#Republicans and Conservatives want a Dictatorship

[thedepressedjuggalette]

Republicans want a Dictatorship.

[kaelor0409]

It's politics.

The Harris campaign seems to be running two strategies right now.

The first targets "the libs" and is aimed at making Trump as scary as possible. The only thing everyone really agrees on is that Trump is a nightmare, so she's making sure everyone knows how bad a second Trump win would be. This ensures everyone on the Left votes for her, if only to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.

The second targets conservatives. Believe it or not, Trump isn't universally popular in the GOP. They aren't all fanatic idiots: some do realize that Trump is a corrupt criminal. It's why so many traditionally Red states flipped in 2020. They're still conservative though, and many are terrified that a Democrat win could somehow turn the country into a communist hellhole.

This is why Harris has been preaching "small town values", picked a VP who is basically the poster boy for "Midwestern Nice", and is promising a conservative seat in her cabinet. She is trying to win over those Conservatives who don't like Trump but also don't like Democrats. Just look at all the "I voted for Trump in 2016, but now I'm voting for Harris!" ads she's running.

Trump won in 2016 because the Democrat vote was divided, and lost in 2020 because the Republican vote was divided. This isn't about virtue signaling or being suicidally inclusive. It's about breaking the GOP base and getting as many votes as possible from both sides of the aisle.

Also known as politics.

[creature-wizard]

Addressing some anti-voter reasoning (and explaining why it's bad)

The reasoning most anti-voters are using is bad, and here's why.

"I plan to vote third party."

When it comes to presidential elections, third-party voting is dead in the water without massive election reforms, which Republicans will never allow if they have their way. By voting third party, you're effectively voting for Trump and Project 2025/Agenda 47. This might sound harsh, but it's just the truth right now.

"I would be complicit in genocide."

If genocide is what you're worried about, how would letting Donald J. "Finish The Problem" Trump become president help? Do you really think Donald J. Muslim Ban Trump isn't going to go after Palestinians already in the US? And what exactly do you plan to do for Palestinians in a Trump dictatorship when you've been imprisoned for "pornography" because you were trans in public, posted pictures of trans people or characters, or posted support for trans people? (Yeah, Trump and his buddies want to legislate so-called "trans ideology" as "pornography" and make it illegal.)

"It would be no worse than what POC are going through already."

However bad things are for POC in America right now, a Trump presidency would make them even worse. Using their suffering to justify letting Trump into the White House again is really, really messed up.

"White people have it coming."

White people won't be the ones who suffer the most. Again, POC will be disproportionately affected by Trump's policies. If you actually care about POC, why would you want to subject them to that? How does making things worse for them help anything?

"Bad things happened under Biden."

And a number of them happened because of Supreme Court members whom Donald Trump appointed, and because Republicans blocked his efforts to fix things. Furthermore, many good things happened under the Biden/Harris administration. Here's one post with examples. Here's another post. And here's another post. And here are some good things Kamala Harris has done.

One reason to vote for Harris is to balance the Supreme Court. If elected, she'll be able to appoint judges who aren't turbo-conservatives, which would help us immensely going forward. (It was a liberal Supreme Court that got us gay marriage, remember?) Meanwhile, if Trump is elected, he will appoint more turbo-conservative judges. We gotta think about the long game here.

"The Revolution would solve everything."

Leftists right now would never have tactical parity with, much less superiority over the US military, which Donald Trump would happily sic on all of you. At best, your "revolution" would actually be decades of insurgency. The genocide in Palestine would still happen, and the most vulnerable people in the US would suffer even more.

So basically, there's just no good reason not to vote at this point. Refusing to vote (or voting third party) is counterproductive to literally anything you want to accomplish, unless what you want to accomplish is "make things infinitely worse for everyone."

[warrioreowynofrohan]

This is one of the best articles I’ve seen yet on Trump, Trumpism, and the upcoming election. It’s directed at the right and centre-right (whereas most tumblr posts on this are directed at the left), but it’s saying – with detailed analysis and evidence – exactly what needs to be said, to everyone. This is not a normal election. How you vote this November determines whether you ever get the chance to vote in a democratic election again. This is not a game. Fascism is not a buzzword or a rhetorical device to hurl at anyone and everyone you disagree with. It is real, it is dangerous, and Trump is openly running on a fascist platform.

There are only two sides in this election: those who want the United States to be a fascist dictatorship and those who do not.

I live in Canada. I do not want to live next to a fascist state (especially since the Comservatives here are way ahead in the polls and their leader gives every sign of wanting to cozy up to Trump).

Please, stop this while you still have a chance.

Today we’re going to look at definitions of fascism and ask the question – you may have guessed – if Donald Trump is running for President as a fascist. Worry not, this isn’t me shifting to full-time political pundit, nor is this the formal end of the hiatus (which will happen on Nov 1, when I hope to have a post answering some history questions from the ACOUP Senate to start off on), but this was an essay I had in me that I had to get out, and working on the book I haven’t the time to get it out in any other forum but this one. And I’ll be frank, some of Donald Trump’s recent statements and promises have raised the urgency of writing this; the political science suggests that politicians do, broadly, attempt to do the things they promise to do – and the things Trump is promising are dark indeed.

