Repeating this

Great so when do his numerous felonies and massive crimes against the country actually amount to something? Because I’ve been holding my breath for a fucking decade now.

I'll believe that anything is stopping him when he's behind bars. This does not mean stop trying, it means try harder.

okay what laws has he actually been held accountable to?

Gravity?
- fuck, you're right. if anything, gravity's thrown the book at him. poor laws of physics they're trying so hard.
- Entropy is doing some good work too. Just not as fast as I'd like.
- democracy is saved ✊😌
he's only deploying the national guard where he's invited. so far.
- He was not, and will never be invited to California. He has deployed his goons anyways.

oh right, laws stopped him. which is why he never spoke during his lawsuit because of several gag orders. he went to jail for not complying with court orders several times. he also went to prison for numerous counts of fraud, jan6, and openly defying several amendments. I doubt he'll ever see the light of day again. great checks and balances bro.

Can't we be a little more nuanced than this? I agree that despair shouldn't drive inaction but to consider them bad-faith actors is a bit much imo.

I am pessimistic (but not hopeless) about America's present and future looking from the outside, north of the 49th parallel, mainly due to the current government's strategy to stop measuring problems while making them worse instead of fixing them. I think it's normal to express disappointment that so many of the institutions, groups and individuals who proudly displayed their independence from govt years or months ago are now bowing down to their dictator.

There's been mixed success in the courts, and the OOP has a point that giving up in the face of this is a win to the fascists. I do sense public resistance, and if it can manifest itself in a co-ordinated way like ICE reporting mutual aid groups, running out the clock is a way to win it back. I say this because the administration's actions look increasingly like they are flailing, and the smarter people that know how to govern in the executive branch have all already been kicked out for reality TV yes-people.

The question, to me is: can Americans put their cultural self-serving helplessness aside for a bit to counteract this administration's attempts to dictate reality? I am holding out hope.

Smell that? That's what copium smells like.

The king has gotten away with everything he wanted.

But lawsuit a bro. But the files bro. Lmao

Horizontal Hostility: When Oppressed Groups Turn Against Each Other

Let's try not to discredit each others tactics. We are on the same side.

This article is as lazy and uninspired as the AI art plastered all over the site.
The article correctly identifies some of the structural and material causes, but completely ignores actual politics, the challenges of grassroot organizing, existing circumstances that create disagreement, such as differing priorities, experiences, and analysis, etc. There is such a thing as someone being "on our side" and being completely wrong and taking actions that damage the movement. There's also united vs popular front dynamics, the popular front being when the largest and most powerful political force taking over smaller tendencies, which more often than not ends up neutralizing any real opposition, while the more powerful party finds common ground and compromise with the forces of oppression themselves, i.e., becoming a kind of oppressor. A united front allows for struggle and debate among organically emergent factions and sharpens the whole movement in the process. This article practically muddies the water for any principled disagreement by lumping it together with unprincipled disagreement, leading to the conclusion that all disagreement is a form of sectarianism. This disastrous rationalization has been the justification for generations of bloody purges and mass immiseration.
There is an actual unification of left resistance happening as we speak. Its coming because of different perspectives working together, not from total agreement across the board. This unification often appears throughout history as a result of increasing repression, when the stakes become more real and less intellectualized. So really what we should be fighting for is how to educate people in dealing with material and political facts rather than ideals and ideologies.
Uncritical acceptance of bad tactics and strategy is in fact the surest sign of sectarianism and cooptation, the actual most devastating tendencies of resistance movements. Progress only occurs through principled struggle, when our principle are in line with the lived experiences of people and the objective circumstances that define the struggle.
Its a nice thought, but completely misidentified and disastrously impractical if trying to mount an opposition. To your point, tactics are downstream of strategy, and strategy is downstream from principles. "Don't criticize tactics" is so wrongheaded, I urge you to rethink this. It doesn't make any sense and betrays a total lack of understanding of not only political struggle but of social change itself. If we want to defeat the forces of death, which can endlessly defend itself rationally, then we need to do better than reason. we need to fight ideals with practice, discussion and education on how to engage with what is real, not ideal.
EDIT: looking at the references I would love to see the justification for including Pedagogy of the Oppressed. There is nothing in that book that supports this argument. This article is AI slop just like the shitty art
- You make many good points. I didn't write this and was looking more for a definition of the phrase "Horizontal Hostility" which dispite your criticism I believe is still something that prevents our efforts.
  I've been guilty of it myself. I've criticized more militant strategies of resistance in the past because it went against my personal principals. And looking back, I wish I hadn't.
  After doing more research and reading, I disagree with the idea that "There is such a thing as someone being 'on our side' and being completely wrong and taking actions that damage the movement." I think that diversity is our greatest strength. And a diversity of tactics, strategy, and principles is important in a resistance.

I feel this way but I'm not trying to convince people to give up. I'm trying to convince people not to assume "things will just work out". My boomer parents keep asking me why I'm not jumping into the housing market or making other major financial decisions. They act like the structure I'd need to be in place to mitigate possible risks will definitely be there. "You'll have social security, your pension, etc because there's no way they can get rid of those things." I say bullshit. I'm in a holding pattern until we find the end of how much the GOP is able to burn down.

Merely stopping his actions is a miscarriage of justice. Do you stop the bank robber and let him walk free?

The argument here seems to be largely the same as saying that a wage slave should be satisfied with his salary because he is getting a salary at all.

I don't think that in an obviously corrupt legal system, the focus should be on how to use this dysfunctional system against those who have shaped it over decades in such a way that their crimes become possible in the first place. There's a term for that: window dressing.

However, it becomes very difficult when someone tries to dismiss legitimate criticism of rampant corruption as counterproductive. This amounts to a refusal to acknowledge that far-reaching reforms are necessary—in other words, to a defense of the status quo with the argument that the system is fine and that there is no problem at all.

I think US citizens would be well advised to realize that their legal system has not only permitted organized crime at the highest levels, but has actually made it possible in the first place. Otherwise, Trump would not be president, but would have been in prison for decades.

because it couldn't possibly be that people recognize this as an attempt to make things seem less fucked than they are..

the law isn't doing shit. if you're having fingers cut off and someone convinces the torturer to only cut off the fingertip on 2 fingers, you're not going to be grateful, you're going to fucking consider them complicit because they didn't tackle the torturer to the fucking ground and start punching them in the face.

I mean, he's not wrong, but at the same time it, seems to be mostly ineffective. And I personally can't do anything that will have a major impact on the outcome. Except wait for the law to fail.

Yeah this annoys me. Im fighting for the constituion and the whole idea of a democratic society based around rights. Man recently got this whole since the constitution is not working so it was no good to begin with. Its not perfect but it has the capacity to be improved and I will take it over 99% of government basises out there.