You know, DOGE, fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored. Is there any way out of that or is it over? Is the USA done?
I heard there was a mentor coming to fix this soon…sorry, I apologize. I mean to say Meteor. Chances of landing up my own ass have increased once more. I probably won’t feel it so I’m not too worried about it.
Mom’s gonna fix it all, soon. Mom’s coming 'round to put it back the way it oughta be.
as new data allows more accurate predictions the chance of impact will rise as the earth takes up more and more of the predicted orbit until it suddenly falls to zero.
Are there chances of hitting after it hits us and we’re all gone? I’m going to as my wife for an open marriage. You know, maybe have a little fun while we wait for total nuklier or meteorite annihilation. Or gas chambers. I’ll be totally naked in the gas chamber!
No even if it hits the most populated area in the world it’s still barely doing fuck all
I hate to say it, but yes. Everything we’ve predicted from trump has come true thus far.
The insurrection was predicted
The migrant camps were predicted
The ice raids were predicted
Roe v Wade was predicted
SellingGiving Ukraine to Russia was predictedBanning DEI was predicted
The list goes on but more importantly these were all seen as hypothetical worst case scenarios. We should stop treating the next steps like they are hypothetical. America has fallen, and civil war is next.
Former presidents at least recognized they had the responsibility to take care of both the people who voted for them and the people who didn’t. Trump only sees the people who voted for him and the people he needs to make an example of.
I hate to say it, but the DNC is weak and won’t help us anymore. I supported Kamala like hell and believed that they could figure it out but they just don’t and won’t.
I’m not a violent person. I hate the thought that I’d ever be forced into a situation where I need to either learn how to fight or die (because right now I’m SOL). I never wanted to find myself rooting for assassins and feeling like the world would be better off of certain people were dead. I’d rather believe the world would be better off if certain people were alive.
But all I see in the future is a federal coup backed by sycophants in the Senate and supreme Court that then collides with the governors of blue states who won’t bend the knee.
TL;Dr if we don’t go full dictator, we are going to civil war, and we deserve it.
Trump only sees the people who voted for him and the people he needs to make an example of
Let’s not pretend like Trump gives a shit about the people who voted for him.
Very fair take.
That said he’s not a full on idiot. MAGAts are useful tools for him, so he is more likely to try and make them happy, in some way. Currently the way to make them happy is to punish the left. In our post 9/11 USA, rage is what flips seats.
W Bush won his second term because we were blind with rage after the attacks, and John Kerry didn’t run a counter rage campaign.
Obama won because the financial crash enraged the left.
Obama won his second term because Romney wasn’t able to stir up the needed rage.
Trump won because he was the embodiment of rage.
Biden won by the rage we had for Trump in the summer of 2020.
Trump won again by running a campaign of rage vs Kamala who ran a “campaign of joy”.
We are a country of 50 mini countries. All you need to do to win is generate enough rage to pit purple states against the states who won’t vote for you. So long as this country stands as it is, this is just how it’s going to be. Sadly any diplomatic fixes for this are pipe dreams now.
The only way this will end is when the fire of rage consumes the whole system and burns it down. After that… I don’t know.
What are some major relevant events that were predicted but haven’t happened yet?
Yes and and beyond screwed.
There is saying things, there is not doing things, and there is doing things.
Trump could say: “What if there was one day where there was no laws and people could just do anything, like the purge…” and… oh, he did say that during his first term. And democracy still survived. Saying things just make people loose respect for America. It is why Obama got the Nobel peace prize. Cause he stopped saying the shit that Bush was saying.
What people should be worried about is actions and inactions. It takes competency to do things. The more fascist a thing Trump wants to do, the more competent people leave and the less likely it is to be done. The true problem is it takes no level of competency to not do a thing.
So Trump’s end game is “Ask not what your country can do for you … because it can no longer do that.”
Unfortunately he’s following the playbook of people who do know how to do things and accomplish goals. And they were much better prepared this time than in 2016.
I thought that Obama won the NPP because of Norwegian political stuff involving NATO.
Well, yes, but it was a very weak case - but people were so sick of Bush that that was enough.
