No Stupid Questions

Americans HAVE their country, this is what they want, this is what they voted for. Stop treating Americans as if this is something pressed upon them. They chose this. Now they will live with the consequences.

Balkanize.

Win it back from who?

Other Americans who made this choice know who Trump is and thats what they want.

The Rich have always owned this country. No one is taking anything from them. Its illegal to try.

Who knows. Apparently half my country is full of legitimately hateful people who just want to watch the people they don't like suffer.

How the fuck do we come back from that? Honestly, are we even worth redeeming?

For me, this is it. This is when America died. If you're still "proud" to be an American after this, you're brain-damaged.

Come to Australia mate

We will send our rejects to America in exchange

Regardless of your views on the Orange Grifter / Gift from God (delete as applicable) this question is fundamentally flawed. “How do we build bridges, find common ground and begin to win over our fellow US citizens who have, in my opinion, made a poor and misinformed political choice that could have terrible consequences for them, our country and the world at large?” might be a more appropriate opener. I understand you’re upset, scared, desolate etc but your language comes off as belligerent and aggressive. Perhaps soften your tone and be more receptive to others’ concerns. For the record, I’ve got no flies on this turd as I’m not from the US, nor do I live there. Good luck.

I think that first you have to start by admitting two things:

1. Americans did win their/your election
2. Americans have l9st faith in their democratic institutions

After that, you can look at why the Democratic parties fail to appeal to Americans, and try to reform them.

If you go outside of democracy to gain democracy, then you probably lose what's left of your democracy.

"Americans" did win their country back. We aren't welcome in it anymore.

It's over.

We radicalize, organize, pour into our communities, support one another, find people already doing the work and join in, and keep fighting like hell.

What do you mean? Trump won decisively. Electoral, popular, in the senate, etc...

You're really asking, "how does a minority continue to exist in the face of a fascist majority?"

The answer is, generally, they don't.

So the way it looks now, Trump has won the presidency, and his allies will have the senate and house of representatives, and they already had the supreme court. The three branches of government will not be working as checks on each other's power, unless we get very lucky and the various factions that make up the GOP split. This is obviously very, very bad, but there are still some checks on presidential power.

1. Trump's last term was a clusterfuck. Things may just be so disorganized that he struggles to actually get what he wants done.

2. The states have limited power to defy the feds. While case law does state that federal law supercedes state law, that doesn't mean all States will immediately cooperate wholeheartedly. Obviously a court battle will eventually get to the supreme court, but that takes time and requires a single panel of judges to beat multiple states into line on each new policy.

3. Governments do have a small amount of caution when it comes to their people. One thing the crazy conservatives had right this whole time was that fundamentally, nobody was ever going to come for their guns because nobody wants to force a confrontation with a bunch of armed lunatics. In the same way, they'll probably try to avoid massive riots and general strikes simply because it isn't worth the fight to whoever is responsible.

4. Citizens can resist. Go to protests, donate to political advocacy organizations (the ACLU will have its work cut out for it), and for Christ's sake, go vote! Show up every year, just not every 4 years. Without the cooperation of congress, his power would be significantly curtailed.

5. If nothing else, terms are limited. In 2 years we can swing congress. He isn't going to be able to pass a constitutional amendment to do what he likes before that. If we swing congress in two years, it will slow him down significantly, and then we can replace him in 2028. Hopefully people will actually keep showing up long enough after that to reverse all the damage he's likely to do in the next 4 years.

Realistically? It's too late.

We now have an ultra-conservative SC for the rest of our lives. The Republican party openly stated and ran on making fundamental changes to our government if they won the House/Senate/Presidency and to "defeat the enemy within".

It doesn't even really matter if the suffering that is coming shocks our society into rebounding in 4 years. The locked in SC and fundamental changes to our government will have already been set in place. Government departments will be run by appointees with absolutely no experience. Entire departments could be re-staffed with partisan political appointees if we are to believe the words of some of the people Trump promised to appoint. We have been placed squarely on the path to decline. That decline won't happen overnight, but in our lifetimes it will become undeniable. We will probably barely recognize this country by the end of our lives.

This election determined the political order we will live under for the rest of our lives.

Buy a gun. Try to find happiness within your immediate sphere. And stay safe, if you can. Very, very few people will come out on top in the scenario we now find ourselves in. Give it a few years and you'll see. They have total control now, so there's no one else to blame for the decline that's essentially guaranteed to become apparent in the near future. But I'm sure if they do fail, immigrants will be at the top of the blame list.

It was a worthy experiment while it lasted.

They will over the next 4 years. Elections swing back and forth. Midterms will probably be greatly fir democrats

They don't. It was never their country to begin with, clearly.

The majority of the U.S. has been racist, bigoted, misogynists from the beginning. Hell, the entire electoral college system that just fucked everyone over is a compromise that was put into place because a bunch of rich white landowners in the Antebellum south couldn't stand the idea of freed black men's votes having as much power as theirs. So they immediately rigged the system to keep them in control of who gets power because you better believe no black man was ever going to be an elector.

That is who your country is. There was a brief period from the 60s to the 80s where it became declasse to be an asshole, and so they mostly shut up during that time when they were in public, and then went home and took out their frustration by beating their wives and kids.

Then along came the modern republican party, who began to tear down that cloak of respectability, and it emboldened all of those wife beating shit-heads to say "Hey...we can be assholes again...go us."

This is your America. It always has been. I'm sorry if that hurts. I really am. But right now I'm also goddamned angry at your country on behalf of my country and all the others that have to be caught in the blast.