What would you have me do? All I can do is vote against it.
If you don’t have a lot to fear from a right-wing dictatorship I guess all you can do is vote against it.
If you’re someone who does have something to fear from a right-wing dictatorship, begin thinking about preparations to hide, run, fight etc. because unsurprisingly every right-wing dictatorship has a high body count.
Still hoping common sense wins out, and unlike a lot of other countries that went dictatorship the military doesn’t have the same relative power and authority, but it’s best to have some plans for the problems that could occur.
The most influential person in politics is you. Openly speaking out to your family and friends about the danger of Donald Trump is the best method of his defeat and the preservation of our democracy. All politics is local.
Time for the people of the US to do some kind of a peaceful overthrowing of the system
We cant expel sex offenders and insurectionists from government, you think you can peacefully overthrow the whole thing?
It’s impossible to peacefully overthrow a violent opposition.
Definitely would take a lot of people physically present at least
Sideeye from the voting booth
Goes back to voting
If you don’t think we can win in the voting booth, we can’t win nonviolently, and we probably can’t win using violence, either. Voting is the non violent way to change things.
Too bad that even that voting system is rigged to only two options
Hard agree.
To win we just need to look at the success of the teabaggers. They ran people at the bottom - school boards, county positions and local city councils. It took about ten years for those to move up the power chain to congress. Of course they achieved power through the backing of tons of very wealthy conservatives, state-of-the-art propaganda and experts at cheating, sprinkled with borderline violence.
That’s all you can do. Also, talk to everyone you know. Mention Project 2025 and it’s goals. Encourage people to register to vote. Light fires under asses. Get mad about it NOW. If Trump gets elected, America is super fucked.
I’m in a super red area, if I encourage more people to vote Trump gets more votes. But everyone around here is so unbelievably brainwashed I just gave up. I’ll vote but I can’t do much else about it.
Right? If I talk about Project 2025 to most people around me they’ll be super excited and do whatever they can to make sure it happens.
Biden out there committing genocide and you’re pretending America isn’t fucked right now.
The mental gymnastics Americans will do…
whenever in mixed company just casually mention the hooker piss tape that you saw of him and how you were surprised by his micropenis. ‘sure explains a lot, eh?’
We’re not sleepwalking into anything.
There’s an increasing number of people who are sprinting towards it at top speed, an increasing number of people willing to let it happen because they’re mad at Biden over Israel or upset that he’s not the embodiment of the perfect candidate, and then those of us who are blaring the warnings from our bullhorns, only to find that half the crowd is blaring right along with us and the other half has no interest in what we’re saying.
“Biden’s old and Israel is bad now, so clearly the obvious solution is to vote for a Trump dictatorship. Surely that’s the most common-sense solution and absolutely nothing can go wrong. The leopard certainly won’t eat my face, right? Right???” – an increasing number of independent and Democrat voters
Also, a lot of the media wants a horse race and wants their clicks, no matter the risk. And they keep bothsidering Biden and Donnie.
The party is dogshit at messaging and has no intention of even trying to get the votes of the people you described.
The principal concern at the moment seems to be preemptively finding a group to blame if Biden loses. Imagine if that energy and focus were put into trying to win votes.
Why would Biden need to win votes when they can simply be manufactured
The folks who say never Biden are right wing operatives. Perhaps unwittingly in some cases, but I suspect many of the loudest voices don’t want to see any Democrat win and running down Biden is their best shot at that.
I don’t want to see any Democrat or Republican or anyone win that is beholden to private entities rather than the people.
It’s all a fuckin show and has been for over 100 years. It goes back further than that but at least we were mostly free of it prior to 1900.
You and me both. It’s a sad state of affairs that it’s not even an option. How we vote and the two party system is written into the fucking Constitution (not as such but the parties become inevitable) and we have to live with it. It’s supposed to be a living document reacting to changes in the times but that’s not possible right now.
I get not wanting either party. I’m certainly not beholden to either of them. But we are stuck. And we can fight one battle at a time to slowly move things in the direction they need to go even if it’s one step forward and two back, or we can give up and just find a way to live with whatever chaos and injustice others choose for us. Because right now there just isn’t another option. Maybe some day if we fight hard enough and we win often enough we can win better options for the future, but they probably won’t be for us. The road is long and the progress is slow.
deleted by creator
Ahh, yes. Just completely disregard any criticism of the Democratic Party as “right wing operatives.” It couldn’t possibly be that they abuse their position as the only other viable option in order to further their plutocratic goals, and the people who have been complaining about it for decades are simply tired of hearing “it’s not the right time” ad nauseum.
