Let's not keep making the mistake of assuming Trump's tweets have force of law. He's just talking out of his ass again, just like he's not actually invading greenland and canada. Notice how he's talking about at least 4 different actions here, I'm pretty sure none of which he can actually do. 5 if you count thanking us for our attention to this matter (?). If Trump tries to do anything in this regard no judge* will uphold it.
People in power do what he says. His word is de facto law, even if it’s illegal. It literally does not matter. You are in denial if you think he’s not going to get away with this.
Let's not keep making the mistake of assuming the rule of law matters at this point. If he does something and nobody stops it, its legality or lack there of is moot. If he says to do something and people do it and nobody stops him (or judge's rulings about it are ignored), then it doesn't matter that it was illegal.
I know you're just trying to get people to calm down, but at this point, people are right to be scared and right to think these things could actually come to pass considering it has happened before. Maybe it won't get that far... But plenty has already happened that should never have happened, and the US currently has a president who is illegally, specifically unconstitutionally, holding office and was allowed to be sworn in anyway, so it's probably not a good idea to assume this won't happen just because it's also unconstitutional.
I swallowed my misgivings and voted Democrat, just like I've done at each election since I turned 18, but handwaving away valid criticisms is not how you get people to side with you. Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
I'm 100% for valid criticisms—I don't even consider myself a Democrat and I have no compunctions about criticizing them when I think they are wrong. But I'm pretty sure that meme is directed at those who withheld their vote.
It would be in theory, but mostly it's just spread around as how any protest against Israel cost the democrats the US election (despite how it was considered widely unpopular to support Israel's genocide by most democrats).
Then maybe Harris and her team should have listened to some feedback about their widely unpopular stance that seemed to somewhat equate them with the Republicans during an election which they absolutely couldn't afford to be seen as remotely similar to republicans.
Democrats are pragmatically there for the money. They aren't comically evil, but they are corrupt. They will throw an election before they ever give up AIPAC money and count on the next election swinging back to them. They get to sit back and watch the republicans be the bad guys and stir shit up for a few years. Then, when they get back in power, they fix the things that's don't make them money and look like he good guys but conveniently leave the unpopular policy the republicans enacted that makes them money and they don't have to look like the bad guys. They just look incompetent. But they aren't. This is all very purposeful. They love this dynamic. They benifit from it.
The democrats as they are for sure need to go. But we need to be more pragmatic ourselves about removing them instead of throwing elections to the republicans hoping it will teach the Democrats a lesson. Because it won't. We need to focus on getting a foothold and changing the party. And that means turning out to vote in every election no matter what. Vote third party. Vote write in. Vote whatever. But sitting out of elections to teach democrats a lesson just isn't going to do anything. It's just throwing away the small amount of political capital most people have. If we don't vote now its either corporate feudalism or civil war in the future.
Yeah I think they've realized over the decades that the needle swings like a metronome whether they try or not, especially thanks to obstructionists like Mitch McConnell ensuring trying won't go anywhere.
So they cash their paycheck, occasionally show up for votes, and play the stock market with knowledge they gain from privileged information.
I don't think so. Not that I have anything better to offer. My wife thinks Biden would've won because too many people stayed home, refusing to vote for a black woman. I, frankly, think the election was about the economy. If you look back over the elections, they are almost always about how people are doing financially. If they are scared or hurting, they will vote for change. If they are happy, they vote for the incumbent. My honest opinion is that there wasn't a scenario or candidate that would've changed Trump's victory.
What I am sure of is that in all of the states where Trump won (even Michigan), if every single person who withheld their vote due to Israel/Gaza had voted for Kamala, that wouldn't have been enough by itself to change the outcome. Certainly, that issue had an effect, but it didn't change the outcome by itself. We have to look beyond that.
But, still, if you did withhold your vote thinking you were fighting for Gaza, yeah I think you deserve to have your nose rubbed in that shit.
No, they were never going to do that. They've already said that they learned their lesson, and in 2026, they're gonna double down on the losing strategy that they've been running since Clinton was in office and run on building the wall on the Mexican border and deporting immigrants to court the moderate Republican vote that doesn't exist and never would vote for them even if it did.
By the Presidential election, it's already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I've been voting. If you want change, it's only going to come by threatening the position of the people in charge of the party and replacing the old guard with people like AOC. Whoever gets elected President does neither of those things. Unless Krasnov declares the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and has them all arrested as political prisoners. But then we won't have to worry about voting ever again, just like he promised.
Firstly, we can dismiss the notion that the candidate can't be moved. The citation for that is Biden in 2020, who effectively campaigned during the primary as a moderate Republican, and until the southern states which we're never going to go blue anyways weighed in, was getting his ass handed to him. The Sunday before Super Tuesday, the rat-fuckening, Oblivious Warren. All that old history.
And then something remarkable happened. Biden opened the doors to the tent and invited the progressive wing of the party in. He handed the Bernie-crats the platform and said "have at it hoss". And it worked. Instead of disenfranchising the activist base, he embraced them, or at least, extended an olive branch by giving them the platform, without which he assuredly would have lost.
So: Candidates can be moved.
Second:
By the Presidential election, it’s already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I’ve been voting.
Again. And I'm singling you out because you responded and well, here we are. This is an obtuse, bordering on bad faith interpretation of the argument being made. You aren't arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of voters who stayed home for Kamala but showed up for Biden. And you moralizing about an objectively misguided application of strategic voting didn't/ doesn't/ won't/ change their votes. When your "strategic voting" strategy results in losing you the election, explain to me how and why its strategic?
You don't/ can't move millions of voters to a new position. Or at least it hasn't been shown to be possible (2016, 2024). Asking voters to "vote against" instead of "voting for" doesn't work and we now have so many receipts, that they will write text books on the matter. What can be done, is that the candidate can be moved. Its also been shown through an evidentiary process to work.
To summarize, candidates can be moved. Biden moved and won an election because of it. When you moralize about your own, demonstrated-to-be-wrong conception of strategic voting, you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with the literally millions of people left on the table by the Democrats. A strategy that when examined before hand will clearly lose, the insistence of then implementing it becomes a "burn the world down" moralization to wash your own hands: Democratic voters who reliably show up, but did not, because the DNC got a hall pass from those making the exact arguments you are making here. They did not need to respond to criticism because this argument you are making shielded them. And it cost us all, practically everything.
Further evidence that the democrats can be moved if we don't let them maintain the delusion they can win while trying to be republicans: The entire party told Biden to drop out when it was clear he had no path to victory.
Sadly Kamala was allowed to believe she could win while embracing the same policies and messaging that killed the Biden campaign. Instead of screaming at the party to campaign on overwhelmingly popular left policy necessary to win the election and use every power at the democrat's disposal to accomplish it, blue MAGA told anyone pointing out that we're headed back towards the waterfall to shut up and paddle harder.
But I spent a lot of time ringing any alarm bell I could find that all of Joe and Kamal's moves to the right was gonna cost us the election, and that the victory fund would lose the House and Senate.
I was right on all counts, but the people I was trying to explain it won't admit that reality proved them wrong.
There's no criticism for what the party did wrong, only anger at anyone with higher standards than the letter by the name.
Neoliberals want nothing as much as they want blindly loyal Dem voters, it's the only way most people ever hold their noses and vote for one. But rather than have a candidate dem voters want, they'd rather risk trump.
When they shut on voters like in that meme, they're telling us they have zero problem watching the country burn. They'd rather have trump than a Dem who agrees with Dem voters.
Yep. Every time they've pulled farther right and lost, they've blamed the leftists for it for being too extremist in their policy demands or claiming that their issues aren't as important, like in the case with Millennials and housing costs, student debt, climate change, etc. Despite trying to make some headway on those issues, they've always refused to campaign on them.
If you look carefully, you'll find statements about how "neither option affects [this particular thing] but we have the best chance of fixing it after the election if we still have a country".
It was never handwaved. It was the least-worse option with some kind of hope given that issue and a thousand others. How many times this has fucking been fucking explained and not fucking understood.
Uh yes it was definitely hand-waved away by some "if you look carefully". It was only the "least-worse option" because so many were successfully manipulated by the system into being placated with crumbs so they wouldn't revolt at the thousands of other reasons we've had for years to fight back against this shit, pushing the Overton window to the right in increments and leading folks to not use or even possess or be taught in the first place the critical thinking skills required to inform oneself and take steps to make positive change, in this system designed to intentionally misinform and mislead us and pit us against each other so we vote for the same rich white men responsible for perpetuating this system and the harm it brings to all of us, especially marginalized communities.
I would recommend to you (and anyone who is interested in informing themselves on what is being done to us) to read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. It details this process of incremental change, and some of the strategies and parties previously and currently involved in taking control of our government (or at this point more like what's left of it).
(For clarity: I'm not saying both parties are the same, although their goals, tactics, and policies seem less different to me as time passes; I'm not making any general statement passing blame to any group of voters or non-voters in this comment, because I believe the bulk of the responsibility lies on the system and those who hold sway over large parts of it in the form of currency or legislation, for example; I'm not denying or invalidating that you may feel this way and/or believe it is true, I'm taking issue with your statement that "it was never handwaved", because I most certainly saw that happen and know people who to this day are clinging to that sentiment; I'm not saying harm reduction isn't the move or good policy, it is but there has to simultaneously be work being done on reducing or removing the source of that harm)
Edit: sorry for run-on sentences. working on it gradually and open to feedback
Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
They're already 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x better than Republicans. So someone would have to be pretty goddamn stupid not to vote for them when the options are them or Republicans.
The majority of the fault isn't on Democrats. It's on goddamn stupid braindead asshole American voters for being goddamn stupid braindead assholes.
I'm not American so nobody got my vote, but seems to me like the issue is with the swathes of people choosing facism rather than progressives who chose not to vote.
Choosing how to act in a world like ours is tricky, anyone following a sense of right and wrong (even if I disagree with their judgement) instead of fear, hate, greed or whatever gets a gold star in my book.
