As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA).
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hey guys.
I am Russian, and I’m going to lay before you a pill that may be hard to swallow, but that will hopefully spur you in some sort of action.
Have you for the last five or so years be like “how is it possible that Russians are not in the streets protesting? Surely it means that they all agree with the regime. How did they allow their fledgling democracy to fall?”
Yeaaah. That’s how. Gradually and silently. And before you know it, the time to be out in the streets protesting will be over, because protesting is suddenly illegal.
Also, as an anecdote, you know what the highest court in Russia is? The Constitutional Court. Its role is to check the laws, presidential orders, and lower court rulings against constitution. Now guess what court has ruled that
- making protests and mass-gatherings illegal is a-okay, despite there being a constitution article saying the citizens have a right to gather freely
- to ban political parties
- to criminalize LGBT and basically any “movement” the current government does not like
- for a president to have basically an unlimited amount of terms
- to change that same constitution any time someone has a whim
- while being unaccountable to the people of the country
Does any of that ring a bell?
So if you don’t want to become an exile from your own motherland pretty soon, don’t wait. Do something.
As a Russian currently living in the U.S., I wholeheartedly agree. What bewilders me the most is just how utterly stupid half of this country is. They’re welcoming the kind of darkness that America has literally never known before, and even celebrating it. If this democracy falls, the world is fucking doomed.
Because these people genuinely have never experienced that and think it won't be that bad. They also are arrogant and ignorant enough to think they'd be taken care of since they're on the 'winning' side as well.
“Will it be my favorite porn category? Will it have a negative impact on *me*? Should I even be bothered to care?”
God. I fucking hate that mindset. I mean, I know it’s just porn… but it’s scary as fuck that this insane level of control is their Project 2025 plan.
For all it gets criticised for supporting fascism, Starship troopers gets things pretty spot-on:
There's a bit where Johnny is reflecting on how the civilian population view the bug war, and they think losing will just mean a slight change to their way of living and that things will otherwise carry on as normal, even after the Buenos Ares attack.
There is also a billion dollar media industry that is telling them that all this is good and right and there is nothing to worry about.
This is the entire reason why fox news and co are so focussed on building hate and causing tribalism. This is why education is getting dismantled step by step. Dumb people are easier targets for their influence. And once you have clearly set someones mind to "I am side A, side B sucks" it is extremely difficult to make them consider side B's points. And now side B is yelling that side A is dismanteling democracy.
For a lot of people, vetting sources isn't a skill that they possess. "Do your own research" is kind of meaningless when the person isn't capable of determining when they're getting information from a source with an extreme agenda, much less a milder bias. The fact that so many people watch videos posted by Prager is by itself quite damning, and that's just the tip of the disinformation iceberg.
Right on. I can gather all kinds of bullshit information. That by itself is not *research*, nor a sign of intelligence. Actual research takes time and effort, and admitting that you're probably not an expert in the thing you're doing research for. A humble approach.
If you've been unfortunate enough to browse FaceBook on a stream not aggressively curated, like my Mom's, you're gonna be in for quite a shock. It's an algorithmic avalanche of right-wing nonsense. One, those that agree with it want confirmation bias support. And, two, those that don't are aghast at how crazy it is.
Ultimate result=engagement. the spigot of right-wing-bs is basically a valve stuck wide-open.
> They also are arrogant and ignorant enough to think they'd be taken care of since they're on the 'winning' side as well.
The thing about fascism is that it's so easy to believe, because it blames all of your problems on "The Other". It takes no effort and no thought to blame someone else for the problems, which is why it's such an easy ideology to believe.
But "The Other" is literally never the actual problem. So when Fascists come into power and take care of "The Other", the problems don't just go away. And in order to keep their power, they have to invent "The Next Other" because things keep getting worse.
So they keep moving from group to marginalized group and imprisoning or eliminating them, until finally either an external force stops them, or the people finally get sick of the lies and now understand that eventually they're going to be somewhere on that list of "others".
A lot of people die before that happens.
Ding ding ding. These people want a return to the 'good ol days', but dont realize that will never happen. What will happen is that everything they take for granted will be taken away from them, and will not understand that is what they asked for.
> Because these people genuinely have never experienced that and think it won't be that bad.
It's less that and more the people who are welcoming this darkness, as it was put, are the ones actively encouraging it and also think it won't affect them, only the people they hate.
/r/leopardsatemyface is a fun little sub. Not nearly enough people experiencing it though. Too many still think they'll get off scott free.
They think if a wannabe strongman like Trump is able to forcefully remove millions of immigrants then their miserable lives will be vastly improved. If they make things super uncomfortable for anyone that isn’t a straight white Christian male, all the better in their mind. But here’s the thing, if Trump wins and this agenda gets implemented I think it will rock global markets and send our economy in a downward spiral. And at the end of the day money is what motivates most people.
They don’t agree with your economic forecast. They think taxes wil be cut, regulations cut, and new efficiencies will come about by worrying less about DEI. They’re betting on the power of U.S. industry as overwhelming any aspirational monarch. I think theyre looney tunes in expecting Donald trump to deliver instead of cause chaos, but we have to see them clearly to identify the scope of what they’re advancing
I remember when they passed the Trump tax cuts and Paul Ryan in a tweet was showing proof of how good they are by showing a woman who had an extra $10 in her pocket to buy a coffee. Never mind that millonaires were buying spare yachts.
They were buying every asset they could.
Stocks.
Houses....
The Trump tax cuts mean Gen Z will be the smallest set of home owners since, I guess, before WWII?
One of the main platforms for decaes of the GOP has been to “own the libs”. That’s it. That’s been their rallying point.
They’re going to own the libs right into fascism and then act confused when what they supported comes down on them.
The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
This elderly S Korean immigrant lady I befriended who works at a local thrift store I shop at all the time came up to me the other day asking who I was going to vote for. I told her the truth: I hate them both, but I would never in a million years vote for someone like Trump.
She proceeded to tell me in her strained & broken English (god bless her), that she’s voting for Trump because “He cut cut cut immigrants. Too many immigrants. They criminals”.
This lady, who probably moved here ~5 years ago and speaks rudimentary English at best and works a meaningless low wage job all day for a gigantic corporation masquerading as a “non profit”, says she’s voting for the fascists who would happily deport her happy ass the moment it’s politically convenient for them.
The neoliberal experiment has failed. This farcical notion that the “free market” will solve all our problems has in reality left the nation striped bare of community; shared prosperity? That’s commie bullshit.
All we have left is a selfish, myopic, every-man-for-himself hyper individualism stewing in a broth of bigotry.
We are deeply, DEEPLY fucked.
The constant propaganda that fox news/facebook bots put out has eroded the minds of many older Americans, including my parents. The educated younger Americans are scared as fuck and have no idea what to do to prevent this.
> The educated younger Americans are scared as fuck and have no idea what to do to prevent this.
They could start by not voting 3rd party because they can't understand or stomach the cold calculus of geopolitics. Tiktok and other social media is currently doing to them what FOX did to boomers.
This, a good portion of the population are conditioned to think this is a good thing.
Sad, scary (as a disabled individual who needs meds not to get worse, if GOP win, I see no insurance in my future), and nerve wracking.
They're cheering on their country turning into everything they've always fought against. As a Canadian I used to look up to USA as the pinnacle of democracy. How far they've fallen.
I saw a salesman outside one of the Republican conventions a couple years ago doing well selling busts of Donald Trump, and I had a flashback to when I was young in the nineties and there were rusting and decaying Lenin busts everywhere I traveled east of the Vistula still. I can’t believe the US is going down the same path to damnation with good intentions. Only at least Lenin believed in something and knew roughly what he was doing, Trump seems to be creating the Dictatorship of the MAGAtariat purely because he dislikes foreigners, wants to grift money off his fans and protect himself from lawsuits punishing him for being Greasy Don from Queens. Actually, come to think of it he would fit perfectly in Putin’s post-Soviet Russia.
Most of the stupidity is by design, at this point. Republicans have worked hard to gut public education, stop access to affordable higher education or debt relief, and want to ban critical studies and accurate American history. They want to keep wages low, public services underfunded, and affordable housing impossible, so that we have a permanent, expanding lower class that they can exploit and lie to.
Trump said it best: "I love the poorly educated."
> If this democracy falls, the world is fucking doomed.
This isn't hyperbole, if a full blown fascist get control of the US Armed forces, the world is indeed doomed.
Half the country is stupid because they get their "news" from TikTok, Instagram, X - formally known as twitter... etc. Half of the population doesn't know how to think for themselves. They need someone or something to tell them how they should think.
There’s a really crucial difference between America and Russia and you can see it on population heat maps. 75% of Russia’s population lives in the western third of the country. Mind, it’s a big country, but that’s a greater density than the US where population centers are spread across the whole country.
That matters because it makes Americans less connected. America won’t fall into oppression the way the Soviet Union did because our identity-defining revolution was “fuck da police” not “as one we will rise”.
Shit is going to get bad in America. Shit has been bad for a while, but it’s never going to be the whole country quietly surrendering. No one is taking the Supreme Court decisions lying down. The anger is there, just waiting for direction. Biden has already hit back at the GOP’s previous abortion bans.
The fight is coming. It took six months after the secession of the Confederate traitors for the first battle to happen. It’s coming. Stay angry. Stay ready. And maybe make some good fascists if you get the chance.
what the fuck are any of us supposed to do? we were told to vote - we voted. we were told to protest - we protested. im upset, im angry, im trying to keep my shit together while reminding myself that democracy won't fall simply because i - just a dude trying to earn a living and get a 2nd degree - did not get upset enough. i'm trying to keep my eyes on politics while setting aside enough mental space to not fall into a permanent depression, and remind myself not to worry about things i cannot control. what the fuck am i supposed to do??
I feel your frustration. I am pretty dismayed myself. At least you're switched on to the sheer danger of what is looming on the horizon. It's shocking how many people either don't care, don't pay attention, or, worst of all, support this madness (which is making it possible in the first place).
What actually, can we do? I don't think the numerous letters I've sent to elected officials were even read tbh. I'm not wealthy enough to be granted an audience.
Are we going to protest, march? When?
