The US is fucked. There is no way this gets better. Trump has already clearly communicated his intent to become a dictator. And no one is taking it seriously. He’s talking about using the armed forces to take out his political opponents.
His opposition is still thinking this can be solved in a democratic and and civil way.
If Trump wins it’s over for you and it will have devastating effects on the rest of the world. I hope you understand this.
The US is fucked.
Yes, I agree, and it makes me very sad. The US has been very good for me personally, I get movies, music, technology, relative stability in the world, and so on from the US. I just feel sad for the poor saps who have to live there.
But now, we can’t count on the US being the top political power in the world anymore. So now the EU really has to step up, because we don’t want China or Russia to become the new #1.
To be perfectly honest, I’m worried about what the US will do once their political capital weekens more internationally while they sit on the 130 odd military bases abroad in 55 foreign potentially ‘hostile’ (to US interests) territories (if they don’t eat their own first ofc). Public trust has already embraced it’s fundamentally rotten core and rightfully so. The social contract is in shreds between the government and it’s people. Something will crumple and it will be ugly. I don’t think Kamala is much of an answer either, but at least it may buy time for circumstances to change. Americans have to learn to live with each other, one way or another.
Americans have to learn to live with each other, one way or another.
Imagine giving this advice to anti-Hitler Germans around 1939 or so.
Have you ever heard of Hadrian’s Wall ? That happens to all of them eventually.
Americans have to learn to live with each other, one way or another.
WIth Americans, yes; but not with these fascist bigots. Americans have to learn to conflict with those, early, visibly, and often.
Americans have to learn to live with each other, one way or another.
Honestly, I often think Americans need to learn to live apart from each other these days. I’m very skeptical of the notion that the US can ever function as a coherent political unit again, and it might be better for all to just cut bait and move to an EU-esque free movement regime. Let New England, the South, the Midwest, the West Coast and whatever Alaska and Hawaii want to be each be their own independent countries, but any citizen of one has the right to move to any if the others and work immediately. If Republicans want to enact their own little Handmaid’s Tales in the deep South, they can go for it, but no moaning when women and POC decide to move elsewhere. The non-GOP hellscape regions can implement social safety net programs to allow anyone who wants to leave the conservative regions to do so, regardless of financial means, knowing they will have housing, food and healthcare when they get to a civilized country.
It really feels like some backwards regions are holding the whole country hostage at this point.
a surprisingly tiny minority of cities and states make up the overwhelming lionshare of fiscal solvency and standard of living that this country enjoys and balkanizing it would leave them all DEEPLY impoverished nations except one or two.
for those impoverished nations; the politically easiest path to solvency is to invade and occupy its neighbors or descend further into facism.
those one or two rich countries would then also then be in a position to invade and colonize their neighbors for more natural resources as rich countries with sufficient access to poor countries invariably do.
poc aren’t leaving red states that publicly and actively disenfranchise them because they’re stuck there and a country formed by balkanization won’t be any different. white people are mostly the ones that enjoy that sort of fiscal mobility, so there’s a chance that white women could move, but not any other kind of woman; and probably into that one or two rich countries in the case of balkanization.
balkanization can only work if there’s something to glue the people together like a culture and all of the cultures in the united states belong to minority groups thanks to the majority eschewing their own originating cultures in favor of an american identity for a myriad of reasons.
Ha, we in Acela-stan will be fine United by our high (ish) speed profitable national railway with all those nearby third world countries to exploit. After we set up tinpot dictators and plantations, californiastan will have no chance!
Ah yes, the Balkanization strategy. Cause that worked out so well the last time.
Some call it Vulcanization, others call it Deprogramming the Trump Cult victims and rehabilitate them into the decent society, if possible.
You’ll still need respect for that to happen, which is what I’m referring to by “living together.” Don’t have to be friends, but you got to compromise somewhere.
you['ve] got to compromise somewhere
Not with intolerance. Defend humanity, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the press, we shall fight on the schoolgrounds, we shall fight in the workplace and in the streets, we shall fight in the churches; we shall never surrender.
And if this draws new borders, let them be drawn; and let our taxes NOT support those who do not uphold common areligious decency and uphold universal care as a goal. Let those who support despot idols die of the classic diseases and impairments of the dark ages they aspire to re-create.
Let their ‘south’ rise again in gun deaths, suicides, teen pregnancies, scandals, hate; just do it on their own – and look to buy states into the new american union when they falter, empty, and sue to secede so they can follow their inhabitants in.
PW;DR
i recommend searching:
“jon stewart on crossfire”
“jon stewart on 60 minutes 2004”
Yeah a classic. For additional context, Crossfire was cancelled about a week after that and Tucker Carlson never wore a bowtie again.