Inaction is still a choice, though. I totally understand the sentiment behind that choice and even agree that we shouldn't be forced to choose genocide, but the alternative that we got is a man who not only wants the same genocide, but wants to accelerate it, put American boots on the ground to assist in it, and then turn the bloodied ground into resorts while also wanting to worsen life across the globe. So, by refusing to act, they didn't oppose that man getting into power. They cared so much about genocide that, ironically, they enabled making that genocide worse by not acting against that possibility.
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn't be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote? Of course, there's plenty there who can't due to things like gerrymandering, but there's a huge swathe of white suburbanites who simply prefer the status quo to actually improving things.
But thanks to the two party system, what effect does it have? And I'm specifically talking about the voting day of the presidential election here, not primaries or other elections. Because that's where those efforts will have the most impact. Not that the Dems deigned to give us even the illusion of a primary this election (or in 2016, truthfully), but so many of these people seem to shake their fist once every 4 years and then go to sleep like cicadas awaiting the next presidential election.
I don't blame people for hating the weak candidates that the Dems consistently push forward to maintain the old guards' leadership positions, but I do blame them for looking at the alternative and saying "I'm okay with the possibility of that man winning if I don't vote or vote third party." The chance of a Trump victory and all that it entailed was a line in the sand that they were willing to cross.
As a trans woman, I blame them for saying, "Your life is not worth biting the bullet for."
Yet refusing to accept the reality of mathematics that showed that, in a FPTP system, not voting for a viable candidate opposing a fascist only helps the fascist is acceptable? Nah. The blood is on the hands of both dems and non-voters. Non-voters/protest voters don't give a fuck about trans people, as shown by their actions.
So it seems like you fully understand the flaws of First past the post voting. Have you done anything to fix it? Are the democrats doing anything to fix it? Nows the time. Not during the election
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn’t be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote?
Sounds like First-past-the-post voting doesn't properly represent the population. Let's try a new electoral system to fix this. The people of Alaska switched to Ranked Choice and they had a referendum last election to go back to FPTP voting, and they didn't want to.
I absolutely agree, though I know of at least one other place that tried it and had issues because nobody knew who the candidates were or what their positions were, but IIRC, there was some context to it that made it a "well, of course they had problems" situation instead of people just being too lazy to read up on the candidates (though that is a very real but solvable issue). Like there were 10 districts on the ballot with 6 open seats in each, and they had about 30 candidates per district or something crazy like that.
I feel a lot of people do a lot to justify stupid behaviour. "Saving is too hard" or "exercise is too hard". There's legit reasons to not be able to save, or exercise or being able to vote 🤨.
However there's a lot of bullshit that people were spouting. It's either a coordinated campaign or just dumb shit. What annoys me is everyone piling on Joe and then they did what people wanted and swapped to Kamala and they're still upset that the Dems "don't listen". Whatever, they're all full of it.
I fucking hate the Democrats but you have to be completely psycho to justify not-voting for them.
To be clear, I'm Canadian and I'm directly impacted by this now. So fuck all of those people.
While I did vote blue conservative (for the last time), they were not worthy of that vote because they did not represent me. That's how representative democracy works. What you advocate for is not representative democracy, it is a hostage situation and should be treated like the crisis that that entails.
Why are you okay with people being underrepresented at the voting booth? Are you actively working to replace First Past the Post voting in your state? People should have the freedom to vote for the candidates they believe are best, while still ensuring their votes count against those they don’t want in office.
It's not as though democrats are just now learning of the mathematical flaws of FPTP. Every election I've seen the same bullshit excuses to take people's inalienable right to vote how they want. Democrats in blue states made a choice to leave a huge portion of the population unrepresented, all for safe states and easy elections.
We don’t need to wait for a miracle from Congress, we can pass election reform one state at a time. Should we have more elections, we must remove the democratic monopoly on this fight against the republicans. Don't worry, blue conservative, you will be free to vote for your preference under a more representative electoral system. Because who would want to deny someone the right to vote for the person they feel is best? You apparently.
Alaska has already abolished FPTP voting. After Ranked Choice Voting kept Sarah Palin out of office, Alaskan Republicans tried to pass a referendum to revert to FPTP, but the people voted to keep Ranked Choice. Why would you want to use the same voting system that Republicans favor? Do you support democracy, or do you get off on forcing people unrepresented in government to vote for your preference?
Will you still be saying that when Trump puts a resort in Gaza?
Yes. Will you refuse to demand electoral reform in your state so the people of this nation can vote outside the two party system without a spoiler effect? Will you refuse to do anything about those who are without representation? Will you refuse democracy?
But you don't know who non voters would have voted for. A study of non voters in 2020 showed a near even split, so it's nothing but pointless speculation to blame people who didn't vote. And I say this as someone who actually supports compulsory voting. I just find it much more productive, and accurate, to lay blame on those who we do know, for sure, actually voted for this result.
Wait, this seems silly. You are in effect saying that it's wrong to blame those who stayed home because some of them would have voted for trump? Like, we'd still blame those people too had they actually voted trumo.
The blame isn't just because you voted for trump it is because you didn't try to stop him, which applies both to those who voted for him and those who didn't vote.
Those who blame the nonvoters for Trump winning are implying that had they voted, Trump would have lost. We cannot know that and I do not find it productive. Again, I actually am in favour of compulsory voting, so urging people to vote is a good thing that I'm very much for. But I'm not going to blame those who didn't vote for Trump for Trump winning.
There are no mental gymnastics, and unless you've been absent in the debate since it began in 2023, it's been one conversation regarding the direction of the Democratic party, with effectively two camps.
The first camp, effectively taking the party line and acting as cheerleaders of the DNC, have taken a "No critisism of the Democratic Party is acceptable; voters need to move to the positions of the DNC" approach.
The second camp took a "The DNC needs to be better and acknowledge it's shortcomings, and make changes when necessary. The DNC needs to align itself with DNC voters and the party base."
The first camp, for the first 8 months of 2024, insisted we had to run Joe Biden. That there were no other possibilities, options, or potential outcomes. They defended the approach the DNC took to the primary process, which was by any measure, the least democratic primary they party had ever held.
The second camp raged at the preposterous farce which was the DNC primary. They pointed out that Bidens poll numbers were so bad he basically had no chance of winning. That by insisting on this losing strategy we were losing critical time.
Bans were made, here, regarding this debate. And the first camp was wrong. There was another way possible.
After the candidates were swapped the first camp further insured that people just needed to move to where the DNC was, after taking effectively a pro genocide, Republican lite campaign philosophy as an outcome of the convention.
The second camp pointed out that this would lose the DNC the election, that we needed our focus to be on moving the candidate to a more popular, more electable position.
The first camp won the argument and lost us all the war, because their fundamental belief in what is being argued and whom they are arguing with is wrong. The first camp is responsible for the millions of votes difference between Kamala and Biden, because they insisted on this losing strategy.
I'm sure the first camp exists, but you should not imply that everyone who voted Democrat and wanted people to vote Democrat was that. I did that, and I encourage everyone to criticize their horrible decisions and actions, of which there are depressingly many.
I'd love it if we pressured them to not be quite as horrible, but at the same time I did not want the Republican party to win control because I knew they'd be worse for people in almost every way. And now, as a trans person, I have to worry about what I won't be allowed to do anymore, or how they'll try to make my life worse just for existing. Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
I just want to point out, that you are making this about me as the rhetorician, when I haven't even weighed in with my position. Its not me you are arguing with when it comes to the application of strategy; its the millions of voters for whom them sacrificing their ideals to get a milquetoast Democrat, pro-genoicde, draconian border policy, democrat into office doesn't work.
This is about a basic understanding of how the table is set, and no amount of willing the environment one finds themselves in changes that. Its like '16 Hillary supporters whining about winning the popular vote. The people who were out their using the argument of "strategic voting" to shield the candidates deeply unpopular positions among democratic voters did real significant harm this election cycle. If your strategy doesn't or can't result in a specific outcome, can we really call it strategic?
My point is that the chiding of voters for not doing the job of the candidate is a way of morally washing ones hands of a strategy that genuinely hurt the candidates ability to get elected.
Does that give anyone an excuse for helping elect a fascist, racist, xenophobic, physchopath who is in the pocket of a foreign enemy leader by not voting for Kamala?? Fuck no. You're out of your mind.
within the context of federal elections as operated in 2024, it's certainly not the fucking fault of the people who were able to recognize that letting Putin's puppet in the office of the president for a second time to subsequently leave Ukraine to fend for itself and to ensure a genocide in Palestine was the worse of the 2 possible outcomes.
Giving in and voting center left establishment to ensure a win is a much better poison than what we have now. anyone who says otherwise is trying to "morally wash their hands" of the blood that's being spilled in Ukraine and Gaza and domestically.
The people who didn't vote because the DNC chose an establishment dem to replace Biden are narcissistic or stupid.
Trans people, gay people, immigrants, women, elderly people on social security fixed income, 1000s of workers in industries who will face layoffs in the face of these tariffs, farmers who are losing 2 billion (40% of the food USAID gives out comes from purchases from us farmers) in USAID food purchases per year, children whose education will be forever altered will all be much happier knowing those self righteous progressives stuck to their guns and didn't compromise their morals as they get persecuted under this administration.
WELL FUCKING DONE GUYS. Don't break your arms jacking yourselves off.
You aren't arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of people who found your rhetoric insufficient and a pro genocide stance unacceptable.
If you want to continue to be the party of "loser Democrats", just keep doing and thinking acting the same way you are presenting yourself in that comment.
When you behaved this way, when this was the rhetoric you used to convince people to vote Democrat, you did real fucking damage, and are in some small way responsible for Trump.
When your "strategy" has the obvious and demonstrated result of the opposite effect to what you want, it's not strategic.
Yeah, I've given some thought to what I'll do in the next election cycle, and I just don't know. I can wish that people would think like me, but I've seen enough evidence from several elections that that's not gonna happen.
