for sure that things will be fine just because in the past the USA has survived
The US has been through a lot and will likely recover, but it would be nice to avoid making the same mistakes again. How
many more people have to get hurt before humanity learns?
How do you replenish the oceans and maintain life for any ecosystem humanity lives off of? Most of America is set to be desert by 4 degrees c average warmth increase. You won't grow crops outdoors. We know we are guaranteed to blow past 1.5 now without being able to stop it as are actions are to late. Yet we are saying "drill baby drill". The topographical map will change drastically.
Choosing between two candidate picked by lobbyists/corporations, and anyone else not having a slightest chance in hell isn't a democracy, but hey, you do you.
It's slightly better than China/Russia having a single candidate and everyone else is just for show.
I share your broader view and cautious optimism. In fact I think that some of what we are seeing are death spasms of that white hegemony that used to lynch blacks at will. They lost their “hard” power long ago with the end of Jim Crow. And they have been losing their “soft” power ever since. Demographic trends point to white people in America eventually becoming a minority. Religion is also dying out. So much of what we see is a panic of a dying group that was once dominant. There is no way that’s ever going to be pretty, anywhere, at any time. But look at the trend behind it and it’s an encouraging one, even if the death spasms are incredibly difficult. TBH if the Democrats could just provide some real leadership into this future, America could flip into a totally different country, much like the liberal democracies of Europe (but way stronger) inside of 20 years. This is the reality that the old guard are scared shitless of, and why they are pulling out all the stops to go the other way.
one difference today is that govt/establishment/utra-rich have centralised way more power than anytime in human history.
add that with extreme surveillance & automated weaponry, “govt” can do basically anything they want. 1% can easily crush any opposition to them with no matter how strongly united the rest of us are. dnc just ignored its entire voter base to continue a genocide & support fracking while letting corporate greed run rampant for last 4 years.
with ai+drones it will become way worse. it’s not unimaginable what’s happening to palestinian will happen to the non-white population here in next 10-15 years.
He could have punished the Southern Aristocracy for starting the civil war. He could have ensured that the evil that led us there was exterminated forever.
Failing that, they could have actually removed him via impeachment instead of falling just short. That would have at least established forever that the presidency is not some sacred "unimpeachable" office.
Nobody thought that at all. Most presidents sitting during outbreaks of war retain their positions. You'd have to have been in a complete echo chamber to believe this stance. The moment 9/11 happened, it solidified Bush's Second term in stone.
I assume you mean Jr. Because Sr wasn't the moron that Jr was.
Yeah no, I'm gonna disagree. Being outside of the US at the time, most people did think that. And yes, obviously I'm talking about Jr since Sr didn't get re-elected. 9/11 was a full three years before the election of his second term. And most importantly before he started the war in Iraq. A war that was widely viewed as illegitimate outside the US.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too. And yeah, I remember, even as a 17yr old at the time, seeing the event happen live and lamenting to my mother that we were going to have another Bush term over it. Historically for America that's always been the case.
You're recollection of events is clearly skewed. Something like 80% of the population approved of it at first. Meanwhile there were protests in the millions of people around the world against it.
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons.
It's so fucking disgusting to be honest... I'm just a worthless dumb shit uneducated factory worker and at 17 I could see right through that garbage... We're a hateful group of people whether we care to admit it or not, there was a lot of anti-islamic/Muslim/Arab sentiment in the US at thst time. People were bloodthirsty.
I was going to join the military after highschool to get training since I'm poor and had no real direction to gamble on college, and then take it from there whether to stay in or not. Once talk started of invading Iraq I immediately said fuccccck that. I still blame Bush partially for my current situation. :/
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved. By 2006 it was viewed as illegitimate by most. My recollection of events is fine, thanks.
America will generally approve of measures when they are led to believe it affects their security and safety. It's the years afterwards that determine if it continues to hold support.
It was, but there were people bitching about it. It may be an unconventional way to show it but if you look at Eminem's album released in 2004 the second track was Mosh.
"Stomp, push, shove, mush, Fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home"
"Let the president answer a higher anarchy
Strap him with an Ak-47, let him go, fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country, we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes its all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out and wiped
And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you know why,
Cause I told you to fight."
To me that's pretty obvious mainstream music pushing us to turn back against exactly what this false patriotism that exists today in MAGA is.
The 80s were fucked, but if you're saying it was worse than the response to the Civil Rights movement...
McCarthyism...
Jim Crow...
Or the KKK destroying reconstruction...
Like, I could see saying that last one was the point, only if you start the clock immediately after resolving the civil war. Cause obviously a Civil War is what really happens after a point of no return. We lasted a couple years in between the two points.
For as fucked as the last 40 years has been, as far as America goes we're beating the average on basic human decency.
What's happening now isn't new, it's a slip backwards, which is unfortunately common when you try to fight fascism with moderate politics. It works for a little bit because they're coasting off the last people who really fought. But all moderate politcs really are, is giving fascist time to regroup in the shadows like fucking Sauron.
It's a cycle, and we live in a time when you can learn pretty much anything about history in a few minutes on Wikipedia
America can not afford for voters to stay ignorant. We need people who know what happened last time, what worked then, and what might work again. Stop acting like we live in unprecedented times, and start reading up on how fascism has been defeated historically.
Cuz we're up, like it or not shits getting real again. And the more people know what we're doing then better.
In my opinion we've already passed the point of no return and recent events have just confirmed as much.
This isn't about having differing political opinions. A profoundly unfit, amoral criminal with a very public history of being an awful person came along and started spewing extremely dangerous rhetoric, some of which is almost verbatim to Hitler's, and our society ate it up and made him president in 2016. This man, who leads a party who courts racists/sexists for their votes, utterly failed his tenure as president, bombing his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2 and presiding over the highest White House administration turnover rate in U.S. history. Since then he has become a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and illegally attempted to overturn our democratic institutions by various means.
This go around the American people were presented with a choice between that person, who only managed to make himself appear even more unfit during this campaign season, openly stated he is anti-worker rights, and is directly responsible for removing women's federally protected right to bodily autonomy, or a successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law, backed by a party that, despite misinformation, has a voting history proving they vote in favor of the average American FAR more than the opposing party....and Americans STILL managed to drop the ball and go with the CLEARLY worse choice. And when I say clearly, I'm talking about by every conceivable metric that exists in reality.
At this point it isn't about Democrat vs Republican or Trump vs Kamala or Biden. It's about the American people. We are not a society of intelligent voters. We have failed our responsibility as citizens in a democracy by being too lazy to learn and by allowing misinformation to mislead us and emotions to cloud our better judgement. We are not engaged in responsible involvement in our own politics. We gleefully elect people that only offer hate and fear and lies, despite how hard they try to prove how awful they are to us. And THAT is why we have passed the point of no return. If you remove the parties and the politicians out of the equation, you still have a society that fails at responsibly preserving a democracy. That gives in to hateful rhetoric and fear. That wants to get the better of the "others".
There is no happy ending for a society like that. A society like that can only decline. This was not an election about one political ideology against another. It was an election about morality. And we categorically failed that moral test.
There are excuses. We've been through a lot. Lots of people are desperate. Desperate people make bad decisions. But the bottom line is we don't live in a society with a majority of responsible adults making responsible, fact-based decisions about the most important things.
In the arc of history we may end up reaching a better place, but personally I believe we're embarking on a decline that will most likely last the rest of our lives. It simply isn't a problem that can be fixed short term. And we're about to experience a sort of deconstruction. A deconstruction of norms. A deconstruction of institutions. A deconstruction of education and safety nets. And those things take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build back, because it's easier to destroy than it is to create or maintain.
Buckle up. Try to find happiness where you can. It's probably not getting better anytime soon.
I'm childless by choice because I don't like children. I'm happy I don't have kids because they'd be experiencing this shit storm during their formative years and I can't even imagine how badly that would fuck them up.
Soldiers knocking down doors to arrest millions of illegal aliens and everyone who looks like an illegal alien and shoving them into camps, what could go wrong?
I don't think we will see that, but i do think we will see ice raids on businesses that tend to hire immigrants and fake crackdowns on paperwork that dramatically increases the time and hassle for everything, and weird pushes for all paperwork to be in English.
Yeah, but so was build a wall. I really think/hope that there's too much infighting and shitslinging for them to follow through on much. They're good at blocking thanks, but not super great at passing things. Concepts of plans and all...
How about the fact drill baby drill means seeing a 3 degree Celsius increase by 2100. That's the lifetime of many of the people in this earth. That kind of change will kill many ecosystems and make deserts out of a lot where we live and grow food. We know we can't stop going past 1.5 degrees now do to our slow changes. Instead we are hitting the gas pedal according to Trump. The oceans, plantlife on land, everything that consumes it is in jeopardy. Estimates are around 60% of animal populations have died off since the 70s. At some point you break the link in the food "chain" if you will, and larger masses die off, until it is unrecoverable.
"We can farm fish". <- We farm fish in the U.S. ship it to China to package and then ship it back to put it on our shelves. That's how wasteful we are.
You don't believe the animals are dying? Or that the temperature is rising, or that the oil companies research who agree are telling the truth? Exxon has been telling us this since the 1970s.
I think that the us perspective on politics is surprising self-centered. If millions will die remains to be seen, but an unpredictable us leadership will certainly shift power dynamics on an international scale.
The trump administration might randomly decide to side with land grabbing dictators, might embolden Israel, or switch to Doge Coin as the main currency. Those things might not directly cause death, but will disrupt the world stage to a degree which might overpower currently stable institutions.
Which in turn might lead to death and suffering as a consequence.
I'm not trying to say that everything should remain as is. Things are awful in a lot of places, but one of the biggest and most powerful nations with a "leader" that might throw a world ending tantrum over a Twitter thread is nothing anybody, but the most nihilistic acclerationists want.
Also Trump's plans to withdraw from climate change mitigation will certainly add to the pile of dead bodies which we will inherit in the next 50 year as a consequence of our actions today.
And progress without testing it's resiliency against malicious actors will not last. As much as we hate Trump being elected and staffing clowns in each position, it will test what has been made so far. Row v. Wade, as we now know, should have been stronger. The Voting Rights Act too. The states that required the law to be fair have pulled back the law and reveal little has changed.
No one likes getting burned but fire is useful for showing us what burns easily and what withstands the heat. We will rebuild stronger and know what works.
So what is your solution when we blow past 4 degrees (c) rise in temperature and most of the land on earth becomes uninhabitable? Shift all the farms up north which will die of freezes annually, or move all agriculture and life indoors permanently? Surely mining all the resources to put all of human life indoors will be a non issue? Or is it just the 5% that get indoors to survive and then the lower 90% of that 5 become the poor disadvantaged driven to be the new poor slowly? Or is your hope that the top 5% after killing most the world's population once indoors will simply accept a form of socialism then?
The US came back from a US president hiring private goons to spy on his political opponents.
The US came back from a US president illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund right wing militias in South America.
The US came back from a US cabinet member taking literal bribes from oil companies to give them oil drilling rights on federal land.
The US came back from a US president illegally firing a cabinet member and installing his own lackey.
But it didn't HAVE to.
I don't think there's really such a thing as a 'point of no return' for a Democracy. But it is possible to get to a point after which you don't return.
It's going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it's clearly dead no hope.
Just feels life another goal post moved... He literally worked to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed on live TV and was then clinched of dozens of felonies. . There can't always be a *"yeah, but if THIS next thing happens..."*I
He failed to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed. And the reason he wanted his VP killed was because he wouldn't help him overthrow the American government.
It's undeniable that some very powerful people want US democracy dead, but from that to the actual death of US democracy is a long way
Failing to Reject the Reagan Revolution, and mass embrace of the Jack Welsh style "trickle down" economics lie, by BOTH parties was the point of no return, almost half a century ago at this point. This car was already totaled.
Citizens United years later was just a victory lap by the owners pissing on the long dead corpse of the dream of societal equity.
Trump is just another symptom of that intransigent reality we all live in.
I'd say hope for collapse, as painful as it is, to have any hope for a better life for our children, maybe, but oligarch greed made climate change and at this point inevitable ecological collapse in the coming decades means there really isn't hope for a better society/civilization for generations(if they eventually develop technologies to better cope with the new hellish climate reality) if at all.
In the near term, people increasingly not being able to afford basic necessities like housing and food will lead to increased societal violence, but that likely won't cause collapse.
Climate scientists are increasingly warning of ecological collapse, meaning core climate systems will fail, like the Atlantic Gulfstream which will cause global famine and destruction, and that might be the end of human civilization all together, we won't know until we do it within the next half century, and see the full extent of our fine work, a climate hostile to agriculture, dependable fresh water, possibly even standing structures not made of steel and concrete.
But man are we speeding towards that cliff for short-term private shareholder profit, wheeeee!
Right now my mind is at, "it very well could be, but time will tell".
