You know, DOGE, fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored. Is there any way out of that or is it over? Is the USA done?
The funny things is americans were like “We need guns to protect ourselves from tyranny.” But of course, the ones with the guns are precisely the ones siding with tyrants.
Lots of Americans have guns. Not just conservatives.
Being a shitty person is multidisciplinary, apparently.
In the short term, yes.
If trump remains in office after this term, absolutely yes.
If we get a different admin - not just another republicrat trump clone - they’re going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time fixing all of trump’s fuckups. One of which should be restricting any wannabe monarch’s ability to rule by decree in the US. So yeah, we’re fucked, and we’re gonna have to spend a lot of effort getting unfucked, digging ourselves out of an oligarchy hole, instead of moving forward from a continually advancing starting point.
E: allies are already turning away from us, politically and economically. They’ll form new alliances and relationships that the US doesn’t get to be a part of, or at least won’t get a leading position in. Same with things like soft power from international aid. China will step in, maybe the EU or even Russia. We lose the goodwill, stability, and any economic “ins” we could have achieved with that soft power. We’re fucked in lots of ways.
We lose the goodwill
Gone. It’s gone. I’m your neighbor. There’s no more goodwill. It’s been completely replaced with desire to see your hubris teach a collective lesson, and a process of internal reflection on how we can not end up like you.
Hope you effectively learn that lesson. I don’t blame any country for turning away from the US. Stupid people electing destructive narcissists and doing absolutely nothing to prevent it.
3 generations of people ‘voting according to their pocketbooks’ makes an easily controlled monoculture.
Their pocketbooks were morons for three generations, too.
Not even close to being done. Right now the biggest changes are a reduction in non law enforcement/immigration government staff and contracts being paid out. The biggest thing coming down the pipeline is Trump clearly wants to free himself of the courts and congress. But it’s far too early to say he’s won that. And even that wouldn’t be the end of things. In the US the states have a lot of autonomy. They are actually the ones responsible for holding elections. So let’s look at a worst case scenario, where he tries to say we shouldn’t have elections.
The first thing that’s going to happen is all the blue states are going to tell him to fuck off and hold them anyways. The second thing that’s going to happen is some red states will also do so, although they’ll likely be less coarse with the language. Then a few more red states will be pressured into having elections by massive protests of people angry they can’t vote anymore. Then while Trump is having a fit because there’s no real way for him to stop this process, we get to learn about a fun feature of the US Congress. There is no law requiring it to meet in D.C. Trump would likely try to claim whatever is left over is the real congress, but without having been elected the Constitution is clear that those states forfeit representation until they hold an election.
So we’d be left with a House that is majority anti-Trump, after all, he tried to make them irrelevant at best. In the Senate we’d likely be looking at something of an even split in 2026. There’s probably 5-7ish red states that would hold elections anyways and combined with the blue states and senate democrats leaving DC they would be able to convene elsewhere with a majority to declare rules of the Senate without Trump’s interference. The new Congress would likely swiftly vote to impeach Trump. The remnants of the old one would protest this but they don’t have any legal power. Only the backing of Trump and propaganda power.
This leaves Vance with a choice. This would be by design because our democratic party leaders only appear to be stupid when convenient. Vance can throw his weight behind Trump and get impeached himself or he can order Trump removed from the White House thus acknowledging the primacy of Congress. If he chooses the first option then Congress simply repeats the process and the presidency goes to the next person in line, the speaker of the house. Yes, Congress can effectively vote one of it’s own members into the White House at any time. This president then declares an emergency and orders the military to secure DC. The military loves process, and loves the Constitution. It is highly likely this order would be followed.
However all would not be well, it’s not a fairy tale. It would likely be the start of an American Insurgency that would take decades to root out. It would certainly be the end of the US as the hegemonic world power. Our Aircraft Carriers would rust in port and our projection of soft and hard power over the world would wither. But we would still be here, just much diminished and never the same in our lifetimes. This is certainly scary but if we all do our part this is as close as we would come to losing our democracy. Far more insidious is the threat of slowly revoking the right to vote. They’d start by raising the age, then by requiring you to not have any debt of specific kinds, then by making harsh punishments for illegally voting, and other such things until voting is effectively restricted to land owners. Certain factions would like to get it to white christian male landowners but that’s probably a decade or more down that line if at all.
Notes -
Why wouldn’t he just send in the military?
2028 isn’t enough time to purge and train enough people to make the military loyal to him. He would be mid project on that at best and the states could effectively counter him into a stand still with their national guard. This would make many people stay home, but the determined voters are likely to be anti-trump because that’s the change incentive. Loyalists will feel like the elections don’t matter.
What’s stopping SCOTUS from declaring the elections invalid?