Now I want to be clear what we’re doing here. I am not asking if the Republican Party is fascist (I think, broadly speaking, it isn’t) and certainly not if you are fascist (I certainly hope not). But I want to employ the concept of fascism as an ideology with more precision than its normal use (‘thing I don’t like’) and in that context ask if Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist based on his own statements and if so, what does that mean. And I want to do it in a long-form context where we can get beyond slogans or tweet-length arguments and into some detail.

Now the response from some folks is going to be anger that I am even asking this question and demands for me to ‘stay in my lane.’ To which I must remind them that the purpose of history and historians is, as Thucydides put it, is to offer “an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human affairs must resemble if it does not reflect it” (Thuc. 1.22.4). This is my lane. Goodness knows, I’d much rather be discussing the historical implications of tax policy or long-term interstate strategy, but that isn’t the election we’re having. And if hearing about these things that happened is unpleasant, well, Polybius offers the solution: “men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past” (Plb. 1.1.1). We must correct our conduct.

The author, Bret Devereaux, lays out the history of the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini and draws out the lessons

What I want to note here are two key commonalities: First, fascists were only able to take power because of the gullibility of those who thought they could ‘use’ the fascists against some other enemy (usually communists). Traditional conservative politicians (your Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham types) and conservative business leaders (your Elon Musks) fooled themselves into believing that, because the would-be tyrant seemed foolish, buffoonish, and uneducated that such an individual could be controlled to their ends, shaped in more productive, more ‘moderate,’ more ‘business friendly’ directions. They were wrong; many of them paid for their foolish error with their lives (Victor Emmanuel III paid for it with his crown). Mussolini and Hitler would not be ‘shaped,’ – they would be exactly the violent, tyrannical dictators they had promised to be – to the total and utter ruin of their countries.

Note that these men were not exactly subtle about what they wanted to do. Mein Kampf is not a subtle book. But they both knew how to promise violence to their followers while prevaricating to their temporary allies; be wary of the fascist who promises violence in his rally speeches but assures you that, if you just give him power, he won’t hurt anyone (except the people you don’t like) – because it is a lie, of course.

Second: once these fascist leaders were in power it was already too late to stop them. Precisely because fascists had no respect for democratic processes and the rule of law – things they had declared openly in seeking power – once in power, they were unconstrained by them and swiftly set about converting all of the powers of the government into a machine to keep them in power. And the conversion from democracy to dictatorship was remarkably swift, in Italy, Mussolini marched in October of ’22, rewrote the election rules in November of ’23 and by December of ’24 had effectively dropped even the pretense of democracy; just two years. Hitler was faster: appointed chancellor in January 1933, by March of that year he had suspended constitutional protections and ruled by fiat; just three months.

The time to stop an authoritarian takeover of a democratic system is before the authoritarian is in office, because once they are in power, they will use that power, to stay in power and it becomes almost impossible to remove them without considerable violence (and difficult to do even with considerable violence).

That, however, creates a tricky situation. With most political ideologies, voters can adopt a strategy of judging by outputs: “if you don’t like the current government’s policies, let these other fellows here have a go at it and see if they do better. If not, you can always vote them out next time.” But with fascists and other authoritarians there may not be a next time and this strategy fails: by the time the actions of the fascists make it clear they are dangerous, it is too late to vote them out.

This is why it is important to listen carefully to what fascists say and what they promise and most importantly to take their threats of political violence and authoritarianism seriously.

Which is not to say that everything on the right is fascism (just as not everything on the left is its own authoritarian variant, communism). Ronald Reagan was not a fascist, nor was George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney. They were conservatives within the liberal tradition (again, ‘liberal’ here in the old Jefferson-Locke-and-Washington sense). Most Republicans today are not fascists, although a distressing number appear ready to repeat Franz von Papen’s mistake of assuming they can achieve their goals through an alliance with fascists. Only the devil wins such a devil’s bargain.

How is one to tell the difference? Listen to the things they promise to do and understand that they make speak out of both sides of their mouth: promising violence to one audience and then toning down their rhetoric to another. But politicians speaking from within the tradition of liberty don’t need to speak that way because they don’t promise violence in the first place.

Listen for the promises of violence, the promises to suspend press freedoms, the promises to persecute political adversaries and when you hear them believe them.

I strongly recommend reading the whole article, as the author goes on to lay out two of the more common definitions of fascism and analyze, point-by-point, how Trumpism fits them.