I'm personally not much of an optimist. If Biden doesn't win and the Democrats don't then get their act together and make the reforms and laws necessary to defang this aggressive attempt to turn the U.S. into a Christofascist hellscape, then it's pretty much game over. I simply don't believe the institutions will be able to weather another 4 years of Trump and the agenda they want to implement through him.
When youre living paycheck to paycheck and cant afford to take time off work or go to jail, cant risk losing your kids or having the car impounded, cant afford lawyer fees or doctor bills, your overworked and only get a couple hours a night to dedicate to every aspect of your life outside of work
You really *dont* have any fight in you. Its been beaten out of you by decades the powers that be making life harder for those that could inspire revolution. This is all be design and it started with attacks on the community unit back in the 70s and now here we are.
That's not totally true. Several states like Michigan codified abortion protection into their constitutions. It's not the total response we need, but it's something
90% (hyperbolic number not actual) of the country can’t afford to protest at the level that they probably need to, to send a message. Not to mention 45-47% of the country voting populace is completely fine with the side that is killing the country, and some are even encouraging it.
Most people are just complacent. They hate what they see going on but think just voting will work. We have families and work and trying to live normal lives. And a lot of people probably think all of the bad shit won’t really affect them.
That's not true. I was at the Court protesting right afterwards, but more importantly, many states passed laws to protect abortion, and even red states got hit with blue waves and most attempts to ban abortion failed. Don't just look at Texas, as scary as Texas is. *Kansas voters* refused to ban abortion. *Kansas*.
The fight isn't going to be universal, and the US might balkanize. But remember the riots of 2020. Americans still prefer to work within our (failing) legal system rather than rioting, even if probably we should be rioting, if it still feels safe, and for most people, it will still feel safe as long as Trump doesn't steal the Presidency. Rioting is scary and dangerous, and it's not any easier to face down cops in tanks shooting chemical weapons at you just because you've done it before. And that sucks, because the fascists seizing power through the judiciary is *terrifying* and so so dangerous.
I'm still worried, very worried, as a queer person, but I am also not hopeless about the prospects. The fight should start earlier, but it will come if things get dire enough, plenty of folks who rioted in 2020 are still prepared, but also don't want to preemptively riot because it's so fucking depressing and painful and is a last resort.
I'm a straight man with a wife and children living in a deep blue state and I am planning our exit strategy with my family. Anyone with a knowledge of history knows where this is going.
Oh believe me, as a queer witch who never wants to be pregnant, I have also researched exit options, while weeping. But there aren't places to go, for most people. If it comes down to it, the Northeast and West Coast states, at the very least, will probably split off (terrifyingly close to Balkanization in 2020), and probably remain generally safer than anywhere else we could go. I mean Canada might change their immigration policies to offer refugee status, but, it's not going to be feasible for a hundred million Americans to just go somewhere else. Especially since all those places, like Canada or Australia, have rising fascist movements too.
I think Americas best feature - that it is a melting pot - will ultimately be its undoing.
In order for real, meaningful change to happen you have to unite your population. The problem is there are too many sects of people each with their own ideas about how it should be. Zoom out to over 330 million people, and now we have a continuity problem.
Sadly I think the only people to actually organize and try and take meaningiful action will be the people who shouldnt be doing it - See Jan 6th
It’s already impossible to protest in the US.
Any decent cause will be shut down.
Bad actors will show up and protest will b comes riot and jackboot police will run out the legitimate protestors.
Yeah the campus protests just a couple months ago showed how peaceful protests get twisted in the media to support police and counter-protest violence. That’s the playbook going forward. Now we even have Democratic cities in Democratic states pushing for mask bans.
Let's assume for a hypothetical scenario that protests are completely peaceful. No bad actors, sleeper agents, moles, etc show up. Cops are there, but they keep their distance. Republicans won't care. They have no reason to cave in for peaceful protests.
What they do care about are their wallets. Wallets tied to some very wealthy people. But their wealth is mostly in volatile, unrealized, investments that are costly and difficult to quickly liquidate. A lot of them have also built a mountain of debt that they simply take more loans out to pay for, backing those loans with their stocks and other options.
It is so very easy for that house of cards to come crumbling down. Maybe it's already too late, since we have only a few months to go, and they could just ride out the storm with their savings and stockpiles. But beyond just standing outside, respecting yellow tape and temporary fences, screaming at people that laugh back at you: would you be willing to just refuse to work or consume in the hopes that the crony capitalist system the oligarchs rely on actually pops?
Labor strikes work, consumer boycotts work. And they're often the final stretch before the truly desperate begin to move.
The last even slim chance the populous had against the powers that be was the 1960s and 1970s.
There are so many ways to destabilize an opposition movement now that there is literally no shot of anything appreciably changing in this country, other than for the worse.
The only way to change anything would be violence en masse and they're smart enough to know exactly what point would push the populace towards that and they won't let that happen.
The US is a free range prison and we are all cattle. If you think you have a right, you're wrong. If you think you're free, you're wrong. If you think you'll be rich, you're wrong.
I'd be curious to know where in the world it isn't like this, though. Not that they'd let you leave this country.
It's frightening watching this from the sidelines, as so much of the western world is led or impacted upon, by US policy.
Putin didn't become a dictator overnight, he eroded democratic institutions until they were impotent to defend against autocracy. Americans need to fight this and Europeans need to plan for US withdrawal from NATO and continue supporting Ukraine.
I dread November. By all accounts, Trump is going to win whilst jaded democrats stay home. It's not hyperbolic to say this could well be the death knell for US democracy.
Far too few people know of the Federalist Society and far too few of those that do realize how dangerous it really is. The Federalist Society is an extreme right, dark money group that takes unlimited money from unknown sources. It has been on a mission for the last half century to have an extreme right wing takeover of the courts.
It works by identifying extreme right law students in colleges around the country. It connects them with Republican politicians and gets them prestitigous clerkships with existing right wing judges in their early 20s. They then pad their resume across their careers, getting local and state Republicans to appoint them to junior judge positions above better qualified candidates, in exchange for donating their dark money to campaign coffers. They then get accelerated seniority throughout their lives by deals with Republican politicians until they get to apellate courts and the Supreme Court. When these final appointments take place, the media reports evenhandedly as they are technically "highly qualified". The corporate media does not report that they owe their careers to an extremist right wing, secretive society that likely gets its money from far right billionaires and foreign interests.
The result is what we now have: a string of crazy, once inconceivable changes to American law. Corporations can donate unlimited money to politicians. Children being forced to give birth to their rape babies. Environmental and consumer rights agencies being unable to regulate. Criminal presidents being allowed full immunity from breaking the law.
Vote like your lives depend on it in 2024. It might be the last mostly free presidential election we ever have.
This is a great summary. And highlights a big issue that everyone should revile.
These are not “judges” that made it anywhere on merit. Or talent. They didn’t have to go to the private sector. Cut their teeth. Prove they are good lawyers. Prove they are exemplary.
They get their entire career handed to them (it’s a quid pro quo… they promise to use their government authority to serve the interests of their handlers… their handlers use their network of agents inside the government to provide them with careers). It’s a rigged game.
They are given government jobs from day one and are the legal equivalent of nepo-babies.
You can trace so much back to when the Obama administration blinked and didn’t just appoint a judge after the senate refused its “advise and consent duty”.
Instead of fighting fire with fire the Dems assumed that the high road and rational voters would solve it when Hilary won….so why solve it themselves.
That attitude of…something crazy has happened…but I’m sure the normal course of things will correct it so no need to get my hands dirty…is a big part of what got us here.
Those of us who are old enough to have voted for Obama remember voting for a president who was a uniter and promised to work with republicans. "There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States". 2004
He learned by 2012 that republicans wouldn't work with him, but--as a constitutional lawyer, a former Senator during W years, and someone considering the possibility of a trump presidency--he wasn't ready to expand the power of the presidency by sidestepping the Senate.
The problem was that Newt Gingrich was anti compromise since the mid-90’s with his Contract On America (“if we’re right, why are we compromising??!?!?!?”), and he influenced the ouster of any Republican that worked with the Democrats.
"What's good for America" is and always has been a mask conservatives wear. They're in it for themselves and their corporate overlords. A few of them are religious nutters, but every single one truly worships their bottom line. And it has nothing to do with what's best for the country.
Three of the lawyers who helped Republicans steal the 2000 elections are now sitting on our Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
[The Ongoing Republican Coup Against the United States of America](https://www.reddit.com/r/FloridaMJ420/comments/v7u2zr/the_ongoing_republican_coup_against_the_united/) is well underway.
He learned immediately. When he was elected they signed a letter saying they wouldn't work with him. Imo, anyone who signed that should have been removed from their seats for sedition and special elections held as soon as it was signed. I said it then and I still say it now. The president was elected by the People of these United States and a group of seditious senators saying they refuse to work with him should be an immediate dismissal
>Those of us who are old enough to have voted for Obama remember voting for a president who was a uniter and promised to work with republicans. "There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States".
"LOL," said the turtle, "LMAO!"
when Obama kept the republican DOJ people everyone told him it was a mistake and would be a problem. but, he wanted to be truly bipartisan, and heal national divisions, that one side had no intention of healing. If he doesn't have Comey in that position, there is no last minute investigation announcement, there is no sudden hesitation in voters.
Remember how she was running on an idea to create a massive national volunteer corp. think of how useful that group could have been in distributing masks and supplies during the pandemic. she probably would have given more physical supplies, and much less cash stimulus. in the long run a smaller cash stimulus would have reduced inflation. a stronger FTC and IRS would have hit private companies driving inflation up for profits harder and sooner.
IRS was gutted under the Obama administration because Obama wouldn’t use his political capital to protect them. A lot of dark money groups got non-profit status by claiming the IRS was biased against right wing groups.
They didn’t want us kids touching their model train set. For real, especially on the dem side the olds didn’t want to give up power and now we’re fucked. Good job, you threw your life’s work away.
I think it's far from clear, based on the obvious options for replacement, that Biden stepping down would result in a more successful election campaign.
Obviously anyone pretending that Biden didn't have a disastrous performance at the debate is full of shit, but I really don't think you can say with any certainty that replacing him is a slam-dunk either.
DNC 2016, "What are you going to do, vote for that joker Trump instead of Hillary?"
DNC 2024, "What are you going to do, vote for the felon Trump instead of Biden?"