The states. SCOTUS is only relevant as long as they have reputation of being an impartial arbiter of Constitutional Law. That opinion is already in the trash heap. They could not make such a decision today, or after 4 more years unless they spend the next 4 years setting themselves as at least a mild opposition in a long game. But they haven’t shown that kind of patience.
What happens in Trump surrounds himself with thousands of armed loyalists in DC?
We select a new capital and wish him the best of luck dealing with DC. There is no law requiring DC be the Capital. The Constitution doesn’t even require the states to give up a district, it only provides the legal possibility. There’s no need to engage in that kind of a conflict. Such a group would be arrested bit by bit by Maryland, Virginia, and Federal authorities until it could be resolved swiftly.
You seem far more hopeful than me, and far more intelligent, so I am going to try and hold on to a sliver of hope.
I’m probably not smarter than you, this is just in my field of study. And to throw a little water on it, it depends on people doing things. We can all sit on our couch and watch the ministry of newspeak broadcasts or we can be in the streets. Our leaders are humans and we can’t expect them to act in a way that endangers themselves without visible support. But it actually takes a heck of a lot to kill a country. We aren’t anywhere near that point yet. Get mad, get in the streets.
The flaw with this scenario is that it assumes Trump would try to simply cancel the elections. Instead, he would be more likely to regulate them in a way that makes unseating him impossible. For example, federal regulations might be implemented that required states to use voting machines, voting machines that are produced by corrupted companies. He just straight up steals the election through rigged voting machines. Or they mess with registrations and voter purges to a level more than the amount that already got Trump elected this time. See the SAVE Act..
Or alternatively, the election systems themselves will be unaffected. However, the candidates will be carefully managed. Any Democratic candidate that would present a significant threat to MAGA will be arrested on trumped-up charges. The courts will miraculously cease to give the Democratic candidate the same leeway they did to Trump when they “didn’t want to interfere with the election.” Or he’ll manipulate the Democratic elites so much that they end up electing someone even more conservative. They end up running Ted Cruz or something insane like that.
Remember, even the citizens of the Soviet Union got to have elections.
He can certainly try, but he can’t pass laws about elections without Congress, which brings the filibuster into play.
Arresting the party leaders of the opposition also generally doesn’t work if you do it more than once or the situation is already very politicized.
At the end of the day it’s going to require us to be in the streets no matter what he tries. Our state leaders need to see that they have support to stand up to Trump.
I really only lurk on Lemmy, but I felt the need to comment. Thank you for writing this. I’ve been stressed out since the EO was announced. I felt like we were doomed, but this gives me some hope. Even if this doesn’t happen, I feel better knowing there is still a way to possibly course correct.
This is actually one of the more pessimistic courses. It’s probable that Trump gets enough push back that his legacy consists of massively handicapping the civil service, screwing up the economy and our alliances, and then peacefully transferring power to a democratic party president.
One of the other things we need to do is seriously organize to support a more left candidate in the 2028 primaries. Part of this shock and awe is meant to make us give up, not only resisting Trump but also in organizing within the Democratic party.
is seriously organize to support a more left candidate
Americans need to start organizing the network for a general strike and start writing a new constitution.
A new constitution is a really bad idea until we can do a lot more organizing. Conservatives have been practicing for a convention for at least 20 years. If we called one right now they’d steamroll the liberals and we’d have an actual king again.
Thank you for this. It’s so easy to feel hopeless in the face of everything that’s happening, which is exactly what they want.
Yeah, there’s still quite a few good paths here. I can’t guarantee we do what’s needed but I can show how if we demand it from our leaders and publicly support them it becomes really hard for Trump and friends to reach their goals.
The silver lining here is that with now 8 years of abolishing civil/workers rights, technology and social development being suppressed and Americans falling so objectively behind in most measurable fields, hopefully Americans can get over their blatantly false sense of exceptionalism and become comfortable just being another part of the world.
Exceptionalism and nationalism has more to do with the propaganda people are being fed, and less with the actual reality they are living. It will take more than a hard downturn in quality-of-life I think.
Yea. I’m sure they will be humbled like the people of North Korea, who think their supernatural leader invented hamburgers and the electric guitar.
Nah there’s still plenty of cognitive dissonance to go around
technology (…) being suppressed
What technology or technology development is being suppressed?
The USA are still leading in most technological fields and have a dominant position.
The US does not have a dominant position in:
microchips.
batteries.
solar.
material science.
fusion.
energy.
computer science.
automotive.
displays.
The list goes on.
If you still think the USA is leading in tech, you are sorely misinformed about the state of the technological world(to be fair, it Is startling how rapidly the US has fallen out of grace in many of these technological fields).
