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We must start urgently talking about the dangers of a second Trump presidency | Margaret Sullivan
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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politics
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The people who need to hear it are voters. The only people with the power to stop it are voters.
Until the voter turnout for Democrats is close to 100%, any effort to inform the public of what is at stake is warranted.
We can whine about it being hopeless after the election, because if Trump wins it actually will be hopeless.
It makes some people feel like they are doing something.
I totally agree with you.
There is one proven method to deal with fascists 🥰
As a European, it's wild to see 2016 just kinda happening all over again. At least that time I too wasn't too worried since, well, how bad could it be?
We should all know a lot better than that by now. Glad to be on this side of the great pond for the time being.
Canadian here. It feels scary being next door. Especially because the far right happenings in America has emboldened some of that rhetoric and mindset over here. And of course, on top of that, any policy or economic moves the US makes has been impact over here.
It’s scary times and I have no clue what they should do about it. I thought it was all a joke until 2016 and have been questioning everything since.
Glad to be on this side of the great pond for the time being.
That time being 12 months.
If Trump does win, Europe can't count on America to respond properly to it's NATO promises. At best Trump will drag out processes that can't be drugout in order for NATO to remain effective. At worst he'll try and pullout entirely.
Absolutely agreed! When it rains in the US, it drizzles in the EU, no exceptions. I'm under no delusion of absolute safety here.
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Yup, lots of 'em. I expect my country to adhere to EU law & regulation when it comes to it.
What about the political refugees about to flee America if Trump gets elected? I'm non-binary and not a Christian, if the fascists win I don't think I'm welcome here anymore.
When Trump won, my stomach sank, because I knew the 2016 election would go on for another 4 years. We're now in year 8 and I'm really hoping it ends for good now.
It's a good thing Europe has never had any of these right-wing populist leaders, or you'd look be pretty hypocritical.
Didn't know Europe has a president...
Bruh, we should have started last year when he started paraphrasing Hitler. We should have started when it became known that he had a defacto 30% of the Republican vote as a starting point.
We should be talking about this now, but we need to be treating it like we're now witnessing a replay of Hitler's rise to power. We don't just need to talk about a second presidency, we need to talk about the very likely second coup attempt, his flirtation with dictatorship, and the fight for democracy we're going to have for the next decade at least.
Historically, the expiration date for a country, before a major revolt or dictatorial uprising, is usually 250 years or so after its founding... That's 2026 for us.
I've heard that before. I wonder how much of our current state of affairs is organic vs some fascist history-bros who think we're on a schedule.
I mean, what the Hell have we been doing for the last 3 years? Journalists, historians, and other folks have really been ringing this bell since 2016, and started ringing it louder on January 6, 2021. You can only scream the truth so loudly, and hand-wringing that people "aren't talking about it enough" when it has been said publicly by high-profile folks for years seems disingenuous and written to generate clicks.
Yeah, we know. We keep saying it. Stop trying to make it seem like you're the only one who has the chutzpah to say it out loud.
The problem is that it's just another partisan divide and there aren't a lot of people on the conservative side of the aisle willing to say it. And those that do get thrown into political exile.
I am honestly suprised no one has taken the Big L on this one. They sure don't remove them from living like they used to when the status quo or old blood was threatened
People get assassinated by the Powers That Be when they try to push for more democracy, not less of it.
There's just too many stupid people in america. that countries main chance is all the old retards dying off so younger people who have some semblance of a working brain will have a higher percentage of the vote
One of the reasons Trump appeals to the oligarch class is he will put an end to democracy before the younger generations get a chance to threaten their power.
"retards", really? The fuck is this, 2001?
The word is offensive, but likening them to fascists is even more so. The terminology he should've used is something more like "evil motherfucking pieces of shit."
I read the same headline since months. So nothing will change.
It's a feature, the people pulling the strings behind trump think a dictatorship would be good for business. It's not trump I'm worried about, it's whomever comes after him, or is pulling the strings that I worry about. Trump is very old, and clearly suffering from some kind of dementia. He's not pulling the strings in what's going on. Behind the scenes there's a coalition of people who want a one party state, that's what should scare people. Trump is a distraction.
Trump is not a distraction, he's their battering ram, and he very much is capable of destroying our checks in balances within a very short amount of time.
Redirecting attention to unarmed untouchable boogeymen who aren't on the ballot is the distraction. Deal with what's in front of your face first.
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We already have a one party state with capital pulling all the strings.
If we had a one party state there wouldn't be democrats and Republicans. It would be one party control in all elections, and that's not what we have, yet.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“The serious scholars of fascism are now saying that the ‘F-word’ is merited,” Jeff Sharlet, a Dartmouth professor and author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, told me in an interview on Wednesday.
Sharlet suggests that media leaders bring in scholars – for example, Yale’s Timothy Snyder, who wrote On Tyranny – to lead newsroom discussions, based on clear historical precedent.
After the New York Times wrote that Trump’s New Hampshire win “raises questions” about Nikki Haley’s path forward, Sharlet scoffed, noting that such questions have been settled for some time “but a press built for the horse race keeps touting a path that never existed when it should be retooling itself to cover a rapidly mutating fascism”.
Weary of the relentless flow of bad news, the dire warnings, the anxiety, we retreat into our personal lives or our political bubbles.
More advice from Sharlet for citizens: form a “boring book club” and read – for example – Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, the shocking (and nearly 1,000-page) rightwing plan to dismantle the federal government and install political allies after a Trump election.
As the Associated Press wrote: “Trump-era conservatives want to gut the ‘administrative state’ from within, by ousting federal employees they believe are standing in the way of the president’s agenda and replacing them with like-minded officials more eager to fulfill a new executive’s approach to governing.”
The original article contains 799 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Yeah, no kidding. And the fascists will Weekend At Bernie's little d all through doing the very worst of things to this country, even if he is mumbling to himself in the corner, shitting in his Depends.
If he manages to get in there, we are so screwed.
Kinda. I mean, it is important to make the danger crystal clear. Problem is, the people with a platform to be heard from are the people who will take the opportunity to sneer at the poor people they imagine put Trump in office (it wasn't). They do the job of the fascists for them and there's no point trying to tell them; they are entirely incapable of learning anything because they are so absolutely certain that they know everything already.
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