Of course - I expected as much, and I, like you, will not refuse to concede the point based on a technicality.
I also think you’re wise to take a bit of time to create reasonably measurable and specific predictions.
That’s fair and I’ll participate in that toast. 
I’m still working on specific predictions with expiration dates. I do still expect a rollback of LGBTQ rights to pre Stonewall levels. I feel that this has already begun, and Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet. I have previously said that the rights of trans people will be first to go. Today on the news, I saw the Supreme Court is hearing a case on whether or not state governments can ban minors from being given puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy. The reporter said the court is expected to let the bans stand.
But stripping LGBTQ Americans of their rights is not, terrible though it is, the end of American democracy. In fact, I don’t think any of the Dopers who disagreed with my Prediction Of Doom disagreed with this specific detail. They simply said that while things will be bad for most people, and worse for LGBTQ people, American Democracy will endure.
So, I am left trying to flesh out other predictions and stick them on a timeline.
That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to discuss in other threads, but far too many times, it seems like replies just dismiss the possibility of any action being possible, then hide and claim that no, of course they don’t mean that, but then refuse to elaborate further. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think of modern Russian elections?
I thought that, too.
I imagine they’re much the same, with Putin and his cronies trying to bring USSR back.
I’m a leftists (among the 3 or 4 most leftist here) and I would unequivocally say “Yes” to that. Capitalism, rotten as it is, isn’t completely evil. Nazism was. I could list a bunch of things that are worse than capitalism.
Thing is, most everyone else (nowadays, in the sane parts of the world) agrees those things are terrible, so opposing them isn’t exactly a hard ask.
And as for this:
represents not a single damn leftist I know. While I definitely am not a liberal, I think they mean well.
This is so insulting that it does not deserve an answer.
This is what we are up against.
Yes, of course.
Ah, don’t forget persecution of his ‘enemies’ And staying out of prison himself.
I don’t even think that they will go back that far. The one thing Trump can’t turn back no matter how hard he tries is the degree to which Gays have been accepted by society at large. At this point with, 70% support, I think even getting rid of gay marriage would be a hard climb.
I agree that trans rights is a different kettle of fish. Up until the last decade or so they had been able to fly under the radar, playing sports, using bathrooms and getting medical treatment without too many people paying attention. Now that the right has focused on them as a scapegoat them they are in danger of losing it all. This is probably the one group for which it might make sense to look into possibly fleeing the country.
But the US isn’t going to turn into Gilead or the Man in the High Castle during Trump’s term. Forging and maintaining a dictatorship takes a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of guts, and Trump by nature is a lazy coward.
My prediction is that he will start his mass deportation exercise, which will result in misery all around, and footage of screaming children, and interviews with people saying that their neighbors who had been there for decades and been among the nicest people they knew before they were hauled off, at which point it will become unpopular and peter out.
The 2025 initiative which is based on a Dunning Kruger understanding of the importance of a functioning bureaucracy, won’t so much turn the government into a political machine that implements a right wing utopia, as it will turn it into a dysfunctional mess.
Trump will go after his enemies but it will be more in terms of specific individuals who pissed him off rather than a purge of anyone who voted Democrat, and rather than involving falling out of windows or being carted off to black sites, will involve IRS audits and lawfare giving the targets massive headaches and costing millions in legal fees but ultimately not going anywhere.
He may lean on traditional media companies to be more “fair and balanced” so we see more of the kinds of things that happened at the Washington post. But traditional media was dying anyway and the new media is harder to silence. Also at some level people will notice that the US has become largely dysfunctional and the economy has crashed whether the media tells them or not.
The truth is with the exception of the maybe some on the freedom caucus, most Republican politicians don’t want a dictatorship, most Republican voters don’t want a dictatorship, the supreme court doesn’t want a dictatorship, and Trump doesn’t have the constitutional fortitude to push it through on his own.
Well, this turned out to be absolute shit, didn’t it?
Got any more guarantees for us?
You have a great deal more faith in the goodness of people than I do. I canot remember who said this “10 % of people are very good. 10% of people are very evil. All the rest go whichever way the wind blows.”
I seem to remember a lot of that during his first term. It changed nothing.
I strongly disagree with this. For a quite a while, the Republican party has been changing from a group with positions and ideals, to the party of Trump. Those who remain in power either actively want a dictatorship or are fine with letting one replace our current government. The same is true of those who voted them into power.
Trump is not now, and has not been for a long time, acting alone.
It doesn’t matter who says they don’t want a dictatorship if all they do is wring their hands and say “OMG!”.
What are they actually prepared to do to confront it?
Suppose they are [channeling Susan Collins] very concerned and have many questions about the slide into dictatorship?
Yeah, as mentioned before what would be more likely would be for people to react with something like “What kind of question is that?” or “What do you mean, ‘capitalism’?” but that’s because many people have become primed to expect any “answer me Yes or No” question to be some sort of trick. But that’s not the same as not seeing a distinguishing value.
Alright, I am gong to back up a moment and do something unusual, which is to admit that I wrongly overgeneralized. I am actually heartened by the responses as irate as they are, and I’ll apologize specifically to those who expressed offense and frustration, @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, @MrDibble, and @thorny_locust .
I do want to express where some of this is coming from because I’m surprised that you all seem unaware, but this is based on interactions I’ve seen on social media (mainly Twitter, TikTok, and BlueSky) in past months. The divide was growing since the 2016 election but after the Hamas attacks last year it became completely unhinged.
Previous to that, I didn’t really have a strong sense of the liberal/leftist divide, I saw us as more or less on the same side, but with differing level of intensity, different priorities, and different approaches. But in recent years it’s become clear (at least in my online interactions) that lots of leftists hate liberals with such an intensity and absolutism that there’s no daylight at all. I don’t actually need to ask them to equate Nazism with capitalism, any attempt to find common ground or limits to their absolutism just ends up in them doubling down even harder.
I will refrain from doing that, but I’d like you all to reflect on that as well. This message board is of course online but it’s an outlier due to moderation and age demographics. What I’m seeing elsewhere in places that are More Online (Twitter, Bluesky, TikTok) are a dozen times more extreme than what I’m seeing expressed here, but more importantly much more voluminous and widespread. So while I will not get into “No True Leftist” territory, I would likewise encourage the rest of you to consider what’s happening in other online spaces. I would like to think you all are the silent majority of leftists, but from where I sit, reasonable folks like yourselves appear to be a dwindling minority.
But anyway, that’s just where I’m coming from, and to be clear this is foremost an unreserved apology in response to some very sincere and surprising sentiments. I was wrong and I won’t make that mistake again.
I think we have to keep in mind something we all learned 25 years ago and have since forgotten: the internet is full of crazy people.
Thank you for that. The willingness to admit that one was wrong is important; so is the willingness to not overgeneralize. The lack of these things in many people is I think in large part what’s gotten us into this mess.
I do appreciate that. I think the leftists you were talking about, who would make the claim that capitalism is as bad as Nazism, have been around for a really long time, and are also much rarer than you think.
I’ve certainly run into them (and gotten into arguments with them), but I agree that they aren’t all leftists. Just a very loud and determined fraction of them.
Yup.
Did you read ghe paragraph after the one you quoted?