You know what will convince people who barely managed to vote for Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 to vote against their conscience yet again? Knowing that they’ll be instantly blamed anyway when the majority doesn’t get their way? Insults and baseless accusations.
Criticize away. I’m no democrat and I have no love for them. I get into disagreements with those on the left about various things I disagree with. But at the end of the day I can work with democrats and I can’t with fascists. Defending freedom and the constitution against tyranny is something I swore an oath to do, and I will vote for nothing but democrats as long as fascism looms here.
How is protecting the queer community, women’s rights, and the civil rights of PoC, voting against your conscience exactly?
None of those are or have been under threat in decades and decades.
Nobody is entitled to special treatment so stop the nonsense.
Decades and decades, way to fuckin out your priv self that spectacularly. For those of us that actually live the experience, we’ve never stopped being under threat, least of all with folks like you getting so mad that we ask for even a modicum of ongoing protection.
Because I believe that protecting democracy is a prerequisite to protecting citizens, especially marginalized groups. The Democratic Party, to me, is a threat to democracy. Different from the Republican party, yes. And much less severe. But a threat nonetheless.
This isn’t “both sides,” the Republicans have 0% chance of ever getting my vote, period. The Democrats can earn my vote but choose not to. In my opinion, they are an active participant in the erosion of democracy in this country. They just have the benefit of only having to do it within their own party.
Is this in the general sense or are there specific policies/actions you could point me to as examples?
Two in particular:
-
The DNC has no interest in running an impartial and even-handed primary. It went so far as to argue in court that it was not bound by the language of its charter to run fair primaries. Since the Democratic primary is currently the only place that progressives can voice their political preferences, this practice effectively removes the right to political representation of anyone left of the party.
-
The Democratic Party engages in pied piper strategies, bolstering extremists within the Republican Party in order to increase their chances of winning the general (by promoting the “you have to vote D to avoid R” rhetoric that this thread started with). Specific to the current political climate, the DNC and the Hillary campaign promoted Trump in the 2016 Republican primary since they saw him as easier to beat than the rest of the field.
So they suppress voters to their left and intentionally radicalize the party and voters to their right.
Hmm ok fair enough actually, thanks
I could point back to 2016 DNC primaries as a perfect example. The vote of the average Democrat voter means jack shit. The caucus leaders and (I forget the position) leaders in the DNC for each zone/region are the only votes that matters. Quite literally how the DNC told the average Democrat voter, “go fuck yourself we’re not putting in Bernie because he’s not part of our globalist scheme”
The RNC isn’t any better. Willfully tanking candidates that realize BOTH parties are playing for a team that is not for the People and their Rights and freedoms.
-
You believe, because you don’t know for certain.
You think those people will be better protected under a republican admin?
Do you think what those people will go through under republican leadership is worth it so that the DNC “learns its lesson” whatever the flying fuck that’s supposed to mean because people like you can’t even be bothered with the primaries you claim to be so incensed about when you turn your nose up at protecting other people’s rights.
Believe it or not democracy is actually not when the candidate with less votes gets forced into the nomination anyways because “trust me bro more people want him bro just ignore he got less votes bro!”
Believe it or not Vote Karen, us folks you’re threatening to send back to the Republicans to be rounded up and tormented if not killed for another 4 years are not able to bring you the party’s manager.
You believe “protecting democracy” whatever the fuck you think that means, comes ahead of protecting people’s lives, and that’s a position you can only have if it isn’t your life in danger.
You objectively prefer us as dead bodies you can gesture to and shout “SEE!” as if it was some nebulous elite’s fault that you refused to save us. You prefer us that way because dead bodies don’t expect you to actually show your solidarity even when it’s such a herculean strain as waiting in line for a day at most and filling some boxes out.
Be an ally, or quit moaning when the people you claim you’re trying to help point out that you’re trying to extort a negotiation out of them for something they have no control over because that seems more “revolutionary” to you than just being there to have it go your way in the first fucking place at the primary stage if you’re willing to turn us over to the fucking gestapo over it.