Had Trump had the right people in places to make certain decisions, it could have very well ended in 2020 just as much. Well the world did change in a big way near the end of his term, with COVID, how he botched it and how he gave corporate handout after corporate handout which caused the inflation that Biden is being blamed for.
I've been still grasping for ways that the US still can be saved, which there are many, but they hinge on
1A. Trump going back on many of his worst promises and not doing them, because reneging is his thing, or
1B. Trump and his team being too incompetent to enact his agenda, or
1C. The backlash to Trump's unpopular moves creates disobedience within government, military and writ large, preventing him from enacting his agenda, and
Democracy not being rigged during his tenure, avoiding where elections become just as meaningful as Russia's or China's during the 4 years.
A plurality of Americans gave Trump and Republican facsism basically all the dragon balls of power, so it's up to him pretty much whether he can use them and the most Americans can do is organize and resist.
I was as surprised and disappointed as anyone, and I think we WILL take a few more steps backwards over the next few years, but I don't expect an unstoppable fall into fascism.
Most of the votes for Trump weren't actually FOR Trump. They were against the current situation they are in. They see him as the revolution. The anti-politician that will bring real change. They think all his court battles are the "Man" trying to hold him down and keep him from disrupting a system that gave up on its people long ago.
Of course that's all bullshit, but, assuming that all "normal" people can see through his lies and that only evil, woman hating racists would support him, is a big part of why he was elected.
Trump denied Project 2025 because he knew most people wouldn't want it. (Honestly, I would be surprised if he even knew what was in it) If he lets the Christian nationalists push that whole agenda on day one, he'll become the oppressive government that is taking away their freedoms. And nothing is more important to Trump than making Trump look good.
I'm way more concerned with Vance. Like you say, Trump does what's best for Trump. If Vance becomes President for whatever reason then ideology takes center stage.
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK -- going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations -- the US isn't anywhere near equipped to counter that. We're still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world's police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
Yeah, I think this could be the end of free and fair elections in the U.S., and there's no coming back from that without a revolution. Don't get me wrong, I don't think most of us will directly be killed by this change; our lives will just be shittier. It'll be like living in Russia. Given how utterly incompetent the administration is looking, and the things they say they're going to do (mass deportation of a significant part of our workforce, blanket tariffs, gutting social safety-nets), we may speed-run an economic and societal collapse. That could sow the seeds for a horrible and bloody revolution.
Or, maybe I'm wrong and the important institutions will somehow hold against a christo-fascist party controlling all branches of the federal government and a president with immunity. If there are still are free and fair elections, then congress could block a lot of things in 2026, and start repairing some of the damage in 2028.
Still, it does not bode well that the U.S. elected these people in the first place, and at best, the U.S. will slowly crumble for decades.
Free and fair elections have never been anything but an ideal in this country. It started with voters were wealthy landowning men, often who owned slaves.
What we're seeing is years of undermined reforms by the momentarily wealthy after the previous empires in europe tore themselves apart.
Meh, I would've given 3/5 stars to U.S. democracy since the Voting Rights Act. Stars taken away for FPTP, gerrymandering, campaign finance, "lobbying," and the electoral college. I believe we're going to go to 0/5 stars with completely rigged elections rather than just manufacturing consent and lightly tipping the scales like they've been doing.
Even with a contentious subject like abortion. That's a disagreement about a specific topic. You can reach a middle ground. It's one of many topics to debate over and forge legislation regarding.
But the majority gleefully electing a guy that effectively looked us all straight in the face and said "I don't give a fuck about democracy and will attempt to subvert or overthrow it if it doesn't suit me"? Yeah, there's really no recovering from that. At least not without a long period of serious decline and suffering, followed by lots of struggle and death to earn back what we lose.
We disrespected the shit out of our democracy and everyone that fought/died for it. There's no way that ends well.
Yeah, we’re a strangely resilient nation. Things that topple other nations have been crises to us. This may be the end and this may be a disaster so great we dismantle the right wing media dominance or any number of things.
The longer the rubes hold on to this pipe dream that the dems can make a come back the further we will slip and longer it will take to recover. Unfortunately, I don't think democrat party members will ever give up on the democratic party and they will spend all their political goodwill investing in this farce of a party long after the elections are still free and fair.
Say, free and fair elections survive by some act of god. That doesn't change the fact the GOP can beat them handley in a free and fair election. The only thing trump needed to cement his win was the Supreme Court to sign off on everything. Given immunity all the road blocks trump had before have been lifted.
We have till January and you will see what the executive is actually capable of, with limp dick biden kicked to the curb.
The terror that will be trumps deportation methods will have your jaw drop and I'm not kidding. We tolerated kids in cages, Abu Ghraib is coming to America and our own sex trafficker and chief will begin some truly despicable shit. You better believe media capture is part of it because there is no way other country's will be let in on this side of the veil.
I'm not a doomer. It's not hyperbole. Im not an oracle and would pay with my own life just to be wrong.
I still am hopeful though that my countrymen can snap out of it and quit dismissing reality in real-time, allowing us an actual chance at resisting this upheaval. If we wait till the midterms though, this shit is cooked, packed, and on the shelf.
If you want to say, look at American history, I'd quickly defer you to the 90s. Whatever we might have once been we are no longer that. We are consumers educated by infomercials who only know reality TV and "influencers". Coke was the first plague, Springer the second. Followed by real world and road rules. All of this media "culture" stripped us of what it ever ment to be American. No one sits around and wanes intellectual about the founding fathers unless you're a fashie supreme court justice or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Today, in 2024, the Apprentice is more American than George Washington.
There was a time when a single black women sitting at the front of a bus could change a nation. Today Rosa would hit the front page of reddit on a Wednesday and fall off by the time Europeans woke up to see.
I think we were fucked once we had a window to all the world's knowledge in our pockets. The line was immediately blurred between having access to that knowledge and the capacity to truly know and process, to possess, that knowledge.
That used to be the casual dividing line between the adults that considered politics and the people puking up shrimp and strawberry wine at the jersey shore. Now the shrimp and strawberry people count fox-scented infotainment as "news" and really just as their sports team of choice - and they line the paths to polling stations holding automatic rifles. They feel emboldened by knowledge they don't actually possess but feel confidence in the fact that they "could look up whenever, just don't want to right now".
All the "Good Liars" clips are a front row seat on American democracy bleeding out.
No. There were two ways the trump admin was going to go. He was either going to run an effective fascist regime, or become the ringmaster of the largest dipshit fucknugget circus. Seeing how things are going so far (and he isn't even the president yet) it's going to be the latter.
Sure, there will be long term damage that is going to take years, if not lifetimes of hard work and good policy to undo, but it can be undone. Assuming 2024 was a wake up call and people vote more effectively instead of throwing their voice away at propped up Russian disinfo candidates.
And the Americans are still here because he ran a clown show last time too. Palestine might not make it through the next 4 years though, but that's what the abstainers and 3rd party voters were pushing for.
Are you one of those people who seriously thought that Harris was going to do anything to help Palestine? If so, you bought into something much dumber than Russian disinfo.
The difference between recession and collapse is a bounce back on the other side.
Banking system is already vulnerable to real estate prices. Commercial real estate has been in zombie mode with banks hiding their losses on the sector. The US government has already unsustainable debt levels that can't afford major adventures or catastrophes. Adventures include mass deportations or wars. The problem with austerity measures for the non-oligarchs is strong degrowth and crime from multiplier effects.
While Trump is likely to be extremely divisive and angering socially, it is economics and geopolitics that will collapse the US. Deregulating banks is letting the fractional reserve system use a riskier lower fraction. Biden was very good at strengthening the subjugation of US colonies, but he pushed away majority of the world. There is major risk that Trump pushes away colonies without making the world more trusting of US. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/requiem-for-an-empire.html
What destroys America is the hubris of thinking it is winning, and that it can win over the world. Fighting China instead of getting cheap stuff is a mistake. Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake. Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won't do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what's left.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn't avert the path to collapse in any way.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake.
I hope that's not your opinion of nuclear energy. People criticizing it miss the fact that a grid has to support some baseline.
All things are good and needed, which are not about burning fossil fuels (and sometimes even those, if getting "greener" energy somewhere pollutes more than just taking a canister of gasoline or diesel fuel). And the more diverse energy supply is, the smaller is each particular environmental impact, be it from greenhouse gases, lithium, ruining watersheds when building hydroelectric stations, similar impacts of wind farms, oil spills, escaping gases, toxic liquids, plastics, ... .
People miss that nuance. You make humanity sustainable again by diversifying as much as possible, so that any particular kind of harm would be minimized, and so that no particular industry would possess strategic power. Not by dividing energy into holy and unholy and burning witches. It's just math.
Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won’t do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what’s left.
Promising won't because promising ain't doing.
But input is leverage, and leverage is power. Look how "free" input from corporations into Linux gave them control over it. So if reindustrialization really-really happens, it will improve politics of your country. It's the way it works. When you live off cheap Chinese labor, your economy depends less on your own.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn’t avert the path to collapse in any way.
Agreed.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
I personally have doubts about UBI. It requires fiscal discipline that no recent US government had. Otherwise it speeds up inflation. Not significantly if we compare it to corporate bailouts, but still.
Peace is always good. But war is a symptom of problems that still would exist if there were no war.
I've recently watched an interview by Bill Joy (the Sun founder) where he mentions how clear water access has done much more to reduce mortality in the world than antibiotics. I think it's the same with accessible good automation vs "AI" and other hype phenomena. I think non-oligopolized tech industry and non-oligopolized Web would do hell of a lot more for all kinds of abundance than any new magic wand like "AI".
Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake.
Nuclear energy is not quite climate terrorism, because it is clean, but it's purpose is to serve climate terrorists and warmongers instead of being a climate solution. It takes too long to build out, and is too expensive. Baseload was never a necessity. It usually made a giant continuous operating plant the cheapest energy. Batteries and transitioning existing FF plants for standby/peaker use is far cheaper than nuclear, and renewables, batteries, and hydrogen can achieve 100% clean energy with 0 additional nuclear. The insurmountable problem with deciding that you need extra GW of baseload in 15 years, is that you need to suppress renewables to still need it by then. Uninsurable and unbankable, and always overbudget in part because political bribes, in a collapsing corrupt dystopia, is only path to building any.
When you live off cheap Chinese labor, your economy depends less on your own.
One of the reasons the US can't reindustrialize or even build affordable housing, is tariffs on steel/metals and lumber. Forces high material prices in addition to labour. For cars, China's advantage is not just steel, and factory building, it is automation. Robotics gets developed close to where the customers are, and US industrialization is going to rely on minimal labour to have a chance. While the US is deeply committed to its oligarchy, inviting Chinese expertise in key industries, with their robotics, is a path to a future relevant America. Instead of tariffs, strategic reserves of domestically purchased steel/metal, solar, batteries that may be sold to US industry at a loss, is a path to having domestic supply resilience while encouraging FDI for abundance purposes.
I personally have doubts about UBI. It requires fiscal discipline that no recent US government had. Otherwise it speeds up inflation. Not significantly if we compare it to corporate bailouts, but still.
Inflation is a market adjustment between supply and demand. You can escape inflation by substituting goods, and you only lose from inflation if 1. you have too much cash, or 2. your income rises slower than inflation. Slavery is good anti-inflation policy that provides high productivity. If inflation is your most important consideration in life, then slavery is excellent path for reducing it. UBI by empowering people to work less if they want to, means that everyone gets 5 recruiter calls per day, and has a very easy time of finding a good paying job if they want it, and there is huge demand for labour because everyone has more money to buy stuff, and you need to work/sell to them to take their money and trickle it back up to the employers.
So UBI is a massive economic/prosperity boost above and beyond inflation. Eliminates poverty and crime, reduces the need for savings, and so multiplies more money into economy, and importantly disempowers "false promise/prophet heroes" trying to tell you Israel first with "working class angle" politicians vs "pro oligarchy slavery full employment" angle. UBI lowers deficits and debt, because it is just tax credits between rich and poor, without making rich any poorer. Significant program cuts means less "tax collection". More program cuts means higher UBI. Politicians can no longer lie their way past even an idiocracy that understands "I like money".
clear water access has done much more to reduce mortality in the world than antibiotics. I think it’s the same with accessible good automation vs “AI”
An AI developer can make more money from a pro-Empire AI than a humanist AI. The Empire can also JFK/MLK the humanist, or threaten it with compliance to the empire's regulations of preventing humanity from prospering on national security grounds. It would be treason if your AI suggests the empire is not pure good, and Israel has done something wrong, and contradicts the CIA/media disinformation plan. As Netanyahu says, if you don't kill everyone Netanyahu wants dead, then Iran wins. You want to support anti-semitic Iranian/China/Russian/DPRK agent AI development? Netanyahu will say you need one of his pagers.
You can escape inflation by substituting goods, and you only lose from inflation if 1. you have too much cash, or 2. your income rises slower than inflation.
If you have enough cash for it to grow faster than inflation, you win and those who have less lose compared to you. So your relative power grows.
