I think this is the ultimate red line that the US crossed from a democracy to a fascist authoritarian country. Here are my points:
- Trump is a known criminal who encouraged a terrorist attack against the government and government officials. The fact that he was not only free of punishment but also legible for running as president shows that the democracy was already extremely vulnerable to a hostile takeover.
- Trump before that has repeatedly tried to convince the public that the election he lost was rigged, this is a blatant attempt to hurt the government and derail the people twoards an insurrection. At the very least he should have been investigated for conspiracy against the government (If he was muslim he would have been fucking assassinated as a terrorist already)
- The insertion of an unelected and unqualified person into the government and letting him run around and fuck with confidential and extremely sensitive systems and data (Elon) is something that should have been stopped way before he was able to start gutting public services.
- Trump did a pump and dump on NFTs, meme coins, and most recently the literal US economy. He is not even investigated for securitys fraud.
And now the really really bad things:
- Deported legal residents without due process and with secret “evidence” that no one is willing to share past “terrorism and national security”
- Ignored the supreme court and deported innocent people to a literal concentration camp. This is the 101 of a democracy being shattered, the authority ignoring the law and the police (ICE in this case) listening to the authority and not the law.
- Has now publicly and shamelessly announced that legal, US born citizens are next. This is past illegal, this unconstitutional and is the very thing the founders of the USA had in mind when writing the constitution.
And all of this without mentioning Trump as a private person being a convicted felon, rapist and a failure of a businessman to a degree that any sane person wouldn’t let him run a fucking easy-bake oven bakery.
So, am I crazy or did we just witness the actual moment that historians would label as the fall of the US democracy?
As an American I can no longer speak freely about what needs to happen to this unspeakably evil piece of trash without fear of being sent to his extermination camps.
It’s unfuckingbelievable.
I think literally every person with working fingers and a working mouth should speak about what needs to happen to Mango Mussolini and the fascists. They can try, but they can’t deport the entire country.
I, too, am Spartacus.
All it takes is one person…and they were with me the whole night.
I can no longer speak freely about what needs to happen to this unspeakably evil piece of trash without fear of being sent to his extermination camps.
So their plan seems to be working…
Along with wannabe Goebbels, Stephen Miller, saying that people spreading hate about America will be deported too. We’re in for some fucked up times.
But hey, maga was mad about egg prices and that black people and women get jobs so I guess it’s ok that we have a fascist dictatorship now right?
Also, for Stephen Miller: I fucking hate America, I fucking hate what you’ve turned this country into. We were never the greatest, but we were never this fucked up. America is worthy of hate. Fox news and Reich wing media have enabled all of this shit and if there was ever justice to be had their propagandists would fucking die in a fire.
Guns.
Buy them.
Help others buy them.
Train.
Help others train.
We should deport Trump. Into the sun.
Horrified and a bit scared. I’m currently out the country and I have to wipe my phone before heading back just in case. I don’t think I’ve said or done anything illegal, but just not liking Trump could get me in trouble these days.
I’ve got so much family here, a grandchild due soon, I can’t leave so that only leaves fighting. Ideally in the ballot box but I will defend this democracy by whatever means are left to me, as required by my oath of enlistment almost 34 years ago.
Rage, disappointment, fear. Also for now the strange feeling that despite everything my life isn’t any different than it has been for the most part. I do feel some hope as I have been going to protests and watching the numbers of people there rise every day.
The scariest thing about everything is just how absurdly powerful the US military is, and knowing that they have chain of command which has Donald Trump at the top. My instinct keeps telling me I should flee, but to where? Canada? I could see a possible future where that would make sense, but I also see a possible future where Canada becomes just as bad.I know someone that fled Croatia in the 50s to become a refuge and a stateless person. He made his way to the US via Germany, eventually getting naturalized and having a successful life and family.
This may be the last path open to us: Flee to a rational Euro country and seek asylum. Be the refugees that they push us to be.
European countries are also passing laws preventing mass-immigration through their borders. Of course, they are responding to Muslims and other brown people, but really, their fear of losing their culture is aimed at all foreigners equally. I’m not sure that asylum will be available or that current citizens will be welcoming to incoming American refugees.
Honestly, I’d be happy to become truly integrated into another culture and country and land. Like, if I end up as a refugee in another country, don’t naturalize me, don’t give me the right to vote until I’ve forgotten American values and culture. I don’t wouldn’t want to taint my new home with the same American biases that led to fascism. I want to learn better values and ways of relation.
It’s tyrannical
The British crown placing tariffs on tea was tyranny. This is authoritarian fascism.
The way I see it, if you see someone killing an ICE member, no you didn’t. Doesn’t matter if they have video evidence of you seeing it or GPS. Claims it’s fake AI videos of yourself and/or your phone was stolen,.just NEVER admit to being there. I know they don’t follow the law, but you should definitely do everything in your power to make their lives miserable if they hastle you.
