#‘he’s a criminal he can’t get re-elected’ go tell that to him then lol

[yeehawbvby]

This seems like a good time to bring up Project 2025

In short, if Trump is re-elected, the US is at legitimate risk of a right-wing dictatorship.

PLEASE vote Biden, or whoever else winds up as the Dem candidate. Sure it’ll suck. They all do. But!!

1. Lesser of two evils

and 2. So many lives are on the line with this election. Disabled people. People who can get pregnant. BIPOC. Anyone who isn’t a cishet man.

We need to take caution now, not when Project 2025 is being contrived and it’s too late.

(If anyone has more credible sources than wiki - which I’ve definitely seen, but lost track of - please reblog with them if you’d like! I just figured this was the next safest bet.)

People are talking about not voting for Biden.

Again.

I'm just so tired of this argument.

I just can't do Trump again.

I can't.

His incompetence killed so many people. A panel estimated 40% of COVID deaths could have been averted.

One of those deaths was my mother.

She was killed because people didn't trust the vaccines and they didn't think masks were worth the inconvenience. That man could have gone on TV and said "This is the Trump vaccine and it is great." He could have sold fucking MAGA masks on his website. He had 100% influence over his dipshit followers and could have used that for the greater good. But he was too vain to wear a mask in public and bungled the vaccine rollout.

And now I worry some of my trans loved ones may not make it through another far right administration. They have this giant target on their back right now and conservatives seem determined to eradicate as many trans lives as possible.

I wrote a whole ass post about how I didn't care for Biden. I still don't. But when I try to imagine what a right wing administration would be doing right now... that seems like it would be a nightmare orders of magnitude worse than the current nightmare.

As someone with an untreatable chronic illness, I know the feeling of being presented with choices where all of them suck. And I have had to survive by choosing the least sucky option over and over.

It feels bad every single time.

I hate it.

And I still fucking choose.

It should be different. There should be better choices. I shouldn't have to choose the least bad thing among all bad things.

But there are people and things in this world I feel are worth sticking around for, so I continue to choose the least sucky thing.

[keshetchai]

I’m going to throw this under a cut, it’s mostly just personal stuff and idk. I don’t care who reads it particularly but also I think it’s nice to put rambles under the jump cut. 

I recognize I SHOULD reach out to my rabbi (not today, not right before shabbat, but in general just to talk because I need to talk) and I SHOULD find a therapist to talk to and I SHOULD do a lot of things but actually my brain is just a merry-go-round of “I’m okay, but I’m not? Things are okay, but they are bad actually?” i should be journaling in my real deal journal! but i’m not? 

I didn’t have my adderall refilled for a month and now i’m back on it again and am a little jumpy (this will usually settle away after a day or two). the med tech asked how i was doing with my anxiety and depression and it’s surreal to be like “oh my normal baseline clinical anxiety and depression are fine, it’s the situational part that is out of control” and try to have that...be understandable lol. 

I keep telling myself I, personally, am okay. I am secure in ways I wasn’t before b��’h. I am doing better. a LOT better. i recognize this. I feel like I have been...not able to engage as Jewishly as I really want which is upsetting to me. I’m not sure what to re-focus on doing so that I am engaged again. 

but also simultaneously, while I the individual am okay, there is a lot that is not okay that makes me...less okay? not just the world in general, but my little brother (19 yo) has been lying to family for months about various things (and usually gets caught out) for MONTHS. 

last fall he was supposed to be starting community college, he had a full time(!) job and I was so so proud. But then it began to unravel. He quit his job (partly because they fired his friend, and partly because they were disorganized and had no one to train him to do his job apparently?). Then without telling anyone right before the pandemic hit, he dropped out of school. (not even online classes, just dropped out totally. and lied.) 