You believe, because you don’t know for certain.
Followed up by you conjuring up all sorts of things you claim I believe to argue against strawmen.
And by the way, I phrase things as “I believe” because that’s what humans base their decisions on. None of us know anything 100%. I can recognize that we can work towards the same goal and have different beliefs about the best way to get there. I don’t automatically assume that everyone who disagrees with my methods also disagree with my goals.
Yeah because you have the privilege to not be condemned to possible state sanctioned violence by that “difference in methods” fuckin’ priv.
Well, who cares about a “threat to Democracy” when we’re a Republic?
Shifting towards this “Democracy” has seen nothing but rampant devaluation of currency coupled with massive increase in cost of goods, housing, energy, etc. and loss of Rights and freedoms.
Do they not teach Civics in school anymore?
We should go back to tax-neutral/positive heads of household being the only ones voting as they have a vested interest in the success of this nation. I’ll even leave out the land owning part since the “Democracy” chasers fucked most of us out of that one.
@MagicShel I know this is hard to understand, but genocide affects our decision making, and some of us would even prefer our country to fall to complete ruin than be aparty to it. Never again isn’t “never again unless it would be politically expedient”
Do you understand what I mean? That there are lines that can never, ever be crossed?
Do you understand why I’d never be able to look in the mirror again after that?
If you think Trump is going to bring a halt to genocide you’re delusional. Vote Trump in and the genocide will continue or escalate. The GOP will escalate persecution of your countrymen and will further dismantle our democracy.
All the shit Trump did, locking kids in cages, rampant corruption, constant stream of lies, bungled foreign policy, stochastic terrorism. None of that crosses the line for you.
Or is it that you’re more about the symbolism of your vote than its real world effects?
@agent_flounder I’m not going to choose between two different far right genocidal monsters.
There’s no rhetorical game here. What you’re asking me to do is an evil my conscience won’t bear, and yours will because of your moral cowardice.
Messy. Damnable. Pragmatism is hell, not cowardice. Trump is not a clay that can be worked on. He will go all in with what Israel is doing. With no alternative, if the lesser evil saves a life I’ll shake hands with it and kiss it on either cheek.
Good grief. Obviously acting in bad faith here rather than actually engaging and discussing. Hopefully few people in battleground states fall for all the people pushing this line on social media.
Fellow citizens, I don’t have to tell you genocide is disgusting. We need to be demanding of our reps and president to put a stop to the genocide here and Sudan both.
Hopefully nobody has to be told that the US has a long history of horrific foreign policy decisions (look up Kissinger or various coups we initiated or wars we started) that kill people by the millions either directly or indirectly. It’s up to us peons to fight this, fight the corruption that runs rampant, and fight to make our democracy work more for us than the Uber rich and powerful. Tale as old as time. It took decades to get us here and it will take decades to unfuck things.
But we are all fucked if if the GOP is allowed to implement Project 2025. It will be even more destructive to our institutions and democracy than the first Trump Presidency.
So you think that the default is no genocide? No genocide is not an option here. Our realistic options are:
A) genocide
B) genocide + fascism at home
Not choosing defaults to B
@kool_newt I’m deontologically committed to not being personally aparty to genocide, and your commitment to a utilitarian calculus where genocide is a given, is exactly why I’ve made that choice.
Ok, and I’m saying by not participating you’re effectively choosing not only genocide but fascism. As Rush says
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”
@kool_newt oh I made my choice. I hope some day you will realize that you have too and what it means got you.
I’m secure in my knowledge that my ideology isn’t so radical I shoot myself in the foot.
We aren’t committing genocide. We oppose genocide in Ukraine, and we would allow it under Trump. The fact that you’d be fine letting this country burn doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. We can’t help anyone in that state. And a lot of us want to help.
@MagicShel We’re making it much much much much worse, providing direct financial and military aid to a country actively slaughtering tens of thousands and displacing millions to facilitate ethnic cleansing.
It’s not that trump wouldn’t be worse, just they supporting Biden is totally and completely unconscionable. And to do so sacrifices a piece of your soul.
Refusing to stand up to fascism is unconscionable to me. My grandfather fought a war against it overseas and I’m not about to fail him here.
