As America backslides into fascism and authoritarian consolidation, what do you think should be done to course correct?
For inspiration you can look into what the countries the US impacted dictatorships in did
I think what Germany did to get corporate money out of government is miniscule to what America will have to do.
Probably having time off of work and not being too tired from living paycheck to paycheck unfortunately.
They need to protest. REALLY protest. General strikes, obstruction, shut down everything. You can’t walk around with a sign on a weekend once a month when it’s nice outside and expect a wannabe dictator will back down. They are spendinrg every minute of every day stripping away your democracy and you have to fight back with the same intensity.
Look at Nepal. France. Italy. They didn’t ask their government to listen. They MADE them. It’s YOUR country! Fight for it!
Yeah but Netflix has some shows I need to watch and I can’t do that from jail, soooo… fascism I guess.
More like food is expensive as hell and so I can’t really afford to loose my pay check. Which is why organizing often starts as mutual aide.
And advocating for a general strike is ILLEGAL and a very easy charge in Trump’s America at this point.
I’ve been rolling around forums and whatnot to see the interest for such topics, and they seem high, but no one is talking about what I’m supposed to do to pay for my pets and apartment when I have 0 support structures in a deeply red state. They don’t treat the homeless very well here, and it’s freezing half the year.
Not that you’re saying it’s easy, you rightly pointed out food too. I just wish there were more resources, or ways to get connected. My community does the No Kings protests, but most of them balked at the Kirk shooting so they’re not quite radicalized enough for the other actions that a not-entirely-peaceful protest would bring.
Personally, I think more of use should do little things, like damage government buildings, infrastructure, etc. primarily of right wing assets. You can get a used paintball gun pretty cheep, and in the dead of night from far away you could pelt a building with red paint relatively quiet.
Paintball guns are not exactly quiet and don’t have sufficient range to even allow you to stand outside the parking lot of most Federal buildings and still reach them, let alone outside of the purview of their security cameras. When you’re caught you’ll inevitably be holding a Gun Shaped Object, which is unlikely to go down well. I admire the spirit, but I’d advise you to think about that one a smidge harder, if I were you.
If you’re going to sabotage, then sabotage. Don’t go for middle school level vandalism pranks.
Paintball trebuchet it is then
I’m down. How many 55 gallon drums full of 'em are we chucking?
Give me an example of an act that would meet your qualifications
America won’t course-correct until it is forced to do so.
The political establishment is so totally insulated in a media bubble that there’s no way to reach them, internal pressures can be safely ignored. Only external pressure can change this country now.
No idea. ICE is blatantly breaking the law and local police are not arresting them.
There are no laws; we made the whole thing up
Consider Spain, Argentina, France, Italy, Libya, Panama, Syria, Germany
The only thing that works once these fools get entrenched into the political machine is a good old fashioned ass whoopin.
FWIW this is why I think it’s so important to keep the farmers and union workers on our side. They are the means by which everything else is built upon. If they’re on the other side, well then the machine can keep on grinding.
Hey silver lining, Trump seems to be doing a really good job of pissing off the military leadership and the common soldiers as well. The only ones that are actually supporting him are nut jobs, the grifters who think they can use him, and executives who think they can squeeze more profit out by crawling up his ass.
As for farmers that’s kind of a mixed bag. The problem isn’t so much that they’ll support him as it is that there might not be many of them left. Trumps policies are bankrupting farmers at a record rate and their farms are being snapped up by foreign holding companies. Most of them are going to end up working farms they no longer own.
Most of them are going to end up working farms they no longer own.
A lot of farmers are killing themselves. The US will have to give migrant workers a path in - which is kind of big picture funny.
If I recall, killing Nazis worked in WWII.
Except we didn’t kill any American Nazis, we just left them alone to fester
As part of an organized war between opposing imperialist nations. I’m not seeing how that’s going to happen here.
Clearly we need a civil war
You’d need to recruit a significant proportion of the military for that to work. It didn’t go so hot for the last guys that tried this.
The two key turning points are going to be the midterms and when it comes time for the next election. Depending on how those events go, and if Trump hasn’t died at some point in the next couple years (either from natural causes or because someone learns how to aim), things will likely go one of two wildly different directions.
If we actually have elections, and if the gerrymandering isn’t so horrendous that it’s impossible to overcome we’ll hopefully see a Democrat elected and we’ll start the incredibly slow crawl back to normalcy, hopefully with some significant reforms to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. The process is going to take decades to unwind all the damage Trump has managed in just a few years, but in theory we’ll get there eventually.