Inflation makes the poor poorer faster than it makes the rich poorer, actually it doesn't do that.
And by "inflation" specifically people usually mean devaluation of money due to growth of monetary mass, which itself is a result of closing budget holes with emission.
So UBI is a massive economic/prosperity boost above and beyond inflation. Eliminates poverty and crime, reduces the need for savings,
Eliminates small crime. Superprofits from selling cocaine working together with corrupt officials will not really change with UBI.
Politicians can no longer lie their way past even an idiocracy that understands “I like money”.
There's never enough money.
More program cuts means higher UBI.
Only if politicians act as you want them to.
It would be treason if your AI suggests the empire is not pure good, and Israel has done something wrong, and contradicts the CIA/media disinformation plan.
The problem here is not with what you are describing, but that you are seriously considering treating a computer program as an oracle, that can ask questions about good and evil.
Inflation makes the poor poorer faster than it makes the rich poorer, actually it doesn’t do that.
This is the big lie. Inflation hurts the rich when bond rates are at an insufficient premium to inflation rate. Those who don't have savings, can complain that their work wages are not rising fast enough, but that is a complaint towards their employer who is raising prices enough to pay higher wages if they weren't oppressing their workers.
Corporatist/Republican media helped swing election to most genocidal supportive candidate over this lie. But a war on Russia made the inflation self inflicted.
Eliminates small crime. Superprofits from selling cocaine working together with corrupt officials will not really change with UBI.
Goal shouldn't be that profits can't exist. It should be poverty elimination, easier life for everyone, and inherent resistance to having profits used to rule over you more harshly.
Only if politicians act as you want them to.
It is not power hungry DNC or RNC who will ever provide UBI. It is candidates who want to disempower Israel first wars and rulership. A campaign for UBI is first and foremost an extermination of the corrupt rulership, replacing it with the empowerment of individuals.
The problem here is not with what you are describing, but that you are seriously considering treating a computer program as an oracle, that can ask questions about good and evil.
AI, including current LLMs, as a humanist oracle, has the power to make you/us less stupid if its mission/programming is truth. If its programming is to serve the same empire media disinformation, then surely, it will tell you to support a war on Iran. Any assistance to governance or empire will be how to best conduct a war on Iran. If an AI has a humanist instead of empire domination programming, you can trust it to both advise good/productive policy that is also truthful. If individual people are evil, and have pure evil biases, they can still override their personal AI to provide advice on how to support their evil, so as to make the AI most useful to them, but the default must be humanist/truthful.
Regulating AI for "national security domination" is inherently coopting that oracle function. Google/reddit/lemmy has been such a function of filtering up answers for you to digest for many years already. AI, Internet and other media are all tools that can choose to disinform you into being stupider, or make you smarter and more informed.
This is the big lie. Inflation hurts the rich when bond rates are at an insufficient premium to inflation rate. Those who don’t have savings, can complain that their work wages are not rising fast enough, but that is a complaint towards their employer who is raising prices enough to pay higher wages if they weren’t oppressing their workers.
I don't understand this paragraph. Maybe it's correct, but the way you use words confuses me. Inflation means that the same real world items cost more of conditional units, that is, money. The bigger proportion of your interactions is done with money and the smaller frequency is, the more you lose from inflation.
Corporatist/Republican media helped swing election to most genocidal supportive candidate over this lie. But a war on Russia made the inflation self inflicted.
What war on Russia? Russia invaded a sovereign nation, leveled cities, killed civilians in droves.
Goal shouldn’t be that profits can’t exist. It should be poverty elimination, easier life for everyone, and inherent resistance to having profits used to rule over you more harshly.
With superprofits from cocaine, prostitution and other forbidden things going to mafia groups associated with politicians - yeah, one would think such profits shouldn't exist. Whichever path you like most, you won't be allowed to tread it while people with the opposing interest have so much power.
It is not power hungry DNC or RNC who will ever provide UBI. It is candidates who want to disempower Israel first wars and rulership. A campaign for UBI is first and foremost an extermination of the corrupt rulership, replacing it with the empowerment of individuals.
So how are you going to do that?
It's like elaborating in detail what you are going to do when we settle Mars and build safe dome cities, without any plan at all how you are going to make that economically plausible.
AI, including current LLMs, as a humanist oracle, has the power to make you/us less stupid if its mission/programming is truth.
No it doesn't, it won't ever be smarter than the dumbest human and also however many oracles you consult, you still bear full responsibility for your own decisions.
Regulating AI for “national security domination” is inherently coopting that oracle function. Google/reddit/lemmy has been such a function of filtering up answers for you to digest for many years already.
Once again, treating these technologies as ever possibly acceptable to tell people what to think is nuts. These are glorified predictors. Their role is to fill the holes where you don't have anything better. These are by definition worse than anything dedicated. And of course they can't think.
I don’t understand this paragraph. Maybe it’s correct, but the way you use words confuses me. Inflation means that the same real world items cost more of conditional units, that is, money. The bigger proportion of your interactions is done with money and the smaller frequency is, the more you lose from inflation.
If your income is rising less than the cost increases of things you are forced to buy, then you lose. The usual blame for your income rising less is that you are desperately beholden to a single employer. Blaming the government for inflation, as hurting the poor, is the oligarchy deflecting blame for their greedflation and war.
What war on Russia? Russia invaded a sovereign nation, leveled cities, killed civilians in droves.
Seems like the popular conviction that they did all of that for no reason at all.
It’s like elaborating in detail what you are going to do when we settle Mars and build safe dome cities, without any plan at all how you are going to make that economically plausible.
A UBI only democratic political platform can promise a net tax cut for 90% of population in addition to elimination of crime, poverty, create massive prosperous economic growth for workers and investors. The only reason to oppose UBI, and it is an important reason, is your political power or willingness to suck up to political power requires misery, despair, and collapse in order to hold it.
If you are saying that Americans are too stupid to not favour UBI over corrupt rulership meant to diminish them, then that history is correct. But the disinformation arguments against UBI that you have repeated are entirely and purely based on "we need slavery" and the rulership that imposes it. There would seem to be some logical hope that the stupidity level required to oppose UBI is not permanent. The message can overcome the well funded disinformation in favour of corrupt evil.
Supporting the DNC after their next leadership election to double down on zionist neocon supremacist rule over US is not the offramp to collapse.
Outside perspective: It doesn't have to be. It is the moment democracy, its values and its people are tested. The path towards open dictatorship and/or fascism is not set in stone. What is clear is that some setbacks, even catastrophic setbacks, are unavoidable. But as a whole the free-fall can be avoided and you can bounce back from setbacks, even if it takes time. This is actually somewhat universal, since it's not only the U.S. which is sliding more and more towards fascistic or anti-democratic tendencies. It's just that, like with so many other things, everything does seem to be bigger in the U.S. (and Texas).
Although I'm sure a lot are feeling economic pain and/or are generally under stress and uncertainty (IIRC 50% of households struggle to make an unplanned $1000 expense), and I don't expect it to get better under the new administration, the U.S. is still a federated system. If you look at what affects your daily lives directly, a lot more is done on a local and state level, than on the federal level.
From where I'm standing, organizing with like-minded people in your community around issues is the most promising way to go. Unfortunately the issues are back to basics issues like human rights and democratic principles, but that's where we are. This entails more than just protesting, but actively pressuring elected officials around legislation proposals. Suggest ballot measures (find out how such a measure gets to the ballot in the first place, because it's very different depending on where you are). And of course having people run for office and for the others to support them to get in, and get the anti-democratic forces out, once it is time. Don't succumb to the nationalization of local elections. People can be reached way better and more directly on the local level, when they can see it directly affecting their lives and talking to the people responsible directly than for anything happening in Washington D.C. Counter the anti-democracy spewing media outlets with true alternatives (maybe there's an entrepreneurial-minded person wanting to found a cooperative media outlet).
It sounds like a lot to do. But you are more, than you think. Even the disillusioned might be good allies. Take yes for an answer. And more people than you might expect have been part of 'the struggle' for a long time. Welcome them. And yes: Coordinate with and support other local actions.
Another view on what will happen with the federal institutions: Although Trump will put more loyalists than ever in powerful stations, there will remain many (even among the loyalists) who profit from the system's status quo. This includes the Supreme Court justices and ironically corporate goons. So in furthering their own advantage, they might resist things leading to an overall degradation. Of course they will go along with and actively lobby for anything that gives them more power at the expense of the general populace, but that is already the case. Again, if you make unlikely allies on single issues: Take yes for an answer.
Bottom line: Democracy and basic rights are ideas, made by humans. And they can only survive, as long as we believe in and fight for them. Always keep the belief, always keep on fighting. If you hit your head and fall down: Get back up. As the saying goes: This is a marathon, not a sprint. All the best!
You seem absolutely sure that this will materialize and that its implication means that you have no scope of action. Again, with enough institutionalists in important positions, even if he tries, it would be difficult for him to actually get rid of federal, let alone local and state elections. What is much more likely is that he will make it easier to skew or how he might call it "rig" elections. You know, like voter suppression and gerrymandering on steroids. So what I've written still holds: On a local and state level (or even federal level), pressure your elected officials and organize around the protection of voting rights. Be an active part of the legislative process. Democracy isn't making a cross every four years. And she's calling on all of us.
Sidenote: For everything that man says, you can find a clip of him saying the absolute opposite. So watch what he and his lackeys do, not what he says.
Sure the US may be past it's glory days. Hell even the Rand Corporation (who write a bunch of stuff for govt leaders and other high ups) says it's been trending downhill since some point in the early 2000s. They didn't mention 9/11 but it seems like a good historical milestone.
Essentially the paper says the last 200 years have been an anomaly and we're slowly sliding back to historical norms. They call it the neomedieval era and it's not just the US.
Yeah pretty much. We're 2-3 generations deep into a cultural expectation that "some one else" will deal with all these problems.
The constant threat of this being "the most important election of our lives", when the party making that argument campaigned as if the outcomes were irrelevant (because from their privileged perspective, the outcomes are irrelevant).
Back during covid a boat got turned a bit sideways in a canal and it seemed like the whole world economy was going to collapse. The system we have is actually incredibly fragile and built largely on trust, both in one another but also in institutions and systems. Not only the US, but western Europe is about to get smacked up-side the head by the 2x4 of failing to maintain a civil society (US at fault within its borders, EU at fault beyond its borders).
Assuming you are talking about who won the US presidential election. Happened 8 years ago too, it wasn't the end of America then. It won't be the end of America now.
Well, by now the Supreme Court has been supplanted and intent to overthrow democracy has been shown. That's a big difference to last time. So it's not exactly the same situation.
Yeah, forcing Trump onto the ballot despite the insurrection because congress hadn't passed a law to enforce the constitution and then making the president a fucking king are a huge difference from 2016. Not to mention Trump appointed jusges throwing out his cases and his 34 felonies not being a sign that he should 't be elected again after his disastrous first term.
Yeah, this is way worse and the only hope is Republican infighting keeping the worst from happening again.
The saying is really about asking god to remove obstacles from your path and facilitate faster travel. A little like "goodbye" is a very shortened "may god be with you."
It's the point of no return for something, but I suspect there's still a future to fight for. Anyone pushing a full doomer view is trying to suppress you. In case the worst happens, you should try to build a community around yourself and support other people. Join a mutual aid group if you can (or start one). If you grow produce or something, talk to your neighbors and exchange resources.
If we build a strong foundation, nothing that happens can break us. In the worst case, they'll try to break us and break themselves upon us. We need to be strong so we can come back stronger in the future.
I sure as fuck am. That being said, before I check out of this world, I guarantee you I will wear a rich man's skin as a suit. They will not just get off without any consequences for the horrors they have created.
Don't believe there really is an absolute point of no return without the plot of Genesis of the Daleks happening. The future is long, and we don't know how the next four to eight years will play out, but dictatorships have risen and fallen before. Spain was a fascist dictatorship for decades, now it isn't. Also, lots of people died in the meantime and not all vestiges of the dictatorship are gone.
Did Britain or Rome know the moments when Pax Britannia or Pax Romana had hit their tipping point to decline? I doubt it.
I think the tipping point will only be observable through the lens of history many years from now with a subject heading of: This event was the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
USA was still very much on the rise at the advent of the internet. If you define the advent of the internet to be Arpanet, then that was 1969, the same year the USA landed on the moon. If you define the advent of the internet to be the first use of the World Wide Web that would be 1989 the same year the Berlin wall came down and 3 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was arguably the most powerful the USA has ever been as it was before China's rise.
Everyone knows it started in the 70s and we’ve been headed down hill ever since. Reality is this country died 60 years ago. It’s just taking awhile for the wheels to fall off the bus.
Not OP; but probably referring to Nixon normalising relations with China; or maybe negotiating with the Viet Cong to prolong the Vietnam War so that he could be elected?; or the whole Watergate fiasco which directly lead to the creation of Fox News.. I mean, that man is responsible for a lot of our modern ails.