Refusing to stand up to fascism is unconscionable to me.
Then the Democratic Party should consider starting. Instead, they’ve unfailingly pretended that fascists are honorable people interested in serious governance that we should just compromise with in order to get concessions.
No disagreement.
@MagicShel voting for a genocidal monster isn’t standing up to fascism. There is a rot deep in your soul if you’ll let yourself fall that far.
Biden isn’t a genocidal monster and those words make you sound pretty unhinged. The fact that one of our close allies has been committing genocide is certainly a problem that we need to address but letting Trump win isn’t going to do Palestinians any favors.
TBH I would understand if he was smart, scheming and charismatic. Instead, they are rooting for a buffoon, an idiot and a failed businessman. He was even in power before, and they still want him back.
Look, I will hold my nose and vote for Biden in the general, just like last time. But don’t pretend that he had any business running again.
I’m not gonna vote for anyone because I’m way too left to agree with a lot of their politics, I’m just gonna vote against Trump. It doesn’t matter who is running against him, I’m not letting that dipshit win again. Or the republican party in general at this point, they’ve gotten too crazy.
Centrist City here I plod
The best thing about Biden and Israel, is he’s doing nothing different than any other president since 1948. Trump was the one who moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ffs.
He’s actually kinda better on Israel than previous presidents, he’s been negotiating the release of palestinians being held hostage in Israel, and has secured Gaza the right to access their own natural resources, which Israel had been blockading.
Almost like he’s actually doing the thing the left accused him of disregarding and using the US’ good terms with israel and israel’s dependency on the US as a negotiating tool to keep things as clean as possible without Israel going completely off the handle and doing something like firing a nuke out of feeling completely isolated.
It’s one of the things I really don’t understand about the argument. I can understand why people are upset with Biden, but yet yadda yadda yadda over the fact that Trump is literally running on a platform of being exponentially worse to them. Tell them they’re cutting off their own nose to spite their face, and they respond by sharpening the blade.
There’s an increasing number of people
Citation needed
I am throwing in the towel for now. I am hetro white uppermiddle class male of prot background and can quote the Bible better than most preachers. I am in zero danger. It is everyone else is who is fucked. The rest of this country can’t even bother to vote to save themselves from firing squads.
The funny thing with an outgroup is that it keeps growing. They’ll find something they don’t like about you.
On a long enough timeline we are all dead.
What is that supposed to mean? Who cares as long as you have your uppermiddle class life (which guess what, you won’t when they find something they don’t like about you). What a glib response.
Biden’s old and Israel is bad now, so clearly the obvious solution is to vote for a Trump dictatorship.
It’s full Bernie Bro logic too. Bernie didn’t get the nomination, so we’re voting for Trump.
These people don’t care about policies, only personalities.
deleted by creator
You know, they are not sleepwalking. Its pretty intentional. Hitler’s had a large following…in the United States. They even had a convention once.
You don’t understand. The right WANT to be ruled by a dictator.
And then they’ll have the most amount of rights!
The best/most powerful rights
The right is the minority in the U.S.
Republicans are a minority, but the right is the overwhelming majority. America has no mainstream left, its firmly center-right with a center-right party and a fascist party.
Make no mistake…. They’re WIDE AWAKE and doing it.
“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting”
– A real quote by a real Trump voter.
They know what they’re voting for, and will be so surprised when it happens to them too.
You mean conservatives and Christians aren’t already being hurt and targeted by this corrupt government? What rock do you live under?
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million more times: the average American, who never received adequate education due to the erosion of the American education system over decades of Republican cuts, doesn’t know a damn thing about political ideology. “Fascism”? Is that like if you don’t like someone’s face?
Voting is now like voting for an act in the AGT show
I agree, 3rd party 2024!
deleted by creator
Making a lot of assumptions about my intentions here aren’t you?
I’ll go let my gov know they didn’t teach me enough “old-men-only” USA political theater.
🇵🇸 Enjoy the Military Industrial Complex I suppose 🇵🇸
deleted by creator
You are one of the people dangblingus was mentioning about the erosion of the Education System. Here, let me help out.
