I’m unwilling to live my remaining years fending off fascist threats, especially if fascism tends to be getting stronger by the day. Id rather they tried an insurrection and got crushed once and for all, like i wish Sherman had done in 1865.
I’ve said this before, and I recognize it’s anecdotal. But my work brings me into contact with a good handful of officers (generally Colonels, but an occasional general; both serving and retired). I’ve got to know a few pretty well, and I’ve always been impressed by how seriously they take that oath. Their allegiance is to the nation/constitution first.
My OP specified that I, and most other Americans, won’t have the opportunity to go anywhere.
Furthermore, what kind of conversation do you hope for? Baseless optimism? Boundless hope?
I think both history and current events show that optimism and hope can’t be the sole strategy to approach the world.
In a world of 8 billion people, think of the hundreds of millions of people whose lives fall into grave misfortune every year—poverty, disease, lack of resources, accident, misfortune, poor local economy, injustice, oppression, crime. Faced with likely bad circumstances would you just counsel optimism and hope?
Or is it perhaps that you have been among the planet’s fortunate minority to benefit from the accident of privileged birth and luck—like many of us here, including me—and you are just unaccustomed to having your attention drawn to the many possible negative outcomes that suddenly—unfairly?—seem more likely.
My OP asks specifically what people are going to do and what should they do in our circumstances. I think that’s quite a practical question to consider in our situation. If that spies someone, anyone to suggest or take practical course of action to avert catastrophe—then that’s where I put my hope and optimism—trying to initiate contemplation and planning of action.
When it comes down to it, human beings are successful when they cooperate to each other’s benefit, not when they leave others to their fate.
On some ways I see this as an opportunity for those of us who have thus far lived lives of privilege to rejoin the rest of humanity and learn lessons of cooperation and collective action and … who knows, I don’t know. That’s my attempt at hope.
I’m not saying anything about optimism or hope. I’m just making the simple observation that human nature is to wallow in discussions like this, and I’m no exception. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong or irrational, just that it’s less likely to result in excited discussions about collective action and more about (to use a metaphor I’ve used before) smothering your kids in their sleep. At least you seem to have had good intentions; if this thread were in, say, the subreddit r/collapse, it’d be a different story entirely.
(Though I’d also observe that “hope” of some sort is necessary to take any action whatsoever. I personally do not define it strictly as “the belief that it’ll turn out okay, so I can just sit and do nothing and wait for it.” Without hope, you’d be more likely to join the fascists in hanging minorities just to survive.)
I have a lot of opinions on this that stem from having relatives in my grandparents/great grandparents that were German Jews - in the Holocaust some of them fled Germany for the US, some hid, one joined a Dutch resistance group (they weren’t really directly attacking the Nazis as far as I know - they were the group that helped my family hide and things like that were their main activities), and some that were killed in concentration camps.
In basically any fascist takeover scenario, I think any way you can flee, hide, or just try your best to not get noticed by people in high places is the course I’d go for. You probably can’t fight a Nazi regime and there’s no shame in trying to keep yourself and your family alive.
If you look at successful insurgencies in modern history, they didn’t just stockpile guns. They typically had foreign governments giving them military weapons (anti-aircraft, anti-tank etc.) and possibly intel, training, etc. And they fought years-long protracted conflicts, often on and off conflicts, where huge numbers of the insurgents died. Of course it’s admirable to make this sacrifice against fascists but I personally wouldn’t throw my life away like that and I both think the vast majority won’t be willing to ultimately and also that it’s completely understandable. I want to believe I have the courage to help persecuted people evade the fascists, but I’d view shooting back at the fascists as just throwing my life away.
That’s the whole point - given how tepid the response to the current coup attempt is, I very much doubt that will happen. Democrats don’t have fight in them, this is the whole discussion earlier about our history has been whitewashed into thinking that violence is never the answer and you’ve always got to engage in peaceful protest only in all situations.
I think both the democratic party and the democratic voter base would just roll over and accept it if this happened. There would be some grumbling, some articles written in the New Yorker, maybe some formal letters of protest, but no meaningful action. We don’t have enough fight in us to really fight a coup. Too many of us are so desperate to believe everything is normal - and there’s evidence of that in this very thread - that we’ll somehow manage to convince ourselves that an obviously rigged election and an overthrow of government are all just part of politics as usual and we don’t have to do anything. People will still be saying “oh that’s the sort of thing that happens in banana republics, it can’t happen here” even while it’s happening. You see that today with a huge percentage of the American population refusing to acknowledge that Jan 6 was a coup attempt, even/especially on these boards.
Honestly I think the only chance we have is a military counter-coup. The US military has incredible institutional strength and philosophy and they really drill into them the importance of the constitution and the US idea of civics. I think they might actively fight against a coup. Obviously, in general, you don’t want your military taking part in a coup, but I think ours is the rare situation that our military would actually be on the right side. My concern is that right wingers have had years to replace the men of integrity who value this country with their own sycophants.
No, it isn’t, because post-election shenanigans trump voting. You can’t vote yourself out of a rigged election, this should be really obvious. You can’t vote against things that invalidate your vote.
On the evening of Jan 6 I was so relieved, I was seriously happy. I went over to my girlfriend’s place to celebrate. I knew their coup attempt was coming, I had no doubt about it. I thought they’d botched it with incompetence. I thought that this was their big move, and the American people, caught passively in denial, would finally see the encroaching fascist coup for what it was and take it seriously and fight against it. I thought Jan 6 was close, but they fucked it up, and now we were going to finally wake up and make sure it didn’t happen.