But if it’s the former, it directly lead to outsourcing production overseas where labour was cheapest, resulting in the gutting of American manufacturing and the entire middle class that depended on it.
I more personally believe that Nixon severely injured the US, but it was Reagan who shot the killing bullet. But that’s honestly a debate for another time.
It’s a bit like trying to figure out who invented the car but I would tend to agree it’s when people turned their power over to daddy Regan and went shopping after Carter treated them like adults…
Still don’t get what OP meant vis-à-vis Russia and Europe.
Honestly it sounds like Sino fear-mongering or Tankie wishful thinking.
It’s easy to forget because it’s made up of a multitude of smaller countries - but Europe has a population of ~750m, and a vastly more coherent and powerful combined military (even if the US were to pull out of NATO).
Russia can’t currently steam-roll one nation, how on Earth do you think they’d do anything against Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland - all countries with a deeply (& rightfully) ingrained distrust/hatred of Russia.
China isn’t likely to risk making themselves an international outcast just to aid Russia - they are more likely to make a play for Taiwan than anything else.
There were similar levels of fear and worry when Russia was amassing troops just under the border ahead of their “3-day special operation”. But the truth of the matter is that Russia has shown itself to be a lot weaker as a military force than they purported themselves to be.
They are relying heavily on Iran, China and NK to supplement their falling arms production; and are now also needing to supplement their conscript forces with NK forces.
Russia has continually been over-estimated, but don’t doubt for a second that it is being cooked like a frog in a boiling pot in a proxy-war solely using Ukrainian forces.
In the event of a handful of allied European nations joining the war to aid Ukraine, Russia would be expelled from the region quite quickly - but at the cost of additional human lives, which is why the escalations have been so slow.
I choose to believe that we are not. The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn't even started yet. Some think it won't. I choose to believe that good will again triumph and life is roller coaster of good and bad.
Yeah, people really don't understand how powerful a surveillance state can be when it focuses it's eye on you. It's not safe to talk about resistance around basically anything internet connected with a microphone.
The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn't even started yet.
Seems like we'll need to form our own political party if we want any representation because we're certainly not getting it from either one of these two dominate parties.
So i agree that the second Trump administration is going to suck in most every way possible, like the first one but worse because they're prepared this time.
BUT
I think people overrate a government's ability to influence the conditions in a given country. I think a country is made what it is by history, geography, technology, sociology, ideology, economics, and the accumulation of small decisions over centuries.
If the Trump administration wants to end democracy in the US, or if a hypothetical based administration were to attempt a switch to ranked choice voting, both ideals would be impossible to implement because our ideals are limited by practical reality. Both would fail regardless of being good or bad changes, because radical change is really hard when the conditions aren't met for it, especially when it's opposed by the rest of the country. If the country just isn't ready to transition to fascism right now, there's not much that Trump can do to make it.
We talk a lot about how powerful people changed the world, but i think far more often they're just the embodiment of a societal trend, and they couldn't change the world if they weren't. Change isn't done by powerful people but deeper movements in humanity, with powerful people riding them like a wave.
As to where the deeper movements in humanity are leading us right now, i refuse to guess, trying to predict the future is the best way to look like an idiot
or if a hypothetical based administration were to attempt a switch to ranked choice voting
There are states that have already passed electoral reform. Voting is controlled at the state level, so waiting for miraculous federal reform is unnecessary.
The US has had presidents who were literally more evil than Mr. Burns.
They haven't been a real democracy (where the will of the majority influences policy) in decades, if ever.
Climate change is still the thing that's most likely to fuck us all, and it's not like the US were actually helpful in that regard under Democratic leadership.
The rest of the world isn't lucky enough to never have to hear about the perpetual US election cycle again, and frankly there's just too much money in it for them to give it up.
It'll be a fucking clown show for the next four years though.
One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.
I'm not sure whether we're going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.
All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you're lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this byzantine. A lot of this country's systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.
Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and "the elite" -- to borrow a tired trope -- also played a part here.
No matter how we arrived at this point, I don't think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.
There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, understand nuance, do research, and create better policy....but at this point I think we're frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.
We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.
Remember that time we as a country condoned owning people as property? No matter how bad shit gets in the next four years, there's no point of no return
Mass deportations sweeping up agricultural workers will need to be replaced when a national emergency is declared because crops can't be harvested. President declares the crops can be harvested by prison populations...what's the word for captives forced to labor for no pay indefinitely?
Slavery. Notably not the same thing as chattel slavery. I'm not saying we can't get worse than we are right now, what I am saying is that no matter how bad things get, we can come back from it. Hell, Germany came back from being controlled by the actual Nazi party.
I know someone is gonna reply saying how awful life was in Germany for several decades between Nazi rule and modern Germany, and I'll note again that I never said life can't get worse, I only said there's no point of no return for a country.
What makes me really sad is knowing it didn't have to be like this, and it doesn't have to get worse to get better...but it likely will, and that tears me apart.
Shit has to get much, much, much worse before people are willing to take up arms against their own family member 'en mass. A civil war isn't one in which you fight a far away enemy, a civil war is one in which many of your family members and friends are on the opposite side. We are nowhere near a civil war, not even close.
Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn't really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we're past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn't really clear yet but it's not looking good.
Appreciate your measured response. I'm wondering how long it will take folks to stop coping out of self preservation and say out loud that this isn't anything we've seen before - it's brand new and can go as far as has been threatened.
It might be for some stuff. I'm worried that it'll have a lasting impact on women inside the USA as well as outside. Inside, they'll have their rights taken away over time. Outside, morale will be impacted. But I'm hoping it'll cause an uprising rather than the other way around.
From an outside observer: it's gonna be harder, but I don't think so. Still, the playbook Trump is gonna try and follow with his trifecta is what his mate Orbán did in Hungary. How hard that is going to be to undo depends on how far he gets.
Someone who has been president before, for four years, was elected president again.
I cannot think of anything less similar to a "point of no return".
You may think of him or his policies what you want (I personally have a mostly negative opinion of him too!), but we have all had four years of opportunity to observe what he does when he is president.
If you are thinking that Trump is like Hitler, then please point me to anything similar to:
a Capitol Fire Decree of 2017 that says several parts of the Bill of Rights are suspended until further notice
an Enabling Act of 2017 that gives the president full power to make law including law that violates the constitution
a Law Against the Formation of Parties of 2017 declaring that the Republican Party was the only political party in the US and anyone attempting to form another party would be imprisoned
You are giving examples in history and changing the dates to the first Trump presidency, which is somewhat confusing.
Those things certainly didn't happen because the GOP did not have a majority in the legislature. I agree that it is unlikely that these will occur during this term as well, given that the majority in the house will be very small, but I assure you there will be bills passed that will continue to strip away power from the legislature and grant those powers to the executive. There will also be interpretations of the law that will disenfranchise the citizens and/or will have repercussions for years to come.
You are giving examples in history and changing the dates to the first Trump presidency, which is somewhat confusing.
I was attempting to tell you when those things would have happened if Trump were doing the same things as Hitler. (It's convenient they both became heads of government in January.)
Those things certainly didn’t happen because the GOP did not have a majority in the legislature.
I stand corrected. My memory served me incorrectly.
Nevertheless, they are more prepared now and the MAGA party holds more of the power compared to last time. It’s a bit like putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse - I suppose we’ll have to see where those that remain of the former GOP are willing to push back.
Thank you for the solid points. People are dooming way too hard, simply because their preferred candidate lost this round. There is an opportunity for Democrats to improve themselves. They had that wakeup call 8 years ago, and they didn't take it. Hopefully they will this time and strengthen the quality of the party and the candidates. Simply being 'not Republican', their primary strategy, isn't enough.
Just to be the nihilist in the room, I honestly think that the point of no return for humanity occurred the moment we stepped down from the trees and started to evolve. And I'm not actually kidding.
I'm not an evolutionary expert, so I'm more than likely talking out of my ass, but I was an Archaeology Major with a focus on the Bronze Age Collapse and what I can tell you is this...
From a certain perspective, the same evolutionary traits that brought our species to this point, are the very same traits that will keep us from moving forward past it. Selfishness, resource hording, greed, the urge to continually expand at the expense of others. Fear of "others" outside of ones own community; all these things in some form were beneficial to growing from hunter gatherers to urban/agricultural societies. We needed organisation to build cities, so we created monarchies. We needed ways to control the growing population, so we created a fear of a deity.
We needed a reason to not allow too many people in to our society so that we didn't waste resources, so we created borders and the concept of "others" that aren't like us. Now, all of that has to get binned if we have any hope of getting past this point because the only way forward is as single planet, not petty nation states. But every single thing that brought us to this point prevents that from happening. It's ingrained in our very DNA, so to speak.
People do see it, it's not easy to see it and act, but they did. I know directly of people that gave up ownership of multiple factories and a very comfortable life in Germany in about this phase of the fascist uprising there. They left to America and Australia, split family, with what they could carry, and started back over from a very modest place. Not too long after, the worst gained momentum in Germany, nazis took over the factories and a horrible fate befell many in their community who didn't acct when they could have.
Yeah... that's not a strength of that society. It's a failure. It's stepping over bodies on the street to go have a Sunday stroll in the park.
And your position is also self-apologist bullshit that helps you personally alleviate an inherent guilt you hold. You feel "accused" by nobody in particular so you state (again, to no one in particular) that "they" (you) don't need to feel bad for being a selfish prick in this moment.
We're here in "no stupid questions". The OP asked a question. So if you want to offer some of your knowledge and insight - go for it. But simply telling OP "you don't understand" isn't really adding anything of value.
It should be noted that through all this people fought for those rights. So don't fall asleep, dear America, because organizing even within small communities will make a difference.
If done correctly, massive change can happen. Dream big so that those who fear negotiate back down to the levels you'll accept.
I feel like a lot of people online need to read this comment, go outside, and live their life. This is not defeatist, and it's not unreal optimism. Thank you for this.
I think the problem here is the concurrent effects of climate change. The US couldn't have picked a worse time to move from flirting with facism to full-on marrying it.
You can deal with one crisis if you're coordinated enough but the chaos that's already occurring with the climate - and is set to become exponentially worse - doesn't give me much hope for a harmonious conclusion to this. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong and you're right.
The part about our history you're forgetting is that we never, through any of that, gleefully elected a guy that has made it abundantly clear he doesn't give a fuck about democracy and will work to subvert or destroy it if it doesn't suit him.
This is new territory.
And we're about to experience the deconstruction of things that will be very difficult to build back.
Your point is that we've been around for a few hundred years, so we can bounce back. But history would like to point out that nations that were around much longer than us have ceased to exist many times over.
I wish I had your optimism.
On the other hand, do keep in mind that mighty empires have fallen. We cannot say for sure that things will be fine just because in the past the USA has survived
Dont forget the trail of tears.
The US has been through a lot and will likely recover, but it would be nice to avoid making the same mistakes again. How many more people have to get hurt before humanity learns?
How do you replenish the oceans and maintain life for any ecosystem humanity lives off of? Most of America is set to be desert by 4 degrees c average warmth increase. You won't grow crops outdoors. We know we are guaranteed to blow past 1.5 now without being able to stop it as are actions are to late. Yet we are saying "drill baby drill". The topographical map will change drastically.
LMAO!!
Choosing between two candidate picked by lobbyists/corporations, and anyone else not having a slightest chance in hell isn't a democracy, but hey, you do you.
It's slightly better than China/Russia having a single candidate and everyone else is just for show.
I share your broader view and cautious optimism. In fact I think that some of what we are seeing are death spasms of that white hegemony that used to lynch blacks at will. They lost their “hard” power long ago with the end of Jim Crow. And they have been losing their “soft” power ever since. Demographic trends point to white people in America eventually becoming a minority. Religion is also dying out. So much of what we see is a panic of a dying group that was once dominant. There is no way that’s ever going to be pretty, anywhere, at any time. But look at the trend behind it and it’s an encouraging one, even if the death spasms are incredibly difficult. TBH if the Democrats could just provide some real leadership into this future, America could flip into a totally different country, much like the liberal democracies of Europe (but way stronger) inside of 20 years. This is the reality that the old guard are scared shitless of, and why they are pulling out all the stops to go the other way.
one difference today is that govt/establishment/utra-rich have centralised way more power than anytime in human history.
add that with extreme surveillance & automated weaponry, “govt” can do basically anything they want. 1% can easily crush any opposition to them with no matter how strongly united the rest of us are. dnc just ignored its entire voter base to continue a genocide & support fracking while letting corporate greed run rampant for last 4 years.
with ai+drones it will become way worse. it’s not unimaginable what’s happening to palestinian will happen to the non-white population here in next 10-15 years.
From an outsider's perspective, I think a lot of people think you guys sailed past the point of no return back in the 80s.
Reagan, he is the starting point of everything: the tax cut from 73% to 28%. USA never got back on track after this.
Nope. Johnson.
No, not that one.