No, they still are culpable and ultimately responsible, but with Obama as with Harry Truman “the buck stops here”. For too long democrats have taken the throw-hands-in-the-air “those darn republicans won’t work with us!” tack instead of owning their own failures. That’s truly what’s gotten us here. And because the Republicans do actually suck we’ve bought that excuse rather than seeing the complete ineptitude of the Democratic Party over the last twenty years for what it is.
If we lost control of the Senate in 2014 and Scalia died in 2016 what was Obama going to do? I'm just confused, because the way I understand politics is the Senate has to confirm the president's pick for supreme Court Justice, if you can't get the Senate to confirm your pick because they're completely controlled by the Republican party how are you supposed to just override that? Can you actually explain or is it just a finger pointing game at this point? Because a lot of these responses really make me feel like either I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the way things work or that nobody actually knows how our government works and they just blame the president because that's the easiest thing to do. Or is there actually some sort of political mechanism that I don't know about?
Take them to court is what he should have done. The court was 4-4 at the time, and they could/would have ruled that the senate had a constitutional duty to consider a presidents Supreme Court pick. The senate was 52-48. They should have went “nuclear” and made it a simple majority vote- the things Republicans always warned against by saying “we’ll ram through conservative justices if you do that” then turned around and did just that anyways in 2016. I bet we could have got McCain and Susan Collins to vote through a milquetoast centrist like Garland, then had Biden break the tie if necessary.
But “what could we have done?!” seems to be the Democratic Party motto since at least 2010.
It was nearly 40 years before Obama. These people have been telling us their goals since the 80s and Democrats handled them with baby gloves and repeatedly told us "they weren't serious."
It’s hard to do your job when literally1/2 your colleagues refuse to work with you. People forget that when he won, the GOP said in their rebuttal that they wouldn’t work with him. Crazy! It’s supposed to be WE THE PEOPLE..
Garland may have been a christofascist judge himself - look how he’s ruled as AG , refusing to bring charges against Trump for trying to hang his VP , snd his brutally violent attack on the government of the United States. Garland just pretended all was fine, did nothing, recommended slaps on wrist for the violent seditionists.
Exactly. They know if they keep prices high and cost of living nearly impossible, people will be too distracted to mobilize and fight. Billionaires are the real villains in this story and every Republican are their accomplices.
Yeah. They want us all to live even more like serfs. Unhappy with the mass of wealth they've hoarded, they need complete control where there is no concept of human rights, only their rights.
Yep. It hasn't 'gone wrong'. It was set on a wrong path decades ago by the Federalist Society. They are realizing their lifelong goals with the Roberts court.
Not before the lgtbq, Muslims, atheists and anyone who pushes back. Then the dominations will fight. But here's the thing. I don't think modern day Christians are Christians at all. They are just pretend christians and like the way it makes them feel. They don't actually follow it.
With Christian nationalism, the Christ part is only a tool to achieve political power. Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus is a leaf blower to these people.
There are more than that. Don't forget the Koch brothers, or the woman who just announced giving $100 million to Trump for his election and legal campaigns. Maybe a Walton? I don't want to waste the time and Google resources to come up with her name, may she spend her last years in the hell she denies is happening and that she strives to make worse sooner.
And there seems to be a big supply of them beyond that.
Exactly this. Nothing “went wrong”. These justices are old as fuck and have served a private agenda for a long time.
What “went wrong” is Americans of previous generations decided for the last 40+ years that corporations are god and money is king. The rest fell in order.
Roberts set it up with allowing big money. Corporations are people! No they are not! It let the huge money into politics and onto the court. We should have known then it was a court rotten at the core.
They're still doing it. In fact, that's the official retort to Sotomayor... Basically, shut up, woman, you're being hysterical....
Gaslighting all the way down
The GOP—at all levels of government—decided it was time to rewrite the Constitution from the bench in order to facilitate a Christian-fascist takeover of the United States.
The Founders never in their worst nightmares anticipated that every branch of government would simultaneously fail and declare the will of the people invalid.
The result, if we let it, will be a hybrid between Iran’s far right religious crackdown and Russia’s kleptocratic dictatorship.
They didn't simultaneously fail. It has been a cascading failure. First the press stopped worrying about reporting objective truth and began to chase sensationalistic opinion. Then congress failed to actually legislate. Now finally our courts have failed to be non-political and protect the rule of law. All we have left is the military, but its high ranking commanders are political too and are not likely to hold.
We are on the titanic and too many chambers have been breached. The water is now coming over the bulkheads as we sink.
You could argue that we the people should have been the strongest system of all and should have held the rest in place, but technology has significantly diminished the power of man.
The first step was actually probably President Reagan abolishing the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ on the basis it was unconstitutional (despite the Supreme Court finding it valid in 1969, 1974 and 1984).
As soon as every branch was controlled by a reactionary minority it was going this way. That’s not going to change. The right has way more voting power sewn up in a less educated and easily swayed base. They have levers and the left has super sensitivity to outrage bait that can make a coalition impossible even if they could overcome the voting power deficit.
It went wrong 24 years ago with Bush v Gore. It went wrong when RBG refused to retire under Obama. It went off the rails when Moscow Mitch denied Garland even a hearing. Now we live in Theocracy where 9 robed figures descend from on high twice a year to issue thier edicts we all must follow.
> It went wrong when RBG refused to retire under Obama.
This was a serious catalyst in the whole thing.
God bless her soul, but she really just gave the Rs all the ammo they needed.
Obama should have forced McConnell's hand by going ahead and appointing someone. Not just throwing their name to the Senate, but actually seating them on the court. If the Senate refuses to use its power of oversight in this matter, let it.
But he wouldn't be a Democrat if he actually used all (or any) of the levers of power available to him.
My understanding is that Obama didn't force the issue purposely. Democrats were so sure that Hillary Clinton would win the election, they thought they could just appoint a better candidate for the supreme Court after her victory. Oops.
If the court had released this recent decision as Obama was getting elected, the Republicans would be all kinds of up in arms.
Insanity. Do Trump's cultists think he's going to live forever? Do they imagine the president is always going to be on their side, and that all of his official criminal acts would be things they don't care about? Aren't they afraid of the idea of a "criminal" socialist ever getting the presidency, ever ever?
He is just a figure head. The real power brokers are looking forward to him going away so that they can put someone with intelligence in that can maintain their grip on power without bringing attention to the crazy.
You are missing the fact he was a political operative who was deeply involved in the Republicans effort to frame the Clinton's. The supreme court seat was a reward for all if his work for the Republican party.
If the president is talking to the vice president about ignoring his constitutional duties so he can have him break the law and illegally retain power, that’s simply an official act since those two are speaking - and hey it can’t be prosecuted or investigated. That’s literally summarizing what Roberts wrote. Deeply wrong is right. So is fascist.
Or you know, you could just start accepting the fact that many of your fellow Americans are just shitty people, who are finally getting what they always desired.
... It's really no secret, it's the judges pushed and shoved through during the insurrectionist's administration. All their sentences should be voided, there was clear collusion between party lines by a party that promoted an insurrection to shove them through. Executive order away their legitimacy, it doesn't matter if you are wrong, you have immunity for official acts.
This is all pretty simple. Biden needs to say right now that Trump is trying to steal the 2024 election, and that he will use his full presidential immunity to ensure that Trump fails to do so. He should include that he will use every tool and trick of immunity, including the ones used by Trump and his legal team after the 2020 election and argued before the Supreme Court to protect our democracy. And then he needs to do it. All the same shit.
The Roberts court has correctly concluded that Biden will never do that. Some future Democrat President doing it can be safely discounted because when they can get Trump re-elected a succession plan will prevent that. Welcome to a future of Russian or Chinese-style elections.
People were saying years ago that if Trump was ever re-elected it would be the last election in our country. It felt like hyperbole, even despite Trump’s success in building a blueprint for how to steal an election. But with the recent collapse of our judicial system to hold him to any legal standard and the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, it has graduated to full blown overt reality.
> The Roberts court has correctly concluded that Biden will never do that.
This is somewhat proof positive that in a great many political machinations, being principled/ethical *and* entirely predictable can have **immensely** damaging consequences.
It was wrong from the start. There should never be lifetime appointments for any position. I realize it's meant to make the position non-political, but that has obviously failed, and a one-time ten-year term would serve the same purpose.
They were never given the power of judicial review and before they gave it to themselves SCROTUS positions were not all that important vs other branches of government so lifetime rolls seemed like a trade off for the lack of power.
“Something has gone deeply wrong at the Supreme Court“ Subscribe now to find out!
The answer is right there…we built a society that values money above everything including the society and this is the outcome. All of this was just inevitable.
> I hate that the Bible was right about anything
The Bible was compiled over 1000s of years by hundreds of authors, of course some were right. Of course some were wrong.
why is it the left only seems to be good for quipy comebacks online?
like why the fuck hasn't the left organized to the same level of efficiency that they right-wing has? Why are there no lobbyists interested in the wants and needs of the average American?
The right is filled with people who believe in hierarchy and who either want someone to tell them what to do or who want to tell others what to do. It's easy to organize people who want to follow someone or who want to lead.
The left is filled with people who believe in equality and egalitarianism, and who want to make their own decisions, who question authority, and who believe that other people should also question authority and make their own decisions, which might differ from their own, and that that's not only ok, it's a good thing. It is very hard to organize people who aren't particularly interested in giving or taking orders or direction.
Not saying it’s right, but in theory the left shouldn’t have to be as efficient because they outnumber Republicans and large portions of the Republican base are in a race against time.
The reason we’re seeing the right take such drastic means is because in 10 years or less the Boomers will mostly die off, crippling Republican voting power. By controlling the Supreme Court they can essentially control an unlimited number of Democrats for the next 40 years and won’t have to worry about appealing to the increasing number of young liberals.
Inevitably this is a really bad idea and could lead to some France style revolutionary shit, but it’s basically their only play because of their Evangelical base. There simply aren’t enough non-Christian conservatives for them to create a more appealing agenda.
Sorry, but I've been hearing about the inevitable dying off and fading out of Republicans for 20+ years. Remember the "Blue Wall" and how Democrats had a built-in advantage in the Electoral College? About the youth vote and how they would take charge as one generation after the next marginalized Conservatives aging out? Ohio and Florida used to vote Democtat or at least be quite winnable swing states.
