I don’t think I suggested that it did: indeed, that’s the problem in a nutshell. Free and fair elections need to be (1) free, (2) fair, and (3) perceived to be free and fair. If any one of these is compromised, the whole thing is compromised.
Personally, I’m not nearly as worried about the elections as I am about what is happening between now and November on all sorts of other fronts.
That’s the part in these vague doomsday fantasies where everyone in the country and at every level of government acquiesces to the invincibility and inevitability of God-Emperor Trump and his thousand year Reich, and we all live unhappily ever after in the glorious new world order, and it totally doesn’t lead to revolution or secession or the dissolution of the US or Trump being forcibly retired by his own palace guard.
The more you embellish, the less convincing you sound.
Ha ha! Oh, you were serious. Things are very, very different this time around.
And even then, people in the camp will be arguing “Well it’s not correctly called a ‘concentration camp’ because the sign on the fence says ‘gathering area’. So we’re probably OK.”
Yes, we’ve established that things are different.
They’re not different in ways that make it easier for him to subvert democracy. He’s older and more infirm. He’s less popular with every demographic, including Republicans. He has less competent people working for him. There is a mass public movement organized against him. Federal election law has been changed to make the things he tried to do in 2020 impossible. Literally earlier today a judge issued a nationwide injunction against one of his attempts to unilaterally change electoral law.
He is weak and he can be defeated and you are being counterproductive by preemptively surrendering to the idea that Democrats cannot win elections.
You do know that he’s not doing this by himself, right?
Doesn’t change the fact that we have the ability to make sure he’s not successful.
We had the ability to make sure he could never be in a position of power back in 2021. A lot of Republicans who were horrified just days earlier decided not to do anything. Of those who are still around, what makes you so sure they wont’ sit on their hands again?
I don’t expect Republican politicians to impeach him.
I expect that by continuing to protest and document the atrocities taking place and refusing to let Trump’s goon squads intimidate us into silence and hopelessness, we can turn the tide of opinion enough to put Democrats back into power in Congress this November so that for his last two years in office he will be fangless and impotent, and that thereafter we can get a progressive Democrat elected in 2028 who can lead the process of undoing as much of the harm he’s done as possible.
One way or another, he has less than three years left before he will never be president again. We need to get people out to vote in such numbers that tricks and shenanigans won’t be able to change the outcome as to what happens after that.
The only thing that brings me comfort is watching his health deteriorate.
Another swing and a miss for you.
If you knew any history, you’d be aware that genocide and slavery are not things that didn’t happen in the past. History is full of examples of societies where genocide and slavery happened. History even includes an example of a nuclear war happening.
But you also referred to things happening now. So which of those things do you think is happening now in the United States? Genocide or slavery or nuclear war?
Great! He and his lackeys and enablers, meanwhile, will sit back and wait politely, and do nothing to prevent that from happening.
I’m honestly not trying to be defeatist. It’s just that rules and elections won’t save you. I think your “what we should do now” is spot on. It’s just that the Democratic Party is not going to fix this unless we ALSO make it impossible for THEM to ignore us.
Since I never brought up any of your favorite strawmen, I would have to say…you are full of shit.
We’re the ones who are saying Trump should be arrested for the real crimes he’s already committed.
You’re the ones who are saying “No, wait, let’s talk about the much worse crimes he’s going to commit in the future.”
People are telling you “Don’t get in the way because there is nothing to worry about.” What people are telling you is “There’s a serious problem going on and we’re trying to fix it. If you’re not going to help could you at least go rant somewhere else so you’re don’t get in our way?”
Of course they’ll try shenanigans. We just need to make sure they fail. They already tried gerrymandering and we out-gerrymandered them in response. They tried demanding voters’ personal data - states are refusing and judges are siding with them. They’re changing the way postmarks work - we need to send in our votes earlier or hand-deliver them to a dropbox or the courthouse or the registrar of voters. They wanna send ICE guys to stand around outside a polling place and look menacing? We send five times as many guys with phones to record them. They can’t be everywhere at once - we can, because we outnumber them. They can’t shoot all of us. They can dispute results in one or two districts, but it won’t make a difference if we cast enough votes to flip forty.
What doesn’t help is vague declarations that “he’ll cancel the elections” or “it’ll all be rigged anyway”, because then you’re telling people that fighting back is pointless. It’s preemptive surrender and it plays right into their hands.
I’ll give you “older and more infirm”.
However:
I will agree with you here. I am not advocating preemptive surrender. I’m just afraid that you are overly optimistic, and people in general are not actually taking this all seriously enough.
I’m afraid Americans are like the story of the frogs in the slowly boiling pot of water
Many are too comfortable. Many are too immersed in their own bubble of misinformation. Many are ill-educated. Many are too much under the influence of alcohol, legal and illegal drugs. Many are racist assholes. Many just want to see the country burn.
There are too few of you left who give a shit.
…why on earth would you think this?
No seriously: why?
I think Trump should be arrested for the real crimes he’s already committed. And I bet if you asked every single person in this thread, whether they agree with you or not, they would say the same thing.
Do you know where you can go to “rant somewhere so you aren’t in the way?”
Right here.
There is nothing that I say in the Pit, nothing that I can say anywhere else on these boards that will get in your way. I’m not stopping you.
So go ahead then. What’s next on your agenda? Arresting Trump? By all means arrest him. Don’t let a handful of nobodies on an obscure messageboard stop the hammer of justice.
Jesus Christ. The child is five years old.
I cannot express how shit this this is. Even in my (very non imigrant welcoming) “third world shithole”, Zimbabwe, a child is treated as a child.
That the governments of Robert Mugabe and Emerson Mngagwa, two of the worst of the worst of tin-pot dictators, did not do this is a shameful sign that the USA is hoping to join us here in the third world, apparently with enthusiasm.