Suppose you’re voting in an election for who is going to be responsible for the Christmas Decorations this year. The rule is the person with the most votes wins. There are three candidates. One person thinks that Christmas is a commercialised holiday that sucks money out of you. He’s saying that the community should NOT put Christmas decorations up, and instead, put that money into the pockets of the homeowners. Let’s call him Mr. Bah Humbug. The other person LOVES Christmas, and wants to put up decorations. We’ll call him Jolly Saint Nick, but your big problem with him is that he isn’t that inclusive. You love Christmas decorations, but you think that he should put up decorations for other Winter holidays as well. And thus, you don’t want to vote for him. So you put yourself up as the alternative to Jolly Saint Nick. Let’s call you Progressive Jim. And you’re going to cause the entire community to get NOTHING. How? I’m getting to that.
The community is narrowly divided on the question of decorations. There are 200 people on your block. 99 of them want to keep the money in their pocket, while 101 want decorations in the community. The 99 are all unified. There’s not much room to debate specifics in that position. All 99 want to keep their $$$ in their pocket. So there’s no vote splitting there. But you have ALREADY split the vote in the 101 side. What happens if you and two other people vote for you? Well, 99 people are voting for keeping money in their pockets. 101 people wanting SOME sort of decoration, minus your three votes, equals 98. The final breakdown is 99 Bah Humbug, 98 Jolly Saint Nick, 3 Progressive Jim. Congrats! You just ensured that NONE of the 101 people who wanted Christmas Decorations get what they want. You let the Perfect (having inclusive holiday decorations) be the enemy of the Good (having any sort of holiday decorations), and now you get the worst outcome of all, nothing at all.
In this system, you have to come to a consensus you can deal with. All the people who want decorations are just going to have to come together and negotiate on the type of decorations, and the thing is that in a democracy, you don’t always get what you want. You have to settle with ‘good enough’ if you want to get anything done. Another analogy used here is voting is like taking the bus, not falling in love. If you insist that you must get EVERYTHING you want, in First Past the Post, you regularly get NONE of what you want, especially if you’re the ‘fall in love’ party like Progressives are, and you’re up against a “Fall in Line” party like the Republicans/Conservatives.
There are fixes. Maybe you make your voting a Ranked Choice system, so people can specify “my vote for a progressive holiday season not tied to Christmas is not a vote for no decorations at all. If I don’t get what I want, I’ll settle for uninclusive decorations, grudgingly.” But that’s not the system we have. And until we do, Nic Cage is right. All you’re doing here is ensuring we get the worst outcome.
As a German: “First time?”
First time the individual was still breathing by this point in the process.
As an American with mostly German heritage;
I’m scared!
The dictatorship supports the right wing policies so they support him.
What is with these bullshit whiny articles? They literally voted against his dictatorship last cycle.
Stupid fear-mongering.
More dominoes lined up this go around.
More safe guards have eroded since 2020. The Republicans that did not fall to heel have been replaced.
Last time he had less of a plan, and less institutional support. Now they have lists of supporters to fill the non-elected positions -those were the people that who slowrolled and resisted his worst policies before.
I’d like to be more optimistic, but this isn’t going to be a fair fight and the stakes are higher.
And Tumbervill blocking military promotions was for one Reason. Remember the military higher ups were fundamental in stopping Trump from doing a lot of crazy dictator things.
but this isn’t going to be a fair fight
The 15th Amendment guarantees every American adult the right to vote and have their vote counted. Anybody who commits treason against our country will be going to prison along with Convicted Rapist Treason Trump. This will be very important since we will be setting up the standards for the future.
Gerrymandering, electoral college, voter suppression
We need to win by 5% just for a tie.
The scary part is the Supreme Court trying to kill Voting Rights just before the election. I’m more afraid of that.
https://scrippsnews.com/stories/is-the-voting-rights-act-at-risk/
Completely agree, that’s what I’m worried about also.
They’re getting real good at taking away citizen rights
New polls that aren’t good.
He also refused to step down…
Trump is leading the election polls by a lot.
It isn’t even the election year.
I dunno, polls concerning if people like trump or not are highly unfavorable towards him
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
Oh, those super reliable polls that have called the presidential election wildly incorrectly twice now?
Also, no they don’t.
All the polls show them tied at worst and Biden usually leading by a small percentage.
Show me your evidence.