None of this is good, and it’s going to cause a lot of big problems across just about everything but, theoretically at least, none of it is unsalvageable.
Remember that elections are run by the states, not the federal government.
So unless you live in one of the most hardcore Trump-sucking red states, you likely will be able to vote in 2026 and 2028, your vote will probably be fairly counted, and you will be able to determine not just the makeup of Congress 2 years from now, but also the types of people that we send to represent our interests and fight back against Trump.
Of course, Trump is wasting no time grabbing power, but it still remains to be seen whether or not Congress and the Supreme Court will surrender their power enough for him to get away with it. As much as the massive cucked-out bitches in Congress and SCOTUS pretend they love Trump, they actually hate his guts and are just as hungry for their own power as he is for his.
Finally there is the possibility of a genuine constitutional crisis in which Trump rejects the concept of shared power by coequal branches of government, in which case the entire constitution is rendered null and void and the USA completely ceases to exist as a federal entity and the union breaks down.
This would probably lead to a civil war, in which case the side that wins is the one that has the best logistics and strategy. I’m confident that the blue states, especially in an alliance with Canada and Mexico, would have no problem beating the land-locked redneck morons in flyover country. All that would be required is to bring the fight to the Southern coastal areas. They’d be totally surrounded and blocked in from trade on every side.
And then we burn Atlanta again!
Unless there’s a coup when the Supreme Court finds against Trump and he ignores them and Republicans keep Congress from holding him accountable the only way the Court will let them.
I’m really hoping that Churchill’s quote about Americans doing the right thing is evergreen, because this first month (!!!) of Trump has been A LOT.
I feel like we’re really close to having tried every alternative by now, right?..right?
fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored.
Sounds like USA authorities are stronger than ever. People have been screwed for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disclosures
this was under obama
Duh.
Next question.
In the short term: Yes. Unless the US military decides to remove a sitting president but that is extremely unlikely.
In the long term: Yes, but also no. Fascism is extremely inefficient and expensive and the US is destroying its own economy and pushing away all of its allies and former trade partners. Things will get very rough but it will not last forever. There will be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.
Unfortunately this has been a long time coming. The United States has never really been united and it was only a matter of time before another possible civil war loomed on the horizon.
I would say it’s been coming since BEFORE the civil war.
People always take my words out of context when I say that life in general would have been better for everyone long term if the south won.
People take that to mean that I’m pro-slavery. I’m not. If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)
But if the south had won, and been able to leave the union? I feel like they’d have made the worst possible choices for their country on a repeated basis. I feel like their country would have crumbled and disolved into multiple smaller countries. The united states would have continued expanding out west. Texas is probably the only former state that wouldn’t have crumbled.
The rest of the confederate states? They’d be struggling to survive, last in the world in education, terrible healthcare, basically a bunch of 3rd world countries. But the rest of the USA? SO MUCH HEALTHIER FOR IT!!! All these cancers trying to tear down OUR country today, wouldn’t be part of our country. They can go fuck up the country of Alabama. Go nuts.
The pure amount of butterfly effect policies that would be different is mind blowing.
To me, the south winning isn’t about slavery. It’s about taking this large lump sum of the worst people in the country, and cutting them free like you cut away a tumor to get rid of cancer.
This is complete hogwash speculation. You have no idea what would have happened to the North if the split had been permanent.
I mean it’s very obviously speculation because nobody has a crystal ball to see the outcome of decisions that never happened. It’s just an interesting thought experiment and something to ponder.
On the one hand… First World War would’ve ended very differently.
On the other… Maybe eugenics would already be discredited by the 20s with how it went in Dixie.
I mean WWI was salty Europeans fighting salty Europeans over European salt. Nothing for America to get involved in.
I didn’t even mention the Second World War, because the first would’ve been different enough to make it having happened in a familiar form into unlikely.
Yeah I wanted to say WWI and mistyped.
The US arms shipments to Britain, and later after the gun runner ship Lustiana, hoping to use its civilian passengers as a shield in breach of the rules of war, led to American popular support for joining with the Allies, which they eventually did to push Germany to defeat despite the newly Sovietised Russia withdrawing.