That makes me feel a bit hopeless, that we're doomed to the worst politicians winning and ratcheting the US further right, and that I will not be safe to live here for a long time. I know there's organizations I can get involved with, but I really struggle to commit time to anything, and I just feel isolated from everyone (yay social atomization). I think my best bet is giving up the fight and just leaving the country.
That division is much, much older. The beltway is full of people who benefit from corporations or come from wealthy families and are materially aligned against the working class, and their ideology reflects this. These people as a group stand to lose more from the democrats moving to the left and hurting the bourgeoisie than winning than staying in the middle and losing.
This is a common dynamic historically; liberals in power need the people to maintain power, but their interests aren't aligned with the people, so they pass policies that marginalize their own base of support, and so the conservatives take power and then do counterrevolution.
Maybe democrats want to lose. Why else would they not invite 3rd parties to participate of equal footing. Why would they say no to multiple chances at beating the republicans? Why would they say no to increased voter participation and the free votes that come along side that.
Where is the urgency during the election? Where is the urgency now? Do they not believe what they've been saying about the republicans this whole time?
3rd parties cannibalize votes from which ever majority party it aligns closest with. That's the problem with our system. Your comment makes no sense I'm the context of current voting rules.
Ranked choice voting would help immensely and then your tongue in cheek rhetorical questions would make sense, but until then the answer is obvious. The Dems don't want that because it takes votes from them.
This exactly. Higher education hurts them in the long run so it was never going to get a pass. It’ll be gutted so that private schools can take over. This is just a way to put the blame on the universities and students who don’t bend to their will.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
1st ammendment to the constitution since conservatives love to claim they support it
Yeah but they're gonna rewrite the constitution, it's gonna be the best constitution the founding fathers will be jealous they didn't come up with this thing it's gonna be airtight and on the blockchain
Congress isn't making a law. Instead, the President is committing treason while his party pretends not to notice and the other party flops around like a dead fish.
"Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives... What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt."
The amount of times I've heard salty right wing grifters complain about Orwellian censorship on literally everything. But I guess it's just fine if cult leader Trump does it, because he stands for what's right and sticks it to those progressive plebs, right?
Does "NO MASKS" mean that choosing to wear a mask to protect your health is now forbidden at colleges or is there another meaning that I don't understand? It is so random and has nothing to do with the rest of the post except for being "woke".
He’s not supposed to be able to. We’ll see if the administration follows his orders or the existing law, or if they’ll listen to court orders. My hopes are, unfortunately, not high.
For loads of clinically vulnerable people, the right to protest is dependent on the right to mask. You can only risk going to a crowded protest if you’re allowed to use protective measures to prevent infections.
this is his plan all alone, one of inner circle wrote the book on geopolitics, and even in the 80 they deemed trump to a potential useful president one day.
Then they came from the students, and I watched my parents still beg for more fascism because they thought they were going to be billionaires any day now
I remember when the Democrats brought down the hammer hard on anti-genocide protestors in universities. Trump is doing the same, but expanding it to all protests.
We have a ton of money, a ton of military installations, and 1 in 8 Americans IS a Californian. Washington and Oregon join us, and we'd be in even better shape. Canada can get in on the action too.
A felon rapist traitor and his traitor party is making our Constitution irrelevant. Time to start looking out for ourselves.
WA state here - it's ridiculous that I have to subsidize chuds in Mississippi and Louisiana when they won't even give their citizens human rights. they're all about fiscal responsibility until it comes to paying their own fucking bills.
edit: love the chudvotes, do we have some cranky MS and LA types? pay your fucking bills jerkfaces. fuck, half your budgets come from federal funds we pour more into.
Federal taxes don't actually work that way. The federal government prints its own money. All taxes effectively go into a giant shredder and are unrelated to spending.
I don’t even know where to begin correcting such an insane statement. Why do you think k taxes are collected if it just gets shredded? Sadistic pleasure?
He makes a good point, it's just to balance the inflation. Take the tax money to offset the federal reserve printing swathes of money to fund government endeavors.
It's a real theory. From what I understand though the shredder is a thought experiment, not meant to be taken seriously. They do acknowledge that you have to receive money to spend money. they just think of it like a balancing act instead of a 1 to 1 relationship.
If we are going to do a tax protest we will need some kind of guarantees from the state government. Otherwise going to war with the IRS will not work. The IRS always wins.
I'm not sure that's feasible, since the states don't just sign a check to the Feds once a year, it's paid via payroll taxes. To my knowledge, there is no kind of mechanism for entire states to collectively refuse payment.
That costs money in state taxes, and the GOP is working on reducing the state and local tax deductions in the federal tax code. Making states who are trying to create good living conditions for their citizens prohibitively expensive to live in. It's horse shit.
Every time I scroll past this image, that’s the line that gets me. Bold threatening declaration by fascist dictator, then ends like a work email reminding you not to leave food in the cafeteria fridge over the weekend.
What can you say to that? The Americans knew what they were getting into. They elected a fascist to power who is abolishing democracy. In case you didn't know it yet, let me tell you: America is on the way to becoming a dictatorship.
Okay so since protests are an expression of opinion, and you got that pesky first amendment, all protests are legal, so this tweet is a nothing burger.
I used to be the pride of my family for having finished college. Now it's demonized by them.
I feel for the students of today. College was an important time for me. I experienced a lot of new ideas, my mind was opened. I didn't get to do much in grad school, but my first four years of college changed me and I wouldn't be the same without those experiences. The way the situation is escalating we may see colleges completely locked down or even abolished.
Also, read up on what they are ultimately going for: Eliminating the First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Trump supporters: "that's fine, the president isn't congress"
I'm not in his district but I was so impressed by Rep. AL Green's (https://algreen.house.gov/about) courage in standing up to and calling out Krasnov's and the GOP's lies yesterday that I wanted to donate some money. Unlike all the impotent, sclerotic clowns who call themselves the Dem "leadership" and constantly ask me for money whilst the most they do are write "Strongly worded letters" and finger wagging, Rep. Green's website was all about service to his district. I literally could not find a way to donate to him. But he is now a hero of mine. If only HE or one of the few with his courage and fire were leading the Dems. I wish he were 20 years younger. He'd have made a great president.
How many universities will abandon free speech rights for 10% of their budget? Hard to say, many abandoned them for less when students were protesting genocide.
We really need to tax the mega rich. I compiled this list of numbers after the President speech last night, it's kinda wild:
$ 99,000 - National Median Income is less than $100 thousand.
$ 1,000,000 - 1 Million Dollars.
$ 485,000,000 - Cut Funds to International Relations and whatever.
$ 1,000,000,000 - 1 Billion Dollars. There are over 400 Billionaires in America.
$ 22,000,000,000 - Cut Funds to American Social Serivces through HHS (Human & Health Services).
$ 244,000,000,000 - Elon Musks Net Worth.
$ 1,620,000,000,000 - 1 Trillion Dollars - Meta (Facebooks) Corporate Net Worth.
$19,900,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2017 (Obama to Trump)
$27,800,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2021 (Trump to Biden)
$36,000,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2025 (Biden to Trump)
some colleges in the west are already suffering from low enrollment as it is to the point they had to slash faculty and classes depending on the field, and some schools are even worst off(this is mostly for state univ that arnt very prestigious), more than likely he will do this to most liberal colleges, and it will quickly depopulate the already dwindling student body in some schools. also the one-to-punch of anti-intellectual and the funding for research is also in jeopardy. more expensive schools with more prestige much be able to weather this, since they are less likely to be affected by these cuts that the schools are going through currently at lower levels.
How much for our first amendment? .....that'll be $24 billon please! You get the presidency too if you're famous. Feel free to grab people by their pussy. Enjoy!
"You know the best strategy to counter this is to do nothing, it will burn itself out after awhile. If a few people die or get imprisoned well that's okay as long as I don't have to do anything difficult or will affect my portfolio and control. "
obviously I made this quote up but it is how I feel about the people in power that say they are against this administration but really are doing jack shit to support or engage the population. Sure there are some that are doing somethings and I appreciate that, but fuck man do most of the "opposition" party really not have a spine? Like what the fuck, there are millions of citizens that are genuinely scared for their life and freedom and all we are getting is crickets...
Don't worry! Once the people who Defend the Constitution after SCORES OF 6 YEAR OLDS GET MOWED DOWN BY A GUNMAN hear about this they'll be PISSED and Take Action!
Now apply that law retroactively to catch all women's March supporters cuz fuck women right? And then all the other civil rights matches before women's. They're gonna catch me for protesting migrants Rights during prop 187?? Back in 1998? Those were the days...just the government trying to fuck up the world slowly with room for lube. Trump is power tool going full send after everyone's rights. WTF get the guy out already!!!!
Make sure to keep blaming "rednecks" and "hillbillies", and not the billionaire backers of MAGA who own various media outlets and some of the largest companies in the world.
Trump is following Hitler's cookbook: change the schools, small kids are easier to form/change than adults. I only hope teachers keep teaching what is honest and good!
There is no such thing as an illegal protest… especially in the US. The US prides itself to the rest of the world about its people’s freedom and liberties. So don’t give any attention to such nonsense as it will only give it power. Be mindful of where & what you give your power to.. it’s what they feed off. Just blow them away with your breath with a gentle whisper of “fuck off” as you exhale 🌬️
I wonder how will be the US's method for 'accidental demise' moving foward.
Defenestration is already taken by Russia, but Trump is not that original, so I'm guessing he'll use the same method, considering he's working form Putin and all.
If only y'all had some sort of constitution with some sort of amendment that ment you had free speech and another that said you had weapons with which to defend said constitution.