On the other hand, we could go the opposite direction. Republicans retain the majority in the midterms, and then when the next primary comes around either we just don’t have an election or Trump “wins” a 3rd term despite that being unconstitutional. At that point we’re likely looking at either a civil war, or the US being defeated in a 3rd world war like Germany was in order to undo all this crap. Neither option is good and if things get to that point the world is fucked, the US doubly so.
I can’t believe people still have faith in fair elections. He tried to cheat his first win. He refused to leave after his loss to Biden and tried to overthrow the government. Then he cheated again last year.
And for some reason you think the midterms will be open and fair?! That he’ll even hold them at all? Or will allow them to be fair without cheating or intimidation? Or will actually obey the results? He doesn’t listen to Congress now! Why would he start if the Dems won?!
And if by some miracle all of that worked out you think the Dems are going to start fighting back now? This isn’t a political fight. It’s a class fight and most of the Dems are in the owner class. That’s why they go along with all this.
Stop relying on the next election. You don’t vote your way out of fascism. Totalitarian leaders do not value elections. He will not leave or give up power.
So the hope is that things are bad enough that voters finally learn their lesson but not bad enough that their votes don’t matter…
we’ll start the incredibly slow crawl back to normalcy, hopefully with some significant reforms to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again
And then the democrats will lose the midterm, which will lock up Congress and maybe get the president impeached, and we’ll be back to this shit again.
This has happened every decade for my entire fucking life.
when the next primary comes around either we just don’t have an election or Trump “wins” a 3rd term despite that being unconstitutional
And all the mainstream media will go about how this is an unusual turn with side panels of experts “debating” what Constitutional means…
The best of the worst cases is the US goes completely isolationist as the world turns from them and it all burns itself out into something different. I do not want this to spread out, and other countries need to pay attention once again and stop pretending it’s fine. That’s what really bothers me, even other leaders play the game instead of refusing to deal with him face to face. I guess they’re doing that high road mess and using economic tactics to hit back.
Best case - mid terms have significant traction and shut him down, assuming he’s still around. If he’s not, Vance or whoever fails to keep what cultists there are still and there’s something left to piece back together. But shit, it has to be better than what we had, otherwise it’s just going to keep happening. In essence this is core Reconstruction failure and continued rot over more than a century. We really should have improved by now.
People, on the whole, will choose the easiest path.
People are also really bad at estimating risk, usually overestimating short term risks and underestimating long term risks.
So what happens is that people choose what they estimate to be the easiest path, based on their faulty ideas about what the short and long term risks are.
Which means that in order for real change to happen - by whatever means - people have to perceive that the immediate risk of change is lower than the future risk of staying the same.
Well stopping the nazis required intervention from other countries. As a Canadian, I really hope my country doesn’t have to intervene. But it seems the only other way to stop this, besides intervention from outside, is violent revolution from within.
General strikes should have happened months ago. You’re actively letting Maga normalize miltary troops quelling protests.
There is nothing to be done if your head is stuck in the old world, which is where 98% of Americans still live.
All I’ve seen on social media are two distinct camps: someone help us, please we don’t want this, and are you fucking crazy I have a family and a job I cannot do anything.
Enjoy the fascism, you’ve earned it. You’ll just have to learn your lesson the hard way, a la climate change. This is only a sneak preview of what happens when you ignore the obvious for too long.
Strikes no longer work in this Country. The strike would have to be until something happens. Like a hunger strike. The end is death Unless change. But I think we all know that isn’t going to happen
Even my dumb as shit family members who voted for trump are beginning to turn on him. I don’t think Americans really have any tolerance for his turn to fascist dictatorship. Sure, a few deplorables out there do - but we outnumber them 100 to 1.
Personally I think MAGA is going to eat itself. Especially if Trump dies in his sleep.
The real problem is this cycle will happen again in if we don’t have a reckoning where the fascists and their sympathizers are made to permanently renounce those leanings. I think we should take their trigger fingers.
The problem is they are beginning to. They should have been against him way back in 2020 when he left
Taking their trigger fingers is probably the nicest thing I’d do
lol user name checks out
I mean… if we are to take the batman approach and let them live, then we need ironclad solutions to prevent this shit from happening again. Loss of trigger finger for sure. Make them record “I was wrong and my decisions led to the destruction of people’s livelihoods and the deaths of innocent people. Do not let me do this again. Do not let other people do this in the future. We must learn from our mistakes and I will be held accountable for the rest of my life.” and if they refuse to repeat that while facing a camera, then they get to rot in a cell until they do. Make those recordings public and make them watch those recordings. And they don’t get to vote.
🔫 probably…
A general strike would be way more effective, but Americans are apathetic cowards.
So the best we will probably get is a rapid decline until someone fed up who is violent and skilled lands a good shot.
Every time I say it I get banned. I say, we remove the people who silence us.
Yeah they will just shut us down.
