If you think things are bad now, then, brace yourself: it is about to get a whole lot worse. If you are alarmed at the speed with which the Trump administration has set about dismantling every institution of American government and every pillar of the international order, you must understand that this is not just the initial burst of activity, the “shock and awe” phase after which things will settle down: if anything, the pace will continue to accelerate.
The world has never before been faced with such a threat. The United States has handed the nuclear codes to a madman, a criminal, a would-be dictator and a moron, all in the same person. Whatever the purpose to which he directs these powers – to impress his dictator friends, to further enrich himself and his cronies, to seize absolute power or just to watch the world burn – we must hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
the extent that Trump has gone to remove barriers to committing atrocities likely corresponds to the extent he intends to commit them
The american people will have to stand up for themselves and it‘s gonna be hard and brutal. Cause no one else can help you with this.
I found the recent developments in Serbia quite interesting and it might help to get an idea what a widespread resistance from the people could look like. Video on Serbia
It’s going to require daily nationwide protests going on for months and months with national participation approaching 1-2% of the population (4-8 million) on weekends and clear and actionable demands (resignation of Trump and his goons and corrupt members of the judiciary).
From my experience living in the US, I don’t think this is likely (I do hope I am wrong). Geographic size can actually be managed by having many thousands of protest sites by key admin buildings all throughout the country. The bigger issue is perhaps a lack of experience “operationalizing” beliefs and standing up to a thugs and oligarchs.
When the Second Great Depression starts, that’s when shit will hit the fan. Once the bread and circuses end and the starving begins.
I wonder if the European bars will have little “For the Cause” jars similar to how Celtic owned businesss has them to support the IRA here in the US.
It could be like months away too based off them wanting to cut like a million fed jobs and dump a shitload of commercial real estate onto the market.
And unlike the first one, we now have 3 guns per person in the US.
This is gonna be some bad juju ahead.
The perma stun proceeds as planned
And American still just going to whine on the internet and do nothing about it.
If anything this has completely vaporized the “checks and balances” democratic system everyone was so obsessed about.
Americans need to update the constitution where people have the power to dethrone a dictator as of right now theres nothing right?
They already have it.
The 2nd amendment.
Yeah lol that would never happen.
If americans can’t even form strong, lasting peaceful protests how could they form an armed resistance against literally the most advanced and powerful military in the world? Even US police is equipped with military APCs - what is your glock gonna do about that?
The 2nd amendment never made sense in the contemporary world. The casualty rate would be 1 to HUNDREDS just through sheer technological and skill difference and no uprising can possibly sustain that.
Removed by mod
Yeah but this sort of cartoon type of dictator is not realistic.
They always have some public support and as long as you lie and control some useful idiots it’s never going to be an ideal rise up people think it would be. It’ll be chaos with some resistance that’ll be marked as terrorists and nothing will be clear enough for “taking down some baddies with me” scenarios.
Luigi mangione is being tried as a terrorist with the maximum sentencing of the death penalty
Just sayin’
What Luigi did was just.
However, the 2A is specifically, ahem, targeted at removing government.
The GOP shows that yes, you can say the quiet part aloud and still have supporters
I agree that what he did was just, the government which is supposed to uphold the 2nd amendment does not was my point.
The 2A was about maintaining state militias to catch runaway slaves and to suppress slave rebellions. The south wanted it, the north didn’t care. At the time the amendments were being written, here was little to no discussion of the idea that an armed citizenry would be able to resist state tyranny. They had just fought a revolution and had a very clear idea of what it took to break away from England. It was a lot more than farmers with hunting rifles or posses of slave-catchers.
I’m not saying that armed resistance is not necessary. I’m just saying the 2A was never really for that. But there are many examples of barely armed citizen’s movements overthrowing governments. Without compliance, without legitimacy, their power can be broken.
I’d somehow never heard this argument before, so I found some random article about it: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2023/06/slavery-militias-and-methodologies-thoughts-on-carl-boguss-madisons-militia
I can’t speak to the quality of the source above, but they argue that your basic thesis is true, but is not the full story. All the former colonies (including non-slave states) wanted militias instead of a peacetime national military, which was as much or more of a driver for adoption of the 2nd amendment than the idea of using militias for appearing slave rebellions.
But that’s just literally the first article I read about it, so I dunno.
The other data point that’s useful is that, in the Continental Congress and in the political debates that led to the writing of the Constitution, there were constant complaints (mainly from the southern states) that northern states were negligent in maintaining the readiness of their militias. After the Constitution was written, this continued, and was one of the main reasons that US military leadership was predominantly southern: they got early military experience in their state militias.
Ah yeah, my semi automatic hunting rifle is really going to stop the armored military and the drones, and the mass data collection. Me and 1000 other people sure will make a difference right up until they shut off the internet and mow us down.
Tanks, jets, and rocket launchers are good against other armies. They’re pretty shitty against anonymous civilians. It’s why the US lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And in the US, the civilians would have 2 other advantages:
- A military that would be more reluctant to kill other Americans on American soil
- The enemy wouldn’t be the military, but poloticians.