And it might be that Dixieland and Yankeeland would support the Allies and Axis, and WWI would have had an American theatre, too opening in 1915 or so. And any major war fought in North America in the 20th century would totally alter the form US neo imperial power and hegemony took, if any at all, in the latter part of the 20th century.
As a minimum, a different US would alter how Versaille and Balfour treaties were made and what who agreed to.
Did you forget about the part where the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? You couldn’t have kept the US out of World War 2 with a trillion dollar payoff. The country wanted blood.
Oh shit I added an extra I for some reason. I mean WWI. WWII was definitely an American problem too.
Lmao, this is why Arabic numbers are superior to Roman numbers.
You say this but it’s hardly just the south that voted for trump. As you mentioned, the butterfly effect could have changed things dramatically. Things still could have turned out worse for everyone.
Though things are pretty crap now so I can definitely relate to your thought process.
If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)
Do you have access to some alternate timeline or something? Where can I get this secret information that you have?
The civil war itself destroyed the south’s market for cotton. The number of slaves that fled was ever increasing and the war made it even easier.
If the north and south were separated they would have continued to come north but would then be asylum seekers.
The north of the south would have been the main producers of economic growth as mineral exports from that region exploded after the civil war. Based on this alone it’s not certain the confederacy would have actually collapsed.
It would take someone with deep historical knowledge of that era to make any realistic predictions of what would have happened.
For instance, the likelihood of the confederate states not further splittering isnt known. And then there are issues such as if the west coast or other regions would do attempt the same break from the union.
There are all sorts of trade imbalances that would be in play. But it’s hardly an idle thought experiment. There are simply too many pieces.
Yeah big [[Citation needed]] vibes here
To be fair though, Texas seceded once already and within a year or two was begging to be taken back. They probably would have crumbled too.
What if this is karma for invading and taking half of Mexico? There weren’t slavers or shittier-that-usual people in the region before that.
I mean, if the united states is getting karma for invading and annexing other peoples land, SURELY you’d think there would have been some repercussions from Native Americans, right? Hell, even Canada arguably has some leeway to give us karma if that’s the case.
And Hawaii.
And technically Puerto Rico, and the Somoa Islands, and Guam.
Even though Vietnam isn’t, nor has it ever been a US territory, they still know what it’s like to be invaded by us. We were never trying to take land for ourselves, but we WERE trying to take land for our cold war ally. We just failed is all. And yet…for everybody reading this from a country that ISN’T America, here’s the weird thing. In our schools, they teach vietnam in history as if WE WON. Which I assume the rest of the world easily see’s how absurd that is. Here in America? There are PLENTY of people who think we’ve never lost a war. There are people who defend the 2001-2020 invasion of multiple middle eastern countries as a war we won. Some of them think it was multiple wars in a short amount of time we won. Others think it was one continuous war that we won. But those people exist. I’ve met many of them.
Now, with all that said, NOBODY calls them freedom fries. Nobody. Never even heard of a single person who calls them that. It was a 2 week thing on tv, and then everybody just shrugged and called it stupid. Which is exactly what I’m hoping this whole gulf of america/mexico thing is. Just political theater, and then it’s over because it’s stupid.
You should read about the Spanish missions and their treatment of the native people on the west coast. But also the Mexicans weren’t innocent of things either. They were constantly having political violence and even voluntarily returned monarchies. (yes plural)
As. Mexican, I agree with you. The conquistadores weren’t people of the highest caliber, and while the catholic monks were better, their mission was evangelizing at any cost, even if it meant killing people who didn’t want to. Even prehispanic people could be brutal.
The main difference between colonial Mexico and USA was that slavery wasn’t a thing here, because the evangelized became full-fledged catholics, having a saved soul and all. Something unthinkable for the slavers, who justified their acts because blacks “didn’t have souls”.
Mexican creoles, the hacendados, found a loophole: Catholics could still be exploited by crushing, multigenerational debt. That’s why we had a century of turmoil after the revolution(s), right after the century of turmoil after our independence from Spain.
Guess my point is: by the time USA invaded and forcefully took half our country, we didn’t have slavers (the hacendado’s loophole was gone), and definitely didn’t trade humans as things. Your south brought back evils that were gone at the time.
