It's sad that it has come to this, but I guess we'll start.
It's sad that it has come to this, but I guess we'll start.
This is exactly how it should be handled. Don't let the Republican party have an escape path of pushing out away from 47 when the policies turn the US economy and world standing to shit.
It is The Republicans who are doing this, all of them, not just some single psychotic politician. The GOP should never be trusted with even the power of a city commision job ever again adter this all blows up. The 33% (or whatever it is) of the possible voters who chose red should bear full responsibility for what they have approved happening. They can't just say they "couldn't have known".
I don't understand "couldn't have known"-ers, I knew, so why can't you?
It's truly "could have known but didn't bother" for that lot.
Nobody is immune to propaganda, even me.
There are a ton of people that can't entertain the hypothetical. They can't understand until it impacts them personally.
New rule: Suspect and distance yourself from anyone who says, "you're only voting/volunteering/donating/canvassing/protesting/contacting representatives, etc. iT's NoT gOiNg To aCcoMpLiSh AnYtHiNg!". Yeah, doing nothing and trying to get others to do the same is the only way to guarantee nothing changes!
People who say "do nothing" are full of shit, but there's some merit to "we need to escalate yesterday". Getting swept up in the tide and not noticing where you actually stand is the second-worst thing you can do, the worst of course being not doing anything.
Absolutely! There is no good reason to oppose protests but here are a few of the ones I've seen around here:
- It'll put you on the list for 'no reason'
-- If nonviolent protest will put you on 'the list', then you're already on the list. We're all on the list. But it's a big list, because we have the numbers on our side.
- It accomplishes nothing!
-- No, nothing accomplishes nothing. If your choices are between "nothing" and "something", do something. If your choices are between "nothing" and "vague appeal to violence", that's not a choice, that's a trap. Even people who believe in those solutions would never try to dissuade you! because public unrest would obviously only help their cause.
- You're provoking them! They'll enact martial law!
-- No, they provoked us. they are not 'waiting for an excuse'. Nonviolent protests and the exercise of free speech do not provoke oppression, that is victim-blaming.
If they want violence, they will bring the violence, and manufacture whatever excuses they need. Please see the Reichstag fire.
thank you for this.
fuck off with that shit. some of us see that more direct action needs to be taken. you can pussyfoot around all you want to. i don't have to agree with it.
so take direct action then. just know there are many ways to resist.
The second part makes sense but I don't understand what the use of the first highlighted point is supposed to accomplish?
It's not like he is Voldemort.
The purpose seems to be twofold. One, he is a narcissist, and it may upset him, which is neat. The more important one is to not trigger people's emotional response to Trump, and talk about specific policies and issues close to home. People mention Trump and their critical thinking skills get replaced with extreme anger or misplaced love.
Yeah, after Trump's first term when everyone referred to him as "T****"... that shit didn't work at all.
He henceforth shall be called "The liar".
It's just virtue signaling. It's about letting other know how much you hat Trump.
It is childish.
‘Regime’ is the word. ‘Republican regime’.
That last part is a hell of an insight.
Lump dems in with it too. It is actions of the entire US government. Until you stand up and make a demonstrable difference and change the trajectory, you are part of the problem and not the de facto solution because you hide behind a cowardly two party system.
No, don't lump dems in with the reps. There is a difference between those parties. It is impossible that some mystical third party will rise in the next 4 years and take over the white house. The US election system sure makes sure of that. There is a big and real difference between the Biden administration and the 47 administration. If Harris was president right now, we wouldn't have this whole mess.
I'll just copy and paste from another conversation:
While their history of curtailing civil rights under the cover of counterterror is certainly fucked up what really makes everyone suffer isn't what Democrats do; it's what they don't do. Democrats are neoliberals working under a mostly neoliberal status quo so frankly they don't need to do anything except maintain that while occasionally giving the working class breadcrumbs to dissipate activist energy, and now you should ask yourself: What is the (pre-2025) status quo? Is that not one under which everyone suffers? Real wages (until Biden) keep falling, people can't find homes to live, homelessness is at an all-time high, the climate crisis isn't going anywhere, etc etc. Most of the time Democrats aren't malevolent actors, but they're seatwarmers who via their very existence and addiction to power (and donor money) prevent the working class from seizing political power and effecting real change. They also fight anything resembling such organization (see: Bernie 2016 and 2020, Jamaal Bowman). Democrats have coopted leftwing politics and turned them into capitalism that will fuck you slightly less, so rather than a tug of war between progress and reaction you have reaction pulling and "progress" condemning it in strongly worded letters. Biden breaking the railroad strike (you'll see people saying that he gave them their demands later, but that's untrue) was also pretty horrible.