There is a reason why some Republicans, even some of the people who were in Trump’s inner circle in 2016-2020, have jumped ship now. The Republicans who are willing to vote for Kamala aren’t doing it because she’s conservative – they’re doing it because they’re anti-fascist. It would be deeply ironic if people on the left who have been calling themselves anti-fascists for the last eight years proved to be less so than those Republicans. This may be one of the most crucial moments in American history. Take it seriously.

[cynicalclassicist]

It says a lot with how many of the people who worked for Trump say that he can't be allowed to get back into office!

[thealogie]

why does the "left" immediately equal marginalized voters in your message. it's not all trans immigrants of color, some are in fact privileged white people just hating on dems. but also if these "marginalized" voters don't see how trump is worse for them they should absolutely be blamed the same as anyone else responsible for this mess. it's one thing if they couldn't vote because of various voter suppression tactics, but if they just sat down and went "nope, not voting for a dem because they are not leftist enough for what i want my ideal candidate to be", they are complicit in making actual marginalized people (both in the US and worldwide) suffer the consequences of this government. as much as dems should finally learn their lesson and change their strategy, i fail to see what's realistically possible at this point, since americans keep ushering MAGA in and populating all branches of government with radicalized conservatives who then let billionaires have free reign with essentially russian style propaganda and brainwashing. it's insane how much this can all be traced back, among other things such as terrible racist sexist republicans, to bernie bros having a hissy fit and not voting dem in 2016, and while admittedly the democrats haven't learned much since then, neither in fact have the leftists, and the only people winning are the far right and governments hostile towards the US. dictatorship is now a realistic future, and it's not just because of racist white women or far right young men as you keep saying, it's *also* because of leftists, and it should very much be a conversation. dems can run on the most leftist campaign possible and then in practice it will all be blocked to hell because of SCOTUS or republican senate or whatever, and the only possible path is voting dems in ALWAYS no matter what, and then pressuring them once they are in office, and then not turning on them and then actually electing them again so it's just majority dems everywhere and shit can actually get passed for a change. if there were just a few election cycles of everyone left of center voting for dems, this could all still be fixed. mild republicans will keep sitting things out because they don't actually believe in democrats (until they actually see things working), so it should be on leftists, as dem policies are closer to what they want anyway. but it's the principle of things, right, dems are not leftist enough, and leftists shouldn't vote for them until they change, huh. you did the right thing but many people who essentially share your views didn't, and everyone suffers, but you still won't judge their actions as harshly as they should be judged and keep saying it's just on the party alone. imo dems' main responsibility right now should be countering disinfo better to stop right wing pivots, but sticking with their party is the responsibility of voters themselves and for now leftists should accept their party is the democratic party (only until we leave this timeline of "far right and even more far right" so that actual leftist reforms become possible again)

I was saying “don’t blame marginalized people” because the only evidence we have of an organized effort from the left to sit out the vote is from Arab Americans who object to the Democratic Party slaughtering their loved ones!

But beyond that - this is fine. You blame leftists for sitting out. You are free to do that. I don’t feel the same as you and the fact that I don’t feel the same will not change anything because feelings do not change anything. When it comes to action, operating from a place of “you should fall in line behind the party that’s closest to you” does not and will not persuade anyone. So I focus on a sentiment that’s “we should continue to vote in people who have some interest in creating a different kind of party and stop blaming voters for their own failure to create enthusiasm”

[bethanythebogwitch]

The mainstream media has a lot to answer for in the rise of fascism in America. In the past 4 years, they've been doing everything they can to get tRump reelected and thus end democracy because they're pissed that Biden is boring. After 4+ years of tRumps circus of bullshit, they can't handle a president who does his job sanely and without causing an international incident every other day. They desperately want tRump's madness back because his insanity sells news better than a responsible president. Thus, they've been downplaying Biden's accomplishments and honestly borderline slandering him.

Did you know that Biden has made heavily impactful policy changes that have vastly improved the quality of life of all Americans? No? That's because the media is too busy calling him old.

Did you know tRump is showing clear signs of serious cognitive decline and Alzheimers? No? That's because the media is too busy calling Biden old.

Did you know there's a published text called Project 2025 written by multiple conservative PACs and think tanks that outlines in clear steps how the next Republican president will turn the country into a christofascist dictatorship with tRump as the untouchable dictator? No? Why would the media care about that when they can call Biden old.

I resume you heard about how the Supreme Court recently overturned the rule of law and made the president into a king above the law. Did you know how the entire legal system is in a five-alarm fire and calling this the greatest threat to democracy since the civil war? No? That's not as important to the media as HEY DID YOU KNOW BIDEN IS OLD?

At best the mainstream media's behavior is dereliction of their duty to present unbiased facts and keep the public informed. More likely the billionaires who own the mainstream media are trying to swing the election to the party that gives them the most leeway to develop monopolies and treat people like slaves in the search for more money to hoard.

This isn't even getting into the media covering up, justifying, and manufacturing consent for the genocide of Palestineans. Its clear the media in America is broken. I don't know how to fix it, but something needs to be done, because a well-informed public is a vital part of a democracy and we don't have that right now.

