Out of curiosity, since you appear to be very certain of this, what are you doing personally to deal with this? Are you leaving the country, moving into the hills, building a bunker, etc? I don't mean to sound antagonistic or anything, I genuinely would like to know.
Not OP but of the same persuasion. Personally, I’m working on emigration plans. I don’t really want to live in an authoritarian state. And if I ever have kids, there’s no way I’d want to raise them in this environment.
I should point out, though, that authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily mean that QOL drops for the average person (if you’re not part of a targeted group). Many people live quite happily in Hungary, Turkey, Russia. Local government will chug along as before, stonks might still go up. But you have to internalize a certain resignation over things you can no longer change or talk about, unless you wish to become a dissident and put yourself in danger. I’m not brave enough for that, so I’m opting out of the whole thing.
You're not at all wrong, but you've successfully described my entire life living in the US as a citizen born here. For that whole time we've incarcerated an absurd percentage of the world's prison population. I watched the crackdown on the Seattle WTO protests and Rodney King on the evening news.
Perhaps the defining feature of the modern nation state is a monopoly on violence and power. Been that way my whole life.
not OP: not sure. I'm in California so things can go crazy for a whole other litany of reasons if any single claim of Newsom starts to blossom. It's going to be a crazy ride if no one cheecks Trump early enough.
I'm waiting it out for now. I'm "close" enough to communte to Los Angeles, but otherwise on the outskirts of the county as a whole. It's a weird place for any federal service to go out of their way to exploit.
Yes. The only way Trump is ousted is if Democrats somehow get a supermajority in the House and the Senate and impeach and remove him, which isn't going to happen. Republicans will always close ranks around Trump at this point. He definitely won't leave office peacefully, if at all. What happens after that, I don't know.
The House has sole power over impeachments. Simple majority vote. The difficulty is scheduling it, the leadership controls this. A more likely path is four Republicans could make a declaration to caucus with the Democratic party, and change the leadership. Again, simple majority vote.
The Senate has sole power over impeachment trials. The trial and conviction vote have no quorum requirement. Republicans will have to show up and vote to acquit, explicitly, to protect Trump.
The law is clear, upon conviction the president is removed from power. The only power any person has is the power people voluntarily give to him. He can also throw poop if so inclined, he's plenty full of it.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies. - Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority
Yes for part of the country. Gerrymandering, long lines, distant polling locations... Voting day isn't a holiday, voting hours aren't 24/7, and not all states have laws requiring time off of work to vote. For a lot of red states, elections simply are not fair.
>Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America?
With a confidence level of some 99.9%+ of votes being legitimate, yes. with 155 million voters in 2024 nationals, that leaves a margin of about 155k illegitimate votes. Elections can be super close (see 2000), but any fraud that went undetected would not sway most American elections. At least not with this electoral college system.
>Do you honestly believe there will not be at least _some_ kind of election in 2028?
Yeah probably. I'm not even sure if Trump will get that far, though. we'll have to see how damning this SAVE act is on women first and if the courts strike this down in the next 18 months or so.
>Even if it's staged, form must be respected.
When has Trump ever done that? most other leaders I disagree with still did this. But not him.
Oh, there will be elections. After all, even USSR and Russia had/have elections of all kinds.
Out of curiosity, since you appear to be very certain of this, what are you doing personally to deal with this? Are you leaving the country, moving into the hills, building a bunker, etc? I don't mean to sound antagonistic or anything, I genuinely would like to know.
Not OP but of the same persuasion. Personally, I’m working on emigration plans. I don’t really want to live in an authoritarian state. And if I ever have kids, there’s no way I’d want to raise them in this environment.
I should point out, though, that authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily mean that QOL drops for the average person (if you’re not part of a targeted group). Many people live quite happily in Hungary, Turkey, Russia. Local government will chug along as before, stonks might still go up. But you have to internalize a certain resignation over things you can no longer change or talk about, unless you wish to become a dissident and put yourself in danger. I’m not brave enough for that, so I’m opting out of the whole thing.
You're not at all wrong, but you've successfully described my entire life living in the US as a citizen born here. For that whole time we've incarcerated an absurd percentage of the world's prison population. I watched the crackdown on the Seattle WTO protests and Rodney King on the evening news.
Perhaps the defining feature of the modern nation state is a monopoly on violence and power. Been that way my whole life.
Any immigrant to the US that doesn't look like the right kind of immigrant, whether citizen or not, should be making plans and moving money.
I'm making plans and moving money already.
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Not OP, but I'm seeking foreign citizenship through prior family history as a mechanism for legally escaping the US should it come to that.
not OP: not sure. I'm in California so things can go crazy for a whole other litany of reasons if any single claim of Newsom starts to blossom. It's going to be a crazy ride if no one cheecks Trump early enough.
I'm waiting it out for now. I'm "close" enough to communte to Los Angeles, but otherwise on the outskirts of the county as a whole. It's a weird place for any federal service to go out of their way to exploit.
Legit inquiry, do you think Trump will last to 2028? I personally don't, but it can go all sorts of ways.
As an aside, I also consider a civil war as "not making it". Having to wage war on the people you lead is fundamentally a failure of all systems.
Yes. The only way Trump is ousted is if Democrats somehow get a supermajority in the House and the Senate and impeach and remove him, which isn't going to happen. Republicans will always close ranks around Trump at this point. He definitely won't leave office peacefully, if at all. What happens after that, I don't know.
Trump's health is a big open question, though.
But even if Trump is out of the picture, that just means we'll get president Vance, which is likely to be even worse.
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The House has sole power over impeachments. Simple majority vote. The difficulty is scheduling it, the leadership controls this. A more likely path is four Republicans could make a declaration to caucus with the Democratic party, and change the leadership. Again, simple majority vote.
The Senate has sole power over impeachment trials. The trial and conviction vote have no quorum requirement. Republicans will have to show up and vote to acquit, explicitly, to protect Trump.
The law is clear, upon conviction the president is removed from power. The only power any person has is the power people voluntarily give to him. He can also throw poop if so inclined, he's plenty full of it.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies. - Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority
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Military coup when?
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> Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America?
Yes.
Yes for part of the country. Gerrymandering, long lines, distant polling locations... Voting day isn't a holiday, voting hours aren't 24/7, and not all states have laws requiring time off of work to vote. For a lot of red states, elections simply are not fair.
>Do you honestly believe there have ever been _fair_ elections in America?
With a confidence level of some 99.9%+ of votes being legitimate, yes. with 155 million voters in 2024 nationals, that leaves a margin of about 155k illegitimate votes. Elections can be super close (see 2000), but any fraud that went undetected would not sway most American elections. At least not with this electoral college system.
>Do you honestly believe there will not be at least _some_ kind of election in 2028?
Yeah probably. I'm not even sure if Trump will get that far, though. we'll have to see how damning this SAVE act is on women first and if the courts strike this down in the next 18 months or so.
>Even if it's staged, form must be respected.
When has Trump ever done that? most other leaders I disagree with still did this. But not him.