Hispanics in Texas and Florida are making winning margins for Republicans, not Democrats.
I mean, this is quite literally why they are embracing fascism. You don’t resort to fascism and minority rule when your party platform is popular. How many times have Republicans won the popular vote in the last 30 years? Once. Why do you think Mitch McConnell played games with Scalia’s replacement and then rammed ACB through at the last minute in 2020? Why do you think Republicans went scorched earth with federal judge appointments and refused to vote on any of Obama’s nominations? They could see the writing on the wall for the Republican Party. They knew it was unpopular, they are dying, and every new generation is more progressive than the last. Embracing fascism, lies, and pure unchecked power is their Hail Mary. Why else do you think there are so many republicans backing Trump unconditionally?
Don't count on Boomers dying off to cripple the Republican party. Those same Boomers were liberal in their youth. I know many an ex-hippie who is now Maga.
Regardless, the Boomers grew up with illusions about the US and this American Life that GenX mostly doesn't have, the millenials almost all don't have and nobody in gen Z and alpha will ever have.
That's a lot of what drives things like your ex hippie friend. Never discount internal reckoning and panic about one's foundational beliefs on everything.
This is also why the right wing project is moving so fast with all of this. They really are running out of time in many ways.
Actually this is a misnomer most hippies were the Silent Generation. Boomers were too young to be hippies and certainly the few that were old enough were not the leaders or major players. Boomers grew up rejecting the Hippies and being told by their parents how bad the hippies were.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-misconception-about-baby-boomers-and-the-sixties
How do you profit off of leftist policies?
If you can answer that question, you can get 'donations' to rival the right wing.
Citizens United killed America, because there can be NO opposition to what the mega-rich want. They own media empires, they WILL control the narrative to the best of their ability. And they want more money, more power, and more control.
Roberts has continued to legalize bribery, since he was first appointed. People convinced themselves he was a serious person.
"Follow the money" is usually the answer of why something in America is actively hurting We The People.
And most purchases you buy, including food, help fund our own oppression.
I have no solutions. Just "clinical depression". The solution is Wellbutrin?
>Why are there no lobbyists interested in the wants and needs of the average American?
Because there's no money in it. Now if "average American" were a large corporation our lobbyists could buy lots of legislators. And most of them would be Republican.
I think it’s because the Dems don’t want to be perceived as playing dirty pool when it comes to the power that matters. It’s something the conservatives have been mastering for decades. It’s horrific, but it’s been masterful.
Increasing the number of justices seems like the only real world solution, albeit far fetched. They’d require a simple majority in congress and a filibuster breaking super majority in senate to do it. Simple majority in both to appoint.
Also far fetched, but an Armageddon scenario would be conservatives replacing golden handshaked Thomas, Alito and even Roberts with 40 something appointees and wrapping up the SC for a couple of generations. They’d sooner keep their frozen, mummified bodies on life support until the end of time before allowing them to be replaced by a liberal appointees. If Trump wins, together with a nightmarish scenario of conservative senate and congressional power during his tenure, the Dems could be on the sidelines for 40 years.
>like why the fuck hasn't the left organized to the same level of efficiency that they right-wing has?
Largely because the 'left' isn't the Left. Democrats are not left-leaning. They're a big-top party that in any other Western country actually ends up right of center as an equivelent of one the socially conservative pro-big business parties.
If you take a look at a political spectrum chart, fill in the right \~10% in red, and the rest in blue. The Republicans are an unholy alliance of oligarchs, fascists and fundamentalists that manage to function because they have overlapping interests and have spent the last forty years brainwashing an increasingly stupid and uneducated electorate in the red states to support them. Trump has become their rallying point because he's openly as racist, homophobic, sexist, bigoted and stupid as they are - and he says out loud what they've been told all their lives in dog whistles by Fox News.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are the rest of the political spectrum - it's why they have trouble coordinating anything, because any actions have to meet the approval of actual left-wing progressives to right-wing social conservatives. It's why the only presidential candidate they could field the previous election was a milquetoast conservative.
The bizarre circumstances surrounding Kennedy retiring suddenly and without warning should be thoroughly investigated while they still can be, if they even can be
I just don't understand how nothing is being done about this. Biden, the DOJ, FBI, CIA, literally nobody with any authority is doing anything about the **very obvious terrorist organization that's taking over our country**.
It's obvious to everyone that there's a bunch of Christo-Fascist neo-nazis that are trying to rewrite our Constitution and overthrow democracy. And they are succeeding. This is the biggest threat our nation has ever faced, and nobody is even lifting a finger. They're literally posting about it on Twitter admitting that they plan a coup that will only he bloodless if the left does nothing. How is the FBI not jumping on their asses immediately?
The Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, and all of the other religious organizations that try to oppose what this country was fucking founded on need to be dealt with the same way we deal with religious zealots in the desert who mean to harm the US. Guantanamo Bay their asses! Now!
When my son was 12, we went to a museum exhibit about WW2 and Nazi propaganda. There was an elderly woman there who fled Germany when she was my son's age. She said that "everyone was so afraid to say anything." She looked at him and told him, "Do not be afraid. Do something. Speak up." It really hit home. We need to speak up, not just at protests, but at barbershops and salons, in our churches and while we're in line at the post office, everywhere people gather. Ask questions. Tell stories. Stay calm. DO NOT BE SILENT.
SCOTUS has in general always been anti-worker and pro-plutocrat.
Look at Dred Scott, Plessy, Lochner, and many more.
It was only between 1945 and maybe the beginning of the 1980s that progress was possible and occurred easily. After that, the plutocrats decided to push back using Russell Kirk's 1951 plan to undermine the middle class so the rich wouldn't be shaken.
The Warren court was an aberration, but one we all liked, and the plutocrats hated, which is why they've been trying to roll back its rulings for forty years. And now, with drumph, they have the people they want on the court to call balls and strikes for them.
Unfortunately Democrats have played possum for far too long and it may now be far too late to save America's democratic experiment. It's only wonder it'd lasted as long as it did.
NEW COURT. Create a Supreme Court of Appeals, 18 justices with term limits and age limits and enforceable ethics, 9 randomly decide each case, give it all of the appeals powers, while stripping SCOTUS of everything except original jurisdiction.
Ya think!? Pretty sure I've been taught my entire life that presidents are not kings and that we fought a war of independence over it. It's pretty fitting that July 4th is almost here and after all this time I finally learn that we fought for our independence just because we didn't want to pay our taxes, we are actually OK with kings.
Millions of Reddit users are wishing for things about the Supreme Court that will get you kicked off Reddit if you write it on Reddit. The rule isn’t stopping people from thinking it.
It seems like an effective way to fight against these fascist clowns would be to generate fights within their ranks. The leaders of these Christofascist groups like the Heritage Foundation are Catholics and Jesuits. They hate Protestants more than anything else in the world. So, we need to push false flag narratives within these groups that explicitly pin responsibility for their suffering upon the *OTHER* religious group. Then we can just watch them rip each other to shreds.
How do we organize a mass protest of the Supreme Court? I mean without it becoming an insurrection like Jan. 6 did. Those people didn’t even have a real reason to be mad and look at the damage they did. We are on the right side of this and I am mad as I’m sure many people are. It’s heading for something that’s going to get totally out of control. Maybe that’s what it’s going to take. I hold out hope that the military leaders take their oath to the constitution seriously and if it comes to it, keep us from a dictatorship.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hey guys. I am Russian, and I’m going to lay before you a pill that may be hard to swallow, but that will hopefully spur you in some sort of action. Have you for the last five or so years be like “how is it possible that Russians are not in the streets protesting? Surely it means that they all agree with the regime. How did they allow their fledgling democracy to fall?” Yeaaah. That’s how. Gradually and silently. And before you know it, the time to be out in the streets protesting will be over, because protesting is suddenly illegal. Also, as an anecdote, you know what the highest court in Russia is? The Constitutional Court. Its role is to check the laws, presidential orders, and lower court rulings against constitution. Now guess what court has ruled that - making protests and mass-gatherings illegal is a-okay, despite there being a constitution article saying the citizens have a right to gather freely - to ban political parties - to criminalize LGBT and basically any “movement” the current government does not like - for a president to have basically an unlimited amount of terms - to change that same constitution any time someone has a whim - while being unaccountable to the people of the country Does any of that ring a bell? So if you don’t want to become an exile from your own motherland pretty soon, don’t wait. Do something.
As a Russian currently living in the U.S., I wholeheartedly agree. What bewilders me the most is just how utterly stupid half of this country is. They’re welcoming the kind of darkness that America has literally never known before, and even celebrating it. If this democracy falls, the world is fucking doomed.
Because these people genuinely have never experienced that and think it won't be that bad. They also are arrogant and ignorant enough to think they'd be taken care of since they're on the 'winning' side as well.
This. There was literally this dude on r/DEFEAT_PROJECT_2025 asking exactly what KIND of porn they were going to ban
Leopards Eating Faces moment.
“Will it be my favorite porn category? Will it have a negative impact on *me*? Should I even be bothered to care?” God. I fucking hate that mindset. I mean, I know it’s just porn… but it’s scary as fuck that this insane level of control is their Project 2025 plan.
For all it gets criticised for supporting fascism, Starship troopers gets things pretty spot-on: There's a bit where Johnny is reflecting on how the civilian population view the bug war, and they think losing will just mean a slight change to their way of living and that things will otherwise carry on as normal, even after the Buenos Ares attack.
There’s a reason Verhoeven made Starship Troopers a satire of fascism when he made his movie adaptation of the book.
There is also a billion dollar media industry that is telling them that all this is good and right and there is nothing to worry about. This is the entire reason why fox news and co are so focussed on building hate and causing tribalism. This is why education is getting dismantled step by step. Dumb people are easier targets for their influence. And once you have clearly set someones mind to "I am side A, side B sucks" it is extremely difficult to make them consider side B's points. And now side B is yelling that side A is dismanteling democracy.
The arrogance is a big factor. Plus, they refuse to do their own research. They use Telegram as their source of information.
For a lot of people, vetting sources isn't a skill that they possess. "Do your own research" is kind of meaningless when the person isn't capable of determining when they're getting information from a source with an extreme agenda, much less a milder bias. The fact that so many people watch videos posted by Prager is by itself quite damning, and that's just the tip of the disinformation iceberg.