In no way am I defending this behavior but wouldn't this only apply to public universities and colleges? The many that are technically private property can entirely ignore this correct?
science meme? ok, i'll bite. fuck this indeed, imagine being Jewish in the past year, and being harassed and bullied from the "from the river to the sea" folks on campus, made to feel unsafe and targeted, not because you're Israeli, but simply because you're Jewish, and when you complain, being met with feckless and indignant school administration saying "free speech bro". broken clock right twice a day, and all that. time to make American Jihadis, and the nihilist leftists that support them, think twice, about what it's going to cost them to continue to terrorize Jews. this all could have been self policed, limits placed internally at just how far and how intense the "protests" were allowed to become, but it was an orgy of Antisemitism, and now, at least this Jew, is glad the hammer is coming down, though I wish it were from someone else, i'm glad for it just the same
I mean, fuck antisemitism in any form, obviously...
...but I'm going to say "allow fascists to eliminate freedom of protest" has a spotty track record improving that particular issue.
This guy is in power in no small part due to whatever definition for not-fascist Americans you want to use not showing up because they feel compromise is beneath them. Maybe it's time to learn that lesson.
Well, no, the time to learn that lesson was November. I guess it's finding out time. For people too rightfully indignant about the genocide in Gaza to look past their own noses and to people in your situation alike, I'm afraid.
Friendly reminder that Trump refused to condemn a group of white supremacists chanting "Jews will not replace us".
He is not on your side. And, if history is any indication, allowing government to control speech and expression by fascist means is much more dangerous to Jews than any group of student protesters could ever be.
Mod reminder to keep it civil and no personal attacks when you reply to this. This person has had bad experiences, remember the human. Please report any personal attacks.
PS: Remember, if you want to convince people you need to meet them where they are. This person is your neighbor, not your enemy.
Sometimes couched as anti-Israel, we find supporters of discrimination in their spheres of influence, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), spouting prejudices with hubris while their party’s leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, remain mostly silent.
German Jews recognize they safely exist only through police protection, who park outside German synagogues to prevent anti-Semitic violence. In Poland, the home of Auschwitz, anti-Semitism has become so accepted it blatantly is part of the platform of the National Democratic Party, known as “Endeks.”
And they assert this bit of history as evidence:
From 1921 to 1935, there was a group named the Association of German National Jews (Verband national Deutsche Juden), whose goal was the total assimilation of Jews into German culture; the self-eradication of Jewish identity; the expulsion of all Eastern European Jews from Germany; and a radical hatred of Zionism. Sadly, these seem like the same goals of many Jews in America choosing to deny the faith and practices of their ancestors in favor of secularizing themselves. On some level — often unconscious — they believe if they deny their Judaism and go along with the anti-Semitic rhetoric, non-Jewish Americans will better accept them. Unfortunately, they are avoiding looking at history.
To me, it sounds like the argument is being framed as "us" Jews and "them" Jews making the mistake of trying to homogenize. That's tremendously ironic, as this type of thinking is exactly what led them to support Nazi Germany. The exact kind of language Trump use, aggressive, bombastic pursuit of "agitators" as undesirables, of ignoring antisemites and bigots Trump associates himself with, of dismissing his speech as a "rhetorical tool," is what German Jewish groups believed would protect them... Until Nazis came for them, too.
Maybe antisemetic violence should be curbed, but you should consider what's actually causing it, and how that "curbing" will be done.
"The Jews are the cause of Antisemitism" yes, how novel, why didn't anyone else think of that, oh, that's right, literally every other band of Antisemites throughout all time have used that line of reasoning,"why can't the Jews, you know, be less Jewish, we are absolutely within our rights to terrorize them until they see the light". "Maybe antisemitic violence should be curbed" "Maybe". Quite.
I'm sure it must be a stressful time for Jewish people. All hate crime is horrible. Many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, oppose the actions of Israel.
I do hope the protests, to stop US arms being sent to Israel, grow in strength. And I do what I can personally to help.
When looking at the numbers its no exaggeration to say that the Palestinian people are being slaughtered by the Israel military.
On October 7, 2023 Israel was attacked killing 1200 Israelis. Israel's response to the attack has been completely disproportionate and has now (as of June 2024) killed over 7,797 children. In the same time the conflict killed 53 children in Israel.
The most conservative estimate is that 7,797 Palestinian children have been killed, in the same time it is estimated that the total Israeli casualties; including military and civilian, including men, women, and children is 1200.
on April 24, 2024 with many thousands of Palestinian children already dead, the US gave 14 billion in aid to Israel
Neither US political party is stopping this.
Here are my sources, I am always interested to have other sources.
I tried to pick from a range of sources and tried to include any statistic that made my argument weakest. Most of the numbers come from June to August of 2024.
honey look, freedom of expression and the right to protest in America just
gotdropped.Let's not keep making the mistake of assuming Trump's tweets have force of law. He's just talking out of his ass again, just like he's not actually invading greenland and canada. Notice how he's talking about at least 4 different actions here, I'm pretty sure none of which he can actually do. 5 if you count thanking us for our attention to this matter (?). If Trump tries to do anything in this regard no judge* will uphold it.
*Obligatory other than Clarence Thomas
People in power do what he says. His word is de facto law, even if it’s illegal. It literally does not matter. You are in denial if you think he’s not going to get away with this.
Let's not keep making the mistake of assuming the rule of law matters at this point. If he does something and nobody stops it, its legality or lack there of is moot. If he says to do something and people do it and nobody stops him (or judge's rulings about it are ignored), then it doesn't matter that it was illegal.
I know you're just trying to get people to calm down, but at this point, people are right to be scared and right to think these things could actually come to pass considering it has happened before. Maybe it won't get that far... But plenty has already happened that should never have happened, and the US currently has a president who is illegally, specifically unconstitutionally, holding office and was allowed to be sworn in anyway, so it's probably not a good idea to assume this won't happen just because it's also unconstitutional.
Hey remember that wall that didn’t get built?
The fact that no one is trolling him about it shows how people are weirdly compliant about all this.
I swallowed my misgivings and voted Democrat, just like I've done at each election since I turned 18, but handwaving away valid criticisms is not how you get people to side with you. Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
I'm 100% for valid criticisms—I don't even consider myself a Democrat and I have no compunctions about criticizing them when I think they are wrong. But I'm pretty sure that meme is directed at those who withheld their vote.
It would be in theory, but mostly it's just spread around as how any protest against Israel cost the democrats the US election (despite how it was considered widely unpopular to support Israel's genocide by most democrats).
Unfortunately it may have.
A lot of voters are stupid. They see Israel=Bad, Biden/Kamala = pro-Israel, they stay home.
Then maybe Harris and her team should have listened to some feedback about their widely unpopular stance that seemed to somewhat equate them with the Republicans during an election which they absolutely couldn't afford to be seen as remotely similar to republicans.
Democrats are pragmatically there for the money. They aren't comically evil, but they are corrupt. They will throw an election before they ever give up AIPAC money and count on the next election swinging back to them. They get to sit back and watch the republicans be the bad guys and stir shit up for a few years. Then, when they get back in power, they fix the things that's don't make them money and look like he good guys but conveniently leave the unpopular policy the republicans enacted that makes them money and they don't have to look like the bad guys. They just look incompetent. But they aren't. This is all very purposeful. They love this dynamic. They benifit from it.
The democrats as they are for sure need to go. But we need to be more pragmatic ourselves about removing them instead of throwing elections to the republicans hoping it will teach the Democrats a lesson. Because it won't. We need to focus on getting a foothold and changing the party. And that means turning out to vote in every election no matter what. Vote third party. Vote write in. Vote whatever. But sitting out of elections to teach democrats a lesson just isn't going to do anything. It's just throwing away the small amount of political capital most people have. If we don't vote now its either corporate feudalism or civil war in the future.
Yeah I think they've realized over the decades that the needle swings like a metronome whether they try or not, especially thanks to obstructionists like Mitch McConnell ensuring trying won't go anywhere.
So they cash their paycheck, occasionally show up for votes, and play the stock market with knowledge they gain from privileged information.
I don't think so. Not that I have anything better to offer. My wife thinks Biden would've won because too many people stayed home, refusing to vote for a black woman. I, frankly, think the election was about the economy. If you look back over the elections, they are almost always about how people are doing financially. If they are scared or hurting, they will vote for change. If they are happy, they vote for the incumbent. My honest opinion is that there wasn't a scenario or candidate that would've changed Trump's victory.
What I am sure of is that in all of the states where Trump won (even Michigan), if every single person who withheld their vote due to Israel/Gaza had voted for Kamala, that wouldn't have been enough by itself to change the outcome. Certainly, that issue had an effect, but it didn't change the outcome by itself. We have to look beyond that.
But, still, if you did withhold your vote thinking you were fighting for Gaza, yeah I think you deserve to have your nose rubbed in that shit.
The problem is that those people (leftist prostest not-voters) most likely wouldn't have changed the results.
No, I agree. There weren't enough single-issue Gaza voters to have changed the outcome. It's still an idiotic position to have taken.
Shielding the Democrats from the pressure to adopt more popular positions lost this election.
No, they were never going to do that. They've already said that they learned their lesson, and in 2026, they're gonna double down on the losing strategy that they've been running since Clinton was in office and run on building the wall on the Mexican border and deporting immigrants to court the moderate Republican vote that doesn't exist and never would vote for them even if it did.
By the Presidential election, it's already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I've been voting. If you want change, it's only going to come by threatening the position of the people in charge of the party and replacing the old guard with people like AOC. Whoever gets elected President does neither of those things. Unless Krasnov declares the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and has them all arrested as political prisoners. But then we won't have to worry about voting ever again, just like he promised.
A few things.
Firstly, we can dismiss the notion that the candidate can't be moved. The citation for that is Biden in 2020, who effectively campaigned during the primary as a moderate Republican, and until the southern states which we're never going to go blue anyways weighed in, was getting his ass handed to him. The Sunday before Super Tuesday, the rat-fuckening, Oblivious Warren. All that old history.
And then something remarkable happened. Biden opened the doors to the tent and invited the progressive wing of the party in. He handed the Bernie-crats the platform and said "have at it hoss". And it worked. Instead of disenfranchising the activist base, he embraced them, or at least, extended an olive branch by giving them the platform, without which he assuredly would have lost.
