Since Jan. 6 some of us have openly speculated about Republicans’ plans for red state legislatures to overturn unfavorable election results and install their preferred electors instead. The lack of pushback against these charges frightens me.
If Democrats were accused of something similar, our objections would be long and loud, as they assault our core values of free and fair elections with all eligible voters able to easily participate.
The conservative response, however, has been crickets. It has become distressingly clear that such a plan is not only considered acceptable, but perhaps also optimal. They are rejecting majoritarian democracy in plain view.
IF the US as we know it turns unrecognizable it will no longer be able or willing to prop up these expat havens so many of you dream of running to. No help with local/ international security, ease of financial transactions, diplomatic relations etc. you will be cut off and left to what transpires in that country.
The Islamic State has cells all over Europe and In the Americas. Have you forgotten about the jihadists threats in those pastoral EU countries some of y’all are thinking of kicking back and watching the CVII unfold from afar? Don’t be naive, that such a disruption in the US will not have repercussions across the globe that will give opportunity for more violence.
How will you really prepare for a global fallout because you can’t run and hide.
So based on most of the posts here and given that my chances of leaving the States are nil, should I start getting the scotch and sleeping pills ready now, or what? (I’m 95% joking and have no thoughts or impulses of suicide or self-harm. Just some dark humor), but the picture you’re painting is damned scary, as it certainly should be.) What can I really do to prevent this regime apart from vote?
After testifying that he informed Trump that the DOJ had found no evidence of widespread election fraud, Bill Barr said in a later interview that he would still vote for Trump in '24 because (paraphrasing) “the greatest threat to the country comes from liberals having the power to impose their disastrous policies.”
They are justifying the dissolution of liberal democracy and are unremorseful about doing so.
There is the old economic cliche that “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.” I think that applies to democracy as well. I’m not sure if there’s anywhere on Earth that things won’t get measurably worse if the US regresses into autocracy, if only due to the risk of conflict, protectionism, and trade disruption.
The wife and I often talk about moving back to Japan if things get bad here. But Japan exists under the US security umbrella and is heavily dependent on energy import, so life isn’t going to be a walk in the park over there either. Plus, when you look under the hood, it’s not exactly a beacon of freedom either.
Organize. Not a militia, but politically and socially. You’ll be fighting lobbyists and their PACs, but a few dozen committed people, especially with media savvy, can really make a difference. Unions are a really good model, and if someone could get one going not so much for workers’ right as for integrity and honor, that would be good. For non-monetary cultural values such as education and (real) criticial thinking and anti-racism and the arts. Give people something to work towards.
I’ve pushed back against false accusations from lefties hereabouts and gotten crickets, which leaves me figuring there’s little point; but, if a lack of pushback frightens you, then let me hereby, uh, pushback, as a right-winger who sure does hope to vote GOP in this election and the next, just like I did the last time I went to the polls: I object.
Good for you. I hope you’re right and that I’m wrong. In light of what has already happened and what continues to happen in red state legislatures, I continue to stand by my prediction. If it comes true, I hope you stand by democracy instead of political power.
Or a Haiti. Take away the Federal government’s guns, the hope for abolition, and add a couple extra decades of slavery, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Confederacy got would have been wiped off the map by a slave revolt within a few decades.
In his alt-history books, Harry Turtledove postulated a Marxist revolution occurring among Southern blacks during WW1, in a world where the Confederacy was on Englands side and the US on Germany’s side.
The USSR dissolved in 1991 while the United States continues to exist. Even with all the problems the United States is currently facing, we’re still better off than Russia. For now at least. We’ll see how far the Republicans drag us down.
If I didn’t have elderly family in the U.S. I likely would sell my businesses and move to a country with easy investor visas (I think with ~$10m in liquidated assets there’s a decent number of countries where I’d qualify), there was a time when I took an oath to fight for my country but I no longer value this country in the same way, and will be mostly fine when its dissolution occurs–I say that sort of in a theoretical sense, while I expect the dissolution I don’t expect it in my lifetime.
FWIW the people who keep posting rural vs urban maps of red / blue breakdowns as examples of why we can’t have a civil war or various states breaking away, that’s ahistorical nonsense. The Confederacy was not a secessionist monolith. In fact many Confederate States had significant pro-Union population, and for that matter a number of Union states had significant pro-Confederacy population.
This mostly didn’t mean much because all that matters is the political leadership. In the States that made up the Confederacy, the vast majority of the political leadership was in favor of secession, and they structured the secession conventions (the mechanism differed state by state) in a way that for most of the States, anti-secessionists weren’t even really allowed to participate. In an atmosphere of open secession it thus won’t matter that there are big blue areas in Texas and Florida, what will matter is what do the people with power want? Who controls the legislative, executive machinery of government? Who gives the State police and military forces orders? The reality is in a secession atmosphere those people make the decisions, and the vast majority of the locals will simply passively accept it, period.
Look to the Confederacy itself for a good example–most pro-Unionists simply hunkered down, tried to avoid being drafted at most. A few fled to the North and volunteered to fight for the Union, a few lead small guerrilla movements inside the Confederacy–but that was incredibly uncommon. The only place where a significant pro-Unionist population took meaningful direct action was in Virginia, where the western counties seceded and formed West Virginia–and that was functionally because McClellan’s forces pushed Confederate troops out of most of the “trans-Allegheny” in 1861. I doubt it will be much different in modern times. Most people aren’t willing to bleed for their political preferences if there is food on their table and their air conditioning works.
I certainly don’t believe that we in Canada are going to be safe from collateral damage from whatever goes badly in the US.
IMO, if you go down we’ll be dragged down with you. Once/if significant violence surfaces in US, what are the chances of Canada’s western separatists/freedom convoy idiots rising to the surface?
And, depending on how things go in the US, what are the chances of hardcore conservatives deciding that it’s time to wrap up the whole manifest destiny project?
Also, if US is sufficiently distracted then we’ll probably be hosting visitors from Russia and/or China on their respective arctic adventures.
Secession? Can’t happen. Think of the military bases and especially Naval bases. While the oath they took doesn’t mean shit to some of these assholes. It does to others.