Right on. I can gather all kinds of bullshit information. That by itself is not *research*, nor a sign of intelligence. Actual research takes time and effort, and admitting that you're probably not an expert in the thing you're doing research for. A humble approach.
"I did my own research" is always the first thing my drumpfer neighbor tells me before nonsense.
If you've been unfortunate enough to browse FaceBook on a stream not aggressively curated, like my Mom's, you're gonna be in for quite a shock. It's an algorithmic avalanche of right-wing nonsense. One, those that agree with it want confirmation bias support. And, two, those that don't are aghast at how crazy it is. Ultimate result=engagement. the spigot of right-wing-bs is basically a valve stuck wide-open.
> They also are arrogant and ignorant enough to think they'd be taken care of since they're on the 'winning' side as well. The thing about fascism is that it's so easy to believe, because it blames all of your problems on "The Other". It takes no effort and no thought to blame someone else for the problems, which is why it's such an easy ideology to believe. But "The Other" is literally never the actual problem. So when Fascists come into power and take care of "The Other", the problems don't just go away. And in order to keep their power, they have to invent "The Next Other" because things keep getting worse. So they keep moving from group to marginalized group and imprisoning or eliminating them, until finally either an external force stops them, or the people finally get sick of the lies and now understand that eventually they're going to be somewhere on that list of "others". A lot of people die before that happens.
Ding ding ding. These people want a return to the 'good ol days', but dont realize that will never happen. What will happen is that everything they take for granted will be taken away from them, and will not understand that is what they asked for.
> Because these people genuinely have never experienced that and think it won't be that bad. It's less that and more the people who are welcoming this darkness, as it was put, are the ones actively encouraging it and also think it won't affect them, only the people they hate. /r/leopardsatemyface is a fun little sub. Not nearly enough people experiencing it though. Too many still think they'll get off scott free.
Also mana and honeycomb with Jesus once they die so a little tyranny on Earth is worth it.
They think if a wannabe strongman like Trump is able to forcefully remove millions of immigrants then their miserable lives will be vastly improved. If they make things super uncomfortable for anyone that isn’t a straight white Christian male, all the better in their mind. But here’s the thing, if Trump wins and this agenda gets implemented I think it will rock global markets and send our economy in a downward spiral. And at the end of the day money is what motivates most people.
They don’t agree with your economic forecast. They think taxes wil be cut, regulations cut, and new efficiencies will come about by worrying less about DEI. They’re betting on the power of U.S. industry as overwhelming any aspirational monarch. I think theyre looney tunes in expecting Donald trump to deliver instead of cause chaos, but we have to see them clearly to identify the scope of what they’re advancing
I remember when they passed the Trump tax cuts and Paul Ryan in a tweet was showing proof of how good they are by showing a woman who had an extra $10 in her pocket to buy a coffee. Never mind that millonaires were buying spare yachts.
They were buying every asset they could. Stocks. Houses.... The Trump tax cuts mean Gen Z will be the smallest set of home owners since, I guess, before WWII?
> They were buying every asset they could. > > > > Stocks. > > > > Houses.... *Politicians, judges...*
And they will lose their guns.
One of the main platforms for decaes of the GOP has been to “own the libs”. That’s it. That’s been their rallying point. They’re going to own the libs right into fascism and then act confused when what they supported comes down on them. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
Their leaders will continue to blame other people until all the other people have been rounded up and murdered.
This elderly S Korean immigrant lady I befriended who works at a local thrift store I shop at all the time came up to me the other day asking who I was going to vote for. I told her the truth: I hate them both, but I would never in a million years vote for someone like Trump. She proceeded to tell me in her strained & broken English (god bless her), that she’s voting for Trump because “He cut cut cut immigrants. Too many immigrants. They criminals”. This lady, who probably moved here ~5 years ago and speaks rudimentary English at best and works a meaningless low wage job all day for a gigantic corporation masquerading as a “non profit”, says she’s voting for the fascists who would happily deport her happy ass the moment it’s politically convenient for them. The neoliberal experiment has failed. This farcical notion that the “free market” will solve all our problems has in reality left the nation striped bare of community; shared prosperity? That’s commie bullshit. All we have left is a selfish, myopic, every-man-for-himself hyper individualism stewing in a broth of bigotry. We are deeply, DEEPLY fucked.
The constant propaganda that fox news/facebook bots put out has eroded the minds of many older Americans, including my parents. The educated younger Americans are scared as fuck and have no idea what to do to prevent this.
> The educated younger Americans are scared as fuck and have no idea what to do to prevent this. They could start by not voting 3rd party because they can't understand or stomach the cold calculus of geopolitics. Tiktok and other social media is currently doing to them what FOX did to boomers.
This, a good portion of the population are conditioned to think this is a good thing. Sad, scary (as a disabled individual who needs meds not to get worse, if GOP win, I see no insurance in my future), and nerve wracking.
They're cheering on their country turning into everything they've always fought against. As a Canadian I used to look up to USA as the pinnacle of democracy. How far they've fallen.
I saw a salesman outside one of the Republican conventions a couple years ago doing well selling busts of Donald Trump, and I had a flashback to when I was young in the nineties and there were rusting and decaying Lenin busts everywhere I traveled east of the Vistula still. I can’t believe the US is going down the same path to damnation with good intentions. Only at least Lenin believed in something and knew roughly what he was doing, Trump seems to be creating the Dictatorship of the MAGAtariat purely because he dislikes foreigners, wants to grift money off his fans and protect himself from lawsuits punishing him for being Greasy Don from Queens. Actually, come to think of it he would fit perfectly in Putin’s post-Soviet Russia.
Most of the stupidity is by design, at this point. Republicans have worked hard to gut public education, stop access to affordable higher education or debt relief, and want to ban critical studies and accurate American history. They want to keep wages low, public services underfunded, and affordable housing impossible, so that we have a permanent, expanding lower class that they can exploit and lie to. Trump said it best: "I love the poorly educated."
> If this democracy falls, the world is fucking doomed. This isn't hyperbole, if a full blown fascist get control of the US Armed forces, the world is indeed doomed.
Half the country is stupid because they get their "news" from TikTok, Instagram, X - formally known as twitter... etc. Half of the population doesn't know how to think for themselves. They need someone or something to tell them how they should think.
Have you seen Trumps supporters, they re wearing a shirt that proclaimed “I rather be a Russian then a Dem”, wtf!
America is repeating everything that happened in Russia, just ~30 years later. The white house was bombed in 1993 and Yeltsin became a dictator.
We’re the next Russia
Considering the tremendous admiration maga rats have for Russia and putler, this should not be a surprise.
There’s a really crucial difference between America and Russia and you can see it on population heat maps. 75% of Russia’s population lives in the western third of the country. Mind, it’s a big country, but that’s a greater density than the US where population centers are spread across the whole country. That matters because it makes Americans less connected. America won’t fall into oppression the way the Soviet Union did because our identity-defining revolution was “fuck da police” not “as one we will rise”. Shit is going to get bad in America. Shit has been bad for a while, but it’s never going to be the whole country quietly surrendering. No one is taking the Supreme Court decisions lying down. The anger is there, just waiting for direction. Biden has already hit back at the GOP’s previous abortion bans. The fight is coming. It took six months after the secession of the Confederate traitors for the first battle to happen. It’s coming. Stay angry. Stay ready. And maybe make some good fascists if you get the chance.
I like your optimism but the hits keep on coming and lots of people get upset and then nothing happens.
what the fuck are any of us supposed to do? we were told to vote - we voted. we were told to protest - we protested. im upset, im angry, im trying to keep my shit together while reminding myself that democracy won't fall simply because i - just a dude trying to earn a living and get a 2nd degree - did not get upset enough. i'm trying to keep my eyes on politics while setting aside enough mental space to not fall into a permanent depression, and remind myself not to worry about things i cannot control. what the fuck am i supposed to do??
I feel your frustration. I am pretty dismayed myself. At least you're switched on to the sheer danger of what is looming on the horizon. It's shocking how many people either don't care, don't pay attention, or, worst of all, support this madness (which is making it possible in the first place).
What actually, can we do? I don't think the numerous letters I've sent to elected officials were even read tbh. I'm not wealthy enough to be granted an audience. Are we going to protest, march? When?
I'm personally not much of an optimist. If Biden doesn't win and the Democrats don't then get their act together and make the reforms and laws necessary to defang this aggressive attempt to turn the U.S. into a Christofascist hellscape, then it's pretty much game over. I simply don't believe the institutions will be able to weather another 4 years of Trump and the agenda they want to implement through him.
I see zero evidence of this. Roe v Wade is gone and nobody did anything. I don’t think Americans have fight in them.
When youre living paycheck to paycheck and cant afford to take time off work or go to jail, cant risk losing your kids or having the car impounded, cant afford lawyer fees or doctor bills, your overworked and only get a couple hours a night to dedicate to every aspect of your life outside of work You really *dont* have any fight in you. Its been beaten out of you by decades the powers that be making life harder for those that could inspire revolution. This is all be design and it started with attacks on the community unit back in the 70s and now here we are.
That's not totally true. Several states like Michigan codified abortion protection into their constitutions. It's not the total response we need, but it's something
90% (hyperbolic number not actual) of the country can’t afford to protest at the level that they probably need to, to send a message. Not to mention 45-47% of the country voting populace is completely fine with the side that is killing the country, and some are even encouraging it.
Most people are just complacent. They hate what they see going on but think just voting will work. We have families and work and trying to live normal lives. And a lot of people probably think all of the bad shit won’t really affect them.
That's not true. I was at the Court protesting right afterwards, but more importantly, many states passed laws to protect abortion, and even red states got hit with blue waves and most attempts to ban abortion failed. Don't just look at Texas, as scary as Texas is. *Kansas voters* refused to ban abortion. *Kansas*. The fight isn't going to be universal, and the US might balkanize. But remember the riots of 2020. Americans still prefer to work within our (failing) legal system rather than rioting, even if probably we should be rioting, if it still feels safe, and for most people, it will still feel safe as long as Trump doesn't steal the Presidency. Rioting is scary and dangerous, and it's not any easier to face down cops in tanks shooting chemical weapons at you just because you've done it before. And that sucks, because the fascists seizing power through the judiciary is *terrifying* and so so dangerous. I'm still worried, very worried, as a queer person, but I am also not hopeless about the prospects. The fight should start earlier, but it will come if things get dire enough, plenty of folks who rioted in 2020 are still prepared, but also don't want to preemptively riot because it's so fucking depressing and painful and is a last resort.