[radgirl-spray]

Rant.

it always gives me whiplash when gringos call me or other latinas on radblog "Republican" and "nazis".

Because they are so sure they are making such the point about us being nazis and bringing conservative and apocalyptic takes on them because we don't want men in females spaces, and yet from our perspective, they are still thousands of people all across latam who simply dissapeared when the north american goverment decided to interfiere in latam's politics which lead to real, actual genocides based on politic stance. Specifically being leftist.

My country in particular had one of the most brutal dictatorships in latam. Over 40.000 people were killed, tortured or simply dissapeared just to prevent socialism, despite the socialist president at the time being chosen democatrically.

Now, women, mostly college students feminists at the time were systematically tortured. I'm not talking about internet persecution or some horrible missgender crime. I'm talking of whole brigades raping 14 to 21 year old girls. I'm talking of soldiers setting girls on fire. I'm talking about men open pregnant women to dispatch the baby. I'm talking about torture and murder.

Why? because they dared to talk about politics, because they dared to talk about contraceptives. About feminine issues. For being Left.

It was also a time where the wrong opinion could get you killed, could mean your children being killed. For being brown, for being indio, for being poor. Think of you neighbour accusing you of hearing certain music and your house being raded and your teenage children being taken to a camp to never be seen again. I'm not talking 100 years ago. I'm talking my parents and anyone who is 5 years older than me.

To this day we are extremely affraid of police and the military. The levels of poverty Latam has are hardly something people in first world countries have seen in a years, because the poverty itself has been caused for said countries and their progress. I'm talking whole neighbourhoods of houses made of cardboard while some first world country leaves a bunch of chemical wasteland just right up the corner where we live so they live better.

Two years ago there was a breakout in my country, it was quite famous. You know the first thing the police did?

They raped and hanged a girl on the street. In 2021.

And then comes some random USA/Canadian citizen and calls you "a republican" and "a nazi".

Did I mention after II world war many nazis escaped to latam and formed whole german colonies for either experimenting on humans or create pedophile nets and raping centers? the more you know.

But we are nazis, we are republicans. Despite the fact that that our indigenous people recognize women as adult human females, that indigenous women were hunted down and used historically to be bred by whites colonizers just like them. Despite the fact that most of us are mestizos, that color and class go hand in hand in latam, that we have a culture heavily based on religious intakes of what's women's place and that we shut up when the men talk, because that's macho culture. We are nazis and we are republicans, despite the fact that their fucking country killed thousands of us because we wanted to try left and to hope for something more than extreme poverty. Shit, we've even been called colonizer by some chicano who doesn't even speak spanish. I mean, what are the odds.

But the white men need to speak, the gringo has something to say, they need us to respect their pronouns and go along with their progress. So they packed their bullshit religion and ship it right down the frontera, and now we have to swallow too. Because we are latinas, we live in the backyard, right? what do we know about the experiences of american dudes in skirts.

[mariacallous]

In their 2024 national convention, Democrats reclaimed the mantle of freedom.

It’s about time.

The first indication was Vice President Harris’s choice of Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as her campaign anthem. It has been playing at her rallies and it played at the end of the film before her entrance onto the stage. In addition to placards that said, “Thank you Joe” or “Vote” or “Coach Walz,” the DNC had thousands of placards printed for the delegates to wave that simply read, “Freedom.” Many of the convention speeches invoked the term in some way. Governor Walz’s acceptance speech for the vice presidency was especially heavy on it:

“Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations—free to pollute your air and water. And banks—free to take advantage of customers.

“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”

Freedom was an especially welcome theme in this convention because, in recent political history, Democrats ceded freedom to the Republicans. This was wrong. Nothing is as central to America’s cultural DNA as freedom. After all, we as a nation were born out of a desire for freedom from King George.

One of the seminal speeches of the 20th century was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. In it, he announced what he called the “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—principles that were incorporated into the war aims of the Allied Powers, and eventually into the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A generation later, the Civil Rights Movement marched for freedom from the oppression of segregation and unequal citizenship, goals that the modern Democratic Party embraced. After the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973, Democrats defended women’s freedom to choose against conservative attempts to restrict access to abortion, and even to prohibit it nationwide.

Since the 1980s, however, Republicans claimed freedom for themselves; starting with the presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan, they narrowed it to mean free markets and limited government. This redefinition rested on the argument that government represented the main threat to freedom, which is at best a half-truth. Yes, government can become oppressive. But weak government can also pose a threat to freedom. Citizens cannot live free from fear unless government minimizes threats to the security of persons and property as citizens act within the structure of law. They cannot enjoy freedom from want unless government protects markets from force, fraud, and threats to competition, and unless it protects individuals from economic privation. In his 1944 State of the Union, FDR declared: “Necessitous men are not free men. Men who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Despite the power of such arguments, modern Democrats have found it difficult to persuade the electorate that they were the true champions of freedom. And then in 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and jeopardized women’s freedom of choice across the nation. The reaction has been striking; with one decision, the government was suddenly in the middle of the most personal decisions women and men could make.