Yeah that’s true. The American South was exceptionally evil. I don’t think we’ve ever properly processed that as a country.
How exactly would slavery have died out “naturally” in a union made up entirely of slave states who’d just fought and won a war to defend it? I get your point about letting the south stand in its own so it could fall, but you are too casually sweeping aside the issue of slavery. “Yeah yeah - that would pass naturally - now let me tell you my MAIN point….”
Northerners weren’t simply more high minded than southerners concerning slavery - industrialization lessened their dependence on slaves to the point where they could abandon slavery without the economy crumbling.
Presumably this would happen in the south as they industrialized as well.
Agriculture still has not eliminated manual labor, son.
Oh OK
Yep the South was invested in agriculture, to this day a labor-intensive sector, largely due to advantages in climate and geography which were basically fixed. So how again would slavery have spontaneously ended in the South again? It’s a question - please answer it.
You’ve convinced me. I hadn’t thought if it quite that way.
(The previous comment was unedited at the time this was written, just in case)
In this timeline, nazis got the atom bomb and rule the world because no “United” States
Lol. Americans continuing to vastly overestimate their contribution to WW2
That’s like every alt history book ever.
You are being way too optimistic. A lot of people will needlessly die, not only from violence but also disease, starvation, suicide and natural disasters.
All these years, preppers may have been right. Having a well supplied fortress of your own can turn out to be very handy.
Personally I think this resurgence is a highly specific cultural moment that is coming as religion dies off and the white population of America teeters toward minority status.
Since the US birth rate began to decline (natural phenomenon that happens to all developed nations) its strong immigration has held it up. But that has had an accumulating demographic effect. White people lost their official hegemony a long time ago but now they are facing the prospect of losing their simple majority and it scares the living shit out of them. It’s not just because privilege sees equality as oppression. It’s also because they know that they have treated others incredibly badly, and deserve to be castigated should they lose power.
That’s why this Trump admin is so ugly. It’s the death spasm of a dying culture. That’s why this Trump admin is hollow at the center: it’s backed by a group that has no future and can only harken back to the past. This is why this Trump admin is openly undemocratic: they no longer have the numbers to play the game.
This too shall pass, but at great cost. The USA is the greatest political prize there has ever been and it won’t be let go of lightly.
The funny things is americans were like “We need guns to protect ourselves from tyrants.” But of course, the ones with the guns are precisely the ones siding with tyranny.
I mean, they wont do anything until the economy crashes and the leopards eat their face.
The last time the economy crashed, the US got 40 years of progressvism.
just waiting for the economy to crash 👀
They were still a democracy back then, now it’s an oligarchy.
They were still a democracy back then
LMFAO, Black people couldn’t even vote back then.
I mean, you’ll get to see the difference between a bad and discriminatory democracy and a pure dictatorship soon enough. If you think an economical crash will bring back progressivism, I wish you good luck but I think it’s really naive. At this point with the gafam siding with pedo-president, they just wait for automation and AI to get a little further before getting rid of half of the country. And since it’s the US, the other half of the country will take care of it for them. An economical crash would be the perfect setup for this. I’m not even american but for the first time of my life I’m considering getting a gun.
That’s an interesting point, because in terms of wealth inequality and unbridled exploitative capitalism stuff was pretty fucking dreadful back then too. But I don’t think there was as much interest in the super rich taking control of the government, because the government didn’t do that much and had never really been a problem for the wealthy (apart from that time they tried to abolish slavery…)
I’m normally a “folks need to work together, big problems need big solutions” European lefty, but seeing the horror of what a powerful central government can do when it’s in the hands of crazy dipshits… It certainly highlights the benefits of small governments and localised power. Maybe this will lead to growth of some forces of progress that aren’t the federal government? The question is whether after the inevitable crash and burn, the next government will be willing to introduce the actual constraints, checks and balances to not let this happen again?
Those pricks had one fucking job and they absolutely blew it. Boot lickers all of them, it makes me sick.
Lots of Americans have guns. Not just conservatives.