Andrew Johnson.
So many ways it could have been better.
He could have punished the Southern Aristocracy for starting the civil war. He could have ensured that the evil that led us there was exterminated forever.
Failing that, they could have actually removed him via impeachment instead of falling just short. That would have at least established forever that the presidency is not some sacred "unimpeachable" office.
But Raygun did a great break dancing set in the Olympics.
Remember when the entire world was convinced there was absolutely no way Bush, an idiot, fascist, religious bigot, etc could get re-elected?
Nobody thought that at all. Most presidents sitting during outbreaks of war retain their positions. You'd have to have been in a complete echo chamber to believe this stance. The moment 9/11 happened, it solidified Bush's Second term in stone.
I assume you mean Jr. Because Sr wasn't the moron that Jr was.
Yeah no, I'm gonna disagree. Being outside of the US at the time, most people did think that. And yes, obviously I'm talking about Jr since Sr didn't get re-elected. 9/11 was a full three years before the election of his second term. And most importantly before he started the war in Iraq. A war that was widely viewed as illegitimate outside the US.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too. And yeah, I remember, even as a 17yr old at the time, seeing the event happen live and lamenting to my mother that we were going to have another Bush term over it. Historically for America that's always been the case.
You're recollection of events is clearly skewed. Something like 80% of the population approved of it at first. Meanwhile there were protests in the millions of people around the world against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq
It's so fucking disgusting to be honest... I'm just a worthless dumb shit uneducated factory worker and at 17 I could see right through that garbage... We're a hateful group of people whether we care to admit it or not, there was a lot of anti-islamic/Muslim/Arab sentiment in the US at thst time. People were bloodthirsty.
I was going to join the military after highschool to get training since I'm poor and had no real direction to gamble on college, and then take it from there whether to stay in or not. Once talk started of invading Iraq I immediately said fuccccck that. I still blame Bush partially for my current situation. :/
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved. By 2006 it was viewed as illegitimate by most. My recollection of events is fine, thanks.
America will generally approve of measures when they are led to believe it affects their security and safety. It's the years afterwards that determine if it continues to hold support.
I clearly stated "at first". Mind you by the end of his term a majority still thought it was the right thing to do.
It was, but there were people bitching about it. It may be an unconventional way to show it but if you look at Eminem's album released in 2004 the second track was Mosh.
"Stomp, push, shove, mush, Fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home"
"Let the president answer a higher anarchy Strap him with an Ak-47, let him go, fight his own war Let him impress daddy that way No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal If we don't serve our own country, we're patronizing a hero Look in his eyes its all lies The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out and wiped And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die If I get sniped tonight you know why, Cause I told you to fight."
To me that's pretty obvious mainstream music pushing us to turn back against exactly what this false patriotism that exists today in MAGA is.
Nucular. 🤦
What?!
The 80s were fucked, but if you're saying it was worse than the response to the Civil Rights movement...
McCarthyism...
Jim Crow...
Or the KKK destroying reconstruction...
Like, I could see saying that last one was the point, only if you start the clock immediately after resolving the civil war. Cause obviously a Civil War is what really happens after a point of no return. We lasted a couple years in between the two points.
For as fucked as the last 40 years has been, as far as America goes we're beating the average on basic human decency.
What's happening now isn't new, it's a slip backwards, which is unfortunately common when you try to fight fascism with moderate politics. It works for a little bit because they're coasting off the last people who really fought. But all moderate politcs really are, is giving fascist time to regroup in the shadows like fucking Sauron.
It's a cycle, and we live in a time when you can learn pretty much anything about history in a few minutes on Wikipedia
America can not afford for voters to stay ignorant. We need people who know what happened last time, what worked then, and what might work again. Stop acting like we live in unprecedented times, and start reading up on how fascism has been defeated historically.
Cuz we're up, like it or not shits getting real again. And the more people know what we're doing then better.
Yes.
In my opinion we've already passed the point of no return and recent events have just confirmed as much.
This isn't about having differing political opinions. A profoundly unfit, amoral criminal with a very public history of being an awful person came along and started spewing extremely dangerous rhetoric, some of which is almost verbatim to Hitler's, and our society ate it up and made him president in 2016. This man, who leads a party who courts racists/sexists for their votes, utterly failed his tenure as president, bombing his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2 and presiding over the highest White House administration turnover rate in U.S. history. Since then he has become a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and illegally attempted to overturn our democratic institutions by various means.
This go around the American people were presented with a choice between that person, who only managed to make himself appear even more unfit during this campaign season, openly stated he is anti-worker rights, and is directly responsible for removing women's federally protected right to bodily autonomy, or a successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law, backed by a party that, despite misinformation, has a voting history proving they vote in favor of the average American FAR more than the opposing party....and Americans STILL managed to drop the ball and go with the CLEARLY worse choice. And when I say clearly, I'm talking about by every conceivable metric that exists in reality.
At this point it isn't about Democrat vs Republican or Trump vs Kamala or Biden. It's about the American people. We are not a society of intelligent voters. We have failed our responsibility as citizens in a democracy by being too lazy to learn and by allowing misinformation to mislead us and emotions to cloud our better judgement. We are not engaged in responsible involvement in our own politics. We gleefully elect people that only offer hate and fear and lies, despite how hard they try to prove how awful they are to us. And THAT is why we have passed the point of no return. If you remove the parties and the politicians out of the equation, you still have a society that fails at responsibly preserving a democracy. That gives in to hateful rhetoric and fear. That wants to get the better of the "others".
There is no happy ending for a society like that. A society like that can only decline. This was not an election about one political ideology against another. It was an election about morality. And we categorically failed that moral test.
There are excuses. We've been through a lot. Lots of people are desperate. Desperate people make bad decisions. But the bottom line is we don't live in a society with a majority of responsible adults making responsible, fact-based decisions about the most important things.
In the arc of history we may end up reaching a better place, but personally I believe we're embarking on a decline that will most likely last the rest of our lives. It simply isn't a problem that can be fixed short term. And we're about to experience a sort of deconstruction. A deconstruction of norms. A deconstruction of institutions. A deconstruction of education and safety nets. And those things take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build back, because it's easier to destroy than it is to create or maintain.
Buckle up. Try to find happiness where you can. It's probably not getting better anytime soon.
I've never been more happy to be childless by choice.
And I'm childless, not by choice, and sadly glad too.
I don't understand this line of thought. As in you are childless by choice BECAUSE of what is going on in the US?
I'm childless by choice because I don't like children. I'm happy I don't have kids because they'd be experiencing this shit storm during their formative years and I can't even imagine how badly that would fuck them up.
Progress isn't a straight line, and sometimes there are setbacks on the way. I'm disappointed, of course, but I'm optimistic that we'll manage.
We may yet manage as a country, but the millions that die from this election won’t get to see it.
how so?
Soldiers knocking down doors to arrest millions of illegal aliens and everyone who looks like an illegal alien and shoving them into camps, what could go wrong?
I don't think we will see that, but i do think we will see ice raids on businesses that tend to hire immigrants and fake crackdowns on paperwork that dramatically increases the time and hassle for everything, and weird pushes for all paperwork to be in English.
It is literally what they're promising.
Yeah, but so was build a wall. I really think/hope that there's too much infighting and shitslinging for them to follow through on much. They're good at blocking thanks, but not super great at passing things. Concepts of plans and all...
Their wishes and promises are not the only thing involved here.
Hm. Okay.
Women. Queer people. Non-white people. Hell, even white straight cis evangelical Christian rich men who die from being sick.
There will be so much death.
It will be unending.
That does not clarify anything.
How about the fact drill baby drill means seeing a 3 degree Celsius increase by 2100. That's the lifetime of many of the people in this earth. That kind of change will kill many ecosystems and make deserts out of a lot where we live and grow food. We know we can't stop going past 1.5 degrees now do to our slow changes. Instead we are hitting the gas pedal according to Trump. The oceans, plantlife on land, everything that consumes it is in jeopardy. Estimates are around 60% of animal populations have died off since the 70s. At some point you break the link in the food "chain" if you will, and larger masses die off, until it is unrecoverable.
"We can farm fish". <- We farm fish in the U.S. ship it to China to package and then ship it back to put it on our shelves. That's how wasteful we are.
Right.
You don't believe the animals are dying? Or that the temperature is rising, or that the oil companies research who agree are telling the truth? Exxon has been telling us this since the 1970s.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/
I’m not about to provide you with masturbation material.
It doesn't clarify anything because so far I've been told
Well la de da. Swish!
I love how you have downvotes for asking for clarification. As if asking for it is an argument deserving of downvotes.
A fellow Lemmit who enjoys split score totals!
I'm not sure I'll be here for long if it's just more groupthink similar to reddit. I like how Tildes works though. Everyone seems nicer too.
Tildes?
https://tildes.net/
I think that the us perspective on politics is surprising self-centered. If millions will die remains to be seen, but an unpredictable us leadership will certainly shift power dynamics on an international scale. The trump administration might randomly decide to side with land grabbing dictators, might embolden Israel, or switch to Doge Coin as the main currency. Those things might not directly cause death, but will disrupt the world stage to a degree which might overpower currently stable institutions. Which in turn might lead to death and suffering as a consequence. I'm not trying to say that everything should remain as is. Things are awful in a lot of places, but one of the biggest and most powerful nations with a "leader" that might throw a world ending tantrum over a Twitter thread is nothing anybody, but the most nihilistic acclerationists want. Also Trump's plans to withdraw from climate change mitigation will certainly add to the pile of dead bodies which we will inherit in the next 50 year as a consequence of our actions today.
And progress without testing it's resiliency against malicious actors will not last. As much as we hate Trump being elected and staffing clowns in each position, it will test what has been made so far. Row v. Wade, as we now know, should have been stronger. The Voting Rights Act too. The states that required the law to be fair have pulled back the law and reveal little has changed.
No one likes getting burned but fire is useful for showing us what burns easily and what withstands the heat. We will rebuild stronger and know what works.
So what is your solution when we blow past 4 degrees (c) rise in temperature and most of the land on earth becomes uninhabitable? Shift all the farms up north which will die of freezes annually, or move all agriculture and life indoors permanently? Surely mining all the resources to put all of human life indoors will be a non issue? Or is it just the 5% that get indoors to survive and then the lower 90% of that 5 become the poor disadvantaged driven to be the new poor slowly? Or is your hope that the top 5% after killing most the world's population once indoors will simply accept a form of socialism then?
We don't know.
The US came back from a US president hiring private goons to spy on his political opponents.
The US came back from a US president illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund right wing militias in South America.
The US came back from a US cabinet member taking literal bribes from oil companies to give them oil drilling rights on federal land.
The US came back from a US president illegally firing a cabinet member and installing his own lackey.
But it didn't HAVE to.
I don't think there's really such a thing as a 'point of no return' for a Democracy. But it is possible to get to a point after which you don't return.
The next line of defense is 3/4 of state legislatures.
Nah.
That was Reagan. You're about 40 years late.
If you want to play that game, it was likely Nixon and the southern strategy.
But neither of those were point of no return. They were just foundational groundwork to set up this moment that likely is.
It's going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it's clearly dead no hope.
Just feels life another goal post moved... He literally worked to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed on live TV and was then clinched of dozens of felonies. . There can't always be a *"yeah, but if THIS next thing happens..."*I
He failed to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed. And the reason he wanted his VP killed was because he wouldn't help him overthrow the American government.
It's undeniable that some very powerful people want US democracy dead, but from that to the actual death of US democracy is a long way
No. Of course not!
Failing to Reject the Reagan Revolution, and mass embrace of the Jack Welsh style "trickle down" economics lie, by BOTH parties was the point of no return, almost half a century ago at this point. This car was already totaled.
Citizens United years later was just a victory lap by the owners pissing on the long dead corpse of the dream of societal equity.
Trump is just another symptom of that intransigent reality we all live in.
I'd say hope for collapse, as painful as it is, to have any hope for a better life for our children, maybe, but oligarch greed made climate change and at this point inevitable ecological collapse in the coming decades means there really isn't hope for a better society/civilization for generations(if they eventually develop technologies to better cope with the new hellish climate reality) if at all.
In the near term, people increasingly not being able to afford basic necessities like housing and food will lead to increased societal violence, but that likely won't cause collapse.
Climate scientists are increasingly warning of ecological collapse, meaning core climate systems will fail, like the Atlantic Gulfstream which will cause global famine and destruction, and that might be the end of human civilization all together, we won't know until we do it within the next half century, and see the full extent of our fine work, a climate hostile to agriculture, dependable fresh water, possibly even standing structures not made of steel and concrete.
But man are we speeding towards that cliff for short-term private shareholder profit, wheeeee!
Right now my mind is at, "it very well could be, but time will tell".
Had Trump had the right people in places to make certain decisions, it could have very well ended in 2020 just as much. Well the world did change in a big way near the end of his term, with COVID, how he botched it and how he gave corporate handout after corporate handout which caused the inflation that Biden is being blamed for.
