As America backslides into fascism and authoritarian consolidation, what do you think should be done to course correct?
I have been thinking about this for quite a while, and I think I have a pretty solid solution. Now, keep in mind, it is easy to dismiss it because it is simple, but once you dig into it you will see the benefits. I propose on-fire things.
I know, I know, but just consider it before you write it off. Yo dont have to go all-in, maybe dabble a little and see how it feels.
It’ll be like McCarthyism, it will be allowed to go way way too far, then in an instant it’ll be stopped, shunned and everyone will be repulsed by it. It‘s well on its way to the same fate.
Massive job losses.
Discover socialism. Not commie tanky left authoritarian bullshit. Just the moderate basic human decency stuff.
Old fashioned people caring about each other. Workers supporting each other. Vets supporting each other. Women supporting each other. Families supporting each other. Naighborhoods supporting each other. Inclusivity. Opportunity. Holding out a hand to the less fortunate. Redistributing wealth so people can have dignity and hope.
Start with taking back schools as safe places from gun massacres. If you can’t do that you can’t do shit. It’s a basic litmus test for a functional society. Take back streets for pedestrians. Take prisons and hospitals away from corporations. Get rid of tipping in favour of a fair living wage. Take a fucking holiday occasionally. It won’t kill you.
The problem is Americans are kept ignorant about what is possible. In place of knowledge all they have is lies. What is the point of change if you don’t even know what you want. You will just end up with more of the same.
For inspiration you can look into what the countries the US implanted dictatorships in did
They need to protest. REALLY protest. General strikes, obstruction, shut down everything. You can’t walk around with a sign on a weekend once a month when it’s nice outside and expect a wannabe dictator will back down. They are spendinrg every minute of every day stripping away your democracy and you have to fight back with the same intensity.
Look at Nepal. France. Italy. They didn’t ask their government to listen. They MADE them. It’s YOUR country! Fight for it!
I think what needs to be said here is- yes it’s so terrible but in general day to day life for everyday Americans hasn’t really changed. That and the general ignorance of things means that people really are not ready to “go strike” or do anything at all.
The overall attitude is more “this is slightly annoying at most” and that is not the attitude that leads to general strikes (nor can most afford to do that here anyway.)
Everyone on the outside in is saying this and that- most Americans don’t know or aren’t affected enough from what they understand to make those steps.
That is reality here. Like I get the arguments but you also have to understand it isn’t bad enough for most people. My thought is once it is it’ll all be way too late.
And France protested but it wasn’t or wouldn’t effect they’re everyday life. But they obviously pay more attention.
Yeah but Netflix has some shows I need to watch and I can’t do that from jail, soooo… fascism I guess.
More like food is expensive as hell and so I can’t really afford to loose my pay check. Which is why organizing often starts as mutual aide.
And advocating for a general strike is ILLEGAL and a very easy charge in Trump’s America at this point.
I’ve been rolling around forums and whatnot to see the interest for such topics, and they seem high, but no one is talking about what I’m supposed to do to pay for my pets and apartment when I have 0 support structures in a deeply red state. They don’t treat the homeless very well here, and it’s freezing half the year.
Not that you’re saying it’s easy, you rightly pointed out food too. I just wish there were more resources, or ways to get connected. My community does the No Kings protests, but most of them balked at the Kirk shooting so they’re not quite radicalized enough for the other actions that a not-entirely-peaceful protest would bring.
So have no savings?
I have a little, it’s to try and get me and my partner the hell out of this state. Not enough for a house, but enough for a used car and a u-haul and first and last month’s rent somewhere else.
A lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck, we’re lucky to be a bit above that and not have kids. Almost all the people we know from high school and college are in worse boats than us.
Personally, I think more of use should do little things, like damage government buildings, infrastructure, etc. primarily of right wing assets. You can get a used paintball gun pretty cheep, and in the dead of night from far away you could pelt a building with red paint relatively quiet.
Paintball guns are not exactly quiet and don’t have sufficient range to even allow you to stand outside the parking lot of most Federal buildings and still reach them, let alone outside of the purview of their security cameras. When you’re caught you’ll inevitably be holding a Gun Shaped Object, which is unlikely to go down well. I admire the spirit, but I’d advise you to think about that one a smidge harder, if I were you.
If you’re going to sabotage, then sabotage. Don’t go for middle school level vandalism pranks.
Paintball trebuchet it is then
I’m down. How many 55 gallon drums full of 'em are we chucking?
Give me an example of an act that would meet your qualifications
I think what Germany did to get corporate money out of government is miniscule to what America will have to do.
America won’t course-correct until it is forced to do so.
The political establishment is so totally insulated in a media bubble that there’s no way to reach them, internal pressures can be safely ignored. Only external pressure can change this country now.
If I recall, killing Nazis worked in WWII.
Except we didn’t kill any American Nazis, we just left them alone to fester
We fought fascists overseas to keep us from fighting fascists at home…
Hell, we imported a few of them from Germany.
As part of an organized war between opposing imperialist nations. I’m not seeing how that’s going to happen here.
Clearly we need a civil war
You’d need to recruit a significant proportion of the military for that to work. It didn’t go so hot for the last guys that tried this.
Do you mean the confederates who, by a different name, are in power right now?
Probably having time off of work and not being too tired from living paycheck to paycheck unfortunately.
Consider Spain, Argentina, France, Italy, Libya, Panama, Syria, Germany
The only thing that works once these fools get entrenched into the political machine is a good old fashioned ass whoopin.
