I believe that we've reached the endgame

[Joe Nation]

This mad dash towards isolationism, autocracy, the dictatorial bullying of our trading partners and defense alliances, will be the end of America as we know it. This isn't hyperbole. Look at the European Union and tell me I'm overacting. This isn't just a rough patch between us and the rest of the world. This an inflection point where every American has to decide what kind of future we want for our kids.

We have an administration that is by any definition an internal enemy tearing apart our security, our economy, our reputation, and our very freedoms in order to create a vision of America none of us wants to see or would even recognize and would undoubtedly have our forefathers rolling over in their graves. If we sit back and do nothing, we will look back at this moment and wish that we had done more to extricate our country from these psychopathic lunatics much sooner. It only gets more costly as they tighten their grip on power.

With each passing day, with each normalization of the absurd, with every act of compliance, we cement one more brick in the wall of Autocracy. It will be much easier to stand up now than later after all people of good conscience have been removed from the military, the government, and our civil rights have been outlawed. The country needs to grind to a halt NOW!!

The Constitution is ignored daily by this administration. That means that extra-Constitutional actions are open to both sides. We can't let the Constitution hamper our responses out of deference to the past while the other side takes a paper shredder to it from the inside. The White House must be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people every day until we get these clowns out of office. Paralyze the functions of government until no actions can be taken and keep the pressure up relentlessly and make our voices heard.

How will they respond? With violence. At that point, we have them and they lose. The moment is now. 2025 will be remembered as the year we either fought for our country or turned it over to the likes of Trump and Musk. You decide.

[barbtries]

1. I agree.

www.generalstrikeus.com
I share this every day on BlueSky.

[stopdiggin]

2. and yet, this is democracy

wherein people voted (and I'll still, grudgingly, contend with full knowledge) for sh*tty leaders - and a correspondingly sh*tty government. If this be the will of the people ... You're telling me (and them) - that they don't have a right to the government they chose?

[Joe Nation]

3. It's the will of approximately 1/4 of the voting public

You can argue that democracy has spoken if you wish. You can rest on your laurels comfortable in the thought that democracy was served at the same time that democracy is ripped from your hands. Yes, democracy was how we got here but that will be little comfort to the next generations toiling under a dictatorial nightmare. Enjoy the show.

[stopdiggin]

33. but note, you do not answer the question

if this be the result of the democratic process .. ?

You argue that your judgement should supplant .. ?

[NH Ethylene]

5. I don't think his voters really understood that he was planning to end our democracy.

They should have. We all knew it. And most of them still don't see what is happening in any objective way. Right now they are thinking 'a bit of pain in the short term and great rewards for all in the long term,' not caring if the Constitution is set aside along the way.

[Evolve Dammit]

14. His voters understand very little unfortunately. "I love the uneducated."

[durablend]

19. *snort* "STICKIN IT TO TEH LIBS YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!"

That's his voters.

[markodochartaigh]

24. A very high proportion of maga

were never fans of democracy. At least not the one person, one vote type of democracy. I grew up in a half century ago in the very red Texas Panhandle. It was a talking point that the US "is a republic, not a democracy". We were taught in school that allowing the poor to vote weakened a country because the poor would vote so many benefits for ourselves that it would bankrupt the country, and that poor people are too stupid to understand the issues and know how to vote. Sure, some percentage of Republicans want a democracy, at least as long as they are in charge, but a not insignificant percentage of maga only want to be led.

It is not a new thing. Sallust said "Few people desire freedom, the majority seek nothing more than just masters. Namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustis dominos volunt."

[NH Ethylene]

34. Interesting. I did not know that. n/t

[birdographer]

27. I think they know very little of what is going on

Their only sources are Fox, Newsmax, and OAN. I read somewhere that the full report of what happened in the Oval Office with Zelensky was reduced to Zelensky being in DC for a “meeting.” They have no clue, as far as I have heard. Not sure if they would care one way or the other, but that’s moot since they are being shielded from all truth about trump.

When you take a group of staggeringly stupid people and deprive them of any truth or information, you basically have a bunch of trump supporters waving flags depicting his head on Rambo’s body.

Of course when this comes to their front door, they will be forced to see it. And they will blame the “libs.” Morons.

[NH Ethylene]

35. Apparently the MAGA memes going around about that meeting

Show Zelensky coming in for a handout and Trump/Vance (verbally) whipping his ass. They have no knowledge of the facts about it.