then he started claiming he was dating this girl he met online (which is not bad PER SE) but she is maybe 16?? too young!!! at some point he took himself to the hospital psych ward, which is fine, he’s allowed to do that and get help if he needs. and then after midnight on my mother’s birthday in april he asked if he could just “Get out of the house” for the night and rent a hotel room “nearby”. my mom said okay, and let him borrow her truck. there’s many details missing here like our cousin M found out about his real plan and tried to stop him, told her dad, who tried to warn my mom i guess, who knows. well, come to find out that his “nearbye” was not in the same STATE even. He ended up flipping her truck in NEW MEXICO. he was fine, but he totaled her truck. 

mom gets new truck per insurance payout. brother is fine. except last weekend(?) my mom texts me asking if I heard from my brother, the answer was no. apparently he stole $4,500 from my grandparents by going to the atm with my nana’s debit card. when she called the bank to report fraud, she had to keep calling back for DAYS. she cried. my brother said nothing. she of course, filed a police report because an atm withdrawal doesn’t look like a fraud case, it looks like spending your own money. but once the police report is on file, the bank pulled the atm video records. and they have my brother on tape. 

so he committed a felony on tape (thinking I guess, that the bank would obviously just pay it back to my grandparents, all this money they saved and saved to replace furniture and make home repairs, they are broke, literally bankrupt.) and then I had to spend the weekend convincing my mother that davka even people caught red handed should demand to speak with legal counsel. (she was very “he is taking responsibility for this!!!” oh sure, but he still needs a lawyer.) 

anyways my grandparents kicked him out (rightfully so they fed and housed him for most of his life and he steals nearly 5,000??? apparently he is claiming he owed the money to drug dealers (if true, he’s an absolute radish brain. his mother works for the local courts, his grandfather used to be a prison guard, his uncle worked gang/drugs task force for the local police, like...i’m the first one who didn’t even ATTEMPT ROTC or law enforcement at some point)

the last updates i have are: 1.) the local PD isn’t jailing anyone for non-violent crime right now due to COVID, as long as my brother turned himself in which is why i told my mother he needs a lawyer 2.) he’ll probably be able to vote again in our state after time served or like...parole or who knows what but still, of course he gets likely charged with a felony before his first election, bc my grandparents will probably need to pursue this to get any money back 3.) my mom is staying with him in a hotel, and they’re hoping to get him into a shelter bc ofc he QUIT HIS JOB and my grandparents RIGHTFULLY kicked him out for theft. and he has nowhere to go. even if i wasn’t across the country, I can’t take a literal bank theft/fraud criminal in my home because I work for a Bank. My uncle can’t take him, he’s a cop. our other uncle lives in the side-house at my grandparent’s. Our dad is in Mexico, and you can’t leave the country if you don’t have a passport, which my brother doesn’t. 

I’m furious at him and furious at my mother who honestly, was enabling some of his behavior in ways I would’ve never EVER been allowed to do as a kid. 

I want to scream. uuuuughhhhhhh. I told my mother MONTHS ago he was out of line and I wouldn’t have gotten as far as XYZ but no, grand theft auto of her truck wasn’t enough she waits until he commits theft related to drugs. he is NINETEEN. 

[sinrau]

There’s a man sitting in an oval shaped office in a big white house, staring out across a lawn that ends in a chain link fence, thinking to himself: “How am I going to steal the next election?”

Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting. Even his hardcore supporters — that fringe of American Idiots — is being chipped away at.

Trump is going to try to steal the next election. The question is: is America prepared?

I know this next part will sound scary. Bare with me until the end. those of us who’ve both studied authoritarianism and survived it can tell you with near absolute certainty that not only is Trump going to try to steal the next election, he’s going to try to do it in a certain way. A way that those who hope to be tyrants and dictators always do.

Put yourself in Trump’s skin for a moment. Sorry. You’re going to need a shower afterwards. You’re a malignant narcissist. Nobody’s ever really loved you, because you’re not capable of warmth, empathy, shame, friendship, caring. The only thing you know, and crave, is power, admiration, respect. As you yourself put it, “dominating” others.

Becoming President was your one bid for the admiration and respect you’ve always sought — but never earned. But now that’s failing, too. The world laughs at you. The nation has begun not just to dislike you — but to genuinely abhor you, as a man of no honor, a person with nothing inside but a giant void.

