This actually comforts me, somehow, even if it’s not intended to do so, and I thank you.
Trump’s got the time and the targets.
What’s truly frightening to me is that the consequences of his victory in terms of the global, truly history-changing, and appalling consequences.
This could easily be the undoing of a convention of 80 years of human progress, decency and dignIty (relatively speaking compared to the entire preceding vista of western history). In 50 or 100 years from now scholars could be studying this the same way we study the holocaust or the world wars.
There could be papers written on such things as:
- why he was elected and the Democrats so soundly defeated;
- how the US pulled out of NATO;
- how aid to Ukraine was ceased;
- how Russia took Ukraine;
- how the remainder of NATO was forced into a world war with Russia and China;
- how the US became an extreme and punitive Christian theocracy; and/or
- Any awful variations of these.
All of this terrifies me.
Well, this one I think we won’t need to worry about. Congress and Biden passed a law prohibiting a president from withdrawing the USA from NATO without Senate approval.
https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/
I know that they set up a Trump-proofing thing. But I suspect that, in reality, Trump can now do manipulate things so that he can do whatever he wants.
And who controls the Senate now?
That depends on whether Rick Scott decides to nuke the filibuster the very first time Democrats use it the way the Fascists have been doing for the last 15 years.
What makes you think laws matter? He’ll control the whole government and has zero concern for the law, nobody will actually enforce anything like that. He’ll be able withdraw from NATO, tell Putin it’s OK to nuke Ukraine or do any other awful thing he wants and nobody will lift a hand to stop him. Law or not.
Yup. America has given the orange shitbag a blank check.
The United States of America is now the world’s first Fruit Salad republic. It’s a banana republic with an orange as the lead.
I’m with you on that. Wonder how the brownshirts will mainfest themselves in this modern context. Should be no short supply of them.
Also agreed. Kamala ran a fine campaign that was disregarded by a large, subhuman segment of the populace that has become fucking alien-as-shit to this Canadian. My anger gets me thinking how I can avoid buying American procucts, but unfortunately the ubiquity of such goods and services would make such a boycott ridiculously impossible, let alone the futility of one, single consumer taking a such a stand. I wish bitching about the situation to friends would be some form of consolation, but, nah, not so far.
And Wrenching Spanners and Crafter Man can go fucking defenestrate themselves.
All over reddit I’m seeing this massive backlash that amounts to “well the democrats called everyone racists!” or some minor flaw with the Harris campaign. And I think maybe our media set the narrative for this and it was hugely influential. Essentially, the way the media covered this whole election was that Trump’s faults don’t count, and that if Harris has one little flaw, then you have to vote for Trump by default. And that seems to be the way these people are talking. Not that anything about Trump was good, or that they think Trump will make the country better in some specific way, but that they have some grievance with the democrats or there was some comparitively minor flaw about Kamala, so obviously we have to vote for Trump.
Our oligarchical “liberal media” is wildly pro-republican and that’s ignoring the literal propaganda mouthpieces for the republican party. It’s disgusting and they’ve baked this massive bias in favor of conservatives into our cultural dynamic that I don’t think there’s anything anyone is going to do to change it at this point.
man, you really told him!
That should have been the response from day one to all those fascists who think that, because hate is easy, it is therefore right.
Coming late to this thread but i had to jump in on this.
The Roman Empire did lots and lots and fucktons of horrible things, threw its weight around and subjugated other nations, etc. But when it collapsed the order and stability and civilization it had provided collapsed with it and kicked off the 500 or so years of the Dark Ages.
Things are bad enough as it is without a rerun of that.
The Dark Ages are a myth. The world overall did just fine without Rome.
Globally, for sure. I doubt that the fall of Rome had any impact on the average Joe in, say, Teotihuacan .
But aren’t the world’s economies much, much more inextricably linked nowadays ?
No, I mean previously Roman Europe, North Africa and Asia, as well. The Franks were just thoroughly Romanized foederati who continued (and evolved) the Empire in Western Europe, for instance. And even the other “barbarians” such as the Visigoths and Alans were largely Romanized by the end of the Western Empire.
Sure, but they weren’t exactly isolated enclaves in 500 BCE either (other than the Americas vs the Old World) - Rome traded with China, for instance.
Yes, and that’s why there’s instead of setting off some kind of centuries long global Dark Age, the collapse of the US would be locally terrible for us but the rest of the world would adjust and move on. Altered, to be sure, perhaps even significantly, but not to the fanciful extent that is being imagined.
Even the Fall of Rome leading to Dark Ages lasting centuries is itself largely a myth. The Eastern Empire carried on largely intact, expanding and contracting through the centuries. And it’s not like the various polities that made up the West just vanished and suffered through centuries of chaos - they were significantly altered, to be sure, but still existed in some coherent form.
The Black Death had a bigger impact on humanity - if you want a lesson we have clearly never really learned from.
This comes to the heart of it. There’s this idealistic fantasy of American exceptionalism - that America is somehow different from anything that currently exists or has ever come before (and that many take to mean ‘better’). And that’s not really true. But we do love to believe it, to our own detriment much of the time.
It’s not the ideal of American exceptionalism that is keeping the global economy together, its the US military overwelming superiority that keeps the capitolism moving along.
I did a quick read of Project 2025 and it is apparent that the Trump adminstaration is going to concentrate on Chinises aggression in SE Asia, because that is where the economic future is. And its clear that he will walk away from NATO as much as possible and require Europe to up their defense game. Which sucks for Ukraine.
The other take I took away is that abortion is going to be banned, along with abortion pills. Its very clear in that document that women will lose significant rights.
That’s what the majority of Americans voted for and it sucks ass. The more I read their plan the more I want to get out of this country and say adios America.