So: Candidates can be moved.
Second:
Again. And I'm singling you out because you responded and well, here we are. This is an obtuse, bordering on bad faith interpretation of the argument being made. You aren't arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of voters who stayed home for Kamala but showed up for Biden. And you moralizing about an objectively misguided application of strategic voting didn't/ doesn't/ won't/ change their votes. When your "strategic voting" strategy results in losing you the election, explain to me how and why its strategic?
You don't/ can't move millions of voters to a new position. Or at least it hasn't been shown to be possible (2016, 2024). Asking voters to "vote against" instead of "voting for" doesn't work and we now have so many receipts, that they will write text books on the matter. What can be done, is that the candidate can be moved. Its also been shown through an evidentiary process to work.
To summarize, candidates can be moved. Biden moved and won an election because of it. When you moralize about your own, demonstrated-to-be-wrong conception of strategic voting, you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with the literally millions of people left on the table by the Democrats. A strategy that when examined before hand will clearly lose, the insistence of then implementing it becomes a "burn the world down" moralization to wash your own hands: Democratic voters who reliably show up, but did not, because the DNC got a hall pass from those making the exact arguments you are making here. They did not need to respond to criticism because this argument you are making shielded them. And it cost us all, practically everything.
Further evidence that the democrats can be moved if we don't let them maintain the delusion they can win while trying to be republicans: The entire party told Biden to drop out when it was clear he had no path to victory.
Sadly Kamala was allowed to believe she could win while embracing the same policies and messaging that killed the Biden campaign. Instead of screaming at the party to campaign on overwhelmingly popular left policy necessary to win the election and use every power at the democrat's disposal to accomplish it, blue MAGA told anyone pointing out that we're headed back towards the waterfall to shut up and paddle harder.
Are you actually trying to argue Biden would have won? Extra large oof.
If this is what you got from reading that, maybe have another at-bat.
Yep, I voted D like I always did...
But I spent a lot of time ringing any alarm bell I could find that all of Joe and Kamal's moves to the right was gonna cost us the election, and that the victory fund would lose the House and Senate.
I was right on all counts, but the people I was trying to explain it won't admit that reality proved them wrong.
There's no criticism for what the party did wrong, only anger at anyone with higher standards than the letter by the name.
Neoliberals want nothing as much as they want blindly loyal Dem voters, it's the only way most people ever hold their noses and vote for one. But rather than have a candidate dem voters want, they'd rather risk trump.
When they shut on voters like in that meme, they're telling us they have zero problem watching the country burn. They'd rather have trump than a Dem who agrees with Dem voters.
Not voting for them has never once, in the history of history, gotten them to change. It actually causes them to pull further right.
Yeah, they probably think, well the right is doing so well so that's probably what the country wants. We need to move further right!
Exactly.
Yep. Every time they've pulled farther right and lost, they've blamed the leftists for it for being too extremist in their policy demands or claiming that their issues aren't as important, like in the case with Millennials and housing costs, student debt, climate change, etc. Despite trying to make some headway on those issues, they've always refused to campaign on them.
No one is hand waving away anything by asking people to vote
The argument, was the least bad between two bads. This is way worse than the alternative would ever get
If you look carefully, you'll find statements about how "neither option affects [this particular thing] but we have the best chance of fixing it after the election if we still have a country".
It was never handwaved. It was the least-worse option with some kind of hope given that issue and a thousand others. How many times this has fucking been fucking explained and not fucking understood.
Uh yes it was definitely hand-waved away by some "if you look carefully". It was only the "least-worse option" because so many were successfully manipulated by the system into being placated with crumbs so they wouldn't revolt at the thousands of other reasons we've had for years to fight back against this shit, pushing the Overton window to the right in increments and leading folks to not use or even possess or be taught in the first place the critical thinking skills required to inform oneself and take steps to make positive change, in this system designed to intentionally misinform and mislead us and pit us against each other so we vote for the same rich white men responsible for perpetuating this system and the harm it brings to all of us, especially marginalized communities.
I would recommend to you (and anyone who is interested in informing themselves on what is being done to us) to read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. It details this process of incremental change, and some of the strategies and parties previously and currently involved in taking control of our government (or at this point more like what's left of it).
(For clarity: I'm not saying both parties are the same, although their goals, tactics, and policies seem less different to me as time passes; I'm not making any general statement passing blame to any group of voters or non-voters in this comment, because I believe the bulk of the responsibility lies on the system and those who hold sway over large parts of it in the form of currency or legislation, for example; I'm not denying or invalidating that you may feel this way and/or believe it is true, I'm taking issue with your statement that "it was never handwaved", because I most certainly saw that happen and know people who to this day are clinging to that sentiment; I'm not saying harm reduction isn't the move or good policy, it is but there has to simultaneously be work being done on reducing or removing the source of that harm)
Edit: sorry for run-on sentences. working on it gradually and open to feedback
They're already 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x better than Republicans. So someone would have to be pretty goddamn stupid not to vote for them when the options are them or Republicans.
The majority of the fault isn't on Democrats. It's on goddamn stupid braindead asshole American voters for being goddamn stupid braindead assholes.
how can this be quantified?
I'm not American so nobody got my vote, but seems to me like the issue is with the swathes of people choosing facism rather than progressives who chose not to vote.
Choosing how to act in a world like ours is tricky, anyone following a sense of right and wrong (even if I disagree with their judgement) instead of fear, hate, greed or whatever gets a gold star in my book.
Inaction is still a choice, though. I totally understand the sentiment behind that choice and even agree that we shouldn't be forced to choose genocide, but the alternative that we got is a man who not only wants the same genocide, but wants to accelerate it, put American boots on the ground to assist in it, and then turn the bloodied ground into resorts while also wanting to worsen life across the globe. So, by refusing to act, they didn't oppose that man getting into power. They cared so much about genocide that, ironically, they enabled making that genocide worse by not acting against that possibility.
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn't be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote? Of course, there's plenty there who can't due to things like gerrymandering, but there's a huge swathe of white suburbanites who simply prefer the status quo to actually improving things.
you can refuse to vote for a Democrat and still oppose the man getting into power.
But thanks to the two party system, what effect does it have? And I'm specifically talking about the voting day of the presidential election here, not primaries or other elections. Because that's where those efforts will have the most impact. Not that the Dems deigned to give us even the illusion of a primary this election (or in 2016, truthfully), but so many of these people seem to shake their fist once every 4 years and then go to sleep like cicadas awaiting the next presidential election.
I don't blame people for hating the weak candidates that the Dems consistently push forward to maintain the old guards' leadership positions, but I do blame them for looking at the alternative and saying "I'm okay with the possibility of that man winning if I don't vote or vote third party." The chance of a Trump victory and all that it entailed was a line in the sand that they were willing to cross.
As a trans woman, I blame them for saying, "Your life is not worth biting the bullet for."
that chance was thrust upon all of us. accepting reality doesn't make him acceptable.
Yet refusing to accept the reality of mathematics that showed that, in a FPTP system, not voting for a viable candidate opposing a fascist only helps the fascist is acceptable? Nah. The blood is on the hands of both dems and non-voters. Non-voters/protest voters don't give a fuck about trans people, as shown by their actions.
prove it
So it seems like you fully understand the flaws of First past the post voting. Have you done anything to fix it? Are the democrats doing anything to fix it? Nows the time. Not during the election
support your claim
I don't believe voting for Democrats is an effective way to save anyone's life.
whether I vote for Dems or no, I'm not ok with republican candidates.
Sounds like First-past-the-post voting doesn't properly represent the population. Let's try a new electoral system to fix this. The people of Alaska switched to Ranked Choice and they had a referendum last election to go back to FPTP voting, and they didn't want to.
::: spoiler Videos on alternative voting systems
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
I absolutely agree, though I know of at least one other place that tried it and had issues because nobody knew who the candidates were or what their positions were, but IIRC, there was some context to it that made it a "well, of course they had problems" situation instead of people just being too lazy to read up on the candidates (though that is a very real but solvable issue). Like there were 10 districts on the ballot with 6 open seats in each, and they had about 30 candidates per district or something crazy like that.
I feel a lot of people do a lot to justify stupid behaviour. "Saving is too hard" or "exercise is too hard". There's legit reasons to not be able to save, or exercise or being able to vote 🤨.
However there's a lot of bullshit that people were spouting. It's either a coordinated campaign or just dumb shit. What annoys me is everyone piling on Joe and then they did what people wanted and swapped to Kamala and they're still upset that the Dems "don't listen". Whatever, they're all full of it.
I fucking hate the Democrats but you have to be completely psycho to justify not-voting for them.
To be clear, I'm Canadian and I'm directly impacted by this now. So fuck all of those people.
Why are we still talking about this? It's over, and we can't undo the results.
While I did vote blue conservative (for the last time), they were not worthy of that vote because they did not represent me. That's how representative democracy works. What you advocate for is not representative democracy, it is a hostage situation and should be treated like the crisis that that entails.
Why are you okay with people being underrepresented at the voting booth? Are you actively working to replace First Past the Post voting in your state? People should have the freedom to vote for the candidates they believe are best, while still ensuring their votes count against those they don’t want in office.
It's not as though democrats are just now learning of the mathematical flaws of FPTP. Every election I've seen the same bullshit excuses to take people's inalienable right to vote how they want. Democrats in blue states made a choice to leave a huge portion of the population unrepresented, all for safe states and easy elections.
We don’t need to wait for a miracle from Congress, we can pass election reform one state at a time. Should we have more elections, we must remove the democratic monopoly on this fight against the republicans. Don't worry, blue conservative, you will be free to vote for your preference under a more representative electoral system. Because who would want to deny someone the right to vote for the person they feel is best? You apparently.
Alaska has already abolished FPTP voting. After Ranked Choice Voting kept Sarah Palin out of office, Alaskan Republicans tried to pass a referendum to revert to FPTP, but the people voted to keep Ranked Choice. Why would you want to use the same voting system that Republicans favor? Do you support democracy, or do you get off on forcing people unrepresented in government to vote for your preference?