As for giving legitimacy to fascism you have surveillance laws, bombing brown people in the Middle East (both during Obama and Biden's terms), going after anti-Zionist protesters, adopting the Republican stance on immigration (including Trump's stupid border wall), never actually going after the fascists and of course touting bipartisanship and compromise with the fascists.
Note: These are both non-exhaustive lists, as I only follow the general beats of American politics. You'll get far more exhaustive ones from American leftists.
Democrats are never going to give you anything other than a red carpet for fascism to walk on.
Krasnov is also acceptable
Nearly 90 million people didn’t vote in the USA 2024 election. If you don’t want to become an American, don’t act like one.
🇨🇦 ✊ 🇨🇦 GET OUT AND VOTE 🇨🇦 ✊ 🇨🇦
no excuses: https://www.elections.ca/home.aspx/
I prefer to refer to him as President Felon. President Sexual Molester works as well.
President Felon is good. It can be ambiguous as to who you are talking about
Love these suggestions.
As for #1, my name for him is HitlerPig. That's the name given by the young staffers in the Biden White House, and I found it simulateously vicious, hilarious, and accurate. I try to only use that name when posting, and I encourage others to use it as well.
My alternate name for him is Agent Krasnov, or just Krasnov, which is the code name given to him by Soviets when he visited them in 1987. They were shocked at how easily manipulated he could be by feeding him cheap, insincere flattery. I've seen lots of people use Krasnov.
As a person with a strong arts background, I also appreciate the call to support the arts. Beauty is an effective antidote for evil.
The one thing I slightly disagree with is attaching the Republicans to him. Its true, of course, but I orefer to refer to them as MAGA, or Nazis, or MAGA Nazis. The Republicans are facilitating them, to be sure, but the subset of the Republican party, the MAGA Nazis, need to be demonized and dehumanized. They are the true enemy, and we need to turn the Traditional Republicans against them, if we are ever going to crush them ruthlessly and mercilessly, and purge them from our government and society.
It will have to be our Democratic FDR, making an unholy alliance with the Republican Stalin, to destroy the MAGA Nazis and their Fuhrer.
If the republicans don't want to be attached to him, they should do something about it.
The Republicans, loud and quiet, have been the enemy the whole time, for decades and decades. When the chips are down they support the MAGA crowd without much real hesitation and their threshold for what is evil is still disgusting. The Democrats are barely even halfway to decent, the GOP shouldn’t even be considered as a legitimate policy-making party.
Do not give them scapegoats for free. Do not let them pretend that they’re “the good ones”. Do not condition yourself to believe that there is any good to be found in the GOP. Anyone against their “policies” to the point of being an actually good person would not be there and the US would be counting it a lucky day if they even made it anywhere within the Democrats.
I orefer to refer to them as MAGA, or Nazis, or MAGA Nazis.
I call them MAGAts (pronounced maggots).
What is the point of not saying Trump's name?
To me, solely referring to him as '47' or something along those lines just comes off as childish or petty. Can anyone explain a reasoning behind this?
Trump is a diva lightning rod. He lives on attention. As well by blaming him directly you indirectly absolve his surrounding Republican party. Meaning when trump dies or goes away, they can slot in JD vance and because trump ate all the complaints they will be given leeway to continue their fascism
Ding ding ding
Problem is that it does feel damn satisfying to aim the vitriol directly at him. But even bad PR is good PR as they say.
I can live with this idea. Other than when how much I actively and intentionally want him to suffer in every way possible. I don't want him to know death until he explores the full spectrum of pain and as he goes I hope he starts to see signs that everything he's ever done start to fall apart and that he will be forgotten quickly.
Basically I want the absolute worst death humanly possible. To the infinityeth power.
I took it to mean we need to shift the focus of conversation to the entire republican administration, as per point 10.
When I first read that sentence I thought it referred to Luigi
1 & 2 are probably good pieces of advice, but hard to follow.
3 is at this point verging on obvious. But I don't even want to "argue" with the disillusioned ones let alone those that are still firm MAGA. I want to do bad things to them that I don't feel entirely safe to admit explicitly here.
5 & 6 though... I don't know. Maybe we'll get past this but I'll always have the knowledge that most of my fellow citizens are bad people. That is simply hopeless. There is no escaping that knowledge.
I'm basically going to forever have a potential litmus test for people born before 2007 or so on how to treat them. Asking them who they voted for in 2024. Sure, they can lie but that's fine. If they're ashamed enough to lie then that at least softens my perspective on them a little anyway.
Why is 2007 your magic mark?
I was born 13 years before that and in only 31. Sure I'm not young but you must be if you think people my age are the reason America is so fucked up