[erronis]

7. That's only if the vote was fair (not) and the counting was true (not).

the repugs have stacked voting against POC and other non-rich-white folks.

As Stalin said, it's not who's voting, it's who is counting the votes. And now we have "and who's transmitting those vote counts to the centers" (Starlink).

[Clouds Passing]

25. Stalin, fred koch's bff. They have their grubby bloody family hands all over this coup.

[paleotn]

9. Did the majority vote for this and is democracy a suicide pact?

The answer to both is no.

[LymphocyteLover]

10. not an outlaw dictatorial unconstituional govt-- no, they don't have that right

their votes don't undo the constitution

[Cirsium]

12. No

This is not democracy. The people do not have full knowledge. This is not the will of the people, people have been duped. People have a right to the government they chose, but first they need a fair chance to do that.

That is not to say that this has not brought out the worst in many people, and it is not to say that there are many who are now unreachable and beyond redemption.

[Random Boomer]

22. Voter suppression keeps us from being a true democracy

The election itself may have been free and fair, but the path to getting registered is littered with the bodies of the fallen. There's no need to rig the election, you just need to keep potential voters from getting into the voting booth.

[keepthemhonestO]

4. I am seeing

What your seeing and waiting for more people to wake up and get to where we are at.

He's definitely dismantling our government and isolated us from our allies.

[Cirsium]

15. It will be a long wait

People think that the MAGA voters will wake up regret supporting Trump.

I say, look to history.

Read what William Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin during the 1930's, discovered when interviewing everyday Germans after WWII. Every German city lay in ruins and millions had been killed.

"There was so much that was true that did not make sense: the monumental apathy of the German people and their deep regret, not that they had started the war, but merely that they had lost it; their whining complaints at the lack of food and fuel and their total lack of sympathy or even interest in the worse plight of the occupied peoples, for which they bore so much responsibility; their boredom at the very mention of the Nuremberg trial, which they were convinced was only an Allied propaganda stunt; their striking unreadiness for, or interest in, democracy, which we, with typical Anglo-Saxon fervor and blindness, were trying to shove down their throats."

― William L. Shirer, End of a Berlin Diary

Their deep regret, not that they had started the war, but merely that they had lost it.

[keepthemhonestO]

21. Oh my

Well that certainly puts a sobering tone in my attempt at an optimistic transformation of these magas. I have some family members that are going to be just like those people that I just read about. Oooh boy.

Thank you for the dose of reality . Sigh

[Cirsium]

31. It is important to know what we are up against

Excerpts from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

One doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not? Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

[JustAnotherGen]

23. Similar to the CSA

And their stupid lost cause.

We never punished them - and it shows.

[Wingus Dingus]

29. That's disturbing to read, and I fear it's the same with the Krasnov regime cult.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Pretty much the end of our international standing...

[paleotn]

8. Honestly, I don't think it would even come to violence. Certainly not widespread violence.

First off, Americans aren't wired that way like other peoples. We're not Russians. We have no institutional memory of anything remotely like that. For even magats, that's not how we think. Oh, some may say it occasionally, but actually doing it? Different story.

Those perpetrating the violence stop when they discover it's their friends, neighbors, family members on the receiving end. Historically, that's when dictatorial violence ends and dictatorships fall. When the machinery necessary to inflict force decides not to. They simply say no. At that point, Trump would be as impudent as the federal courts seem to be.

But I agree we may need to set the Constitution aside for this one. Either some of us leaving the Union or some government function deciding enough is enough and physically removing him. I don't think we're there yet, but we're getting awfully close. On the flip side, there's no institutional memory in our people for that either. I don't think that would preclude it. Just raise the level of pain necessary for it to become a viable option.

Rome dealt with something similar long ago. The Catilinarian Conspiracy, where the Roman Senate felt the need to set aside Roman law in order to protect it. The Roman Republic didn't last long after that, but that's arguably due to other, systemic issues that had nothing to do with Catiline. But it is a slippery slope. Are we willing to go there? We may have to.

[DENVERPOPS]

13. If we all hadn't viewed J6th

I might agree with you...........

Mark my words.......Trump is just sitting and waiting for demonstrations, to enact the Insurrection Act which would allow him to declare Martial Law across the entire U.S. and utilize the entire U.S. Military for use against the civilian population........

Every day, he probably contacts Putin, and asks him: "can I do it yet, pretty pretty please" ???????????

How many times have we said, over the past 8+ years......He Can't Do That ?????????????????????????