::: spoiler Videos on alternative voting systems
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
Your comment's downvotes = how many profoundly stupid people who STILL haven't learned from their mistake there are out there.
Refusal to hold themselves accountable for their own actions/inactions is a trait they share with mainline MAGA.
I can't be accountable for other people's votes.
At the time I read your comment.
Nobody pushing genocide is worthy of votes or support.
It was incumbent on Dems to EARN votes, and they failed spectacularly. You’re wrong to try blaming voters for failings of our corrupt politicians.
So this includes trump for his support of two separate groups that have demonstrated willingness to commit genocide.
Will you still be saying that when Trump puts a resort in Gaza?
Trump has made it crystal clear: He plans for the complete and total ethnuc cleansing of Gaza. All Palestinians will be killed or removed
That's what Arab and Palestinian Americans chose when they voted for Trump
Yes. Will you refuse to demand electoral reform in your state so the people of this nation can vote outside the two party system without a spoiler effect? Will you refuse to do anything about those who are without representation? Will you refuse democracy?
Virtue signaling doesn't wash blood off your hands sweetie
Imagine thinking 5 people on the internet caused Trump to win.
They only had $1,500,000,00 to spend on Biden/Harris....
How is that supposed to counter the majority of Dem voters not wanting the Dem candidate?
What are they supposed to do?
Run a fair primary, back the winning candidate in the general, and stop bankrupting state parties?!
George Clooney doesn't eat dinner for free ya know....
zuck, Elon, bezos.... those three are on the internet. got 2 more?
Ahh. This bullshit trope from the class of people basically responsible for Trump winning the 2024 election.
Sorry, did you just blame the people who didn’t vote for Trump for being responsible for Trump being president? Interesting mental gymnastics there…
It's a very popular sentiment on Reddit and Lemmy, in my experience, to blame non voters as much as or even more than Trump voters.
But you don't know who non voters would have voted for. A study of non voters in 2020 showed a near even split, so it's nothing but pointless speculation to blame people who didn't vote. And I say this as someone who actually supports compulsory voting. I just find it much more productive, and accurate, to lay blame on those who we do know, for sure, actually voted for this result.
Wait, this seems silly. You are in effect saying that it's wrong to blame those who stayed home because some of them would have voted for trump? Like, we'd still blame those people too had they actually voted trumo.
The blame isn't just because you voted for trump it is because you didn't try to stop him, which applies both to those who voted for him and those who didn't vote.
Those who blame the nonvoters for Trump winning are implying that had they voted, Trump would have lost. We cannot know that and I do not find it productive. Again, I actually am in favour of compulsory voting, so urging people to vote is a good thing that I'm very much for. But I'm not going to blame those who didn't vote for Trump for Trump winning.
Which is a fantastic way to get people to care more about politics
Maybe getting rid of social security, freedom of speech, and the national parks will do the job.
There are no mental gymnastics, and unless you've been absent in the debate since it began in 2023, it's been one conversation regarding the direction of the Democratic party, with effectively two camps.
The first camp, effectively taking the party line and acting as cheerleaders of the DNC, have taken a "No critisism of the Democratic Party is acceptable; voters need to move to the positions of the DNC" approach.
The second camp took a "The DNC needs to be better and acknowledge it's shortcomings, and make changes when necessary. The DNC needs to align itself with DNC voters and the party base."
The first camp, for the first 8 months of 2024, insisted we had to run Joe Biden. That there were no other possibilities, options, or potential outcomes. They defended the approach the DNC took to the primary process, which was by any measure, the least democratic primary they party had ever held.
The second camp raged at the preposterous farce which was the DNC primary. They pointed out that Bidens poll numbers were so bad he basically had no chance of winning. That by insisting on this losing strategy we were losing critical time.
Bans were made, here, regarding this debate. And the first camp was wrong. There was another way possible.
After the candidates were swapped the first camp further insured that people just needed to move to where the DNC was, after taking effectively a pro genocide, Republican lite campaign philosophy as an outcome of the convention.
The second camp pointed out that this would lose the DNC the election, that we needed our focus to be on moving the candidate to a more popular, more electable position.
The first camp won the argument and lost us all the war, because their fundamental belief in what is being argued and whom they are arguing with is wrong. The first camp is responsible for the millions of votes difference between Kamala and Biden, because they insisted on this losing strategy.
I'm sure the first camp exists, but you should not imply that everyone who voted Democrat and wanted people to vote Democrat was that. I did that, and I encourage everyone to criticize their horrible decisions and actions, of which there are depressingly many.
I'd love it if we pressured them to not be quite as horrible, but at the same time I did not want the Republican party to win control because I knew they'd be worse for people in almost every way. And now, as a trans person, I have to worry about what I won't be allowed to do anymore, or how they'll try to make my life worse just for existing. Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
I just want to point out, that you are making this about me as the rhetorician, when I haven't even weighed in with my position. Its not me you are arguing with when it comes to the application of strategy; its the millions of voters for whom them sacrificing their ideals to get a milquetoast Democrat, pro-genoicde, draconian border policy, democrat into office doesn't work.
This is about a basic understanding of how the table is set, and no amount of willing the environment one finds themselves in changes that. Its like '16 Hillary supporters whining about winning the popular vote. The people who were out their using the argument of "strategic voting" to shield the candidates deeply unpopular positions among democratic voters did real significant harm this election cycle. If your strategy doesn't or can't result in a specific outcome, can we really call it strategic?
My point is that the chiding of voters for not doing the job of the candidate is a way of morally washing ones hands of a strategy that genuinely hurt the candidates ability to get elected.
This is fucking despicable.
We have a 2 party system. Does that suck? Yes.
Should we fight to change it? Yes.
Does that give anyone an excuse for helping elect a fascist, racist, xenophobic, physchopath who is in the pocket of a foreign enemy leader by not voting for Kamala?? Fuck no. You're out of your mind.
within the context of federal elections as operated in 2024, it's certainly not the fucking fault of the people who were able to recognize that letting Putin's puppet in the office of the president for a second time to subsequently leave Ukraine to fend for itself and to ensure a genocide in Palestine was the worse of the 2 possible outcomes.
Giving in and voting center left establishment to ensure a win is a much better poison than what we have now. anyone who says otherwise is trying to "morally wash their hands" of the blood that's being spilled in Ukraine and Gaza and domestically.
The people who didn't vote because the DNC chose an establishment dem to replace Biden are narcissistic or stupid.
Trans people, gay people, immigrants, women, elderly people on social security fixed income, 1000s of workers in industries who will face layoffs in the face of these tariffs, farmers who are losing 2 billion (40% of the food USAID gives out comes from purchases from us farmers) in USAID food purchases per year, children whose education will be forever altered will all be much happier knowing those self righteous progressives stuck to their guns and didn't compromise their morals as they get persecuted under this administration.
WELL FUCKING DONE GUYS. Don't break your arms jacking yourselves off.
You aren't arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of people who found your rhetoric insufficient and a pro genocide stance unacceptable.
If you want to continue to be the party of "loser Democrats", just keep doing and thinking acting the same way you are presenting yourself in that comment.
When you behaved this way, when this was the rhetoric you used to convince people to vote Democrat, you did real fucking damage, and are in some small way responsible for Trump.
When your "strategy" has the obvious and demonstrated result of the opposite effect to what you want, it's not strategic.
Yeah, I've given some thought to what I'll do in the next election cycle, and I just don't know. I can wish that people would think like me, but I've seen enough evidence from several elections that that's not gonna happen.
That makes me feel a bit hopeless, that we're doomed to the worst politicians winning and ratcheting the US further right, and that I will not be safe to live here for a long time. I know there's organizations I can get involved with, but I really struggle to commit time to anything, and I just feel isolated from everyone (yay social atomization). I think my best bet is giving up the fight and just leaving the country.
Makes sense; sow further division in the groups who don’t like Trump so there’s less opposition to him.
That division is much, much older. The beltway is full of people who benefit from corporations or come from wealthy families and are materially aligned against the working class, and their ideology reflects this. These people as a group stand to lose more from the democrats moving to the left and hurting the bourgeoisie than winning than staying in the middle and losing.
This is a common dynamic historically; liberals in power need the people to maintain power, but their interests aren't aligned with the people, so they pass policies that marginalize their own base of support, and so the conservatives take power and then do counterrevolution.
If false dichotomy was a person you'd be it
if you want to keep losing elections, keep at it.
Maybe democrats want to lose. Why else would they not invite 3rd parties to participate of equal footing. Why would they say no to multiple chances at beating the republicans? Why would they say no to increased voter participation and the free votes that come along side that.
Where is the urgency during the election? Where is the urgency now? Do they not believe what they've been saying about the republicans this whole time?
3rd parties cannibalize votes from which ever majority party it aligns closest with. That's the problem with our system. Your comment makes no sense I'm the context of current voting rules.
Ranked choice voting would help immensely and then your tongue in cheek rhetorical questions would make sense, but until then the answer is obvious. The Dems don't want that because it takes votes from them.
That's what this meme does.
“…illegal protest…”?
Oh right, the US Constitution doesn’t exist any more.
This is the same as the Zelensky trap. They're going to cut federal funding regardless. The just plan on getting you to bend the knee before hand.
This exactly. Higher education hurts them in the long run so it was never going to get a pass. It’ll be gutted so that private schools can take over. This is just a way to put the blame on the universities and students who don’t bend to their will.
Maybe. If it resists. If it fails to resist it will be turned into an institution responsible for communicating a fascist ideology.
1st ammendment to the constitution since conservatives love to claim they support it
Ah! But it says "congress shall make no law," not that "the president shall tweet no bullshit!"
tbh, the founding fathers did fuck this up quite bad, by not including this
The constitution also didn't say "the president shall give a shit about the law"
Rookie mistake, IMO
It literally did, minus your contemporary idiom:
(It's called the "take care clause" and is part of Article II, Section 3, in case anybody wants to look it up.)