Since then, not a month has passed without some horror story making national news about a woman denied abortion care that could save her life and/or her fertility. On stage at the Democratic convention, some of these women told their heartbreaking stories. Since then, abortion has been on the ballot in seven states—many of which, like Kansas and Kentucky, are conservative, deep red states. And in every single instance, the pro-choice position won. Since then, abortion has played a major role in the Virginia legislative elections, the congressional midterm elections, and many special elections. In 2024, abortion referendums will be on the ballot in eight states, two of which, Arizona and Nevada, are swing states and where the issue may very well bring out young Democratic voters. 

Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising that Harris’s speech spent more time on abortion than any other single policy issue. Her unique ability to prosecute this issue was evident back when she was a senator from California who asked then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh if he could think of a law that controlled men’s bodies. In addition to warning the country about Republican plans to take away reproductive freedom by enacting a national abortion ban and installing a national anti-abortion coordinator in the White House, Harris expanded on threats to freedoms.

“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.”

Beyond the articulation of a freedom agenda, the speech had other tasks, which Harris crisply carried out. She introduced herself to the country as a child of a middle-class family and declared that building a strong middle class would be one of the defining purposes of her administration. To that end, she advanced her vision of an “opportunity economy” where everyone would have a chance to compete and where success for some need not mean failure for others. 

Harris took on inflation and immigration, two areas of potential vulnerability for her campaign. She promised to bring down prices of everyday goods and services and to attack the nation’s housing crisis. On immigration, she sought to turn the tables on Donald Trump, reminding her audience that he had subverted a bipartisan reform bill that would have helped secure the border.

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny. She articulated a firm pro-Israel stance while mentioning the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants and endorsing Palestinians’ right to dignity and self-determination.

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. She ended her speech in the most traditional way imaginable, by asking God to bless the United States of America.

Harris’s speech, which the convention received with unfeigned enthusiasm, did nothing to interrupt the momentum of one of the most explosive campaign launches in American history.

[rainbowdaisy13]

Lmao, when I was doing a deep dive on Kaylor back in 2019 I stumbled on a Republican website that had its own forums and I came across an old thread from 2015 about the then upcoming 2016 election where this Republican had a conspiracy theory that Taylor and Karlie were going to try to turn America from a Constitutional Republic into a Lesbian Socialist Dictatorship by infiltrating the White House through J*red's gay little brother, everything scares the shit out of that very ✨️special✨️ type of conservative so I wouldn't be surprised if Karlie's poltical opinions got their panties all in a twist 😂

THIS IS THE FUTURE THE GAYS WANT

[seraphic-sibyl]

I’m tired.

This is gonna be depressing, so for my poor mutuals’ sake I’m gonna put this under a cut.

I’m so tired.

I’m so, so tired.

An election should not have people having to log onto social media and beg their mutuals not to kill themselves. An election should not have people making posts about how to survive a dictatorship, which books are likely to be banned, to stock up on medication.

An election should not have people crying in the streets or terrified for their lives.

I log onto social media and it’s like a bunch of people in the brace position before a plane crash. Everyone is helpless, knows something Very Bad beyond their control is about to happen and can do so, so little to protect themselves. You can’t stop the plane from crashing. You can only brace.

And what? 80 million people are CHEERING for this?

I have a hard time believing all these people are that hateful. But they are uneducated, or selfish, or ignorant, and the Republican party just takes advantage of that.

And so many of them really are that hateful.

And when bad things happen that don’t affect those people, they cheer. And when the bad things that do affect them happen, it’ll be anyone’s fault but their orange god’s. They don’t realize they are a cult, and they willingly traded away EVERYONE’S freedom for this.

I just voted in my first election. I don’t know if I will vote again in an election that matters.

And I will be one of the last few that remembers civil, peaceful elections. I was a young child when Obama won reelection against Romney. Back then, the teacher could hold a mock election amongst us kids and it wouldn’t turn ugly. I can’t wait for the next election, I thought, it’ll be such a fun spectacle.

Nope. We got Trump 1.0 instead. And ever since then the rot has been so obvious.

There are kids alive today that won’t remember the world any different.

I’ve had some time to think about how people are this evil, or apathetic, or easily brainwashed (Gen Z is becoming MORE conservative??? Are you NUTS??). I have no good answer. I feel like I’ve truly lost the last of my innocence. I miss being 14 and just loving life, being optimistic and believing in the inner good of humanity.

And the worst part is, there is no comfort. People are consoling one another and trying to reach out and find solace in community, but there is nothing we can do to delay what is coming for us. And it is bad. People are turning to their friends and local communities because they are realizing that their government will no longer do anything to help them.