Protests wrack the cities. Statues are pulled down. A pandemic rages. The death count spirals into the realm of world war. Your nation is a failure, and the world knows it. You can’t get re-elected legitimately with a record like this. You weren’t really “elected” in the first place.

Now your back is against the wall. What is a person like you — a power-seeking narcissist, a man without honor, shame, courage, or principles — to do? That is when you are most dangerous of all, like a wounded animal. When you’re backed into a corner. You are going to take by force what you can’t have freely. You are going to try to steal the next election.

And then you chuckle. Because you’ve said as much, over and over again. You’ve joked about it, and you’ve brooded on it publicly. Not just stealing the election, but never giving up power, handing it your kids, building a dynasty of dictators all your own.

Only not very many people seem to really believe you. People are gullible. They don’t believe you when you show them who are, when you tell them what you’re going to do. Instead, they say you’d never try that. Their denial is your greatest asset. You’ve shown them who you are — authoritarian, fascist, aspiring dictator. Isn’t that kind of folly why you have such contempt for the very people you are supposed to lead? Why bother caring for them at all — when they don’t believe you when you show them exactly who you are, over and over again? People are there to be used. They always have been. Especially people who don’t believe what’s right before their own eyes.

That snaps you back into focus. Right now, you are thinking very, very hard, about one thing, and one thing only: how to steal the next election. That, by the way, is why you don’t care about any of the terrible things happening to the country you purport to lead: the pandemic, the deaths, the economic fallout, the social upheaval, any of it. You only care about one thing — one thing — right now. How to steal the election.

How will you do it?

You have an endless list of tactics at your disposal. All you need to do is combine them into a strategy now.

You can deter minorities who vote against you — with dirty tricks, with the brutal policing your country’s famous for, with “voter challenges.”

You can mount legal challenges, in the event you lose by a narrow margin. The Supreme Court is on your side, thanks to your first term, in which you stacked it.

You can count on a supine Congress, and the party which you lead, which will follow you into the abyss — hasn’t it already — to back you in trying to steal the Presidency, whatever the outcome of the election.

You’ve already threatened to declare martial law. All you need is one more event, in a nation already on a razor’s edge, to go through with it. And if you can do that, then you can control who votes where and when, and — hey presto! — the election’s yours. You drool with anticipation, hoping for that one event which lets you declare martial law.

Your party’s already published a stance calling for shooting people on the streets. You smile to yourself. People who can just be…shot…don’t tend to vote. You know how easily it will be to steal this election.

Then there are your friends, in the Kremlin. They will do whatever they can to help you. Flooding social media with propaganda and disinformation, just like last time? Planting all kinds of fake news?

Even hacking the vote itself? You laugh. Sure, you’re under their thumb. But isn’t it worth it? They’re going to help you steal an election.

But not just them. You remember how, during the last election, the issue had become her emails. Your opponent’s. It wasn’t your lack of character, judgment, experience, or even any remotely positive human qualities of goodness and decency. Nope. Her emails. How easy was it to trick the media into doing what you wanted? Hadn’t you done it all your life? A lie here, a half-truth there — and weren’t they always ready to pounce on the nearest woman, minority, person of color?

But her emails! You giggle at the stupidity of it. And you know that this time around, you can misdirect the media with any number of similar scandals. Maybe that irritating woman who heads the opposition against you will have a scandal. Maybe this other woman will. Maybe that Latina in Congress will have one. Scandal after scandal appears before your eyes. And you remember how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of a nation that’s already gone half-blind with ignorance, fear, and rage. But her…emails. LOL.

You remember, too, then, how the warnings had been ignored. A tiny number had called it all correctly. That you’d do the things fascists do, because you were a fascists: camps, raids, bans, purges, Gestapos.

But nobody much had listened to them. The nation’s intellectual class had warned, instead, of calling you a fascist or an authoritarian.

This time you laugh, hard, sneering in contempt. What fools! You told them exactly who you were, and what you were going to do. You spent election season rallying your base of American Idiots by calling refugees and immigrants vermin, promising to ban them and build walls. But these intellectuals — these ivory-tower fools — didn’t believe you when you said it out loud.