Oh yeah then explain this *gestures broadly at everything*
The chuds have more guns, thanks to many years of lefties demanding guns be removed from society and giving theirs up while the chuds just bought more (thanks for that one, Dad and friends)
They’re also usually a liiiitle more ready to use them, and the law is a looooot more ready to defend them than they are us
Right wingers have organized militias for decades. These might be made up of stupid fat fucks, but they have trained how to organize, communicate, and do logistics.
The number and quality of weapons is one factor. Wars are won by logistics, communication, and coordination. If you have an existing social political network, you can arm it pretty quickly. A group that knows how to set up a music festival in the middle of nowhere, can learn how to run a military camp.
Being a shitty person is multidisciplinary, apparently.
‘Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’
-Karl Marx
2nd amendment Americans. Shoot your fascist orange government rapist leader right between his beady little eyes.
Trumps time has come.
“He who saves his country does not violate any law.” -Donald Trump (reading a post-it note handed to him by Felon Musk, quoting Napoleon, or something)
He’s old and doesn’t have much time left. The really problematic people are all around him and they are many.
Yeah he’s like the very obvious and prominant pus-filled boil on a body riddled with disease. He isn’t the cause of the disease, just one of the symptoms.
And yet in all their past few decades none of them rallied the base like he did.
Remove Trump and you remove most of the power.
Lol
True hydra situation going on
Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.
-Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)
Been thinking about this quote a lot lately. The fact that Trump is so popular shows that he’s just the symptom of a deeper, possibly terminal disease.
Nobody is saying it would solve the problem but it might make me feel a little better
The fact that Trump is so popular shows that he’s just the symptom of a deeper, possibly terminal disease.
Capitalism
This is the thing making me lean more toward leaving than trying to change things. Even if Trump were magically impeached today, and our election system were left as near-intact as it is, somebody just like him could be just as likely to be elected in the next cycle. And odds are he’s going to pull off rigging the system to make sure that happens by then.
I think that on a long term scale, to get at the root, something needs to be done about the media machine behind him. Culture eats policy for breakfast.
inb4 moderation
Shitty time to be alive when it’s no longer cool to shoot Nazis.
Any media that silences it is in support of Trump.
As Elon Sucks says, “you’re the media now”.
Who has a good recipe for cooking the rich
Trump is just the convenient caricature of a puppet pushed forward to be the face and disorganise everything. When he dies he’ll be replaced by someone else capable of filling that role. It wouldn’t surprise me if the follow-up person is already known in their circles.
Trump is old and messed up. The propaganda rocketing him up can just as easily shoot him down. He is here to do damage and to disrupt and corrupt the system. He’s here to weed out the failsafes against fascism/monarchy so a new political model can take over.
When he’s done enough, someone else will step forward to rebuild and ‘repair the damage’ but only in such a way that the fascist/oligarchy gains more power and the majority of people lose more power.
Not that I’m opposed to the idea on principle, but realistically that kind of long wolf adventurism would only make things worse.
In the short term, yes.
If trump remains in office after this term, absolutely yes.
If we get a different admin - not just another republicrat trump clone - they’re going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time fixing all of trump’s fuckups. One of which should be restricting any wannabe monarch’s ability to rule by decree in the US. So yeah, we’re fucked, and we’re gonna have to spend a lot of effort getting unfucked, digging ourselves out of an oligarchy hole, instead of moving forward from a continually advancing starting point.
E: allies are already turning away from us, politically and economically. They’ll form new alliances and relationships that the US doesn’t get to be a part of, or at least won’t get a leading position in. Same with things like soft power from international aid. China will step in, maybe the EU or even Russia. We lose the goodwill, stability, and any economic “ins” we could have achieved with that soft power. We’re fucked in lots of ways.
During my lifetime, the view people have of the US has completely changed.
It used to be “When I grow up, I want to move there.” and “Oh, you went to the US on vacation? AWESOME”.
Now it’s “Why the fuck would you go there, are you stupid?”Agreed on all counts.
We lose the goodwill
Gone. It’s gone. I’m your neighbor. There’s no more goodwill. It’s been completely replaced with desire to see your hubris teach a collective lesson, and a process of internal reflection on how we can not end up like you.
