funni

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It’s true. Much of the evil shit Trump does was done under liberalism where it was fairly popular. Christian Nationalists, Americans imperialists, bigots, and bloodthirsty capitalists were able to accomplish their goals within the system. They could get enough of what they wanted at the ballot box because their views had enough popularity to sustain it.

However, as neoliberalism eroded the middle class, as civil rights for minorities became more popular, as there was less support for war and supporting authoritarian allies, as people turned away from churches, the right knew there would come a day when they could no longer win through playing the liberal democratic game. They knew that if they waited long enough, left wing populism would usher in either a progressive era of labor reforms, or even more radical changes that would fundamentally threaten their power.

Under Trump, their goals are either to make their ideas popular, or take away any of the levers of control that regular people could use to stop them. The bigots and the Christians can use the billionaire media and newfound kingdom to enforce their dogma from the top down. Deport enough migrants, create enough anti trans laws, and suppress enough open discussions of sex through payment processors that much of it will become normalized. The billionaires can use those helpful idiots to take away the ballot box as an option and make the hollowed out husk of the government so broken and impotent that any liberal efforts to restrain them will be fruitless. Even the imperialists win because America’s lost ground to China will galvanize future liberals into being more anti communist and cruel in promoting national self interest.

Liberalism may have died, but it’s fully responsible for its own demise. It always had a fascist contingent that used the republicanism liberal ideology afforded to accomplish their own goals.

I fundamentally do not trust any Republican Congress member speaking out to not be controlled opposition, or serving some of the few evil billionaires who didn’t personally hang with Epstein.

Never. He’ll die before Americans do anything

This is Lemmy. You can say pedophile. You can swear. You can call spades a spade without doing wrongspeak that censors you from the algorithm.

I didn’t realize right wingers actively thought of San Francisco as a hellhole. I’ve heard it of Portland and Los Angeles, but never of the Bay area. I thought people imagined that all the coastal elites were from there.

Maybe if you were white and rich. All the good shit in America from the progressive labor reforms to the civil rights act were the result of things being so terrible that people risked their lives to change things. The government, private goons, and community bigots have done some the most heinous, genocidal shit in history.

Company towns where people were killed for trying to unionize. FDR deporting hundreds of thousands of Hispanic American citizens. Black neighborhoods that saw success getting annihilated for daring to try to carve out a good life. Supporting authoritarian governments and their death squads. Horrific experimenting on poor people and minorities. Persistent cultural genocide, mass displacement, and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans that puts Israeli efforts in Palestine to shame. Creating our current policing system to enforce fucking chattel slavery!

The US has not been “somewhat better than autocratic dissent genocides.” The Soviet Union did horrible things, China does horrible things, yet America can match every single fucking atrocity they’ve ever committed. We inspired Nazi Germany, helped any authoritarian regime that opposed communism, and created an inescapable system of global neoliberal capitalism that rapes weaker nations and calls it fair.

You’re right, it’s usually not a fascist state that will burn anything for fuel; it’s usually something far more insidious. It’s a imperial republic that people like you think is some shining city on a hill. It uses your faith in it to turn you into a good little patriot for a country that is recognized worldwide as THE evil empire.

The fact that he doesn’t work for ICE probably means he’s such a major fuckup that not even the Gestapo want him

Nobility of the 21st century. Things never really changed.

Good thing (not really) we’re barreling towards economic catastrophe and potential rising geopolitical danger. I’m not gonna pretend it will make things better, but I think people consistently lack imagination for how things can actually suck. People can imagine extinction or the status quo, but actually conceptualizing a middle ground is far more difficult.

I’m willing to give the news some benefit of the doubt here because there actually are rational and non-evil reasons to do this.

I’m not. They’ve been bending the narrative with this wishy washy rhetoric so much recently that they need the backlash. Even if incompetence, it’s been an persistent pattern on their part. Trump is a fascist dictator, nothing he does is legally justified or anything near our old standard of “normal”, and yet they have been pretending that we still live in a stable world because they don’t want their interests threatened.

Also, this whole “they were post-adolescent” distinction is a waste of time. This shit is evil and anyone litigating nuance isn’t worth serious debate. It’s all delay tactics. Words are only tools to them.

Only so far as the Epstein files themselves were a distraction that gave false hope that people would change their beliefs. It’s only a language for frustration; a way for people to justify themselves turning away from ideologies that no longer serve them. Some Trumpians might turn from him, some neoliberals might rethink their support of our old system, but they’ll only care about Epstein because their personal wallets and rights were jeopardized.

