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OT: American Politics

axlsalinger said:
This really hurts man. Can't at least one of your alts give me some support here?
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No problem. I think your general point that we don't know how things will play out is fair enough. I think Democrats are almost certain to flip the House in 2026 (yes there will still be elections). Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028 no matter how much he pushes for it. He's still somewhat constrained by public opinion (immigration is his best issue and consequently where he's breaking the law the most). Things are already quite bad, but the fight is ongoing.
 
Hoss said:
I think I've told you all that I've been taken into secondary the last two times I went to the US...once with extended family going on a Disney cruise to Alaska and the other time when going to new York with wife and sister in law.

I'm scheduled to go to New York for April long weekend with my family and sister in law and I know it's gonna happen again.

My name is most likely similar to some drug person from Mexico.
They've asked me to speak Spanish and when they asked about where my parents were from....the agent tells me I hesitated.

My wife is thinking it won't happen....but I am prepared to be sent back.

I'm also doing Roatan in July and the only way to get there is with a stop in Houston 😳. 50 min lay over.
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I don't think I knew that - sorry you've had to go through that, twice.

At least with pre-clearance, if they don't want to let you in, you can just go back home? Maybe I'm being overly optimistic.

Did they ever give you any indication as to why you were being taken for further questioning?
 
hockeylover said:
Wait, why would we assume this Congress would impeach and remove Trump though?
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It's hard to predict anything because so many Republicans are incredibly craven and pathetic losers. But for my own mental health I would like to believe there are still a few with some basic human decency. I know for certain they're not all true believers.

If it becomes obvious that the American people are demanding action (let's say Trump's approval rating is below 30% and he's ordering people to be shot on the street) if you want to say it's possible the USA becomes a dictatorship you must say it's also possible that he could get impeached.

TLDR: I'm not saying it will happen, just that it is a possibility. Anything is possible because this situation is insane and unprecedented, and nobody knows what's going to happen.
 
MindzEye said:
He killed a border bill that was basically a Republican border bill just so Biden couldn't have that as a policy win.

He was a shadow President the entire 4 years.
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not to mention running his parallel foreign policy out of Mar-A-Lago. he was meeting with freakin heads of state
 
axlsalinger said:
It's hard to predict anything because so many Republicans are incredibly craven and pathetic losers. But for my own mental health I would like to believe there are still a few with some basic human decency. I know for certain they're not all true believers.

If it becomes obvious that the American people are demanding action (let's say Trump's approval rating is below 30% and he's ordering people to be shot on the street) if you want to say it's possible the USA becomes a dictatorship you must say it's also possible that he could get impeached.

TLDR: I'm not saying it will happen, just that it is a possibility. Anything is possible because this situation is insane and unprecedented, and nobody knows what's going to happen.
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Okay I think again the problem is that we disagree on how far down that road we already are. I think when they’ve got armed groups taking people off the streets with no due process and ignoring court orders to release them and threatening to do it again and again we’re already in the bad place, not just approaching it.
 
axlsalinger said:
Here's a question for Mindz. For the most part blue states are funding red states. That's just a fact. And of course, they're blue meaning they already don't support Trump or the right. This will get more and more pronounced with millions of people having zero interest in having a President Camacho for life. There has been talk already about California seceding, which is highly unlikely.

New York + California is a massive economic engine and huge amount of people with no interest in being subjugated by this idiocy. There must be some things that can be done here.
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Here's where you and I are having our disconnect I think. You seem comfortable with the idea that the response to authoritarianism can be measured and slow in arriving. That resisting democratic backsliding can be something like two economic engines that are part of the whole can choose to do something like secede (in a nation where secession has no legal mechanism at all and the last secession crisis led to civil war that the power of the federal government won despite that version of it not being ready for war, at all).

To answer your question though, this is how that goes:

Secession:

Gavin Newsom says fuck this, we're seceding. Trump says "nuh uh that's insurrection" sends the military to Sacramento (as he would legally be able to under the Insurrection Act), has Newsom arrested, tried, and shot.

Slow rolling protests:

As soon as they get close to reaching critical mass, Trump will again use the insurrection act to deploy military and the now pliant military (because I assume we're talking about some time years from now in your scenario, the military will be fully, fully captured by then as a tool of executive power) will follow orders to shoot protesters. Shit will maybe pop off after that but this joke will become about "us" instead of "them" as it was intended:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSqCjMRXWA

The thing about democratic backsliding is that if you don't stop it relatively early, you kind of don't stop it. That's why I seem so unhinged to you about this, because I'm too familiar with the history of successful vs unsuccessful attempts at sliding from democracy to authoritarianism and we're 8+ years into this direct attempt (with 50 years of legislative ground work laid to benefit the attempt), not 2 months as you've suggested. The US is at the tipping point right now, a year from now is just too late.
 
So when does everyone think the second US civil war will happen? Before next year?

Or do they skip the civil war and move right into a military dicatorship?
 
axlsalinger said:
I wasn't referring to you specifically, I don't remember exactly what started the debate. I do know Mindz was upset there weren't more mass protests and my thought was that it's still pretty early and there have already been a number of protests. Trump got 77 million votes and there is a massive disinformation campaign down there combined with an incredible amount of ignorance and cognitive dissonance. It's only been 2 months was my point. There will be more and they will grow exponentially.

We can see from Republican town halls that people are reacting pretty strongly, to the point that there are going to be fewer Republican town halls going forward. I think Tesla probably is finished as a brand. The attack on millions of federal workers is going to have a similar effect to covid, in that many apolitical people on the right, even those with their heads in the sand, are going to be made aware of what's going on because a friend or family member is affected.

The attacks on habeus corpus and judges is a sign that things are escalating quickly. You were right to be upset about it, it's sick and it's evil. My only point here is that this will lead to a legal battle that is going to take months if not years. It's interesting that John Roberts has already weighed in. It's not going to be resolved overnight, and we aren't going to win every battle.
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why do you keep pretending Trumpism is a recent phenomenon? it has been more than two months - this has been ongoing since at least 2016.

the legal battle is not gonna take months or years - it's gonna end soon (if you don't think it's been lost already) cause the administration is deliberately undermining rule of law.

the courts will not save us, or America, because court orders are only as strong as their enforcement, and the people in the US who enforce them have made it clear that they will ignore the ones they do not like.

if you really want to stick with the baseball analogy, the 2024 election was the 9th inning. now we're onto the parade.
 
hockeylover said:
Okay I think again the problem is that we disagree on how far down that road we already are. I think when they’ve got armed groups taking people off the streets with no due process and ignoring court orders to release them and threatening to do it again and again we’re already in the bad place, not just approaching it.
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Again, we are not really disagreeing that we are pretty far down that road. The situation is very bad and getting worse.
 
G-Dub said:
oquDWJM.png


Bruh. One of these is the Jumpman logo. For fuck's sake.
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like did they just flip through a mexican tattoo artist's book to come up with these?
 
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