The US has way better surveillance of irs own cotizens than it had of Afghanistan. They will send Homeland Security after any militia before it becomes a credible threat to them.
We live in a budding techno-fascist police state. Your argument depends on anonymity. That is almost completely lost on the modern America. Hong Kong is one if many examples over the last 15 years. They’ll find you. They’ll disappear you. Sure. Buy yourself a gun and load up on ammo. It will do you lots of good when they break your door down if you actually prove to be a credible threat.
People don’t have to be part of an organized, traceable resistance when everyone has guns and the targets aren’t military in nature.
United Healthcare lost its CEO to a random dude lone gunman while he was walking down the street.
The idea is to make everybody a potential threat to those who abuse power. But one side of the political spectrum decided that guns are bad and disarmed themselves, so 90% of the guns are owned by fascists.
Only if your army isn’t willing to go on a genocide.
If the end result is the same, fighting is the only choice.
I agree that a full scale war against the US military using small arms is probably not likely to go well for those attempting it, but assassinating a president is a different thing altogether. America has assassinated many presidents.
Search for “Winter on Fire”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNxLzFfR5w
can’t get it without logging in
I was thinking about this last night. If we fall, can (do we have the will) we write a better Constitution?
Not if we actually stand up and all march to DC. Just sayin’. Nothing has ever been won by shit posting and staying home.
That’s not going to change anything either, not by itself.
Everything, everywhere.
Gotta start somewhere. It’s more than the Americans seem to be doing.
It was an American thing to do. Too many doomers today saying we’ll just get AC130’d.
I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time the US has bombed its own people, intentionally.
People are protesting all across the US. Check out the TeslaTakedown, for example.
Protests do not remove dictators from power.
Only one thing removes them.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is already distancing himself. The wheels of government are going to shut Trump down. He doesn’t have that much power.
Mike Johnson is way scarier than Trump. He’s a true believer, total hypocrite, and smart. His ideal society would be similar to The Handmaid’s Tale and he will pursue that agenda and believe he’s righteous when they build camps and dig trenches for the bodies.
Mike Johnson scares the fuck out of me. Watch him.
I haven’t been tracking his psychotic fantasies.
Let’s hope he doesn’t want the US taken over by Russia. Whatever differences with Trump he can find will do.
…they said, hopefully.
Yes — hopefully
Hopefully the house is not found to be impeding in making great again… Be a shame if something where to happen to it.
Duh
One thing that concerns me that not many people have talked about is what’s going to happen to the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency? More and more countries want nothing to do with us and while the US dollar has a huge edge over any other currency, the US becoming a pariah is probably going to impact that.
It’s fine dude, Trump tweeted threats against any country that tried to get off the USD has the global reserve currency so therefore it definitely won’t happen. Or something.
I’ve wondered about this too.
The USA government has enormous debt, which grows every year due to an enormous deficit. But historically people have been relatively comfortable with just letting that continue to grow, because it is balanced by economic growth and stability (roughly speaking).
But now that the government is somewhat unstable… bad things might happen to the currency. The debt will continue to rise, but the productivity and stability that underpin it are eroding. It may collapse.
The RMB yuan is used in international trade by only eight countries, yet the Chinese economy is not going down the shitter. Has anyone credible tried to quantify the effect of the USD no longer being used as a reserve currency or in international trade?
I’m just hoping it can stay duct taped together long enough for me to get out of country. I don’t know if it will :/ I’ve been doing the protest thing, donating to resistance efforts, boycotts, building community, been doing all of this for years. I’ve never seen it tangibly help and I’m one of the first to get black bagged if/when this goes full genocide (am trans). I can’t do it anymore, my body is aging, my brain is a disaster. I wish I could keep fighting. At least I can bring my labor somewhere else and stop letting my taxes fund the madness that is the US government
Thank you so much for doing your part. I don’t blame you for feeling defeated. I hate defeatist attitudes, but it’s hard not to feel like that.
stop letting my taxes fund the madness that is the US government
Surprise! FATCA taxes Americans no matter where in the world that they work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act
FEIE
There are exemptions for most of that if I’m in another country long enough, and ideally I’ll renounce citizenship entirely down the line
The shit thing, since I don’t make enough to actually pay taxes on my salary, is their PFIC and other rules. I can’t put money in my US retirement accounts. I also can’t use any of the ones here in Japan because, even if I just used them to put money pre-tax into cash savings, they all contain auto-investment rules that makes the target PFICs which are a nightmare.
Thank you for doing what you can. It’s the only thing we can do. No one can save the world alone.
I hope you get somewhere safe.
Paywalled.
i guess i didn’t really need free information about the weather or how fucked is the climate. i know it’s fucked and seasons change. fuck science after all.
Never submit to the POV that the services they are dismantling are free. You pay for them. I pay for them. We deserve these services and they are being stolen from us just like when tax funded research is locked behind patents and pay walls.
well put
people were literally going back in time to try to assassinate him before the election. that should give us an indication of how bad it is going to get.
Serious question: Has the person with the nuke codes have an independent security detail, and isn’t beholden to any president?
Less hysteria, more substance—this article misses the mark.
🐱🐱