The US is either barely clinging to previous legacies of prowess in tech fields to match other countries or falling behind rapidly, and without innovative latitude, federal grants or funding for research, they’re falling behind even further.
the US does not have the technological edge it once did; scientists, officials from the department of defense, everybody in the know agrees and have been making public statements about how quickly the US is falling behind in critical scientific and technological fields.
The US is still leading in aerospace and defense. Boeing is in a slump, but military planes are top notch. SpaceX is a decade ahead of the global competition at least.
computer science
All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US. American companies dominate the market for software and internet services. The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.
You’re also missing biotechnology as another key sector, where the US is doing very well.
the US does not have the technological edge it once did;
That much is clear. It’s still doing very good though.
The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA and it attracts top minds from across the globe.
you first claimed that the US is still leading in most technological fields.
this is false, as I pointed out in my previous comment.
your new tack is the US “is still doing very good, though”
this is also incorrect, largely a belief based on past achievements and cultural stories.
“aerospace”:
a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.
China has been investing in space, and are planning to build space stations and moon bases, and have been having regular launches.
“defense”: We are not ahead of the game anymore. US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense, AI weapons systems among those, despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget.
“All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US.”
biggest? okay.
leading? in what world is Microsoft a leading technological innovator?
they cannot even compete with a free operating system despite decades of a head start and hundreds of billions more capital.
Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor, and their newest phones aren’t even playing catch up with East Asian phones anymore, hardware or software.
“You’re also missing biotechnology…”
I wasn’t listing literally every field the US was failing in, I was refuting your false notion that the US was still leading in most technological fields.
“The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.”
not according to AI researchers, AI CEOs, computer scientists, and the US DOD.
and again, any prowess US companies had in AI was due to the mass exploitation of workers abroad.
“The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA”
it sure isn’t now, grants and federal funding have been cut by more than half since dumps took office.
“it attracts top minds from across the globe.”
this was true 20 years ago, as most of you are above assumptions were.
they are not true today.
The US is not leading in most, if any, technological fields, it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.
If people can’t afford groceries or a simple apartment to live in, let alone education, none of which they can afford in the US anymore, and have not been able to for the last generation, innovation falls by the wayside.
as it has been for a long time.
and now, US “dominance” will continue to freefall for at least the next 4 years.
you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.
The US population has not been invested in, and your industries are suffering for that.
meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.
I want to note that this is a good thing, this sort of disillusionment.
The US is not leading in fields that you recognize as critical.
it’s important to recognize how The US fell behind in these fields and what the US can do to catch up to other countries, or more hopefully, work with other countries to progress together, which may be their only practical choice anyway.
a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.
Huh? The US government paying SpaceX made it possible to succeed in the first place. That’s literally the US investing in aerospace tech.
US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense
China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology. The one area they are ahead is industrial capacity to build, especially ships. China builds a huge number of civilian and military ships.
despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget
Wages, manufacturing, etc. are all far more expensive in the US. It’s also much easier and cheaper to copy someone else’s design than to discover and build for the first time.
they cannot even compete with a free operating system
Microsoft has good support for Linux nowadays with Windows services for Linux and Azure Linux for example. On the desktop Microsoft Windows is still leading in market share and Microsoft Office is dominating as well.
Where are the biggest Linux companies located?
Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor
Apple’s AR/VR is innovative, if not particularly successful in the market. Their M-series chips are among the best chip available. Very fast with low power use.
Apple makes their products in same factories (Foxconn etc) as other companies. So the labor conditions aren’t unique to Apple at all.
it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.
I mostly agree. The quality of the US education system is similar to the health care system. The US has some of the best education and health care in the world. However, it’s neither cheap nor affordable for the majority of the population.
you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.
I agree mostly. Regarding funding under Trump, we will see. Elon Musk certainly know about R&D costs and benefits and is influential.
meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.
Yes, other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.
“China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology”
this is a fiction, according to US defense officials, but if we pretended it was true, it doesn’t change the original point, that the US is falling behind in most technological fields.
you’ll notice that I didn’t mention aerospace in my original top of the dome list.
it looks like you’re agreeing with all my other points though, so I don’t have much else to say except that the important American fiction to dispel is this:
“other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.”
10 years ago? you could argue that other countries were playing catch up in most technological fields.
now?
The US is behind in nearly every technological field and especially now is uninterested in catching up to the rest of the world.
The US population cannot afford to live and is critically undereducated, and are about to have four more years of withheld R&D funding and catastrophic isolationist policy.
That’s the reality on the ground now.
any “we’re not doing so bad” mentality simply is not correct anymore, and it’s important to recognize the reason behind and the rate at which the US is failing to advance in critical fields.
You’re not going to be able to swerve back onto the road by pretending the guardrails you’re grinding against aren’t there.
We live in a criminally stupid country but Musk is doing his best to show everyone that being a billionaire should be a crime.
