You’re assuming that the coalition-fracturing and opposition-galvanizing Bernie Bros were not themselves Russian bots.
They very well could have been. And perhaps that sort of subtle meddling is more effective than arming factions as we do in the Middle East.
Still, the sooner Trump is out of office and replaced with someone intelligent, the better. You’ll always need eternal vigilance to preserve democracy, it’s just lately the requirement has been kicked up a notch.
“Never again” does not mean “Let’s wait and see”.
So you think the 10 Nazis in the US are so scary they require replacing law and order with armed and violent mobs? Hmm, perhaps there is a great danger to democratic institutions.
Heck, the U.S. circa 1955-1965 had not just been through a horrific war, the economy didn’t suck, and there was still widespread and arguably well-grounded fear of communism, though probably less so of anarchism, and some Americans were using firehoses and police dogs on other Americans who wanted to (gasp!) vote! The horror!
It’s perfectly fair to be wary of people who consider this period a golden age and seek its return.
It’s downright adorable that you believe there are only 10 Nazis in the U.S.
That said, among the best ways to keep them in check is a free and respected press supported by an independent judiciary. Your boy Trump is trying to undermine both.
Neither does it mean “stress out about Nazis dragging you away to your death.” I’ve witnessed friends and family who used to post about music, life, fun shit, their pets, etc, do nothing but barrage my Facebook feed with posts about the looming fascism all day, every day, grim black and white pictures from concentration camps and Nazi rallies and Klan lynchings with lots of red text and pictures of Trump and his cohorts, and I mean all day, every day - how do these people enjoy life? The answer is they don’t, they’re miserable. But they’re miserable over an outlandish alarmist fear. Jesus, I can’t believe how people are losing their shit, and I say again, why aren’t more of these people instead directing their outrage towards the rapacious medical/insurance industry, the private prison industry, the drug war which is ACTUALLY Nazi-like and has imprisoned thousands and thousands of Americans for bullshit reasons? These are legitimate specific problems that need attention called towards them, but instead it’s TRUMP-NAZI, TRUMP-NAZI, TRUMP-NAZI all day every day.
I have Trump derangement fatigue.
First they came for the illegal immigrants, and you rolled your eyes. Then they came for the legal immigrants, and you rolled your eyes. Then they came for the naturalized citizens, and you rolled your eyes. See a pattern?
It’s not a myth. They got Trump into office. You don’t need a huge amount of Nazis to pull it off. His election empowered racists. Even this protest wouldn’t be happening if they hadn’t thought they got the Right on their side. The alt-right did well.
I personally have encountered more racism sine Trump was elected than at any previous point in my life. And I’m just a white man who stumbles upon it, not someone who actually experiences it.
It’s great that we drove them back into the shadows, but the war is not over until they can’t surge again.
Hell’s Bells, I’ve had to shout anti-Muslim good ol’ boys off a stage in downtown Calgary. Wanna know what their leader was wearing? One of those dumb MAGA hats.
Oh! It’s not actually about Nazism or racism. You’re just not paying attention. None of those pictures have to do with the actual Nazis or KKK taking over. They are about the authoritarian and proto-fascist bent of Donald Trump, and his large number of devoted followers. Those people are who they are worried about.
The owner or Reddit is so fucking scared of Trump supporters that he won’t delete their subreddit despite it breaking all the same rules that allowed him to delete all the other bad subs.
Trump himself has power he should not have, and keeps appointing racists into power. He is the president and the leader of the Republican Party. He actively tries to undermine the free press. He is trying for a Republican coup of the Supreme Court, which would mean that all those checks and balances aren’t functional. If all three branches are one party, then that party wins–the only thing keeping them from controlling is inter-party turmoil
None of them are scare about those protestors marching, or even the Nazis who are too afraid to march. They’re afraid of the alt-right, the mishmash of racist, sexist, homphobic, transphobic, xenophobic, authoritarian, often violent assholes who have enough power that they are trying to take over the Republican Party, which is trying to take over all three branches. Between Voter ID and gerrymandering, the actual population is not represented proportionally.
Will it go Nazi Germany bad? No, probably not. Is it a problem? It most definitely is. And pretending that people who you apparently call your friends are all deranged is not a good way to deal with that.
Or, really, to keep friends. If I had a friend pulling the “Trump derangement syndrome” card, they’d be an ex-friend. I already dropped all the liberal tears people.
I think roaming mobs attacking bystanders with flagpoles, guns, and cars should be dealt with appropriately. Why do you hate self-defense?
Why are you so intellectually dishonest?
You forgot the conspiracy theorists. The alt-right, and the GOP, are in league with conspiracy theorists, e.g. Q Anon. The GOP has been re-tweeting their nonsense and so has Sean Hannity.
Ultimately, the biggest danger to American democracy is the idea that there is no danger to American democracy.