Look, I know there have been Bad Periods and Good Periods everywhere on Earth for all of humanity. It’s nothing new. But now I feel that I won’t see the good again in my lifetime. Things will never be as good as they were when I was a kid. If in the future there is ever someone here where I am sitting now enjoying our hard-earned freedoms, it won’t be me.

The climate is what scares me, too. If it weren’t for that I’d feel that at some point things would be good again, right? Right?

Now I just wonder if everyone, even the ones who played fair, even the ones a million miles away, have run out of time.

There are barely any memes. Tumblr was all prepared with the Destiel memes and then it turned out most people were too depressed to even use them. (November 5 will never hit the same, that’s for damn sure.) No one is laughing anymore. When I looked at Tumblr on Wednesday morning, no one was even saying what happened. They were just reblogging hope posts and cute animals and goddamn suicide hotlines. No one wanted to say it.

I can hear the bell tolling.

There’s nowhere to hide anymore. And I am SO. Goddamn. Tired.

Why are humans such a species?

[helispark]

It's September now, two months away from the United States 2024 presidential elections. In addition, some states are holding their primaries in a few days (hello, Massachusetts!).

A lot happened over the summer, and I wanted to make a little "reminder" post about the situation we're in.

In an effort to enable anybody to understand what's been going on, even if they haven't been around for recent developments for any reason, I'm going to summarize the major events, talk a bit about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and give my two cents on why you should vote blue.

It's gonna be a pretty long post, so I'll start under the cut here to talk about Project 2025...

What's Project 2025?

It's a set of plans authored by the Heritage Foundation, a Republican think tank behind a lot of nasty policies over the years, which details their intent to reshape the government into an extreme right-wing, Christian nationalist dictatorship.

They will carry it out to the best of their ability the next time a Republican becomes president. They're hoping that person will be Donald Trump, who chose several members of the Heritage Foundation for the Cabinet in his 2016-2020 term. If that happens, they will do many very bad things, including but not at all limited to:

- Reclassifying most government workers as "at will" workers that can be fired if they don't agree with right wing extremist policies

- Banning abortion nationwide, and tracking people's pregnancies to get them arrested if they don't give birth

- Making it illegal to be transgender. They plan to do this by reclassifying gender identity as pornography, which will also be banned, by the way

- Eliminating the Department of Education, COMPLETELY, making it so the only schools will then be private schools

- Defunding green energy, shrinking the Environmental Protection Agency and allowing businesses to ignore the Endangered Species Act.

A great summary is here:

And the full document outlining Project 2025 is here, permanently. It's a huge document, over 900 pages, so don't beat yourself up if you can't read the whole thing:

https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

What happened over the summer?

On July 9th, Joe Biden made a post on Twitter telling people to look up Project 2025. It wasn't a new thing that just got announced, but Biden tweeting about it gave it mainstream attention.

A few days later, on July 13, Donald Trump was holding a rally in Pennsylvania when someone tried to assassinate him. They didn't kill him, the bullet only grazed his ear.

Some of the story is blurry - the shooter's motive is unknown, and some even think this whole thing was staged, which I personally could see being true given the timing of it - point is, what happened doesn't matter as much as what the Republicans tried to do with it.

They tried to launch a big attack against the left, decrying leftist voters as being bloodthirsty and violent. Pressure was mounting on Biden. He had already done very poorly in a presidential debate on June 27th, which spread concerns that he was just too old to run the country anymore. But this basically ensured that he'd never get elected come November.

The Republicans started the Republican National Convention two days later. There, Trump was confirmed to be the Republican pick for president, and he announced his pick for vice president - JD Vance, a weird and slimy man just like Trump himself.

The convention was kind of a big deal. I had to bear witness to it myself because of my conservative family, the large crowds chanting "Bye, bye, Biden!" And for a moment, for a lot of people, it looked like civil rights in America were finished.

But Biden did something clever. See, both the Republican presidential and vice presidential picks were now locked in. But the Democratic National Convention was still a month away, in August. He waited until July 21st, after the GOP had spent billions of dollars campaigning against him, to drop out of the race and endorse the current vice president, Kamala Harris, for the position.

Enter Kamala

Kamala quickly grabbed the Democrat Party's favor for the presidential candidacy. She entered the race and the feedback was unprecedented. She broke fundraising records, raising $81 million from small donors in 24 hours.

On July 19, the Democratic National Convention started. She became the presidential pick and announced Tim Walz to be her running mate as vice president.

Kamala has a great history before her time as vice president. When she worked as a district attorney and then attorney general for California, she created a new program that charged people for low level drug offenses instead of throwing them directly to jail, which drastically lowered incarceration rates.

She refused to defend the ban on same-sex marriage in 2008, leading to it being overturned in 2013, and she removed "gay panic" as a criminal defense. She's a very vocal proponent of safe, legal abortion.

As for Tim Walz, he's also awesome. He's the governor of Minnesota, and under his leadership Minnesota became the most progressive state in the country as of 2023.