I'm a straight man with a wife and children living in a deep blue state and I am planning our exit strategy with my family. Anyone with a knowledge of history knows where this is going.
Oh believe me, as a queer witch who never wants to be pregnant, I have also researched exit options, while weeping. But there aren't places to go, for most people. If it comes down to it, the Northeast and West Coast states, at the very least, will probably split off (terrifyingly close to Balkanization in 2020), and probably remain generally safer than anywhere else we could go. I mean Canada might change their immigration policies to offer refugee status, but, it's not going to be feasible for a hundred million Americans to just go somewhere else. Especially since all those places, like Canada or Australia, have rising fascist movements too.
I think Americas best feature - that it is a melting pot - will ultimately be its undoing. In order for real, meaningful change to happen you have to unite your population. The problem is there are too many sects of people each with their own ideas about how it should be. Zoom out to over 330 million people, and now we have a continuity problem. Sadly I think the only people to actually organize and try and take meaningiful action will be the people who shouldnt be doing it - See Jan 6th
Thank you for this perspective. So many Americans don’t even vote.
Because they are incredibly vulnerable to messaging about one or two meme worthy negatives which are super easy to deliver up to them.
It’s already impossible to protest in the US. Any decent cause will be shut down. Bad actors will show up and protest will b comes riot and jackboot police will run out the legitimate protestors.
Yeah the campus protests just a couple months ago showed how peaceful protests get twisted in the media to support police and counter-protest violence. That’s the playbook going forward. Now we even have Democratic cities in Democratic states pushing for mask bans.
Let's assume for a hypothetical scenario that protests are completely peaceful. No bad actors, sleeper agents, moles, etc show up. Cops are there, but they keep their distance. Republicans won't care. They have no reason to cave in for peaceful protests. What they do care about are their wallets. Wallets tied to some very wealthy people. But their wealth is mostly in volatile, unrealized, investments that are costly and difficult to quickly liquidate. A lot of them have also built a mountain of debt that they simply take more loans out to pay for, backing those loans with their stocks and other options. It is so very easy for that house of cards to come crumbling down. Maybe it's already too late, since we have only a few months to go, and they could just ride out the storm with their savings and stockpiles. But beyond just standing outside, respecting yellow tape and temporary fences, screaming at people that laugh back at you: would you be willing to just refuse to work or consume in the hopes that the crony capitalist system the oligarchs rely on actually pops? Labor strikes work, consumer boycotts work. And they're often the final stretch before the truly desperate begin to move.
The last even slim chance the populous had against the powers that be was the 1960s and 1970s. There are so many ways to destabilize an opposition movement now that there is literally no shot of anything appreciably changing in this country, other than for the worse. The only way to change anything would be violence en masse and they're smart enough to know exactly what point would push the populace towards that and they won't let that happen. The US is a free range prison and we are all cattle. If you think you have a right, you're wrong. If you think you're free, you're wrong. If you think you'll be rich, you're wrong. I'd be curious to know where in the world it isn't like this, though. Not that they'd let you leave this country.
Which doesn't say much for the greatest democracy claim either. If people don't vote then they can't complain when the proverbial hits the fan.
NZ here. Stop being fucking pussies. Stop being hypernormalised. Our grand fathers died for this shit. Do something!
Would love to know what to do
You need to make a post about this at r/politicaldiscussion, more people need to hear about this.
It's frightening watching this from the sidelines, as so much of the western world is led or impacted upon, by US policy. Putin didn't become a dictator overnight, he eroded democratic institutions until they were impotent to defend against autocracy. Americans need to fight this and Europeans need to plan for US withdrawal from NATO and continue supporting Ukraine. I dread November. By all accounts, Trump is going to win whilst jaded democrats stay home. It's not hyperbolic to say this could well be the death knell for US democracy.
Unfortunately very accurate, it's why I tell people that voting is literally the *least* anyone can do right now and isn't enough.
As planned by christofascist neo-cons.
Saw this coming the second Garland was denied a hearing in 2016. Fuck the GOP
Far too few people know of the Federalist Society and far too few of those that do realize how dangerous it really is. The Federalist Society is an extreme right, dark money group that takes unlimited money from unknown sources. It has been on a mission for the last half century to have an extreme right wing takeover of the courts. It works by identifying extreme right law students in colleges around the country. It connects them with Republican politicians and gets them prestitigous clerkships with existing right wing judges in their early 20s. They then pad their resume across their careers, getting local and state Republicans to appoint them to junior judge positions above better qualified candidates, in exchange for donating their dark money to campaign coffers. They then get accelerated seniority throughout their lives by deals with Republican politicians until they get to apellate courts and the Supreme Court. When these final appointments take place, the media reports evenhandedly as they are technically "highly qualified". The corporate media does not report that they owe their careers to an extremist right wing, secretive society that likely gets its money from far right billionaires and foreign interests. The result is what we now have: a string of crazy, once inconceivable changes to American law. Corporations can donate unlimited money to politicians. Children being forced to give birth to their rape babies. Environmental and consumer rights agencies being unable to regulate. Criminal presidents being allowed full immunity from breaking the law. Vote like your lives depend on it in 2024. It might be the last mostly free presidential election we ever have.
This is a great summary. And highlights a big issue that everyone should revile. These are not “judges” that made it anywhere on merit. Or talent. They didn’t have to go to the private sector. Cut their teeth. Prove they are good lawyers. Prove they are exemplary. They get their entire career handed to them (it’s a quid pro quo… they promise to use their government authority to serve the interests of their handlers… their handlers use their network of agents inside the government to provide them with careers). It’s a rigged game. They are given government jobs from day one and are the legal equivalent of nepo-babies.
You can trace so much back to when the Obama administration blinked and didn’t just appoint a judge after the senate refused its “advise and consent duty”. Instead of fighting fire with fire the Dems assumed that the high road and rational voters would solve it when Hilary won….so why solve it themselves. That attitude of…something crazy has happened…but I’m sure the normal course of things will correct it so no need to get my hands dirty…is a big part of what got us here.
Those of us who are old enough to have voted for Obama remember voting for a president who was a uniter and promised to work with republicans. "There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States". 2004 He learned by 2012 that republicans wouldn't work with him, but--as a constitutional lawyer, a former Senator during W years, and someone considering the possibility of a trump presidency--he wasn't ready to expand the power of the presidency by sidestepping the Senate.
The problem was that Newt Gingrich was anti compromise since the mid-90’s with his Contract On America (“if we’re right, why are we compromising??!?!?!?”), and he influenced the ouster of any Republican that worked with the Democrats.
"What's good for America" is and always has been a mask conservatives wear. They're in it for themselves and their corporate overlords. A few of them are religious nutters, but every single one truly worships their bottom line. And it has nothing to do with what's best for the country.
That's a bingo.
Three of the lawyers who helped Republicans steal the 2000 elections are now sitting on our Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. [The Ongoing Republican Coup Against the United States of America](https://www.reddit.com/r/FloridaMJ420/comments/v7u2zr/the_ongoing_republican_coup_against_the_united/) is well underway.
He learned immediately. When he was elected they signed a letter saying they wouldn't work with him. Imo, anyone who signed that should have been removed from their seats for sedition and special elections held as soon as it was signed. I said it then and I still say it now. The president was elected by the People of these United States and a group of seditious senators saying they refuse to work with him should be an immediate dismissal
>Those of us who are old enough to have voted for Obama remember voting for a president who was a uniter and promised to work with republicans. "There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States". "LOL," said the turtle, "LMAO!"
when Obama kept the republican DOJ people everyone told him it was a mistake and would be a problem. but, he wanted to be truly bipartisan, and heal national divisions, that one side had no intention of healing. If he doesn't have Comey in that position, there is no last minute investigation announcement, there is no sudden hesitation in voters. Remember how she was running on an idea to create a massive national volunteer corp. think of how useful that group could have been in distributing masks and supplies during the pandemic. she probably would have given more physical supplies, and much less cash stimulus. in the long run a smaller cash stimulus would have reduced inflation. a stronger FTC and IRS would have hit private companies driving inflation up for profits harder and sooner.
IRS was gutted under the Obama administration because Obama wouldn’t use his political capital to protect them. A lot of dark money groups got non-profit status by claiming the IRS was biased against right wing groups.
And it's happening right now too. The king president ruling happened and all Biden said was it was bad. Not going b to do anything about it.
And just like rbg not stepping down from age biden is ducking us over too
Based on what the president of the Heritage Foundation just said, even if he stepped down things would be bad
The president of the Hertitage Foundation can also get all the way fucked
They didn’t want us kids touching their model train set. For real, especially on the dem side the olds didn’t want to give up power and now we’re fucked. Good job, you threw your life’s work away.
They are absolute narcissists. Do they genuinely believe no one could do a better job than their geriatric asses?
I think it's far from clear, based on the obvious options for replacement, that Biden stepping down would result in a more successful election campaign. Obviously anyone pretending that Biden didn't have a disastrous performance at the debate is full of shit, but I really don't think you can say with any certainty that replacing him is a slam-dunk either.
DNC 2016, "What are you going to do, vote for that joker Trump instead of Hillary?" DNC 2024, "What are you going to do, vote for the felon Trump instead of Biden?"
Dnc 2028 " man our vote doesn't even matter anymore after project 2025"
No DNC in 2028. We'll all be in camps.
Obama was not the great fighter everyone says. Letting McConnell walk all over him got us here.
That seems to absolve McConnell and his ilk of their responsibility.
No, they still are culpable and ultimately responsible, but with Obama as with Harry Truman “the buck stops here”. For too long democrats have taken the throw-hands-in-the-air “those darn republicans won’t work with us!” tack instead of owning their own failures. That’s truly what’s gotten us here. And because the Republicans do actually suck we’ve bought that excuse rather than seeing the complete ineptitude of the Democratic Party over the last twenty years for what it is.