So my stance doesn’t matter if they’re going after people born here or not. Also, if you can safely cause a scene, cause one. Just be confident in claiming you weren’t there or your ability to cause a big enough scene to scare the cowards away.
To be fair, if they try to kidnap you while wearing plain clothes and not showing a badge and a court order, you are well within your rights to self defend
Under a normal administration I’d say you’d be more than fine, but under the current one, that could be extra spicy.
Plan A is to tough it out. Illinois is a relatively safe state.
If ICE gets too close to me for comfort, or if Pritzker loses power, Plan B is to visit a friend overseas and forget to come back. Maybe we can find a civilized country that would not simply extradite us
If fleeing is not practical then Plan C is guns
Bad.
I’ve been predicting that by the time this is all over, there will be mass graves in the US and Trump will be included in the lists of worst mass murderers in history.
I’m now predicting that there will be mass graves in El Salvador and Trump will be included in the lists of worst mass murderers in history.
Is there even a point in asking? Obviously no one likes it.
For the time being, I, a EU citizen can say “I hope Trump dies” (or worse) without having to fear repercussions… yet.
I absolutely cannot enter the US anymore though. I’ve said things that would get me sent to CECOT on arrival. No big loss…
I had a therapist that said they wished the would be assassin hadn’t missed. Def my favorite therapist, though I still question that he was ever even shot in the ear.
It’s terrifying but it’s not entirely new, that “red line” was crossed long ago, with thunderous applause. Bush did this shit too, disappearing people off the streets with no due process and sending them off to be tortured at a CIA blacksite or Egyptian prison. And extraordinary rendition also goes back to Clinton, and then Obama explicitly reaffirmed that the US considers itself to have jurisdiction over every country on earth, that it can freely drone strike anywhere it thinks there are terrorists - and that can include US citizens as well.
These tools have existed for 20 years or more and constitute a massive violation of civil liberties both for Americans and for the entire world, they are fundamentally incompatible with a free society, and there was no telling how far they could be taken. These concerns were largely ignored and brushed aside because of 9/11 and the “Jack Bauer” fantasy of being a badass antihero who breaks all the rules to get things done, there was a virtually complete bipartisan consensus that these tools needed to exist and at no point has anyone had the opportunity to vote against any of it.
Trump is of course expanding the scale of it, which is terrifying. Maybe you’re right that he’ll be remembered as the “tipping point” into fascism, but the real tipping point was Bush, who was all the more terrifying because he was doing it while having like a 90% approval rating. Trump is just taking the mask off and doing it in a blatant, incompetent, and unpopular way, which makes him in some ways more dangerous and in some ways less.
Of course you could make the argument that it goes further back than Bush, the US has a long history of toppling democratically elected governments and disappearing people to blacksites, running experiments like MKUltra and the like. But there was a massive shift in discourse after 9/11 where caring at all about civil liberties meant you wanted the terrorists to win.
This might be corny but I remember a movie from my childhood - Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame - certainly a flawed movie in many respects, but you can tell that it was very obviously made before 9/11, because otherwise it would’ve read as a call to action to rise up and overthrow the US government. The bad guy is obsessed with hunting down minorities to the point that he burns and kills innocents, doing whatever it takes to get them, his ultimate act of crossing the line is violating the right of sanctuary, breaking and entering a place of worship that he wasn’t legally allowed to, at which point the heroic captain of the guard turns to open rebellion and rallies the masses against him - it’s a direct allegory for Bush’s presidency and calls for soldiers to disobey orders and turn against the government - except for the fact that it was made before he took office. Growing up at this time, I watched those virtues become vices and those vices become virtues. A mere five years later and Judge Claude Frollo would be the based antihero doing whatever was necessary to save Paris from terrorist infiltration while Captain Pheobus would be the weak disloyal liberal traitor undermining Paris’ safety through the sin of empathy because of his whiny “rules” about whose houses you’re allowed to burn down. (Although tbf, it was attacked at release, but the people attacking it were considered the far-right fringe as opposed to the mainstream discourse).
Trump is worse only because he’s further down the line of where this shit was always headed and where I’ve been saying it was headed since I was like 13 when libertarian weirdos like Ron Paul were the closest thing we had to any kind of opposition to any of it. I’m glad people are finally waking up to the fact that the president has dictatorial powers and that that’s a bad thing, but please remember that when the next, more competent fascist gets in and does all the same shit while being more “respectable” and having better PR.
Trump crossed the red line during his first term when he tried to overturn the 2020 election and this is an escalation of the same thing. With Republicans as active participants in the slide to fascism, and Dems still trying to follow the law while other side doesn’t, there isn’t anything to hope for because the only solution will be violent revolt and that would lead to even more death and suffering.
Even if he was overthrown and the Republicans scattered to the winds, US history has shown that it will not actually hold connected people responsible so we will just be back in the same position in a few decades.
We are completely screwed.