Now Minnesota has banned conversion therapy, 12 weeks of both paid sick leave and paid family leave for workers, and a universal breakfast and lunch for children in participating schools.

Why you should vote blue

I won't pretend that Kamala getting elected will fix everything in our nation. But I believe it's important to acknowledge that regardless of political views, we're all living in this country together. Sometimes you have to work with people and make compromises even if you hate their guts. Like with bad siblings or school project partners.

When most people state their reasons for why they plan not to vote, the genocide in Gaza is brought up a lot. And you know what, I think it's awful! It makes my blood boil thinking about all the people who are starving, surrounded by the death and destruction of everything they've loved. The last time I opened my mouth about politics on here it was about Gaza.

But if you really care about saving lives, you have to ask yourself what is going to be the best solution.

Not voting, or voting for third party? That's a vote for Trump, and he thinks Israel has been soft on Gaza. He wants them to "finish the job."

Overthrow the government? I'd love to, but we have one of the most militarized police forces in the world, not to mention the actual military. A violent approach like that is just going to get us all killed, so we need passive change.

Move out of the country? Most of us can't do that. We're stuck here, whether we like it or not.

Please vote for Kamala when elections come this November. If you want to see bigger change, I encourage you to participate in local politics.

Every month, there are little things happening in your state or your town that you can feel happy that you were able to make an impact in. And little changes like that will add up. If Kamala wins, it means we all get at least four more years to change this country for the better. We could do a lot in that time.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

https://www.project2025.org/policy/

this is what the republican party wants: a dictatorship and rollback on all gay rights. you choose to support a party that publicly seeks to make you a second-class citizen.

So your link goes to a site about a book with policies that some conservatives want the next Republican president to implement. There are 30 different links that all open up different multi-page pdf files about different policies, most having to do with federal agencies from my brief skim. My dude, there ain't no way I'm reading through all of this just to find out that by "rollback gay rights" you mean "overturn the unconstitutional SCOTUS bench legislation that invented a right to marriage out of thin air". And by "dictatorship" you mean...I don't even know, because you people called Trump winning an election and having a slight congressional majority a dictatorship 8 years ago, so you're probably just overreacting or making shit up like you guys always do. Especially not when there's not a single statement from Trump or his campaign that he intends to adopt any of the policies or take any of the actions this particular book suggests.

[tenaflyviper]

Just another reminder:

If Republicans win in November, they will begin implementing Project 25.

I don't like Biden either, but I am NOT letting a bunch of conservatives try to drag us back into the 1950's.

They openly want to ban birth control, abortion, gender-affirming healthcare, same-sex marriage, Social Security, Medicare, and public schools. They want to implement christian nationalism. They want to end democracy and install a dictatorship.

A Biden term will only last 4 years.

A Trump term won't end until he dies.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:

During Donald Trump’s first term, Republicans dismissed well-founded concerns that he wouldn’t leave office willingly as “silly.” And then January 6 happened. Trump’s coup attempt wasn’t an aberration. If he returns to power, it’s likely he and his minions will push to abolish the 22nd Amendment and its maximum of two terms for presidents — in fact Project 2025 is already scheming to do just that. And you don’t have to take it from us. Just listen to the man himself. Last weekend, Trump gave a speech to the NRA where he openly mused about serving three or more terms. “FDR, 16 years … he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three terms or two terms, you tell me?” Trump here, as elsewhere, presents his assault on the Constitution and rule of law as a kind of semi-coherent joke. But looking at his history and plans for the future, his fantasies about making himself ruler for life don’t seem very funny.

Trump loves fantasizing about becoming America’s Putin

After much debate among the founders, presidential terms were originally fixed as four year terms with no limits on reelection. George Washington, the first president, resigned after his second term rather than seeking reelection. The presidents who followed Washington all followed his lead and did not seek a third term. Over the years there was considerable debate about whether to formalize the two-term norm. The question took on additional urgency when Franklin Roosevelt sought and won a third term in 1940 and then a fourth in 1944 before dying in office in 1945. Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats were determined that there should never be another FDR, and they managed to pass the 22nd Amendment, which formally imposed a two-term limit. Whether you think that’s good policy or not, Trump’s interest in serving three or more terms has nothing to do with the merits and everything to do with his desire to become America’s Putin.

Trump’s signaled for years that he likes the idea of holding onto the presidency for as long as he can. While he was in office, he floated the idea that he could serve more than two terms semi-regularly. During a July 2019 Turning Point USA conference in DC, for instance, someone yelled out from the crowd, “President for life!” Trump chuckled and replied, “That’s what they’re afraid of, you know.”

Trump kept dreaming of an eternal MAGA rein as the 2020 campaign heated up. In January of that year, during a CNBC interview, Trump mused, “President Xi — president for life, okay? It’s not bad.” In February, immediately after being acquitted in his first impeachment, Trump shared a video which showed campaign posters for a Trump 2044 run — essentially a fantasy of rule by Trump eternal. By August 2020, Trump came up with a reason he deserved three terms — the Russia investigation. He said during a rally in Wisconsin that he’d win a second term “and then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”

[...]