The polls have not been wrong, both elections feel within the margin of error.
The only reason that Convicted Rapist Treason Trump is “ahead” is swing state polls is because he spent huge sums of money on media commercials there and Biden has yet to spend money there because he doesn’t have a real primary. In America we have an advantage other countries didn’t/don’t have. A culture of valuing democracy and freedom that is literally as old as the country itself. We need to keep emphasizing how Convicted Rapist Treason Trump is a clear and present danger to our American core values.
They’re both historically unpopular candidates, Biden took his first hit after the Afghanistan pullout and never recovered from the low 40s of approval, took his 2nd hit with Israel and is trending downward still.
But we’re still gonna pick the non-dictator option by a huge popular vote margin. The other 40% are cheering the dictator.
The problem it’s the swing state morons, who either don’t bother voting or “protest” vote for some third party and end up enabling the fucking dictator. Those are the only possible sleepwalkers. And there really aren’t that many of them.
enabling the fucking dictator
Do you think it’s ironic how Hillary was so willing to drive them away by calling them deplorables, yet it only enabled them further by sloganizing the fact the Democrats hate them? I don’t see the rationality in both accepting you need more voters in these swing states, while simultaneously pushing them further away. Seems like this is part of the downward spiral.
Hillary Clinton was a fucking horrendous candidate and represented everything wrong with the Democrats. They should have put an honest to god progressive up there.
The Democrat superdelegates didn’t want Sander because he threatened to alter the economic arrangement of Democrat donors, aligning instead with popular politics. Hillary was more of a Democrat vision than a viable candidate. Biden is too but he succeeded relative to Trump’s failure.
the Afghanistan pullout
That’s the one Mr Trump started after a really bad plan, right?
Ultimately nobody wanted to take the L on that one, this goes back to Obama too. Everyone knew how fast it would fall and how bad it would look and when it was put on the table they delayed it, Trump included. IMO it’s one of the best things Biden did and showed his integrity on the topic, he was willing to be the loser and think about others, and go against the interests of the military contractors etc.
Biden actually took full credit and responsibility for that on a few occasions, I think he explicitly stated “this responsibility rests with me and me alone” or something to that effect. So “blaming” Trump for this good thing is ironically giving Trump credit.
…unless the justice department do their fucking jobs, nobody is above the law.
Not sleepwalking but speed running fully awake.
Removed by mod
That would probably lead to the absolute worst outcome - every time he opens his mouth he damages his rep further in the eyes of his followers, so we need him to keep doing that:-).
I don’t see how the assassination of a former president and current candidate would do anything good for the country. It might be a value add for our adversaries because it would certainly be destabilizing.
People are set on how they’ll vote and it isn’t up for debate.
If you have it in your mind that voting for trump is an option, there isn’t an argument on the planet that will sway you.
So it comes down to getting democrats to actually vote, and removing illegal barriers to them having voting access.
Most people are not even paying attention yet.
Can someone explain to me - European, why is Biden seen as bad president by republicans? I might be uninformed but what did he do exactly?
You could repeat all of the positions that a Republican claims to have, and if you tell them a Democrat said it, they’ll condemn it.
There’s no logic.
Reality doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just Fox screaming hatred and Facebook conspiracy theories. Watch some Fox or Tucker Carlson and you’ll understand. (NB I’m Canadian.)
Nothing but that D (for Democrat) next to his name. If he was a republican with the exact same policies they would love him. Same with democrats and their opinion of a politician with an R next to their name.
Short answer? He became a Democrat. Literally, that’s the only reason they hate him.
Tribalism. Gotta love it, right? Is there room in Europe for 84 million Americans? 🤣
The polls are deceiving, people won’t openly support Biden until after July 4, 2024.
Fuck you, he should already be on death row. That’s not the American people’s fault.
Well, it IS the American people’s fault if they continue to support the obvious fascist Russian asset.
The American people who have had their education dismantled and been lied to their entire lives about the cause of their problems? Those Americans subject to the most advanced propaganda the world has ever seen? It’s all their fault?
Nearly all of our major problems are caused by a tiny number of psychopathic sadists and the people who allow themselves to be ordered to act against their brothers and sisters for pay. These psychopaths are not loyal to any country or party, they are all about power and maintaining it.