I've been still grasping for ways that the US still can be saved, which there are many, but they hinge on
1A. Trump going back on many of his worst promises and not doing them, because reneging is his thing, or
1B. Trump and his team being too incompetent to enact his agenda, or
1C. The backlash to Trump's unpopular moves creates disobedience within government, military and writ large, preventing him from enacting his agenda, and
A plurality of Americans gave Trump and Republican facsism basically all the dragon balls of power, so it's up to him pretty much whether he can use them and the most Americans can do is organize and resist.
I was as surprised and disappointed as anyone, and I think we WILL take a few more steps backwards over the next few years, but I don't expect an unstoppable fall into fascism.
Most of the votes for Trump weren't actually FOR Trump. They were against the current situation they are in. They see him as the revolution. The anti-politician that will bring real change. They think all his court battles are the "Man" trying to hold him down and keep him from disrupting a system that gave up on its people long ago.
Of course that's all bullshit, but, assuming that all "normal" people can see through his lies and that only evil, woman hating racists would support him, is a big part of why he was elected.
Trump denied Project 2025 because he knew most people wouldn't want it. (Honestly, I would be surprised if he even knew what was in it) If he lets the Christian nationalists push that whole agenda on day one, he'll become the oppressive government that is taking away their freedoms. And nothing is more important to Trump than making Trump look good.
I'm way more concerned with Vance. Like you say, Trump does what's best for Trump. If Vance becomes President for whatever reason then ideology takes center stage.
Vance and Bannon
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK -- going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations -- the US isn't anywhere near equipped to counter that. We're still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world's police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
Yeah, I think this could be the end of free and fair elections in the U.S., and there's no coming back from that without a revolution. Don't get me wrong, I don't think most of us will directly be killed by this change; our lives will just be shittier. It'll be like living in Russia. Given how utterly incompetent the administration is looking, and the things they say they're going to do (mass deportation of a significant part of our workforce, blanket tariffs, gutting social safety-nets), we may speed-run an economic and societal collapse. That could sow the seeds for a horrible and bloody revolution.
Or, maybe I'm wrong and the important institutions will somehow hold against a christo-fascist party controlling all branches of the federal government and a president with immunity. If there are still are free and fair elections, then congress could block a lot of things in 2026, and start repairing some of the damage in 2028.
Still, it does not bode well that the U.S. elected these people in the first place, and at best, the U.S. will slowly crumble for decades.
Free and fair elections have never been anything but an ideal in this country. It started with voters were wealthy landowning men, often who owned slaves.
What we're seeing is years of undermined reforms by the momentarily wealthy after the previous empires in europe tore themselves apart.
Meh, I would've given 3/5 stars to U.S. democracy since the Voting Rights Act. Stars taken away for FPTP, gerrymandering, campaign finance, "lobbying," and the electoral college. I believe we're going to go to 0/5 stars with completely rigged elections rather than just manufacturing consent and lightly tipping the scales like they've been doing.
It would seem that way. The people elected a guy that tried to overthrow democracy
How do you recover from that
You probably don't.
Even with a contentious subject like abortion. That's a disagreement about a specific topic. You can reach a middle ground. It's one of many topics to debate over and forge legislation regarding.
But the majority gleefully electing a guy that effectively looked us all straight in the face and said "I don't give a fuck about democracy and will attempt to subvert or overthrow it if it doesn't suit me"? Yeah, there's really no recovering from that. At least not without a long period of serious decline and suffering, followed by lots of struggle and death to earn back what we lose.
We disrespected the shit out of our democracy and everyone that fought/died for it. There's no way that ends well.
It’s my point of no return. Leaving in two weeks forever. Good luck.
Hope you're okay and this is a move to another country being discussed?
Thanks, I’m good! An Aussie
Bogan
Strewth
Congratulations. Did you already have citizenship somewhere else?
Australia, thank God
Where ya goin? And why there?
I've been trying to figure out the most popular countries where people are fleeing to, but I couldn't figure out how to search for this.
Popular is irrelevant, you need to match your personality and skills with where you can thrive. Easy and familiar isn't necessarily good.
Citizen of Australia, never been more valuable than now
Yeah. Looks like Australia has had their shit together lately
Trump is all but a speck of dust in the grand scheme of time, luck gooded
He's a whole lot more than a speck of dust in the grand scheme of a person's life.
Even just his 8 years is about 10% for most people. Then you have to add on the extra years of trailing effects...
Too right. The groundswell of antipathy in the U.S. is the real reason I am leaving
It might be. Only time, and the actions of Americans themselves, will tell.
It's the biggest crisis in my lifetime. But we have survived other crisises, some-fucking-how, so maybe we'll luck our way out of this one too.
Yeah, we’re a strangely resilient nation. Things that topple other nations have been crises to us. This may be the end and this may be a disaster so great we dismantle the right wing media dominance or any number of things.
For democracy? Yes.
The longer the rubes hold on to this pipe dream that the dems can make a come back the further we will slip and longer it will take to recover. Unfortunately, I don't think democrat party members will ever give up on the democratic party and they will spend all their political goodwill investing in this farce of a party long after the elections are still free and fair.
Say, free and fair elections survive by some act of god. That doesn't change the fact the GOP can beat them handley in a free and fair election. The only thing trump needed to cement his win was the Supreme Court to sign off on everything. Given immunity all the road blocks trump had before have been lifted.
We have till January and you will see what the executive is actually capable of, with limp dick biden kicked to the curb.
The terror that will be trumps deportation methods will have your jaw drop and I'm not kidding. We tolerated kids in cages, Abu Ghraib is coming to America and our own sex trafficker and chief will begin some truly despicable shit. You better believe media capture is part of it because there is no way other country's will be let in on this side of the veil.
I'm not a doomer. It's not hyperbole. Im not an oracle and would pay with my own life just to be wrong.
I still am hopeful though that my countrymen can snap out of it and quit dismissing reality in real-time, allowing us an actual chance at resisting this upheaval. If we wait till the midterms though, this shit is cooked, packed, and on the shelf.
If you want to say, look at American history, I'd quickly defer you to the 90s. Whatever we might have once been we are no longer that. We are consumers educated by infomercials who only know reality TV and "influencers". Coke was the first plague, Springer the second. Followed by real world and road rules. All of this media "culture" stripped us of what it ever ment to be American. No one sits around and wanes intellectual about the founding fathers unless you're a fashie supreme court justice or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Today, in 2024, the Apprentice is more American than George Washington.
There was a time when a single black women sitting at the front of a bus could change a nation. Today Rosa would hit the front page of reddit on a Wednesday and fall off by the time Europeans woke up to see.
Some very profound points.
I think we were fucked once we had a window to all the world's knowledge in our pockets. The line was immediately blurred between having access to that knowledge and the capacity to truly know and process, to possess, that knowledge.
That used to be the casual dividing line between the adults that considered politics and the people puking up shrimp and strawberry wine at the jersey shore. Now the shrimp and strawberry people count fox-scented infotainment as "news" and really just as their sports team of choice - and they line the paths to polling stations holding automatic rifles. They feel emboldened by knowledge they don't actually possess but feel confidence in the fact that they "could look up whenever, just don't want to right now".
All the "Good Liars" clips are a front row seat on American democracy bleeding out.
That's how far I got before I could hear the aluminium hat.
-Denial <- you are here
-Anger
-Bargaining
-Depression
-Acceptance
That's up to Trump, because your vaunted checks and balances are gone.
Think he's going to show restraint? Insight? Empathy?
No. There were two ways the trump admin was going to go. He was either going to run an effective fascist regime, or become the ringmaster of the largest dipshit fucknugget circus. Seeing how things are going so far (and he isn't even the president yet) it's going to be the latter.
Sure, there will be long term damage that is going to take years, if not lifetimes of hard work and good policy to undo, but it can be undone. Assuming 2024 was a wake up call and people vote more effectively instead of throwing their voice away at propped up Russian disinfo candidates.
And the Americans are still here because he ran a clown show last time too. Palestine might not make it through the next 4 years though, but that's what the abstainers and 3rd party voters were pushing for.
Are you one of those people who seriously thought that Harris was going to do anything to help Palestine? If so, you bought into something much dumber than Russian disinfo.
Out of the two and only two choices Americans had (thanks, first past the post), she was overwhelmingly and objectively the best.
But yes she was weak on Palestine and that was bad. Ranked choice for actual third parties, please.
I voted for Jill Stein. She advocated an arms embargo against Israel to end the genocide, which I believe is the best course of action.
Nope I'm not.
we don't actually know what Harris would have done to be intellectually honest, we just have what she said.
the problem is that people learned nothing. The pandemic gave trump a get out of jail free card, I guess, even though he fucked it up
Absolutely not. It’s the moment where everyone digs in harder.
Ask anyone with skin darker than yours, or whose sexuality or gender was once or still is illegal. You don’t fuckin give up
You don't vote out a dictator. The only way out is through violent revolution.
Trump is the worst dictator ever, seeing as he literally got voted out last time and could do nothing about it.
The difference between recession and collapse is a bounce back on the other side.
Banking system is already vulnerable to real estate prices. Commercial real estate has been in zombie mode with banks hiding their losses on the sector. The US government has already unsustainable debt levels that can't afford major adventures or catastrophes. Adventures include mass deportations or wars. The problem with austerity measures for the non-oligarchs is strong degrowth and crime from multiplier effects.
While Trump is likely to be extremely divisive and angering socially, it is economics and geopolitics that will collapse the US. Deregulating banks is letting the fractional reserve system use a riskier lower fraction. Biden was very good at strengthening the subjugation of US colonies, but he pushed away majority of the world. There is major risk that Trump pushes away colonies without making the world more trusting of US. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/requiem-for-an-empire.html
What destroys America is the hubris of thinking it is winning, and that it can win over the world. Fighting China instead of getting cheap stuff is a mistake. Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake. Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won't do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what's left.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn't avert the path to collapse in any way.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
I hope that's not your opinion of nuclear energy. People criticizing it miss the fact that a grid has to support some baseline.
All things are good and needed, which are not about burning fossil fuels (and sometimes even those, if getting "greener" energy somewhere pollutes more than just taking a canister of gasoline or diesel fuel). And the more diverse energy supply is, the smaller is each particular environmental impact, be it from greenhouse gases, lithium, ruining watersheds when building hydroelectric stations, similar impacts of wind farms, oil spills, escaping gases, toxic liquids, plastics, ... .
People miss that nuance. You make humanity sustainable again by diversifying as much as possible, so that any particular kind of harm would be minimized, and so that no particular industry would possess strategic power. Not by dividing energy into holy and unholy and burning witches. It's just math.
Promising won't because promising ain't doing.
But input is leverage, and leverage is power. Look how "free" input from corporations into Linux gave them control over it. So if reindustrialization really-really happens, it will improve politics of your country. It's the way it works. When you live off cheap Chinese labor, your economy depends less on your own.
Agreed.
I personally have doubts about UBI. It requires fiscal discipline that no recent US government had. Otherwise it speeds up inflation. Not significantly if we compare it to corporate bailouts, but still.
Peace is always good. But war is a symptom of problems that still would exist if there were no war.
I've recently watched an interview by Bill Joy (the Sun founder) where he mentions how clear water access has done much more to reduce mortality in the world than antibiotics. I think it's the same with accessible good automation vs "AI" and other hype phenomena. I think non-oligopolized tech industry and non-oligopolized Web would do hell of a lot more for all kinds of abundance than any new magic wand like "AI".
Nuclear energy is not quite climate terrorism, because it is clean, but it's purpose is to serve climate terrorists and warmongers instead of being a climate solution. It takes too long to build out, and is too expensive. Baseload was never a necessity. It usually made a giant continuous operating plant the cheapest energy. Batteries and transitioning existing FF plants for standby/peaker use is far cheaper than nuclear, and renewables, batteries, and hydrogen can achieve 100% clean energy with 0 additional nuclear. The insurmountable problem with deciding that you need extra GW of baseload in 15 years, is that you need to suppress renewables to still need it by then. Uninsurable and unbankable, and always overbudget in part because political bribes, in a collapsing corrupt dystopia, is only path to building any.
One of the reasons the US can't reindustrialize or even build affordable housing, is tariffs on steel/metals and lumber. Forces high material prices in addition to labour. For cars, China's advantage is not just steel, and factory building, it is automation. Robotics gets developed close to where the customers are, and US industrialization is going to rely on minimal labour to have a chance. While the US is deeply committed to its oligarchy, inviting Chinese expertise in key industries, with their robotics, is a path to a future relevant America. Instead of tariffs, strategic reserves of domestically purchased steel/metal, solar, batteries that may be sold to US industry at a loss, is a path to having domestic supply resilience while encouraging FDI for abundance purposes.