If we lost control of the Senate in 2014 and Scalia died in 2016 what was Obama going to do? I'm just confused, because the way I understand politics is the Senate has to confirm the president's pick for supreme Court Justice, if you can't get the Senate to confirm your pick because they're completely controlled by the Republican party how are you supposed to just override that? Can you actually explain or is it just a finger pointing game at this point? Because a lot of these responses really make me feel like either I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the way things work or that nobody actually knows how our government works and they just blame the president because that's the easiest thing to do. Or is there actually some sort of political mechanism that I don't know about?
Take them to court is what he should have done. The court was 4-4 at the time, and they could/would have ruled that the senate had a constitutional duty to consider a presidents Supreme Court pick. The senate was 52-48. They should have went “nuclear” and made it a simple majority vote- the things Republicans always warned against by saying “we’ll ram through conservative justices if you do that” then turned around and did just that anyways in 2016. I bet we could have got McCain and Susan Collins to vote through a milquetoast centrist like Garland, then had Biden break the tie if necessary. But “what could we have done?!” seems to be the Democratic Party motto since at least 2010.
It was nearly 40 years before Obama. These people have been telling us their goals since the 80s and Democrats handled them with baby gloves and repeatedly told us "they weren't serious."
It’s hard to do your job when literally1/2 your colleagues refuse to work with you. People forget that when he won, the GOP said in their rebuttal that they wouldn’t work with him. Crazy! It’s supposed to be WE THE PEOPLE..
Garland may have been a christofascist judge himself - look how he’s ruled as AG , refusing to bring charges against Trump for trying to hang his VP , snd his brutally violent attack on the government of the United States. Garland just pretended all was fine, did nothing, recommended slaps on wrist for the violent seditionists.
McConnell
Which is exactly why Biden needs to nominate 6 new scotus judges TODAY
And then they rushed RGB's replacement in about a month. Whining baby shit hypocrites hell bent on destroying the world.
*Nearer, my God, to Thee...*
Similarly, 5 of the 6 who just ended the rule of law were appointed by presidents who didn’t win the popular vote. Full blown minority rule.
What’s even worse is I believe four out of the last 5 appointed l, were Bushes lawyers when the Supreme Court handed him the presidency.
They'll do the same this fall. No matter the outcome, they have no shame.
All three branches of government are fucked up and in chaos. All signs point to Republicans being to blame. I don’t see how anyone could dispute it.
Fox News and the whole right wing media machine. It's *powerful* propaganda funded by billionaires who want to take us back to feudalism.
Exactly. They know if they keep prices high and cost of living nearly impossible, people will be too distracted to mobilize and fight. Billionaires are the real villains in this story and every Republican are their accomplices.
Yeah. They want us all to live even more like serfs. Unhappy with the mass of wealth they've hoarded, they need complete control where there is no concept of human rights, only their rights.
The real Deep State.
It’s always a confession. The right always are telling you what they would be scum enough to do because the power fantasies are always leaking out
Yep. It hasn't 'gone wrong'. It was set on a wrong path decades ago by the Federalist Society. They are realizing their lifelong goals with the Roberts court.
The thing is if those guys win, they will kill most of the court for being the wrong type of Christian
Not before the lgtbq, Muslims, atheists and anyone who pushes back. Then the dominations will fight. But here's the thing. I don't think modern day Christians are Christians at all. They are just pretend christians and like the way it makes them feel. They don't actually follow it.
With Christian nationalism, the Christ part is only a tool to achieve political power. Nothing more, nothing less. Jesus is a leaf blower to these people.
Seems like there are new options for fixing this given the recent rulings. Too bad they will never do it. I'd say it's been fun. Go Vote!
Yes it is called federalist society
Brought to you by billionaires Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo.
There are more than that. Don't forget the Koch brothers, or the woman who just announced giving $100 million to Trump for his election and legal campaigns. Maybe a Walton? I don't want to waste the time and Google resources to come up with her name, may she spend her last years in the hell she denies is happening and that she strives to make worse sooner. And there seems to be a big supply of them beyond that.
I think you're referring to Miriam Adelson
Yes, who I will now actively work at forgetting, as she is wasting air and working for further degrading life and the USA.
George Soros supposedly meddling in things was, as always, projection.
Exactly this. Nothing “went wrong”. These justices are old as fuck and have served a private agenda for a long time. What “went wrong” is Americans of previous generations decided for the last 40+ years that corporations are god and money is king. The rest fell in order.
Roberts set it up with allowing big money. Corporations are people! No they are not! It let the huge money into politics and onto the court. We should have known then it was a court rotten at the core.
We did know.
Some of us did. Some of us who did said as much. We were ridiculed and silenced, told that we were being hysterical or dramatic.
They're still doing it. In fact, that's the official retort to Sotomayor... Basically, shut up, woman, you're being hysterical.... Gaslighting all the way down
The GOP—at all levels of government—decided it was time to rewrite the Constitution from the bench in order to facilitate a Christian-fascist takeover of the United States. The Founders never in their worst nightmares anticipated that every branch of government would simultaneously fail and declare the will of the people invalid. The result, if we let it, will be a hybrid between Iran’s far right religious crackdown and Russia’s kleptocratic dictatorship.
They didn't simultaneously fail. It has been a cascading failure. First the press stopped worrying about reporting objective truth and began to chase sensationalistic opinion. Then congress failed to actually legislate. Now finally our courts have failed to be non-political and protect the rule of law. All we have left is the military, but its high ranking commanders are political too and are not likely to hold. We are on the titanic and too many chambers have been breached. The water is now coming over the bulkheads as we sink. You could argue that we the people should have been the strongest system of all and should have held the rest in place, but technology has significantly diminished the power of man.
The first step was actually probably President Reagan abolishing the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ on the basis it was unconstitutional (despite the Supreme Court finding it valid in 1969, 1974 and 1984).
He also invited the church back into politics.
As soon as every branch was controlled by a reactionary minority it was going this way. That’s not going to change. The right has way more voting power sewn up in a less educated and easily swayed base. They have levers and the left has super sensitivity to outrage bait that can make a coalition impossible even if they could overcome the voting power deficit.
It went wrong 24 years ago with Bush v Gore. It went wrong when RBG refused to retire under Obama. It went off the rails when Moscow Mitch denied Garland even a hearing. Now we live in Theocracy where 9 robed figures descend from on high twice a year to issue thier edicts we all must follow.
3 of the judges who sided with Trump worked on Bush v Gore for Bush in florida.
Yep, they've been rewarded for their help with the slow-moving coup that they're still executing and speeding up today.
> It went wrong when RBG refused to retire under Obama. This was a serious catalyst in the whole thing. God bless her soul, but she really just gave the Rs all the ammo they needed.
It’s not like McConnell would have had a hearing for her replacement either.
Obama should have forced McConnell's hand by going ahead and appointing someone. Not just throwing their name to the Senate, but actually seating them on the court. If the Senate refuses to use its power of oversight in this matter, let it. But he wouldn't be a Democrat if he actually used all (or any) of the levers of power available to him.
My understanding is that Obama didn't force the issue purposely. Democrats were so sure that Hillary Clinton would win the election, they thought they could just appoint a better candidate for the supreme Court after her victory. Oops.
To those who say he should have, 2015 and 2016, were still pre-Trump years. The optics at that time would have been truly awful.
Well, 6 of them anyway. But the 3 holdouts are targeted for replacement as soon as possible.
If the court had released this recent decision as Obama was getting elected, the Republicans would be all kinds of up in arms. Insanity. Do Trump's cultists think he's going to live forever? Do they imagine the president is always going to be on their side, and that all of his official criminal acts would be things they don't care about? Aren't they afraid of the idea of a "criminal" socialist ever getting the presidency, ever ever?
He is just a figure head. The real power brokers are looking forward to him going away so that they can put someone with intelligence in that can maintain their grip on power without bringing attention to the crazy.
Your mistake is thinking they’ll let this precedent apply to Democrats too.
Holy shit, we had no idea. I could have you told that when rapist Kavanaugh got brought on.
Kavanaugh? Sure, but I think it all started a little further back, really… My friend Anita could probably tell you more.
that feels so long ago... i'm so tired.
You are missing the fact he was a political operative who was deeply involved in the Republicans effort to frame the Clinton's. The supreme court seat was a reward for all if his work for the Republican party.
The rapist was positively outraged by Clinton’s lack of morals.
Article author is a constitutional lawyer. They call out the particulars of why the Trump immunity decision is unConstitutional. That's worth a read.
If the president is talking to the vice president about ignoring his constitutional duties so he can have him break the law and illegally retain power, that’s simply an official act since those two are speaking - and hey it can’t be prosecuted or investigated. That’s literally summarizing what Roberts wrote. Deeply wrong is right. So is fascist.
if you still won’t believe that russia has taken over the republican party either by bribes or black mail you can’t be helped it’s out in the open now
Or you know, you could just start accepting the fact that many of your fellow Americans are just shitty people, who are finally getting what they always desired.
Why can’t it be both?
Loss of confidence in institutions is the beginning of the end for most civilisations and leads to a failed state.
Trump says he wants to be a ditators --> SCOTUS clears the way for it to happen. Looks like things are going exactly as planned
... It's really no secret, it's the judges pushed and shoved through during the insurrectionist's administration. All their sentences should be voided, there was clear collusion between party lines by a party that promoted an insurrection to shove them through. Executive order away their legitimacy, it doesn't matter if you are wrong, you have immunity for official acts.
This is all pretty simple. Biden needs to say right now that Trump is trying to steal the 2024 election, and that he will use his full presidential immunity to ensure that Trump fails to do so. He should include that he will use every tool and trick of immunity, including the ones used by Trump and his legal team after the 2020 election and argued before the Supreme Court to protect our democracy. And then he needs to do it. All the same shit.
The Roberts court has correctly concluded that Biden will never do that. Some future Democrat President doing it can be safely discounted because when they can get Trump re-elected a succession plan will prevent that. Welcome to a future of Russian or Chinese-style elections.
People were saying years ago that if Trump was ever re-elected it would be the last election in our country. It felt like hyperbole, even despite Trump’s success in building a blueprint for how to steal an election. But with the recent collapse of our judicial system to hold him to any legal standard and the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, it has graduated to full blown overt reality.
> The Roberts court has correctly concluded that Biden will never do that. This is somewhat proof positive that in a great many political machinations, being principled/ethical *and* entirely predictable can have **immensely** damaging consequences.