120 Days of Sodom was written in 1785 on the eve of the French revolution. It was adapted into the film Salò, which set the story in German occupied Italy. None of this depravity by untouchable elites is new. People with so much institutional power will always do shit like this. The only solution is to resist the power no matter if it’s unpopular, no matter if they send goons to kill you for calling the system what it is. They are replaceable villains, thus the only thing to fight is anyone’s ability to be above us mortals.

A lot of these seem like very different lies, and some of them aren’t lies at all. Americans’ perception of other countries is slanted towards US imperial interests, but that doesn’t mean shit can’t legitimately suck in those countries. Of course, even when things are bad, intervention that isn’t popular and requested won’t make things better.

Even with Iranians in revolt, even if a large number genuinely want US involvement, I doubt a contribution by this administration would make the country better in the long run. I doubt Israel getting to eliminate their biggest regional enemy for a bargain bin price will do anything good for Palestinians. I doubt the US once again demonstrating the geopolitical necessity of having nukes will make the world a safer place.

Putting tankie BS about North Korea being based or Ukraine being a puppet aside, the US only ever does anything good out of self interest, and right now the government isn’t even acting on its own, but that of Trump. He’ll attack if he thinks Iran is weak enough; not for any strategic interest, but so he can brag. Taking out Maduro did nothing for the US. Taking Greenland would do nothing for the US. They were just easy targets for him to bully, and a weakened Iran might be another.

I always knew Trump could win and I immediately knew why. I still haven’t mentally recovered and I still don’t know how I’m gonna survive the hell the Democrats’ decades of failures have brought upon us.

As someone who has voted in every election I could, I wouldn’t bother. I’d vote up and down ballot for every local race and ballot measure, but there would be no point for the presidency if it is a free and fair election. Newsom winning would be all but guaranteed.

The fascists will be thrown under the bus for a few years after Trump is gone. We haven’t seen the worst of what he has to offer, and anyone trying to emulate him after he dies is guaranteed to lose any fair election. Corpos will want stability, so they’ll use their propaganda machines to bury the unpopular and leaderless Republicans so they can elect a neo feudalist. Most of the corruption will not be rolled back and regulations on the rich will stay non-existent, allowing the exact same shit or worse to happen again.

Any alternative to Republicans will win, so if Newsom is on the ticket then America has already lost. The only way to rebuild immediately after Trump is through radical reforms that will not happen under Newsom. We are looking at a post fall of Rome or a Century of Humiliation type future.

You think Trump won’t literally invade and occupy Canada to stroke his ego? You think even American liberals of the future, invested in cold war anti communist narratives, wouldn’t take over a China aligned neighbor?

America is a bully and always has been. It is still the most dangerous empire on earth. Canada and Mexico will better serve their people by opening stroking Trump’s ego while quietly preparing for war. They don’t need to capitulate; they only need to avoid being an easy target.

Maybe a bit of Harris’s fault for not sitting down and personally explaining what the choice is.

Yes, it was. It was on the entire party establishment for not being alarmist enough, and on the entire party NOW for not being alarmist enough. We are in 3rd Reich level fascism and they still act like we live in a stable liberal democracy. They refuse to rock the boat and admit how dire things are because their narrative cannot perceive the rules being different. By not rejecting the status quo they legitimize it. By treating this blatantly corrupt dictatorship as normal, they make it the baseline for all future governments.

What they should be doing is literally risking their lives. Filibustering, running desperate campaigns, calling the immigration facilities concentration camps and ICE Trump’s personal thugs who are above the law. They should be honest about Trump making the constitution meaningless, about the entire system of liberal democracy being dismantled completely. If that makes Trump become more heavy handed with lawmakers, that would be good. If it causes him to suspend Congress, that’ll make the resistance to him even more popular. Make him destroy the illusion of civility, as nothing they’ve been doing within the system has slowed him down.

You’re so close to getting it that it’s fucking depressing.

Fine. Vote for young radicals in the primaries because the past has shown that anything but boldness won’t move the needle. Vote DSA, even if you’re uncomfortable with them. The controlled opposition establishment should make any Democrat more uncomfortable at this point.

If you’re not doing something different to what you’ve done in the past, there is no hope for making sure fascism stays dead. A failure to enact change will not keep things the same or return them to normal, but ensure that things get continually worse.

They have a lot more to lose from provoking the US