My country looked up to the US as a charismatic winner with a big ego and an anger problem, who turned full coked up psychopath now. I listened to the Fall of Civilizations-Podcast a lot and this feels like one. It’s scary to watch and I feel sorry for all the good people living in this mess. But I agree, there is no sympathy left. Let the raging insanity humble the evil empire.
We’re kin. Fall of civ is my dystopian lullaby. I can hear that piano refrain, but it’s about us now.
Hope you effectively learn that lesson. I don’t blame any country for turning away from the US. Stupid people electing destructive narcissists and doing absolutely nothing to prevent it.
3 generations of people ‘voting according to their pocketbooks’ makes an easily controlled monoculture.
Their pocketbooks were morons for three generations, too.
Yeah no, this will be long term
First trump term, him fucking over all allies is something the allies could forgive. Second time, not so much. Allies now know they can’t rely on the US to be a trustworthy ally.
Trump already destroyed all soft power, he wants to reduce military spending by 50% too, so hard power will be down the drain as well.
Then he’s destroying the economy, he increased highcorruption like there is no tomorrow, he is destroying education and he is destroying all oversight on companies
He’s working hard on destroying democratic institutions too so forget fair elections, as if the US ever had any.
IMHO, the US will never recover from trump, and that is what it deserves. It always had the great chance to be truely great but it fucked itself around every corner trying to please the rich
It’s some very good news if he’s indeed dramatically downsizing the military. Give’s Canada and Mexico a fighting chance! Will Canada be USA’s next Vietnam experience?
The silver lining here is that with now 8 years of abolishing civil/workers rights, technology and social development being suppressed and Americans falling so objectively behind in most measurable fields, hopefully Americans can get over their blatantly false sense of exceptionalism and become comfortable just being another part of the world.
Exceptionalism and nationalism has more to do with the propaganda people are being fed, and less with the actual reality they are living. It will take more than a hard downturn in quality-of-life I think.
Yeah. I think that Russians feel the same inside of their country, because they’re been fed with propaganda.
Yea. I’m sure they will be humbled like the people of North Korea, who think their supernatural leader invented hamburgers and the electric guitar.
North Koreans don’t think this. Everybody knows its bullshit. The point is not for people to believe in the bullshit, the point is normalizing the government to get away with obvious bullshit. And this pattern is not exclusive to North Korea at all.
How do you know everyone knows its bullshit?
When I was in the Russia – my last time was as late as 2019 – the shocking thing was to notice that people there really think their country is somehow a good and exemplatory place! At least in the Russia people should by all logic understand it’s all bullshit. But in practical terms they don’t. They go with it.
Nah there’s still plenty of cognitive dissonance to go around
Yes.
The amount of harm already done to your country by Trump and Musk is immeasurable, and will take a generation or more to recover from.
The amount of harm done to your standing in the world is equally bad. The world was skeptical after Trump’s first term fucked over the rest of the world, but we were hopeful that maybe the US had learned their lesson?
Nope. They elected a fascist. They RE-elected a known fascist, felon, rapist, idiot-child, psychopath. Worse, they bolstered Musk to get into a seat of unauthorized and unimaginable power.
When Trump announced his idiotic tarrifs, Canada collectively said “that’s it - we’re divorcing.” When he pulled back on the idea for 30 days, Canada said “don’t care, still divorcing.”
Trump is following the exact model of HItler, and it’s only a matter of time until he actually invades either Greenland or Canada if he’s not stopped. The USA has to collapse into ruin and rebuild from scratch before anyone is going to trust them again.
It’s a good point and deeply concerning.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Trump decided to invade somewhere just because he can.
Especially if his economic measures start making him look bad.
Trump ordering an invasion of Canada and the military going along with it, will be his demonstration of full powers.
He wants a grand victory parade.
And then begins the real fun. The assassinations, the pipe bombings, etc. Americans won’t allow an invasion on Canada. Things will get incredibly ugly.
A generation seems very generous. The only path back to US hegemony I see is Fascism: we’ve burned our bridges and I don’t think the world will be willing to work with us for a long time. But I don’t even think the current batch are interested in US hegemony.