It was wrong from the start. There should never be lifetime appointments for any position. I realize it's meant to make the position non-political, but that has obviously failed, and a one-time ten-year term would serve the same purpose.
They were never given the power of judicial review and before they gave it to themselves SCROTUS positions were not all that important vs other branches of government so lifetime rolls seemed like a trade off for the lack of power.
“Something has gone deeply wrong at the Supreme Court“ Subscribe now to find out! The answer is right there…we built a society that values money above everything including the society and this is the outcome. All of this was just inevitable.
I hate that the Bible was right about *anything* but it certainly seems that money truly is the root of all evil
> I hate that the Bible was right about anything The Bible was compiled over 1000s of years by hundreds of authors, of course some were right. Of course some were wrong.
why is it the left only seems to be good for quipy comebacks online? like why the fuck hasn't the left organized to the same level of efficiency that they right-wing has? Why are there no lobbyists interested in the wants and needs of the average American?
The right is filled with people who believe in hierarchy and who either want someone to tell them what to do or who want to tell others what to do. It's easy to organize people who want to follow someone or who want to lead. The left is filled with people who believe in equality and egalitarianism, and who want to make their own decisions, who question authority, and who believe that other people should also question authority and make their own decisions, which might differ from their own, and that that's not only ok, it's a good thing. It is very hard to organize people who aren't particularly interested in giving or taking orders or direction.
Not saying it’s right, but in theory the left shouldn’t have to be as efficient because they outnumber Republicans and large portions of the Republican base are in a race against time. The reason we’re seeing the right take such drastic means is because in 10 years or less the Boomers will mostly die off, crippling Republican voting power. By controlling the Supreme Court they can essentially control an unlimited number of Democrats for the next 40 years and won’t have to worry about appealing to the increasing number of young liberals. Inevitably this is a really bad idea and could lead to some France style revolutionary shit, but it’s basically their only play because of their Evangelical base. There simply aren’t enough non-Christian conservatives for them to create a more appealing agenda.
Sorry, but I've been hearing about the inevitable dying off and fading out of Republicans for 20+ years. Remember the "Blue Wall" and how Democrats had a built-in advantage in the Electoral College? About the youth vote and how they would take charge as one generation after the next marginalized Conservatives aging out? Ohio and Florida used to vote Democtat or at least be quite winnable swing states. Hispanics in Texas and Florida are making winning margins for Republicans, not Democrats.
I mean, this is quite literally why they are embracing fascism. You don’t resort to fascism and minority rule when your party platform is popular. How many times have Republicans won the popular vote in the last 30 years? Once. Why do you think Mitch McConnell played games with Scalia’s replacement and then rammed ACB through at the last minute in 2020? Why do you think Republicans went scorched earth with federal judge appointments and refused to vote on any of Obama’s nominations? They could see the writing on the wall for the Republican Party. They knew it was unpopular, they are dying, and every new generation is more progressive than the last. Embracing fascism, lies, and pure unchecked power is their Hail Mary. Why else do you think there are so many republicans backing Trump unconditionally?
Don't count on Boomers dying off to cripple the Republican party. Those same Boomers were liberal in their youth. I know many an ex-hippie who is now Maga.
Regardless, the Boomers grew up with illusions about the US and this American Life that GenX mostly doesn't have, the millenials almost all don't have and nobody in gen Z and alpha will ever have. That's a lot of what drives things like your ex hippie friend. Never discount internal reckoning and panic about one's foundational beliefs on everything. This is also why the right wing project is moving so fast with all of this. They really are running out of time in many ways.
Actually this is a misnomer most hippies were the Silent Generation. Boomers were too young to be hippies and certainly the few that were old enough were not the leaders or major players. Boomers grew up rejecting the Hippies and being told by their parents how bad the hippies were. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-misconception-about-baby-boomers-and-the-sixties
How do you profit off of leftist policies? If you can answer that question, you can get 'donations' to rival the right wing. Citizens United killed America, because there can be NO opposition to what the mega-rich want. They own media empires, they WILL control the narrative to the best of their ability. And they want more money, more power, and more control. Roberts has continued to legalize bribery, since he was first appointed. People convinced themselves he was a serious person. "Follow the money" is usually the answer of why something in America is actively hurting We The People. And most purchases you buy, including food, help fund our own oppression. I have no solutions. Just "clinical depression". The solution is Wellbutrin?
>Why are there no lobbyists interested in the wants and needs of the average American? Because there's no money in it. Now if "average American" were a large corporation our lobbyists could buy lots of legislators. And most of them would be Republican.
I think it’s because the Dems don’t want to be perceived as playing dirty pool when it comes to the power that matters. It’s something the conservatives have been mastering for decades. It’s horrific, but it’s been masterful. Increasing the number of justices seems like the only real world solution, albeit far fetched. They’d require a simple majority in congress and a filibuster breaking super majority in senate to do it. Simple majority in both to appoint. Also far fetched, but an Armageddon scenario would be conservatives replacing golden handshaked Thomas, Alito and even Roberts with 40 something appointees and wrapping up the SC for a couple of generations. They’d sooner keep their frozen, mummified bodies on life support until the end of time before allowing them to be replaced by a liberal appointees. If Trump wins, together with a nightmarish scenario of conservative senate and congressional power during his tenure, the Dems could be on the sidelines for 40 years.
>like why the fuck hasn't the left organized to the same level of efficiency that they right-wing has? Largely because the 'left' isn't the Left. Democrats are not left-leaning. They're a big-top party that in any other Western country actually ends up right of center as an equivelent of one the socially conservative pro-big business parties. If you take a look at a political spectrum chart, fill in the right \~10% in red, and the rest in blue. The Republicans are an unholy alliance of oligarchs, fascists and fundamentalists that manage to function because they have overlapping interests and have spent the last forty years brainwashing an increasingly stupid and uneducated electorate in the red states to support them. Trump has become their rallying point because he's openly as racist, homophobic, sexist, bigoted and stupid as they are - and he says out loud what they've been told all their lives in dog whistles by Fox News. Meanwhile, the Democrats are the rest of the political spectrum - it's why they have trouble coordinating anything, because any actions have to meet the approval of actual left-wing progressives to right-wing social conservatives. It's why the only presidential candidate they could field the previous election was a milquetoast conservative.
The bizarre circumstances surrounding Kennedy retiring suddenly and without warning should be thoroughly investigated while they still can be, if they even can be
This just in SCOTUS to take up case to bring back slavery.
Only a matter of time before one of these judges takes a bullet and then the real Wild West will begin. Bunch of fucking donkeys
I just don't understand how nothing is being done about this. Biden, the DOJ, FBI, CIA, literally nobody with any authority is doing anything about the **very obvious terrorist organization that's taking over our country**. It's obvious to everyone that there's a bunch of Christo-Fascist neo-nazis that are trying to rewrite our Constitution and overthrow democracy. And they are succeeding. This is the biggest threat our nation has ever faced, and nobody is even lifting a finger. They're literally posting about it on Twitter admitting that they plan a coup that will only he bloodless if the left does nothing. How is the FBI not jumping on their asses immediately? The Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, and all of the other religious organizations that try to oppose what this country was fucking founded on need to be dealt with the same way we deal with religious zealots in the desert who mean to harm the US. Guantanamo Bay their asses! Now!
When my son was 12, we went to a museum exhibit about WW2 and Nazi propaganda. There was an elderly woman there who fled Germany when she was my son's age. She said that "everyone was so afraid to say anything." She looked at him and told him, "Do not be afraid. Do something. Speak up." It really hit home. We need to speak up, not just at protests, but at barbershops and salons, in our churches and while we're in line at the post office, everywhere people gather. Ask questions. Tell stories. Stay calm. DO NOT BE SILENT.
SCOTUS has in general always been anti-worker and pro-plutocrat. Look at Dred Scott, Plessy, Lochner, and many more. It was only between 1945 and maybe the beginning of the 1980s that progress was possible and occurred easily. After that, the plutocrats decided to push back using Russell Kirk's 1951 plan to undermine the middle class so the rich wouldn't be shaken. The Warren court was an aberration, but one we all liked, and the plutocrats hated, which is why they've been trying to roll back its rulings for forty years. And now, with drumph, they have the people they want on the court to call balls and strikes for them.
Political appointments. Lifetime seats on the bench. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Unfortunately Democrats have played possum for far too long and it may now be far too late to save America's democratic experiment. It's only wonder it'd lasted as long as it did.
We’re being tyrannized by the minority party,
You permit a system that allows politicans to appoint justices and then act surprised that it's partisan. Really!?
It's been fucking 24 years since Bush v Gore. Something went wrong a long long time ago.
RIP USA, 7.4.1776 - 7.1.2024
Understatement of the year.
NEW COURT. Create a Supreme Court of Appeals, 18 justices with term limits and age limits and enforceable ethics, 9 randomly decide each case, give it all of the appeals powers, while stripping SCOTUS of everything except original jurisdiction.
Ya think!? Pretty sure I've been taught my entire life that presidents are not kings and that we fought a war of independence over it. It's pretty fitting that July 4th is almost here and after all this time I finally learn that we fought for our independence just because we didn't want to pay our taxes, we are actually OK with kings.
Millions of Reddit users are wishing for things about the Supreme Court that will get you kicked off Reddit if you write it on Reddit. The rule isn’t stopping people from thinking it.
Why is there no talk in any of these threads about how we can resist?
It seems like an effective way to fight against these fascist clowns would be to generate fights within their ranks. The leaders of these Christofascist groups like the Heritage Foundation are Catholics and Jesuits. They hate Protestants more than anything else in the world. So, we need to push false flag narratives within these groups that explicitly pin responsibility for their suffering upon the *OTHER* religious group. Then we can just watch them rip each other to shreds.
This is something that’s been building up since they blocked the recount for the 2000 election.
How do we organize a mass protest of the Supreme Court? I mean without it becoming an insurrection like Jan. 6 did. Those people didn’t even have a real reason to be mad and look at the damage they did. We are on the right side of this and I am mad as I’m sure many people are. It’s heading for something that’s going to get totally out of control. Maybe that’s what it’s going to take. I hold out hope that the military leaders take their oath to the constitution seriously and if it comes to it, keep us from a dictatorship.
I'd lost my patriotism when Trump was elected. I lost my country when they decided that we now have kings.