… and here we are, a year and a half later, we never had that wakeup call. A few of the actual insurrectionists have had some minor prison sentences, but no one involved in setting it up has been even indicted. People are still acting like a right wing coup is some crazy fantasy even though it happened before their very eyes and continues to happen. They’re still in denial about it, they still see this as politics as usual. The response to it has been tepid, weak, incompetent. After the Beer Hall Putsch, they at least threw Hitler in jail for a few years - we’re not even going to do that much. Our response to it has basically been “keep doing it until you get it right, we’re not going to stop you”
Yes, I know, the hearings are ongoing now, but it’s not going to result in anything. I will be utterly shocked if this results in anyone big being charged with a serious crime, as not only they deserve, but is absolutely necessary to preserve the rule of law in our country.
I would’ve been so incredibly fucking disappointed on the night of Jan 6 had you told me that this would be the result. That we’d watch their orchestrated, deliberate, planned, facilitated coup attempt right before our eyes and we basically ignored it and pretended it didn’t happen.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 01, 1924Hitler sentenced for his role in Beer Hall Putsch
Adolf Hitler is sentenced for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of November 8, 1923. The attempted coup in Munich by right-wing members of the army and the Nazi Party was foiled by the government, and Hitler was charged with high treason. Despite his conviction, Hitler was out of jail before the end of the year {…}
Hitler sentenced for his role in Beer Hall Putsch
Well that’s the lesson. Hitler got a token punishment, and it came back to bite Germany in the ass. We couldn’t even do that much. The Jan 6 insurrectionists (the ones who planned and facilitated it) aren’t even going to get punished, they’re going to be allowed to continue their coup - what’s the lesson there?
You need to crush attempts by people who are above the law to undermine your entire system of government. A slap on the wrist, or worse, no punishment at all is just an invitation for them to keep trying again until they get it right. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.
You left out the, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women! part.
No state has allowed its legislature to choose electors since 1860, and by 1832 that state (South Carolina) was the only one doing so. Any attempt now to disfranchise the population would likely run afoul of the 14th amendment and would result in a legal challenge that will not be settled before the next president is sworn in, and I honestly can’t imagine even this Supreme Court going along with such a plan.
I’m with you, but I’d still prefer almost anything to having this vile network of insurrectionists operating in secret, making their plans and plots and schemes to foist fascism on us utterly unnoticed by anyone. If we fail, we fail, and so be it, but I want to have the inevitable fight out in the open-- and now, before they get even stronger.
The Supreme Court? How many divisions do they control?
Funny… being a “functioning free country” didn’t stop the government from rolling tanks down I-75 and into the city during the '67 Detroit Riot. Admittedly, nukes were not used on that occasion.
Anyone thinks the government wouldn’t drive tanks through a US city doesn’t know history and is also just fooling themself.
Perhaps you haven’t been following recent news. Disenfranchising the population is exactly what was attempted in the 2020 election, and has been proposed for the next one. The electoral system is what makes this possible (some think).
The 60s were a time of real social change exactly because people were willing to put up a real fight against their government for those changes. Extreme moves like this did indeed harm the credibility of the government and ultimately lead to social change through making the populace more sympathetic to the movement (and scaring the powers that be).
Just because you can point to an outlier situation in which this occurs doesn’t mean it was no big deal. So, imagine, the Republicans blatantly steal the election, big protests happen, and then they just come out with tanks and murder all the protestors Tiananmen square style. No big deal, right? The government would casually do that and there would be no costs for it, because hey, it happened once already.
These arguments are extremely reductivist and miss the whole point that the real world would be a messy situation with a lot of factors, and using tanks to mow down protestors is not something the government of a nominally democratic society is going to do lightly. The idea of “your rifles don’t matter, they have tanks!” is reductivism to the point of absurdity - like we’re playing a game of rock paper scissors except it’s rifles tanks nukes- and ignores the real world implications of the government using the full force of its military, after a coup which it will spend a lot of effort pretending was not a coup, to quell civil unrest. Such a move would be kind of a big deal, and exactly the sort of thing that would wake people up after their complacency after a coup, and something they’d definitely try to avoid unless absolutely necessary. In addition, a military that might feel uneasy about what’s going on after unprecedented election shenanigans might be motivated to take a side if they’re ordered to start slaughtering protestors.
And if they do take that step, it will likely backfire in the long run as it will galvanize resistance against them from people who would’ve otherwise been passive. I didn’t say that they would never do it under any circumstances, I said that it wouldn’t be something they’d take lightly. Forcing them to do that would be beneficial to a resistance movement compared to them not needing to do that because they can use less extreme measures to fully suppress civil unrest.
What I find particularly frightening is that a large number of Republicans believe what they’re doing is preserving democratic priniciples.
That’s what I thought too. At the time, a lot of Republicans were shocked by what was happening and I honestly thought this was going to be a wake up call for millions of Americans. But it didn’t take long for them to pretend like nothing happened and why are we making a big deal out of a few rowdy patriots who were just upset that their votes weren’t counted?
By who? Aside from one state legislator in Arizona I haven’t seen any actual attempts by Republicans to change the way their state picks electors, and his plan was immediately dismissed by the speaker. Do keep in mind that any attempt to do so would have to happen before the election and would have to endure all legal challenges and stays before then as well. Any Republicans who want to change the way their states pick electors are running out of time.
Also, there’s that small matter of how they’d lose all of their electors if they implemented such a plan.
There are potential answers to this afoot in the evil RW plan:
How’s that plan working out for Turkey?