Starting with his own?
I feel like disgraced former sherif Joe Arpaio (who Trump pardoned in 2017) serves as a blueprint. He discriminated heavily against Latinos for traffic stops, put them in a “tent city” (that he bragged was a concentration camp) to serve inadequate water and expired food, then had them do forced labor in a chain gang.
You know damn well there are some Project 2025 types planning to do something very similar with the immigrants they’ve rounded up, to put them to work for profit. They’ve openly advocated for taking away DOJ oversight of the prison system, which would make such abuses much easier to carry out.
The proposal includes a mandate to eliminate all existing DOJ consent decrees. Consent decrees are typically issued by a court following a DOJ investigation into a pattern of misconduct — they are often used to reform a jurisdiction’s jail system or police department. While the DOJ does not have the authority to end all consent decrees unilaterally, they can request that the court end each agreement and end any further investigations.
Whether or not that is ever implemented by Trump, I don’t know. But these are the kinds of things the people pulling Trump’s strings are wanting to do.
Of course he’s not planning for a genocide! Nobody starts out planning for a genocide, these things just happen.
The truth doesn’t appear to be a powerful ally these days.
The truth is on our side?
Oh, goody. Yet another moral victory. 
Whereas men have a hormonal cycle every 24 hours…
When Trump suggested that Canada should be the 51st state, I saw one internet patriot suggest that every Canadian should go out and buy a hunting rifle. Maybe he got the idea from that famous documentary Red Dawn?
I agree that Trump - and his minions - are not planning on what most of us would define as genocide, slavery, nuclear war. But I was not aware that folk - on these boards at least - were claiming he was.
If such was said, I would imagine the words were used hyperbolically. Someone could be arguing that reducing health care/research will affect certain groups in a manner akin to genocide. Or that folk will be required to labor in a gig economy that could be (inaccurately) described as slavery. But, no - I see no evidence that Trump or those closest to him are sincerely desirous of killing off or enslaving any particular group. Rather, they are utterly indifferent to what happens to the least fortunate among us.
I know this is the Pit but could you point out where such charges are being made around here sufficiently to warrant a pitting?
I agree with the OP. There’s different degrees of evil. On a 1-10, with 1 being the least and 10 being the most evil, Trump is maybe a 4 or 5. When Dopers and other Trump opponents keep saying “He’s ten, ten, ten, ten!” - it’s not only crying wolf, but also essentially drowns out any meaningful discussion on whether Trump is now slowly progressing from 5 to 6.
I’d argue that one of the problems we’re having now is that we heard about how Romney was evil, and McCain, and of course Bush, and don’t forget the cause of every problem in this country for the last 50 years Reagan. Pretty much all fascists too. Parts of the left have attacked every Republican politician so hard for so long that people tune out Trump as more of the same. Especially if they’re not actively paying attention to what is happening.
Yup, and that was said as early as 2016.
The difference, of course, is that Trump is genuinely bad in a way that Romney and others weren’t. But yes, we have to be careful about not portraying “level 5” evil as “level 10,” lest we have run out of arguing room when or if Level-10 evil genuinely shows up someday.
If you told people back before Trump’s first term that he would be reelected, what the results would be and what he and his croneys want them to be, I don’t think anyone with more than a dozen braincells would say that the amount of panic would only rank 5 or 6 out of 10. This is definitely a case of bringing the lobsters to a slow boil then telling them to calm down and quit squawking because at least they haven’t been eaten yet.
[Because Dope]
Actually, interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia) was conspicuously absent from Justice Thomas’s short list of “next-ups.” The list was confined to:
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965): This case established a right to privacy that protected the use of contraceptives for married couples.
Lawrence v. Texas (2003): This case struck down a Texas law that criminalized same-sex sexual conduct, establishing a right to private, consensual sexual relations.
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): This case legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, establishing a fundamental right to marry for all couples.
Yeah. Go figure, huh? The oversight of all oversights, I’m sure.
How, in dog’s name, is this “obeying in advance?”
The problem isn’t that intelligent, educated people are detailing what this administration is doing. It isn’t that we are sounding the alarm. It is NOT that we are telling people EXACTLY what the slippery slope entails.