Inflation is a market adjustment between supply and demand. You can escape inflation by substituting goods, and you only lose from inflation if 1. you have too much cash, or 2. your income rises slower than inflation. Slavery is good anti-inflation policy that provides high productivity. If inflation is your most important consideration in life, then slavery is excellent path for reducing it. UBI by empowering people to work less if they want to, means that everyone gets 5 recruiter calls per day, and has a very easy time of finding a good paying job if they want it, and there is huge demand for labour because everyone has more money to buy stuff, and you need to work/sell to them to take their money and trickle it back up to the employers.
So UBI is a massive economic/prosperity boost above and beyond inflation. Eliminates poverty and crime, reduces the need for savings, and so multiplies more money into economy, and importantly disempowers "false promise/prophet heroes" trying to tell you Israel first with "working class angle" politicians vs "pro oligarchy slavery full employment" angle. UBI lowers deficits and debt, because it is just tax credits between rich and poor, without making rich any poorer. Significant program cuts means less "tax collection". More program cuts means higher UBI. Politicians can no longer lie their way past even an idiocracy that understands "I like money".
An AI developer can make more money from a pro-Empire AI than a humanist AI. The Empire can also JFK/MLK the humanist, or threaten it with compliance to the empire's regulations of preventing humanity from prospering on national security grounds. It would be treason if your AI suggests the empire is not pure good, and Israel has done something wrong, and contradicts the CIA/media disinformation plan. As Netanyahu says, if you don't kill everyone Netanyahu wants dead, then Iran wins. You want to support anti-semitic Iranian/China/Russian/DPRK agent AI development? Netanyahu will say you need one of his pagers.
If you have enough cash for it to grow faster than inflation, you win and those who have less lose compared to you. So your relative power grows.
Inflation makes the poor poorer faster than it makes the rich poorer, actually it doesn't do that.
And by "inflation" specifically people usually mean devaluation of money due to growth of monetary mass, which itself is a result of closing budget holes with emission.
Eliminates small crime. Superprofits from selling cocaine working together with corrupt officials will not really change with UBI.
There's never enough money.
Only if politicians act as you want them to.
The problem here is not with what you are describing, but that you are seriously considering treating a computer program as an oracle, that can ask questions about good and evil.
This is the big lie. Inflation hurts the rich when bond rates are at an insufficient premium to inflation rate. Those who don't have savings, can complain that their work wages are not rising fast enough, but that is a complaint towards their employer who is raising prices enough to pay higher wages if they weren't oppressing their workers.
Corporatist/Republican media helped swing election to most genocidal supportive candidate over this lie. But a war on Russia made the inflation self inflicted.
Goal shouldn't be that profits can't exist. It should be poverty elimination, easier life for everyone, and inherent resistance to having profits used to rule over you more harshly.
It is not power hungry DNC or RNC who will ever provide UBI. It is candidates who want to disempower Israel first wars and rulership. A campaign for UBI is first and foremost an extermination of the corrupt rulership, replacing it with the empowerment of individuals.
AI, including current LLMs, as a humanist oracle, has the power to make you/us less stupid if its mission/programming is truth. If its programming is to serve the same empire media disinformation, then surely, it will tell you to support a war on Iran. Any assistance to governance or empire will be how to best conduct a war on Iran. If an AI has a humanist instead of empire domination programming, you can trust it to both advise good/productive policy that is also truthful. If individual people are evil, and have pure evil biases, they can still override their personal AI to provide advice on how to support their evil, so as to make the AI most useful to them, but the default must be humanist/truthful.
Regulating AI for "national security domination" is inherently coopting that oracle function. Google/reddit/lemmy has been such a function of filtering up answers for you to digest for many years already. AI, Internet and other media are all tools that can choose to disinform you into being stupider, or make you smarter and more informed.
I don't understand this paragraph. Maybe it's correct, but the way you use words confuses me. Inflation means that the same real world items cost more of conditional units, that is, money. The bigger proportion of your interactions is done with money and the smaller frequency is, the more you lose from inflation.
What war on Russia? Russia invaded a sovereign nation, leveled cities, killed civilians in droves.
With superprofits from cocaine, prostitution and other forbidden things going to mafia groups associated with politicians - yeah, one would think such profits shouldn't exist. Whichever path you like most, you won't be allowed to tread it while people with the opposing interest have so much power.
So how are you going to do that?
It's like elaborating in detail what you are going to do when we settle Mars and build safe dome cities, without any plan at all how you are going to make that economically plausible.
No it doesn't, it won't ever be smarter than the dumbest human and also however many oracles you consult, you still bear full responsibility for your own decisions.
Once again, treating these technologies as ever possibly acceptable to tell people what to think is nuts. These are glorified predictors. Their role is to fill the holes where you don't have anything better. These are by definition worse than anything dedicated. And of course they can't think.
If your income is rising less than the cost increases of things you are forced to buy, then you lose. The usual blame for your income rising less is that you are desperately beholden to a single employer. Blaming the government for inflation, as hurting the poor, is the oligarchy deflecting blame for their greedflation and war.
Seems like the popular conviction that they did all of that for no reason at all.
A UBI only democratic political platform can promise a net tax cut for 90% of population in addition to elimination of crime, poverty, create massive prosperous economic growth for workers and investors. The only reason to oppose UBI, and it is an important reason, is your political power or willingness to suck up to political power requires misery, despair, and collapse in order to hold it.
If you are saying that Americans are too stupid to not favour UBI over corrupt rulership meant to diminish them, then that history is correct. But the disinformation arguments against UBI that you have repeated are entirely and purely based on "we need slavery" and the rulership that imposes it. There would seem to be some logical hope that the stupidity level required to oppose UBI is not permanent. The message can overcome the well funded disinformation in favour of corrupt evil.
Supporting the DNC after their next leadership election to double down on zionist neocon supremacist rule over US is not the offramp to collapse.
Outside perspective: It doesn't have to be. It is the moment democracy, its values and its people are tested. The path towards open dictatorship and/or fascism is not set in stone. What is clear is that some setbacks, even catastrophic setbacks, are unavoidable. But as a whole the free-fall can be avoided and you can bounce back from setbacks, even if it takes time. This is actually somewhat universal, since it's not only the U.S. which is sliding more and more towards fascistic or anti-democratic tendencies. It's just that, like with so many other things, everything does seem to be bigger in the U.S. (and Texas).
Although I'm sure a lot are feeling economic pain and/or are generally under stress and uncertainty (IIRC 50% of households struggle to make an unplanned $1000 expense), and I don't expect it to get better under the new administration, the U.S. is still a federated system. If you look at what affects your daily lives directly, a lot more is done on a local and state level, than on the federal level.
From where I'm standing, organizing with like-minded people in your community around issues is the most promising way to go. Unfortunately the issues are back to basics issues like human rights and democratic principles, but that's where we are. This entails more than just protesting, but actively pressuring elected officials around legislation proposals. Suggest ballot measures (find out how such a measure gets to the ballot in the first place, because it's very different depending on where you are). And of course having people run for office and for the others to support them to get in, and get the anti-democratic forces out, once it is time. Don't succumb to the nationalization of local elections. People can be reached way better and more directly on the local level, when they can see it directly affecting their lives and talking to the people responsible directly than for anything happening in Washington D.C. Counter the anti-democracy spewing media outlets with true alternatives (maybe there's an entrepreneurial-minded person wanting to found a cooperative media outlet).
It sounds like a lot to do. But you are more, than you think. Even the disillusioned might be good allies. Take yes for an answer. And more people than you might expect have been part of 'the struggle' for a long time. Welcome them. And yes: Coordinate with and support other local actions.
Another view on what will happen with the federal institutions: Although Trump will put more loyalists than ever in powerful stations, there will remain many (even among the loyalists) who profit from the system's status quo. This includes the Supreme Court justices and ironically corporate goons. So in furthering their own advantage, they might resist things leading to an overall degradation. Of course they will go along with and actively lobby for anything that gives them more power at the expense of the general populace, but that is already the case. Again, if you make unlikely allies on single issues: Take yes for an answer.
Bottom line: Democracy and basic rights are ideas, made by humans. And they can only survive, as long as we believe in and fight for them. Always keep the belief, always keep on fighting. If you hit your head and fall down: Get back up. As the saying goes: This is a marathon, not a sprint. All the best!
You seem confident that there will be more elections. The dictator already promised that there won’t be.
You seem absolutely sure that this will materialize and that its implication means that you have no scope of action. Again, with enough institutionalists in important positions, even if he tries, it would be difficult for him to actually get rid of federal, let alone local and state elections. What is much more likely is that he will make it easier to skew or how he might call it "rig" elections. You know, like voter suppression and gerrymandering on steroids. So what I've written still holds: On a local and state level (or even federal level), pressure your elected officials and organize around the protection of voting rights. Be an active part of the legislative process. Democracy isn't making a cross every four years. And she's calling on all of us.
Sidenote: For everything that man says, you can find a clip of him saying the absolute opposite. So watch what he and his lackeys do, not what he says.
Sure the US may be past it's glory days. Hell even the Rand Corporation (who write a bunch of stuff for govt leaders and other high ups) says it's been trending downhill since some point in the early 2000s. They didn't mention 9/11 but it seems like a good historical milestone.
Essentially the paper says the last 200 years have been an anomaly and we're slowly sliding back to historical norms. They call it the neomedieval era and it's not just the US.
Yeah pretty much. We're 2-3 generations deep into a cultural expectation that "some one else" will deal with all these problems.
The constant threat of this being "the most important election of our lives", when the party making that argument campaigned as if the outcomes were irrelevant (because from their privileged perspective, the outcomes are irrelevant).
Back during covid a boat got turned a bit sideways in a canal and it seemed like the whole world economy was going to collapse. The system we have is actually incredibly fragile and built largely on trust, both in one another but also in institutions and systems. Not only the US, but western Europe is about to get smacked up-side the head by the 2x4 of failing to maintain a civil society (US at fault within its borders, EU at fault beyond its borders).
Assuming you are talking about who won the US presidential election. Happened 8 years ago too, it wasn't the end of America then. It won't be the end of America now.
8 years ago, the GOP wasn't crammed with MAGA, the judiciary wasn't crammed with MAGA, and the executive wasn't going to be crammed with MAGA.
It WAS the end for a lot of people. Not everyone survived the last Trump regime.
Be prepared for the doomers to tell you why you are wrong. God speed, brother.
Well, by now the Supreme Court has been supplanted and intent to overthrow democracy has been shown. That's a big difference to last time. So it's not exactly the same situation.
But we'll see how robust American democracy is.
Yeah, forcing Trump onto the ballot despite the insurrection because congress hadn't passed a law to enforce the constitution and then making the president a fucking king are a huge difference from 2016. Not to mention Trump appointed jusges throwing out his cases and his 34 felonies not being a sign that he should 't be elected again after his disastrous first term.
Yeah, this is way worse and the only hope is Republican infighting keeping the worst from happening again.
How fast is God speed?
The saying is really about asking god to remove obstacles from your path and facilitate faster travel. A little like "goodbye" is a very shortened "may god be with you."
TIL the etymology of goodbye is a contraction of "god be with you."
Which is why I always just say, "Later, butt sniffers."
Kinda makes "bye bye" seem a little weird, eh?
Be with you, be with you.
Infinite, I guess?
More than 55 mph, that's for sure.
It's the point of no return for something, but I suspect there's still a future to fight for. Anyone pushing a full doomer view is trying to suppress you. In case the worst happens, you should try to build a community around yourself and support other people. Join a mutual aid group if you can (or start one). If you grow produce or something, talk to your neighbors and exchange resources.
If we build a strong foundation, nothing that happens can break us. In the worst case, they'll try to break us and break themselves upon us. We need to be strong so we can come back stronger in the future.
Every minute is a death and a rebirth.
This is so stupid. Can't we just be really fucking discouraged because the reality of the situation is mind-bogglingly grim?
I sure as fuck am. That being said, before I check out of this world, I guarantee you I will wear a rich man's skin as a suit. They will not just get off without any consequences for the horrors they have created.
Don't believe there really is an absolute point of no return without the plot of Genesis of the Daleks happening. The future is long, and we don't know how the next four to eight years will play out, but dictatorships have risen and fallen before. Spain was a fascist dictatorship for decades, now it isn't. Also, lots of people died in the meantime and not all vestiges of the dictatorship are gone.
Did Britain or Rome know the moments when Pax Britannia or Pax Romana had hit their tipping point to decline? I doubt it.
I think the tipping point will only be observable through the lens of history many years from now with a subject heading of: This event was the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
The exact point will be the advent of the internet.
USA was still very much on the rise at the advent of the internet. If you define the advent of the internet to be Arpanet, then that was 1969, the same year the USA landed on the moon. If you define the advent of the internet to be the first use of the World Wide Web that would be 1989 the same year the Berlin wall came down and 3 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was arguably the most powerful the USA has ever been as it was before China's rise.
It's unlikely.
That's hard to impossible to answer in the moment but easier for historians to determine in retrospect.
its going to be a shit 32 years.