Of course, no one spied on Trump’s campaign; he was complaining because the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election implicated his campaign. In any case, the Constitution doesn’t give presidents a “redo” term if they feel they’ve been treated unfairly. Trump was, as usual, just rummaging around in his backbrain for some garbled excuse to justify his limitless lust for power. Trump sycophants have picked up the hint and started to lay the “intellectual” groundwork for giving Trump the third (and fourth, and fifth) term he wants. In March, Peter Tonguette at the American Conservative argued that the 22nd Amendment is an “arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms.”

[...]

Americans don’t like dictatorship. Remind them of that.

Trump running in 2028, and 2032, and on and on, MAGA without end, is a terrifying thought — and not just for Democratic partisans. Democratic and Republican strategists have both found that undecided voters are very concerned that Trump would not step down in 2028. It’s a fear that consistently pushes voters towards Biden. Democrats have so far not focused much attention on the possibility that Trump will never leave office. But maybe they should. Forcing Trump to talk more about his 2028 plans can only discredit him. Voters need to be reminded that the only way to ensure that Trump doesn’t rule for life is to vote him down now, before he gets into position to abolish the horserace, the Constitution, and any vestige of democracy we have left.

Noah Berlatsky wrote in Public Notice that Donald Trump’s plan to circumvent the 2-term limit for the Presidency isn’t a joke, but a serious authoritarian power grab to turn our nation into Russia.

[radioactive-leopard]

I am hearing so much rhetoric from other Americans about either not voting or voting for Trump in the elections in November as a protest vote and I cannot believe how naive they are. Yes, what the current administration is doing in Palestine is terrible; yes, our president is a literal Zionist who openly supports Israel; yes, this is terrible. I don’t think people remember how bad it was under the trump presidency. I’m going to break down a few of their talking points, including those about how the Biden administration failed to live up to their campaign promises.

Biden didn’t protect roe v wade. No, he didn’t, but do you know who you should blame for that? Obama. If Ruth bader Ginsberg hadn’t refused to step down when Obama was president, the Supreme Court would be slightly less conservative. Obama could have pressured her more into retiring. When Obama did have the overwhelming majority in both the house and the senate, he didn’t push for any reproductive rights bills to go through. From 2020-2022, Dems had the slimmest majorities in both the house and senate. In the senate, it was a 50-50 tie with Kamala Harris as the tie breaker, and democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema didn’t support those bills. They had a 13 seat majority in the house, but frankly there wasn’t enough to pass a reproductive rights act. How could Biden have stopped the overturning of roe v wade? He has no power over the Supreme Court. Right now, republicans control the house and the senate is 51-49. Nothing is going through Congress right now.

Biden didn’t cancel student loans like he promised. No, he didn’t. Because the Supreme Court overruled his attempt to forgive a bunch of student loans at once. So what is he doing? Pushing through smaller forgiveness packages to get around the Supreme Court. People want Biden to be a benevolent dictator but only when it suits them.

Biden supports Israel. Yes, he does. Who else supports Israel? Literally every president since WWII. Biden isn’t alone here, and frankly he is far more moderate than other presidents have been. Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, signifying that the us recognizes israeli domain over Jerusalem. Trump has also been vocal in his support for the genocide in Gaza, calling for the IOF to flatten it. Voting for trump would be even more disastrous for the Palestinian people, as he would actively support Bibi. Remember, Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies want Biden to lose because they know what trump will be like.

It can’t get any worse. Yes, it can. Project 2025 is the gop plan to destroy American democracy and any pesky minorities. They want to get rid of the department of education among others. It is a white nationalist, Christian nationalist plot. They want to ban abortion nation wide, persecute trans people, install lackies in civil service positions instead of more neutral professionals, enter into a trade war with china, and grow the fossil fuel industry. If trump wins, his administration will do their best to strip away any constitutional freedoms and create a dictatorship. All of this would be disastrous, and many of these policies would hurt trumps own voter base. Speaking as a midwesterner, I remember when trump was doing that trade war with china and they imposed tariffs on American agricultural products, specifically pork. My family ate so much pork during that time because it was so cheap, but that was only because pig farmers were suffering without the market in china. A trade war with china would specifically hurt farmers.

Don’t vote for either we need a revolution. Seriously? How do you propose we do that? How on gods green earth would people create a successful revolution in less than 6 months. Who do you think would be the first ones hurt in the event of a revolution? The answer is that a revolution would only hurt societies most vulnerable: women, gender and sexual minorities, people of color, Muslims, Jews, any other religious minority, children, and disabled people. A revolution or uprising would be the worst thing that could happen to the people of this country, and it would embolden fascists to enact violence.