The problem is that STUPID people are willingly giving themselves over to the fold, so to speak.
Let’s define “stupid.”
In this sense, I mean it to mean people for whom the physical exertion of rational thought is a bridge too far. Not people who are naturally incapable of higher intellectual processes. I mean the people who CHOOSE to be stupid. They go along with the status quo. They find an in-group, join it, and do whatever they are told to do.
They make stupid faces in selfies.
They wear the same stupid sleeveless shirts cut all the way down to their waists at their stupid pop country fests, right next to the girls wearing their stupid jeans with more cuts than fabric and boots that make it difficult to walk.
They wear stupid red hats, because they want to belong to a cult.
They do logical somersaults to make whatever the last thing was that the stupid Fuck In Charge said make sense.
HOW IN THE FUCK DO YOU GET THROUGH TO THAT LEVEL OF STUPIDITY???
People are generally driven to belong to a group. What the MAGA movement has done is appeal to the very stupidest of the stupid, and tell them “Hey! You belong over here!” …and over there they went.
It’s the same reason stupid people in Columbus, Ohio (Where I live, mind…) who never went to college and have no ties, whatsoever, to OSU, claim that they “bleed Scarlet and Gray.”
It’s “Team Mentality.” It takes no effort on the part of the person choosing to be stupid.
So, when someone says “that’s ah-MAY-zing” to you, know that they didn’t want to exert any real effort, and have subjected themselves to this bullshit nonsense.
When someone says they are a “Libertarian,” know that that term has long since jumped the shark.
When someone says they “aren’t racist,” I take them at their word, until they prove me otherwise. In this case, that was a simple MAGA vote.
It’s always been about “belonging to a team,” and “winning.” There was NEVER any thought put to it beyond that.
I have been braying about this shit for years. Pop Country is the perfect example. By any professional musician’s objective measurement, it is created and produced for the lowest common denominator. (That is, it is for stupid people who don’t want to think about their music.) They want easily-repeatable lyrics, chord structures, verse-chorus-verse structures, etcetera. THAT is what it is there for.
MAGA tapped into that. They just made it in Politics. Then, they made it easy to say the quiet part out loud.
I, for one, will not stand idly by while the country I love founders like this, and tips inexorably into the abyss of failed republics. Those of us who KNOW what is coming, and are SEEING what is already here HAVE to stand up against this shit. Even if I stand completely alone, I will know that I stood on the right side.
And yes, for the record, I do believe that genocide and slavery and totalitarianism are COMPLETELY on the table. And yes, words DO fucking matter. Say it over, and over, and over the fuck again until everyone fucking listens.
Thank dog this is the Pit.
When the best attribute of a a leader of a country is that he’s a moron so he may not be able to do all he wants to do, it’s time to step back and consider other options.
Good post, the whole thing. Well said.
I’ve said many times that I think that Bush the Younger was a basically decent person, who was just unfortunately enough of an idiot that it was easy for actual evil people to manipulate him.
I yearn to return to a time when Republicans are wrong within normal parameters.
I’ll be more respectful in my criticisms of them than I was in the past. Trump has made all of them look better in retrospect. His level of incompetence, corruption, immorality, and disgracefulness was beyond anything I could have imagined for an elected official just 10 years ago.
Maybe. The post was on the prostelysing side.
I agree with a bunch of it.
But, really? Blaming country music because you don’t like it is a little much.
It’s not my first choice of music. I have some I like (…ahem, Merle Haggard). Music choice is MY choice. Or your choice.
I almost said my right or privilege. But I suppose that’s silly.
Don’t tell me what to listen to. If you have something interesting you like, I’ll listen. No promises. But you like what you like.
Just a tiny bit reminiscent of the time that evil Rock and Roll was what we were warned about.
To be fair, Beck, I said Pop Country, meaning today’s incipient bullshit.
I love Merle Haggard.
Part of what made me make that statement, in particular, is that I was yearning for the days of Farm Aid, when the likes of Merle and Willie and Prine and Mellencamp fought for workers’ rights…and in a way WON.
Today’s country music is, largely, garbage.
A lot of it involves pop stars slapping on a fake cowboy hat and singing the same shit but with a fake twang, and country stations desperately playing them to stay relevant and bring in quick cash