Not that it matters anymore, after Trump v. United States.
It was the first time they were writing a constitution. Obviously they were rookies
Second. The Articles of Confederation was first and failed.
Bold of you to assume that the US is a country still under the rule.of law.
Nah I'm pretty sure the 1st amendment just says I can say the N word /s
Laws only matter if they are enforced.
The right wing doesn't care about law or consistency. They care about in-groups to protect and out groups to bind.
If "how do treat strangers" is a viable metric for assessing if someone is a good person or not, the the right wing are not good people.
Yeah but they're gonna rewrite the constitution, it's gonna be the best constitution the founding fathers will be jealous they didn't come up with this thing it's gonna be airtight and on the blockchain
Oh, we don't use that outdated piece of paper any more, haven't you heard?
Yeah, it's way too woke. Same with Jesus.
Congress isn't making a law. Instead, the President is committing treason while his party pretends not to notice and the other party flops around like a dead fish.
That's not a problem if executive orders are treated as law; the first amendment doesn't curtail the president's power.
Mask up. Leave your phones at home. Break shit.
What's an illegal protest? I thought first amendment speech covered that
Also, how can he expel a student from a school he doesn't control? or does he mean expel students from the country?
This happened before: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl
She's bae.
RIP hero
Also, happening right now in russia with any anti-war protests
I'm more of a Black Orchestra but big props to the White Rose
The amount of times I've heard salty right wing grifters complain about Orwellian censorship on literally everything. But I guess it's just fine if cult leader Trump does it, because he stands for what's right and sticks it to those progressive plebs, right?
That's the only part here anyone needs to know.
He'll threaten to pull funding for his stupid pet issues first, then pull it anyways for everyone else.
Therefore, fucking ignore his threats, nothing you can do will ever appease him and he will go back on his own word like it's a bodily function.
Ill do whatever the fuck I want bitch, shut the fuck up and go suck Elons dick.
Does "NO MASKS" mean that choosing to wear a mask to protect your health is now forbidden at colleges or is there another meaning that I don't understand? It is so random and has nothing to do with the rest of the post except for being "woke".
Probably making wearing any mask while protesting illegal, regardless of the legality of the protest itself.
There's a lot of things he's not supposed to be able to do.
Until America actually does anything about it; he's got free rein to do whatever the hell he wants.
I live in the SW, where bandanas are part of our cultural heritage. I should go pass out bandanas at our state colleges and universities.
He’s not supposed to be able to. We’ll see if the administration follows his orders or the existing law, or if they’ll listen to court orders. My hopes are, unfortunately, not high.
Unless it's the proud boys with their uniforms, obviously.
Yeah a lot of states passed "you must carry a doctor's note to wear a mask in public" laws during COVID.
I've written to my Republican state lawmaker only to receive a form reply.
Wouldn't surprise me if they were STILL bitching about having been forced to wear masks 5 years ago lmaooo
Masks are for hiding your identity.
But perhaps the double context is intentional.
For loads of clinically vulnerable people, the right to protest is dependent on the right to mask. You can only risk going to a crowded protest if you’re allowed to use protective measures to prevent infections.
Not random, masks make it harder for the facial recognition cameras.
Ah yes, that free speech that Musk is always taking about.
Hey Muricans, this is what you wanted and voted for (or could't be bother voting to prevent)... enjoy
or, hit the streets and remove the fascist gov you elected
This is absolutely absurd. People have a right to a lawful assembly.
Anyone supporting this guy is insane. Literally trying to become an emperor
What does he think "illegal" means? Is he getting rid of the first amendment?
Well there you go kids, he just explicitly named exactly all the things you should be doing.
They want violence.
I want violence.
Be the change you want to see?
HEAR, HEAR! And happy cake day.
Safety first. :)
I didn't ask how big the room was, I said I cast FIREBALL!
no one wanted my memes before the election
Happy cake day!
Putin sure wants the US to tear itself apart and sever ties with western allies. And what's the Trump administration doing again...?
this is his plan all alone, one of inner circle wrote the book on geopolitics, and even in the 80 they deemed trump to a potential useful president one day.
Then they came from the students, and I watched my parents still beg for more fascism because they thought they were going to be billionaires any day now
Well that's easy. The protests aren't illegal. Therefore this amounts to nothing.
Fuck this dude.
I remember when the Democrats brought down the hammer hard on anti-genocide protestors in universities. Trump is doing the same, but expanding it to all protests.
May 10, 2024 Map: Where university protesters have been arrested across the United States
Isn't this the exact type of thing the 2nd Amendment types were supposed to have their guns and militia to guard against?
I didn’t think it was possible to hate this fucker more and more each day and yet here we are.
ive seen a lot of nazi protesters with masks on though. what about those cunts?
Blue states need to start up their own shadow government, fund their own shit.
Californian here.
We should stop paying federal taxes.
We have a ton of money, a ton of military installations, and 1 in 8 Americans IS a Californian. Washington and Oregon join us, and we'd be in even better shape. Canada can get in on the action too.
A felon rapist traitor and his traitor party is making our Constitution irrelevant. Time to start looking out for ourselves.
WA state here - it's ridiculous that I have to subsidize chuds in Mississippi and Louisiana when they won't even give their citizens human rights. they're all about fiscal responsibility until it comes to paying their own fucking bills.
edit: love the chudvotes, do we have some cranky MS and LA types? pay your fucking bills jerkfaces. fuck, half your budgets come from federal funds we pour more into.
Federal taxes don't actually work that way. The federal government prints its own money. All taxes effectively go into a giant shredder and are unrelated to spending.
I don’t even know where to begin correcting such an insane statement. Why do you think k taxes are collected if it just gets shredded? Sadistic pleasure?
He makes a good point, it's just to balance the inflation. Take the tax money to offset the federal reserve printing swathes of money to fund government endeavors.
It's a real theory. From what I understand though the shredder is a thought experiment, not meant to be taken seriously. They do acknowledge that you have to receive money to spend money. they just think of it like a balancing act instead of a 1 to 1 relationship.
You don't need to receive money to spend money if you print money. The purpose of taxation is to reduce the monetary supply.
In one specific economic theory.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm pointing out that it's a whole debate.
You guys need to go hang with Hawaii. Alaska can come too.
THE END
It’s an old meme, but it checks out.
"But I em le' tiiiired..."
"Zen take a nap...ZEN FIRE ZE MISSLEZ!!"
If we are going to do a tax protest we will need some kind of guarantees from the state government. Otherwise going to war with the IRS will not work. The IRS always wins.
I'm not sure that's feasible, since the states don't just sign a check to the Feds once a year, it's paid via payroll taxes. To my knowledge, there is no kind of mechanism for entire states to collectively refuse payment.
isn't that kind of the idea of states? Them having their own budgets?
Well, yes, but I meant they to pool their budgets amongst themselves, like a mini federal government.
That costs money in state taxes, and the GOP is working on reducing the state and local tax deductions in the federal tax code. Making states who are trying to create good living conditions for their citizens prohibitively expensive to live in. It's horse shit.
Americans, you are living under a fascist regime.
We are very aware.
Ah there goes another thing that distinguished the USA from China and Russia.
There are manifestation which are legal, even with masks, in the US
God I hope not.
EDIT - It's real.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114104167452161158
Archived link so we do not give him traffic.
https://archive.is/vzZ8k
Got a good person out there mirroring those “Truths” too
This one’s at:
https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/29946
Bless.
"illegal protests" Pretty sure Freedom of Speech and Assembly is part of the first amendment. He's a putz
At this point and with all these new and ilogical rules, Trump is basically Dolores Umbridge!
We need a giant to take him down!
Two minutes later: we don't have enough skilled people to make Teslas and computer chips.
Four minutes later: I have an idea, let's hire immigrants.
Six minutes later: we hate immigrants, they are stealing our jobs.
Let me see, USA becoming a dictatorship... BINGO!
This is something that only the Judiciary can declare (by failing to do anything), so I think it takes more than a few weeks.
But the Executive sure is working towards it.
The judiciary only has power if the executive accepts that it has power.
So much for the 1st Amendment. Guess that's only valid when it fuels the Trumpsterfire.
“Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Every time I scroll past this image, that’s the line that gets me. Bold threatening declaration by fascist dictator, then ends like a work email reminding you not to leave food in the cafeteria fridge over the weekend.
Look at what happens when you don’t burn the fascist the moment it pops up. It will get worse and then even more worse.
I wish the non-mouth breathing half of the US the best of luck.
Last time I checked, people had a right to peaceful assembly and to protest.
Sound alot like how russia works.
What can you say to that? The Americans knew what they were getting into. They elected a fascist to power who is abolishing democracy. In case you didn't know it yet, let me tell you: America is on the way to becoming a dictatorship.
Again. Right from the play book
1st4th5th6th8th14thIllegal protests.
Okay so since protests are an expression of opinion, and you got that pesky first amendment, all protests are legal, so this tweet is a nothing burger.
What is an illegal protest?
No masks, says the guy with the supporters wearing masks and carrying nazi flags
I used to be the pride of my family for having finished college. Now it's demonized by them.
I feel for the students of today. College was an important time for me. I experienced a lot of new ideas, my mind was opened. I didn't get to do much in grad school, but my first four years of college changed me and I wouldn't be the same without those experiences. The way the situation is escalating we may see colleges completely locked down or even abolished.
So we do it more.
Camera-shy hoodie
We need something like this for daytime.
Also, read up on what they are ultimately going for: Eliminating the First Amendment
Trump supporters: "that's fine, the president isn't congress"
GG America. You better gear up for your own Maidan soon enough if you want to keep your rights.