A decade ago we couldn't have even begun to think of these past eight+ years in our wildest nightmares.....

And for the last month, he has gone down his checklist of everything he bragged about at his rallies, which were dismissed at "Just Talk"

Bend Over Baby........You ain't seen nothing yet..............

One take away of mine from the Trump/Vance ambush, was when he asked Zellinski about "risking millions of lives"........
MILLIONS? of lives????? Makes you wonder what Putin has planned for Ukraine if Zellinski and the people of Ukraine if Zellenski doesn't cave in and kiss the feet of Trump and Putin?????? You do know the the resistance in Syria, by Assad, was bombed with Chemical weapons given Assad by Russia......Wiping out entire villages and small towns. Men, Women, Children, babies. Inhaling Chlorine gas is an absolute horrific Death........

Given what we have seen so far, I won't rule out anything Trump, Putin, and 70+ Million Trump Humpers will do, now that they feel super empowered and omnipotent......

[GiqueCee]

20. I beg to differ...

... vehemently. Americans have been raised on violence, and there are more guns in this country than there are people. The imbeciles in red hats and K-Mart camo are itching to start killing. But they'll lose the stomach for it as soon as their buddies get disemboweled by return fire. They think "them libruls" won't fight back. Guess again, assholes.

[Cirsium]

32. Really?

Americans aren't wired for violence?

We have no institutional memory of anything remotely like that.

Um, well, there is the Civil War.

[LymphocyteLover]

11. Nothing is done yet. We can see their endgame, that doesn't mean it is inevitable.

[GiqueCee]

16. Nailed it.

[WestMichRad]

17. Yes on extraconstitutional measures to address this crisis.

I don’t know exactly what those are, but if we play by “the rules” then we’re losing our democracy for sure.

[AntiFascist]

18. I agree with everything you say up until the next to last paragraph...

Once Democrats begin acting outside of the Constitution, then we are no better than the Administration and they will then have an excuse to declare martial law. The heads of the FBI and the Defense Dept already view Democrats as the Socialist "enemy within". Do we need to give them more reasons to start acting against us?

The Constitution itself does provide a bulwark for defending itself, and it is in the 2nd Amendment. I know that this touches a big nerve among liberals who are against the acquisition of assault weapons, but once blue state governors begin discussing this as our very last means of defense for saving the US Constitution, it would send a strong message to the Feds that we are not messing around!

[lastlib]

26. Maybe we need to try this:

The Music That Captured A Dictator

https://www.wearethemighty.com/music/listen-to-the-playlist-that-captured-dictator/

[Buddyzbuddy]

28. We were in trouble when McConnell cheated us out of our

Supreme Court Justices, at least 2 nominated by our elected Democratic Presidents. So please stop with the hand ringing about doing what's right about the 2025 elections. That boat sailed long ago. The Supreme Court is largely responsible for this mess.
Bullet 1 "Corporations are people".
Bullet 2 Bush v Gore stop a legitimate count of a Presidential election resulting in Bush.
Bullet 3 ignoring precedent overturning Roe v Wade
Bullet 4 Presidents have immunity for just about anything as long as it's done per his job duties. Such as seal team 6 eliminating enemies of the President.
Stolen secret documents, Russian collusion, using the Justice Dept. as a personal law firm, appointing a private citizen to fire gov't civilian workers and eliminate gov't departments.
Bullet 5 Ignoring the 14th Amendment to allow a convicted Felon to run for the Country's highest office.
Bullet 6 Eliminating longstanding voting rights and protections.
That's just off of the top of my head.
But, by all means, let's sit back and not rock the boat because some dumb ass nut bags voted to put a felon in office.
Sure we can just sit and wait for our chance in 4 years. I mean, what could possibly happen?

Joe Nation, you're absolutely, positively correct.

[BeyondGeography]

30. Hollowed out from within and isolated abroad

Complete with a cast of unqualified lackeys in the Cabinet and a Rasputin-like figure in Elon Musk.

It’s a horror show, and the combination of what is happening and the fact that enough American people voted for it to make it possible is going to do long-term damage not only to our political standing in the world but to our economy.

We are the assholes of the free world and everyone wants to stick it to us. And they will. All they have to do is find replacements for our shit and travel somewhere else.

[Arazi]

36. Whatever comes next won't resemble the American democracy we've known

He’s broken the constitutional order.

We must restructure.

That will come with revolution imo