FWIW this is why I think it’s so important to keep the farmers and union workers on our side. They are the means by which everything else is built upon. If they’re on the other side, well then the machine can keep on grinding.
FWIW this is why I think it’s so important to keep the farmers and union workers on our side.
WHELP
Hey silver lining, Trump seems to be doing a really good job of pissing off the military leadership and the common soldiers as well. The only ones that are actually supporting him are nut jobs, the grifters who think they can use him, and executives who think they can squeeze more profit out by crawling up his ass.
As for farmers that’s kind of a mixed bag. The problem isn’t so much that they’ll support him as it is that there might not be many of them left. Trumps policies are bankrupting farmers at a record rate and their farms are being snapped up by foreign holding companies. Most of them are going to end up working farms they no longer own.
Most of them are going to end up working farms they no longer own.
A lot of farmers are killing themselves. The US will have to give migrant workers a path in - which is kind of big picture funny.
for all their bullshit, conservatives have never given a fuck about farmers. if they did, we wouldn’t have a migration issue at all.
The two key turning points are going to be the midterms and when it comes time for the next election. Depending on how those events go, and if Trump hasn’t died at some point in the next couple years (either from natural causes or because someone learns how to aim), things will likely go one of two wildly different directions.
If we actually have elections, and if the gerrymandering isn’t so horrendous that it’s impossible to overcome we’ll hopefully see a Democrat elected and we’ll start the incredibly slow crawl back to normalcy, hopefully with some significant reforms to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. The process is going to take decades to unwind all the damage Trump has managed in just a few years, but in theory we’ll get there eventually.
On the other hand, we could go the opposite direction. Republicans retain the majority in the midterms, and then when the next primary comes around either we just don’t have an election or Trump “wins” a 3rd term despite that being unconstitutional. At that point we’re likely looking at either a civil war, or the US being defeated in a 3rd world war like Germany was in order to undo all this crap. Neither option is good and if things get to that point the world is fucked, the US doubly so.
Trump hasn’t even been in a year yet. Shits going to go downhill.
we’ll start the incredibly slow crawl back to normalcy, hopefully with some significant reforms to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again
And then the democrats will lose the midterm, which will lock up Congress and maybe get the president impeached, and we’ll be back to this shit again.
This has happened every decade for my entire fucking life.
The Dems have to stop being weak ass babies and just do what they want. If the right can do it why can’t the left. Fuck norms and traditions.
I can’t believe people still have faith in fair elections. He tried to cheat his first win. He refused to leave after his loss to Biden and tried to overthrow the government. Then he cheated again last year.
And for some reason you think the midterms will be open and fair?! That he’ll even hold them at all? Or will allow them to be fair without cheating or intimidation? Or will actually obey the results? He doesn’t listen to Congress now! Why would he start if the Dems won?!
And if by some miracle all of that worked out you think the Dems are going to start fighting back now? This isn’t a political fight. It’s a class fight and most of the Dems are in the owner class. That’s why they go along with all this.
Stop relying on the next election. You don’t vote your way out of fascism. Totalitarian leaders do not value elections. He will not leave or give up power.
So the hope is that things are bad enough that voters finally learn their lesson but not bad enough that their votes don’t matter…
when the next primary comes around either we just don’t have an election or Trump “wins” a 3rd term despite that being unconstitutional
And all the mainstream media will go about how this is an unusual turn with side panels of experts “debating” what Constitutional means…
The best of the worst cases is the US goes completely isolationist as the world turns from them and it all burns itself out into something different. I do not want this to spread out, and other countries need to pay attention once again and stop pretending it’s fine. That’s what really bothers me, even other leaders play the game instead of refusing to deal with him face to face. I guess they’re doing that high road mess and using economic tactics to hit back.
Best case - mid terms have significant traction and shut him down, assuming he’s still around. If he’s not, Vance or whoever fails to keep what cultists there are still and there’s something left to piece back together. But shit, it has to be better than what we had, otherwise it’s just going to keep happening. In essence this is core Reconstruction failure and continued rot over more than a century. We really should have improved by now.
The oligarch should be banned from other countries. Why let them in to spread they’re hate.
No idea. ICE is blatantly breaking the law and local police are not arresting them.
There are no laws; we made the whole thing up
General strikes should have happened months ago. You’re actively letting Maga normalize miltary troops quelling protests.
There is nothing to be done if your head is stuck in the old world, which is where 98% of Americans still live.
All I’ve seen on social media are two distinct camps: someone help us, please we don’t want this, and are you fucking crazy I have a family and a job I cannot do anything.
Enjoy the fascism, you’ve earned it. You’ll just have to learn your lesson the hard way, a la climate change. This is only a sneak preview of what happens when you ignore the obvious for too long.
Exactly they are at war and don’t want to do anything. Oh well they deserve what they get.
They got really, really fat, drunk and horny off the American exceptionalism post-WW2, and they never came down from the high.
This is that, catching up with them. They’re not taking it well. Most of them still refuse to believe it.
Strikes no longer work in this Country. The strike would have to be until something happens. Like a hunger strike. The end is death Unless change. But I think we all know that isn’t going to happen
People, on the whole, will choose the easiest path.
People are also really bad at estimating risk, usually overestimating short term risks and underestimating long term risks.
So what happens is that people choose what they estimate to be the easiest path, based on their faulty ideas about what the short and long term risks are.
Which means that in order for real change to happen - by whatever means - people have to perceive that the immediate risk of change is lower than the future risk of staying the same.