Edit: the tweet is fake, btw
Is that a real tweet?
No, it’s intended to show their real intent. He has an entire PR team dedicated to trying to make him appear intelligent, competent, and in control. However his actions speak so much louder than words. He’s barely able to contain himself. Luckily, his living flak jacket that he wears around is learning to speak and his hilariously repeating all of the things he says in private.
I hate this dumbshit as much as trump, but we shouldn’t be sharing fake twitter posts. It doesn’t help anything.
Anything from twitter should be suspect, especially without a date. I get your point though, I’ll note screenshot is fake.
Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down 'ere!
If we can’t get enough people protesting and taking action, yes. The window is closing.
The fuck is protesting going to do at this point, lets be real here. Why do you think a protest has any sway of the bulldozer that is happening in the US Legal system?
Protesting is just not gonna accomplish much, a little bit more than that is needed I think.
General strikes are the only answer.
That just means your target changes. You’re not protesting to change an unchangeable administration. Instead you’re building consensus and creating a movement that can activate if certain lines are crossed.
When it’s all done and dusted, I hope it’s the beginning of the end for corporate capitalism as we know it. Allowing them to become that big and powerful through corruption that they literally think that they can control the world, is insane.
This is happening because of greed.
I would say it would’nt be able to happen due to greed exclusively. You need an entire nation (race! the entire human race) to be selfish, dumb and hateful enough to allow these buffoons to rise to power, in the first place.
The orange faeces sprinkler could have done literally everything, have the voters been empathetic and intelligent enough - he wouldn’t have gotten much further than being the head of a hotel company, or something. At best.
But yet, here we are, because the entire human race, the human DNA itself is designed to be a selfish dick, and prioritise themselves or their closest circle (friends/family) over anyone and anything else. This will be our end, and hopefully it happens before any other forms of life cease to exist on this planet.
It’s never over.
Even the worst dictatorship can collapse. They get internally couped until the dictator learns to purge anyone capable of challenging them, then human mortality fixes that dictator and the government collapses
It’s not good though. The best time to fix it was ages ago before Reagan. The second best time is right now before the police state is firmly in place
The second best time to fix this was 4 years ago, when the Capitol was attacked to try to overturn a democratic election. But the USA has a big problem: nothing was done. A criminal staged a coup and failed. And nothing was done. He was allowed to go free, run for president and now he is in charge. The USA already failed years ago and now is just reaping what it allowed fascism to sow. Because nothing was ever done about it.
Getting rid of dictators typically takes decades once they’ve built up their power base. I doubt Trump has that kind of mileage in him, given how old he is. But the damage has been done now. Trump has proven that the famous “checks and balances” of the US system just don’t work.
As for the US’s reputation in the world, it’ll take a long time to recover (if at all). One Trump Presidency was a blip; an experiment. A second Trump Presidency is like America saying “fuck you” to the rest of the world, especially its allies like the UK and the EU. Americans will be hated everywhere else as much as Russians are hated now.
It’s only February of the first year of Trump’s second term. Who knows what might happen in the next 4 years; but honestly, I think the US is done as a superpower and a reliable friend to the West. Every empire dies, and I don’t think I’ve ever read in history books about an empire dying quietly in its sleep; it’s always a turbulent process that historians can usually pinpoint to a specific precipitating event afterwards.
That’s how you get new checks and balances, once the dictator falls.
But you’re right the US is rapidly burning its power and alliances. That would take decades to repair, and they might never reach the same position again.
The wound predates Reagan and goes back to the Civil War. Sherman had the chance to cauterize it, but he held back and let it fester, and here we are.
Damn you, McCarthy! Your imaginary list of communists doomed us all!!
Whether it’s now or later, life has to get a lot worse before it gets better. People will have to feel a lot more pain than they’re feeling now before they do more than bitch and moan online.
Life doesn’t have to get harder tho
I heard there was a mentor coming to fix this soon…sorry, I apologize. I mean to say Meteor. Chances of landing up my own ass have increased once more. I probably won’t feel it so I’m not too worried about it.
Yes, and we knew this would be the outcome the second he won the election. I’m staying in the U.S. because my life is worthless anyway and I’d prefer death in glorious revolution than survival, but anyone who values their life should have started their plans to leave in August 2024 when it became obvious he was going to sieze control.
Wolverines!
Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Absolutely.
Unless you get good with a sniper rifle its going to stay screwed for ever. Or if you actually have the gall to try to annex one of your neighbours. Then we’ll take care of your problem for you.
Centuries to build
Weeks to destroy.
Good luck.
To be fair, decades to destroy. This has been slowly culminating since before I was even born. Maybe before my parents were born.
We’re cooked fam. Can’t wait for the reboot.