You guffaw, realizing: they probably don’t believe you’re going to try to steal this election, also, even though you’ve told them that, too.

You suddenly feel a surge of confidence.

You can steal this election. Why, it’s going to be easier than last time. This time, you’re already President. You can order the soldiers into the streets. You can create havoc on a scale the nation has never seen before. Your friends in the Kremlin will do anything to keep you there. And this nation, especially its intellectuals and media — how easy are they to fool? They still don’t believe you, every time you tell them exactly who you are, and what you’re going to do. LOL. You can steal this election just like grabbing a pssy. Isn’t that all it is? Grabbing a society’s pssy, and never letting go? And isn’t that what a real man has to do?

A doubt crosses your mind. What if you lose the election, though, and they send in the military to remove you from office? What then?

Ah, but you’ve been making deals your whole life long. You realize that all you have to do is make the military a deal it can’t refuse. Maybe this general becomes the ruler of this province, or that general owns this energy grid, water system, utility, company, stock market, or that general simply inherits the entire nation’s treasury. That’s what every good dictator does, in the final moment, when the military challenges him. He strikes a deal.

It’s never cheap. That’s how the war criminals of the world buy penthouses in Paris and go on mega-shopping sprees at Harrods. They’ve gone from generals to oligarchs. Now they don’t just control a military — but they own a nation’s vital assets. How much money would you make if you owned an entire energy grid? You realize that you can offer payoffs that would corrode even the sternest, noblest heart.

Sure, the military’s made of fine and noble people. But how many will turn down a payoff so large that it would suddenly make you as rich as a king? Maybe they will turn it down, you brood.

And then you chuckle. But that’s the bet, isn’t it? That that last final safeguard will fall, too, because, now, as President, you can offer payoffs that nobody else can, buying off the last protectors of democracy �� and thus become dictator.

You’re willing to take that bet. It sounds pretty good to you, actually. Who’s going to turn down a billion dollars? Five? Ten? Generals in places like Russia and Pakistan don’t. Do they ever? Have they anywhere? Didn’t they ultimately turn into decadent and fat fools in Rome, too?

You laugh. You know, suddenly, that it can be done. You are understanding how to become a tyrant.

The glimmers of a plan now flash through your mind. It glitters, like a great and vast scaffolding, made of silver and steel. You see its girders and bolts joining together. You frown, as you try to see the whole picture of it, this grand edifice, this plan. How to become a tyrant. So many have done it before you. Why can’t you do it, too?

Adrenaline surges through you. Dopamine rushes. Your blood roars and your heart pounds. This is how it can be done. This is how you become the dictator of a nation.

You shake with excitement. Your face is flush. Your lips are twisted in hot, thrilling rage.

What are you going to do these last five months? Govern? Lead? LOL.

You are going to hone your plan. Fine tune it. Account for every eventuality. Plan exactly how to fool the media and intellectuals again, which scandal to offer them, all over again. How to drive your base of American Idiots into a frenzy, all over again. When to drop your friends in the Kremlin a note for help, all over again. When to declare emergency, martial law, send the soldiers into the streets, put the nation under curfew. And what to offer those last few good souls standing in the way of your ascent, as glittering prizes that no one else can, to get the hell out of the way.

You have five months to think this all over carefully. How to steal an election. It’s plenty of time. And the more you think about it, the more you realize: it’s not even going to be that hard. In fact, the more surprising outcome would be if you didn’t.

You smile, the dopamine afterglow’s lightning sizzling across your cortex. You sneer at the stupidity. Everyone’s. The ones who support you, and the ones who don’t. The ones who are against you, and the ones who are for you. All of them. Isn’t this how you rose? Because you were born for it? Because you were always better, stronger, smarter, cleverer than them — only no one knew just how much? Who’s laughing now?

Around you, the cities burn. A gigantic wave of death rips across society. The nation has fallen into poverty, despair, sickness, ruin.

Things have never been better.

Umair June 2020