I'm not in his district but I was so impressed by Rep. AL Green's (https://algreen.house.gov/about) courage in standing up to and calling out Krasnov's and the GOP's lies yesterday that I wanted to donate some money. Unlike all the impotent, sclerotic clowns who call themselves the Dem "leadership" and constantly ask me for money whilst the most they do are write "Strongly worded letters" and finger wagging, Rep. Green's website was all about service to his district. I literally could not find a way to donate to him. But he is now a hero of mine. If only HE or one of the few with his courage and fire were leading the Dems. I wish he were 20 years younger. He'd have made a great president.
The American people need to take the French route. “Off with their heads!”
But yesterday he said that free speech was back?
Man, I wish this country still had the balls to deal with traitors the way they're supposed to be dealt with.
American university students can protest for weeks over Palestine, but don’t show up when their own country is taken over by a fascist.
How many universities will abandon free speech rights for 10% of their budget? Hard to say, many abandoned them for less when students were protesting genocide.
I'm masking and spray painting cameras. Cry about it, butterball.
Do not comply in advance.
Do not comply after the fact either.
We need to be taking to the streets now. He’s purging the military so when we finally do there won’t be any dissent when he orders them to flatten us.
The country that did the Million Man March would rather cuck for this guy now.
Yes daddy. Ok daddy. You’re so manly we love you.
I am not American, I was in the border of anarchism before all this but now I am full anarchist.
Thanks Orange man.
We really need to tax the mega rich. I compiled this list of numbers after the President speech last night, it's kinda wild:
(List of Mentioned Trump Cuts)
Woah america, are you alright?
Checks fascist handbook. Jup. Checks out.
So what about legal protests?
One step closer to dictatorship
Yeah, okay. With a pandemic on?
You gotta at least wear a surgical mask in public for your health, in minecraft.
Your doctor could probably write you a recommendation, prior to the protest, in case you have any legal issues.
Americans, come to Europe !
you'll be treated like human beings here
Good luck stopping college kids from protesting. I eagerly await the lawsuit that comes out of him trying.
Taken right out from a latin america's dictator playbook.
truly a champion for free speech 🤡
He love the uneducated
Illegal protests? Isn't protesting legal? Freedom of speech and all that...
Oh so only Trump has the right to stage protes.... oh I mean storm the capitol
You heard the man, fire any employee and expel any student who participated in the January 6 insurrection.
some colleges in the west are already suffering from low enrollment as it is to the point they had to slash faculty and classes depending on the field, and some schools are even worst off(this is mostly for state univ that arnt very prestigious), more than likely he will do this to most liberal colleges, and it will quickly depopulate the already dwindling student body in some schools. also the one-to-punch of anti-intellectual and the funding for research is also in jeopardy. more expensive schools with more prestige much be able to weather this, since they are less likely to be affected by these cuts that the schools are going through currently at lower levels.
Yes, fuck this. And fuck the previous guy and every president before that.
Trump has a team of scientists sitting in a lab cooking up the worst possible tweet in response to every issue.
I'm so fkng tired to see American politics even on the salad.
Too bad Dems just set the precedent for him to do this. And make no mistake, they will help Trump serve Israel before they help us oppose him.
How much for our first amendment? .....that'll be $24 billon please! You get the presidency too if you're famous. Feel free to grab people by their pussy. Enjoy!
Land of the free, eh?
FrEeDOm!
King Trump be like
Well, protests aren't illegal, so there's nothing to worry about, right?
"You know the best strategy to counter this is to do nothing, it will burn itself out after awhile. If a few people die or get imprisoned well that's okay as long as I don't have to do anything difficult or will affect my portfolio and control. "
obviously I made this quote up but it is how I feel about the people in power that say they are against this administration but really are doing jack shit to support or engage the population. Sure there are some that are doing somethings and I appreciate that, but fuck man do most of the "opposition" party really not have a spine? Like what the fuck, there are millions of citizens that are genuinely scared for their life and freedom and all we are getting is crickets...
Don't worry! Once the people who Defend the Constitution after SCORES OF 6 YEAR OLDS GET MOWED DOWN BY A GUNMAN hear about this they'll be PISSED and Take Action!
Finally, free speech! (/s, obv)
Now apply that law retroactively to catch all women's March supporters cuz fuck women right? And then all the other civil rights matches before women's. They're gonna catch me for protesting migrants Rights during prop 187?? Back in 1998? Those were the days...just the government trying to fuck up the world slowly with room for lube. Trump is power tool going full send after everyone's rights. WTF get the guy out already!!!!
Trump's such a petty bitch
Democrazzzymaxxing
guns
Fuck my student loans then. Seriously. Fuck you. Fuck you Drumpf. Fuck you. Aaahhhh! Asshole!
But this isn't really a meme. Just a screenshot of madness.
“Have fun!”
What’s our over/under for how long until the executive order that conveniently pushes the boundaries of what “illegal” is.
I dare you, you fat fuck. Do it. Arrest a citizen for exercising free speech. I want to see that second amendment used on you, you wannabe king.
"Guess I will just get sick and fucking die."
-Everyone with an autoimmune disease
He knows people can see this, right?
is this a joke? or actually posted?
wtf? seriously....
Sure are a lot of suckers making policy over in the USA at the moment...
Is this really a science meme?
Is the President trying to tell private institutions who they can do business with?
Why I never!
Third times the charm. C’mon someone!
Fuck this is correct.
The fool is literally begging someone to put him out of our misery
Pretty sure the colleges were doing this on their on volition. No need to reiterate president trump, they have the situation under control.
mr. grab-em-by-the-funding doing his thing.
Full on free speech is dead if this is the norm, fuck them keep up the protests
Lol who is this guy, the chief of police?
Hey, completely unrelated note, who here has watched Winter on Fire?
True Terrorism
This is really real? Holy shit
Cool, when's the protest hosted by college students? I'll go too.
Make sure to keep blaming "rednecks" and "hillbillies", and not the billionaire backers of MAGA who own various media outlets and some of the largest companies in the world.
Stay in your lane, Tim.
Trump is following Hitler's cookbook: change the schools, small kids are easier to form/change than adults. I only hope teachers keep teaching what is honest and good!
There is no such thing as an illegal protest… especially in the US. The US prides itself to the rest of the world about its people’s freedom and liberties. So don’t give any attention to such nonsense as it will only give it power. Be mindful of where & what you give your power to.. it’s what they feed off. Just blow them away with your breath with a gentle whisper of “fuck off” as you exhale 🌬️
I wonder how will be the US's method for 'accidental demise' moving foward.
Defenestration is already taken by Russia, but Trump is not that original, so I'm guessing he'll use the same method, considering he's working form Putin and all.
The guy of "freedom of speech", everybody!
Trump needs to get a treatment of his own!
So make sure you protest off campus so the school can't be blamed!
Jesus wept.
If only y'all had some sort of constitution with some sort of amendment that ment you had free speech and another that said you had weapons with which to defend said constitution.
LOL
...i mean you gotta give the orange one credit for making a show every day.
In no way am I defending this behavior but wouldn't this only apply to public universities and colleges? The many that are technically private property can entirely ignore this correct?
science meme? ok, i'll bite. fuck this indeed, imagine being Jewish in the past year, and being harassed and bullied from the "from the river to the sea" folks on campus, made to feel unsafe and targeted, not because you're Israeli, but simply because you're Jewish, and when you complain, being met with feckless and indignant school administration saying "free speech bro". broken clock right twice a day, and all that. time to make American Jihadis, and the nihilist leftists that support them, think twice, about what it's going to cost them to continue to terrorize Jews. this all could have been self policed, limits placed internally at just how far and how intense the "protests" were allowed to become, but it was an orgy of Antisemitism, and now, at least this Jew, is glad the hammer is coming down, though I wish it were from someone else, i'm glad for it just the same
I mean, fuck antisemitism in any form, obviously...
...but I'm going to say "allow fascists to eliminate freedom of protest" has a spotty track record improving that particular issue.
This guy is in power in no small part due to whatever definition for not-fascist Americans you want to use not showing up because they feel compromise is beneath them. Maybe it's time to learn that lesson.
Well, no, the time to learn that lesson was November. I guess it's finding out time. For people too rightfully indignant about the genocide in Gaza to look past their own noses and to people in your situation alike, I'm afraid.
Friendly reminder that Trump refused to condemn a group of white supremacists chanting "Jews will not replace us".
He is not on your side. And, if history is any indication, allowing government to control speech and expression by fascist means is much more dangerous to Jews than any group of student protesters could ever be.
Mod reminder to keep it civil and no personal attacks when you reply to this. This person has had bad experiences, remember the human. Please report any personal attacks.
PS: Remember, if you want to convince people you need to meet them where they are. This person is your neighbor, not your enemy.
This position is interesting. It's echoed in articles like:
https://jewishjournal.com/culture/first_person/300258/when-the-chicken-votes-for-colonel-sanders/
And they assert this bit of history as evidence:
To me, it sounds like the argument is being framed as "us" Jews and "them" Jews making the mistake of trying to homogenize. That's tremendously ironic, as this type of thinking is exactly what led them to support Nazi Germany. The exact kind of language Trump use, aggressive, bombastic pursuit of "agitators" as undesirables, of ignoring antisemites and bigots Trump associates himself with, of dismissing his speech as a "rhetorical tool," is what German Jewish groups believed would protect them... Until Nazis came for them, too.
Maybe antisemetic violence should be curbed, but you should consider what's actually causing it, and how that "curbing" will be done.
"The Jews are the cause of Antisemitism" yes, how novel, why didn't anyone else think of that, oh, that's right, literally every other band of Antisemites throughout all time have used that line of reasoning,"why can't the Jews, you know, be less Jewish, we are absolutely within our rights to terrorize them until they see the light". "Maybe antisemitic violence should be curbed" "Maybe". Quite.
I'm sure it must be a stressful time for Jewish people. All hate crime is horrible. Many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, oppose the actions of Israel.
I do hope the protests, to stop US arms being sent to Israel, grow in strength. And I do what I can personally to help.
When looking at the numbers its no exaggeration to say that the Palestinian people are being slaughtered by the Israel military.
Here are my sources, I am always interested to have other sources.