I think it's possibly the end of Western democracy. If Russia and China stroll through Europe with Trump's help, that's pretty much it, no?
Naw this is ridiculous.
Everyone knows it started in the 70s and we’ve been headed down hill ever since. Reality is this country died 60 years ago. It’s just taking awhile for the wheels to fall off the bus.
Kenedy was the coup.
What? When what started?
It was still the USSR in the 70’s.
Wrong comment?
Not OP; but probably referring to Nixon normalising relations with China; or maybe negotiating with the Viet Cong to prolong the Vietnam War so that he could be elected?; or the whole Watergate fiasco which directly lead to the creation of Fox News.. I mean, that man is responsible for a lot of our modern ails.
But if it’s the former, it directly lead to outsourcing production overseas where labour was cheapest, resulting in the gutting of American manufacturing and the entire middle class that depended on it.
I more personally believe that Nixon severely injured the US, but it was Reagan who shot the killing bullet. But that’s honestly a debate for another time.
It’s a bit like trying to figure out who invented the car but I would tend to agree it’s when people turned their power over to daddy Regan and went shopping after Carter treated them like adults…
Still don’t get what OP meant vis-à-vis Russia and Europe.
Honestly it sounds like Sino fear-mongering or Tankie wishful thinking.
It’s easy to forget because it’s made up of a multitude of smaller countries - but Europe has a population of ~750m, and a vastly more coherent and powerful combined military (even if the US were to pull out of NATO).
Russia can’t currently steam-roll one nation, how on Earth do you think they’d do anything against Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland - all countries with a deeply (& rightfully) ingrained distrust/hatred of Russia.
China isn’t likely to risk making themselves an international outcast just to aid Russia - they are more likely to make a play for Taiwan than anything else.
They’ve been Russia’s main aid all along. The no limits agreement?
https://hir.harvard.edu/chinas-aid-in-the-ukraine-war/
https://cepa.org/article/russia-and-china-two-countries-one-threat/
Russia has almost totally shifted to a war-time economy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
But they’re not fighting a conventional war. They didn’t invade the US or Belarus on foot.
Once they have Ukraine and US is not supporting NATO it’s not looking good for Europe.
Der Spiegel agrees
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-and-the-new-world-order-the-end-of-the-west-a-b71fa1bd-6147-47a4-8738-5c17eff44a55
There were similar levels of fear and worry when Russia was amassing troops just under the border ahead of their “3-day special operation”. But the truth of the matter is that Russia has shown itself to be a lot weaker as a military force than they purported themselves to be.
Their internal war-time economy is anyway starting to flounder as the >1.5K daily casualties they are amassing is having a noticeable impact on not only military production, but also civilian and agricultural. (‘ Russia economy crumbling with food prices skyrocketing as Putin's problems mount’ - Express.co.uk).
They are relying heavily on Iran, China and NK to supplement their falling arms production; and are now also needing to supplement their conscript forces with NK forces.
Russia has continually been over-estimated, but don’t doubt for a second that it is being cooked like a frog in a boiling pot in a proxy-war solely using Ukrainian forces.
In the event of a handful of allied European nations joining the war to aid Ukraine, Russia would be expelled from the region quite quickly - but at the cost of additional human lives, which is why the escalations have been so slow.
What democracy? The US never had democracy
No. It will be bad and might set us back a few decades, but we will fight back or die trying.
I choose to believe that we are not. The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn't even started yet. Some think it won't. I choose to believe that good will again triumph and life is roller coaster of good and bad.
Will it start any time soon? It's only going to get harder and harder to resist, from now on.
Yeah, people really don't understand how powerful a surveillance state can be when it focuses it's eye on you. It's not safe to talk about resistance around basically anything internet connected with a microphone.
Let's try this: https://magic-8ball.com/
Thanks for that....
I got "Outlook not so good."
Yeah, Outlook sucks. I think the future of our country is not great either.
Seems like we'll need to form our own political party if we want any representation because we're certainly not getting it from either one of these two dominate parties.
Count me the fuck in. I'll grab my pitchfork.
So i agree that the second Trump administration is going to suck in most every way possible, like the first one but worse because they're prepared this time.
BUT
I think people overrate a government's ability to influence the conditions in a given country. I think a country is made what it is by history, geography, technology, sociology, ideology, economics, and the accumulation of small decisions over centuries.
If the Trump administration wants to end democracy in the US, or if a hypothetical based administration were to attempt a switch to ranked choice voting, both ideals would be impossible to implement because our ideals are limited by practical reality. Both would fail regardless of being good or bad changes, because radical change is really hard when the conditions aren't met for it, especially when it's opposed by the rest of the country. If the country just isn't ready to transition to fascism right now, there's not much that Trump can do to make it.
We talk a lot about how powerful people changed the world, but i think far more often they're just the embodiment of a societal trend, and they couldn't change the world if they weren't. Change isn't done by powerful people but deeper movements in humanity, with powerful people riding them like a wave.
As to where the deeper movements in humanity are leading us right now, i refuse to guess, trying to predict the future is the best way to look like an idiot
There are states that have already passed electoral reform. Voting is controlled at the state level, so waiting for miraculous federal reform is unnecessary.
The US has had presidents who were literally more evil than Mr. Burns.
They haven't been a real democracy (where the will of the majority influences policy) in decades, if ever.
Climate change is still the thing that's most likely to fuck us all, and it's not like the US were actually helpful in that regard under Democratic leadership.
Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.
I'm 14 and this is deep?
🤣 yes
Doubt it.
The rest of the world isn't lucky enough to never have to hear about the perpetual US election cycle again, and frankly there's just too much money in it for them to give it up.
It'll be a fucking clown show for the next four years though.
One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.
I'm not sure whether we're going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.
All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you're lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this byzantine. A lot of this country's systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.
Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and "the elite" -- to borrow a tired trope -- also played a part here.
No matter how we arrived at this point, I don't think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.
There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, understand nuance, do research, and create better policy....but at this point I think we're frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.
We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.
We won't be fine, this is meaningfully different
According to history? Yes, but I guess there's a chance that the USA will beat the odds
May I suggest that you give Vlad Vexler's youtube a listen? He describes this as a period of dlweaking democracy, but explains why all is not lost.
Democracy dlweaks in darkness
Remember that time we as a country condoned owning people as property? No matter how bad shit gets in the next four years, there's no point of no return
Mass deportations sweeping up agricultural workers will need to be replaced when a national emergency is declared because crops can't be harvested. President declares the crops can be harvested by prison populations...what's the word for captives forced to labor for no pay indefinitely?
Slavery. Notably not the same thing as chattel slavery. I'm not saying we can't get worse than we are right now, what I am saying is that no matter how bad things get, we can come back from it. Hell, Germany came back from being controlled by the actual Nazi party.
I know someone is gonna reply saying how awful life was in Germany for several decades between Nazi rule and modern Germany, and I'll note again that I never said life can't get worse, I only said there's no point of no return for a country.
What makes me really sad is knowing it didn't have to be like this, and it doesn't have to get worse to get better...but it likely will, and that tears me apart.
Earth will not care. Life on earth may suffer, but Earth will not care.
Then I guess we shouldn't worry about Earth, because it'll be fine.
The save the earth movement isn't about earth, it's about humanity.
Why do we call it united?
Last I checked the math books, 50 is Divided.
I always did find it amusing that they are called the United States when it seems like it's constantly teetering on brink of another civil war.
Heard that!
I'm a united individual of one, can't help where I was born..
Shit has to get much, much, much worse before people are willing to take up arms against their own family member 'en mass. A civil war isn't one in which you fight a far away enemy, a civil war is one in which many of your family members and friends are on the opposite side. We are nowhere near a civil war, not even close.
Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn't really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we're past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn't really clear yet but it's not looking good.
Appreciate your measured response. I'm wondering how long it will take folks to stop coping out of self preservation and say out loud that this isn't anything we've seen before - it's brand new and can go as far as has been threatened.
Could be, but we have thought that before.
As others have stated, this is an entirely new depth to that thought.
It might be for some stuff. I'm worried that it'll have a lasting impact on women inside the USA as well as outside. Inside, they'll have their rights taken away over time. Outside, morale will be impacted. But I'm hoping it'll cause an uprising rather than the other way around.
👊
I guess we'll see.
From an outside observer: it's gonna be harder, but I don't think so. Still, the playbook Trump is gonna try and follow with his trifecta is what his mate Orbán did in Hungary. How hard that is going to be to undo depends on how far he gets.
5
Someone who has been president before, for four years, was elected president again.
I cannot think of anything less similar to a "point of no return".
You may think of him or his policies what you want (I personally have a mostly negative opinion of him too!), but we have all had four years of opportunity to observe what he does when he is president.
If you are thinking that Trump is like Hitler, then please point me to anything similar to:
Oh, none of those things happened in the late 2010s? Then why exactly are you expecting them to happen in 2025 or 2026? What is different now?
You are giving examples in history and changing the dates to the first Trump presidency, which is somewhat confusing.
Those things certainly didn't happen because the GOP did not have a majority in the legislature. I agree that it is unlikely that these will occur during this term as well, given that the majority in the house will be very small, but I assure you there will be bills passed that will continue to strip away power from the legislature and grant those powers to the executive. There will also be interpretations of the law that will disenfranchise the citizens and/or will have repercussions for years to come.
LegalEagle gives a pretty good rundown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG_L3fLLG3c
I was attempting to tell you when those things would have happened if Trump were doing the same things as Hitler. (It's convenient they both became heads of government in January.)
what? It did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary
I stand corrected. My memory served me incorrectly.
Nevertheless, they are more prepared now and the MAGA party holds more of the power compared to last time. It’s a bit like putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse - I suppose we’ll have to see where those that remain of the former GOP are willing to push back.
Thank you for the solid points. People are dooming way too hard, simply because their preferred candidate lost this round. There is an opportunity for Democrats to improve themselves. They had that wakeup call 8 years ago, and they didn't take it. Hopefully they will this time and strengthen the quality of the party and the candidates. Simply being 'not Republican', their primary strategy, isn't enough.
Just to be the nihilist in the room, I honestly think that the point of no return for humanity occurred the moment we stepped down from the trees and started to evolve. And I'm not actually kidding.
I'm not an evolutionary expert, so I'm more than likely talking out of my ass, but I was an Archaeology Major with a focus on the Bronze Age Collapse and what I can tell you is this...
From a certain perspective, the same evolutionary traits that brought our species to this point, are the very same traits that will keep us from moving forward past it. Selfishness, resource hording, greed, the urge to continually expand at the expense of others. Fear of "others" outside of ones own community; all these things in some form were beneficial to growing from hunter gatherers to urban/agricultural societies. We needed organisation to build cities, so we created monarchies. We needed ways to control the growing population, so we created a fear of a deity.
We needed a reason to not allow too many people in to our society so that we didn't waste resources, so we created borders and the concept of "others" that aren't like us. Now, all of that has to get binned if we have any hope of getting past this point because the only way forward is as single planet, not petty nation states. But every single thing that brought us to this point prevents that from happening. It's ingrained in our very DNA, so to speak.
Of what?
What color paint? And did it have a distinct flavor?
You tell me? I don't understand all this "end of the world" nonsense. Not saying everything is fine, but holy crap y'all are going way over the edge.
Doesn't feel like you're paying attention
Would you ever allow yourself to accept that truth if so, or will you need to see actual bodies in the streets before you believe it's over?
This isn't something you'll be able to determine in the moment. It will only be clear in hindsight.
People do see it, it's not easy to see it and act, but they did. I know directly of people that gave up ownership of multiple factories and a very comfortable life in Germany in about this phase of the fascist uprising there. They left to America and Australia, split family, with what they could carry, and started back over from a very modest place. Not too long after, the worst gained momentum in Germany, nazis took over the factories and a horrible fate befell many in their community who didn't acct when they could have.
Point of no return for what?
Do you mean its fall, like Rome?
No, I don't think so at all.
I actually think we're on the cusp of actual, true reform.
But if I'm wrong, just try to remember that millions of people lives happy, fulfilling lives, even while Rome fell around them. We will too.
You sound like a scoundrel...
"You can drown out the screams and dance if you just hustle hard enough!"
Uh, no, that's not what I said. It's just a fact that when empires fall, almost everyone living in it just live their lives regularly
Yeah... that's not a strength of that society. It's a failure. It's stepping over bodies on the street to go have a Sunday stroll in the park.
And your position is also self-apologist bullshit that helps you personally alleviate an inherent guilt you hold. You feel "accused" by nobody in particular so you state (again, to no one in particular) that "they" (you) don't need to feel bad for being a selfish prick in this moment.
No. Just the next chapter in the story.
Rome had a final chapter.
The Germans are good at ending things, aren’t they?
You don't understand Americans at all.
We're here in "no stupid questions". The OP asked a question. So if you want to offer some of your knowledge and insight - go for it. But simply telling OP "you don't understand" isn't really adding anything of value.
It's like not commenting, but with more effort.