The US is currently in Stage 3 of Paxton’s five stages of fascism. Now, this is where such movements live or die. And I do believe that future historians will look back at this period as when Americans turned their back on fascism, or embraced it.
To be honest, based on what I’ve seen from Americans lately, I don’t like your odds.
You are comically under-qualified to ask anyone that.
And now you’ve been reduced to a babbling fool and a liar. Where did I call for violence against Nazis? What I did do is call out the hypocrisy of a racist hater like you who pretends to have ideals only when his Nazi snowflakes are threatened. Maybe you defended Kaepernick and maybe you didn’t. Since you couldn’t bother to cite the claim, any defense you offered was probably lukewarm.
You have a very inflated opinion of your own self-worth if you think anyone is going to conduct a Search to hunt for a redeeming octopus post. We already know what you are.
My denigration of Alabama as “shit-hole” was a parody of your idol’s racist diction. That you couldn’t even figure that out shows that you have been reduced to a babbling fool. Ha ha ha.
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History doesn’t repeat itself in straightforward ways. Hitler did lead a large violent demonstration in 1923, but then decided non-violent politics was the path to take-over. Led by Trump, America’s racists have, at least temporarily, leap-frogged the Bürgerbräu-Putsch in their rise to power.
In today’s America we see police being called against someone for no reason except that the person is black or brown. Police are tasing and shooting blacks for no real reason but their skin color. America is full of frothing-at-the-mouth haters, egged on by the likes of Koch and Ryan who, like Germany’s rich elite in the 1930’s, see hatred as a political path to support their greed.
octopus may not quite be frothing-at-the-mouth in his hatred, but it’s easy to see he’s been duped by the cackling right-wing kleptocrats.
How will this play out over the next decade or so? The odds are against extreme violence, I think, but the schism does seem to be worsening. If violence does come it may erupt very suddenly.
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That’s an expert level deflection, you unprincipled coward. It takes literally zero courage or moral conviction to join the irrational majority posting in this thread and on this board who are only in favor of fundamental rights when they agree with the precise method they are exercised. If this board leaned right and if there happened to be a vocal group advocating violence to silence socialists I’d be against that as well. The difference between me and you is that you are too cowardly to engage where your viewpoint is the minority. Don’t worry you can’t be bike locked through your screen.
Disparage my motive all you wish. I’ve consistently been pro freedom of expression regardless of the popularity of the view. It’s just a shame that this board is filled with those a board like this is supposed to help.
Now regards to the eruption of violence in the future. It doesn’t take all that much for factional warfare to start. Are you certain that it’s a good idea to continue to paint Republicans as Nazis and push the point of view that it’s a legitimate tactic to violently assault those you disagree with?
Well, I mean, we just went through a major recession, we’re still in at least one war and aiming for another, and our commander in chief is quite opposed to the free press.
The most important checks on the presidency are Congress and the Supreme Court.
Congress is currently controlled by people who share a party affiliation and overall ideology with Donald Trump. Of those, a small handful have spoken out about his leanings, and those two are going to resign because they know they cannot win elections without Trump’s base. The rest are terrified of being primaried or abandoned in the general election. The absolute most you’ve gotten from the republicans in Congress are milquetoast condemnations for people on Twitter who then turn around and vote party line 99% of the time anyways. So Congress is a wash.
The Supreme Court is (still) a majority-republican institution, which has fairly consistently gone along partisan lines in recent memory. It’s soon-to-be next inhabitant does not believe the president can be indicted or prosecuted, and is being selected by a president more surrounded by scandal than Nixon. So… they’re probably not going to help us.
What this “balance of powers” thing leaves out is party politics. Do you honestly expect Mitch McConnell to rein Trump in? Paul Ryan? I don’t. In fact, I think if you do expect that, you have not been paying attention.
No, but when you have an extremely partisan electorate, a party which cares less about the rules and norms of democracy than about passing their (phenomenally unpopular) agenda, a supreme court unwilling to check their more anti-democratic moves such as voter suppression (as RGB put it, “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”), and a president with clear authoritarian asperations… That’s a recipe for disaster.
Things are bad. They could very quickly and very easily get worse. And who’s going to stop it?
So our answer to tyranny within the government may be… what, a military coup? That’s reassuring.
Completely wrong, as usual. I have engaged right-wing idiocy in person. If there were an intelligent right-wing message board I might argue there, but I think “intelligent right-wing” is almost an oxymoron.
And right here at SDMB I often argue against extreme political correctness, to the point where I’m almost accused of racism or misogyny myself.
I think this is another lie. You link to three octopus posts where you come across as a sincere seeker of truth or justice and I’ll link to nine where you come across as a hateful right-winger.
First of all: When did I call for “violent assault,” you fucking liar? I already told you that charge was false; can you even read as well as you write?
Conversely the real threat comes from your ilk resorting to violence — in fact, it already has. What’s your solution? Rational thinkers and centrists need to give the right-wing what it wants so it doesn’t get even more violent?