Thanks, Hari. I meant every damned word of it.
Thank you for a profoundly moving post. I am honored to be among people like you here and in the real world.
I am a social worker and the population I see every day are the ones most likely to be targeted. Women, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+, etc. I suspect there will be cuts to our funding eventually as well.
What baffles me is how the majority of my coworkers voted in the (insert name of choice - I cannot even type it at this stage of grief).
Leopards will begin some of their faces in the near future.
Me? I’ll likely survive physically but emotionally I am a wreck. I’m too old & fragile to resist and pitch in the fight. I can only cheer from the sidelines.
I haven’t slept well at all since the election and here I am up 2 hours before I usually rise for the third day in a row. I really need to work on that.
Every person who voted for Trump is laughing at reactions like this. That’s motivation enough to not do it.
I say let er rip and burn. I don’t care anymore.
Since the election, I must admit that I have posted on this board a lot of doomsday talk. I was venting, hurt and angry, and also afraid of what was in store for us.
Then I saw this.
Tennessee Brando is right. Harris is not spreading bullshit about rigged elections. No Harris supporters are demanding recounts and filing lawsuits.
Because we are adults, good and decent. This is how you take a loss.
There are big problems in this country. There always were. But we can’t give up.
We have fought so hard to bring us to where we are today. People are not property because of their race like they were at the founding. You can marry whom you love even if the love of your life is the same gender as you are,
Women can choose their destinies regarding whether or not to marry. They can demand an equal pay. Yes, there’s been a lost battle of reproductive rights, but we can still fight this. We had to lose something to wake us up to what we must do.
We must take a lesson from the victors. They overturned Roe by getting involved in local government. By pushing for their beliefs, as odious as those beliefs are. By going to school and community meetings. By demanding action from those politicians who would push their agenda into legislation.
So we must do the same. MAGA’s motives were vile, but their methods were not. We must do what they did. We must show up to local community meetings, make demands. Talk to and elect politicians who will fight for us. Fight for our rights, both those we still have and the one we have lost in Roe vs Wade. Organize, protest, fund, fight!
So that is how to make life worth living, by having something you are willing to die for. We have to get busy and get involved.
I agree with all of the above. This, too, shall pass. I’m depressed today, but I will work through it. I will take care of myself and the people I love. Even the people who voted for that [many bad words redacted], I hope they get everything they want. But they better not come crying to me when they get what they asked for.
I will resist the nightmare to come, just like I did multiple times over the last twenty years (geez, my entire adult life has been spent like this? Arrrgh!) But I can’t do that unless I take care of myself first. I don’t mean emotionally, I mean medically. I don’t have time to worry about the government right now because I’m dealing with a) the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and b) a breast cancer diagnosis I got two weeks before the hurricane. Once the dust has cleared and I’ve beaten cancer with a stick, I’ll then use that stick to knock any fascists I find out of my way.
There is a deliberate crack in the glass and it is getting bigger, and many people in positions of power are trying to break it. Sometimes, outside of storybooks, things just don’t get better or, if they eventually do, it definitely wasn’t worth the cost in pain, suffering and death.
I think this is a matter of perspective. I cannot think of a single group in America that had it better in the 1940s or even the 1990s than they have today. Yes, it’s far from perfect. Yes, there are setbacks. Yes, evil wins sometimes. But there has been incredible progress, and there will be again.
Well, why do you care?
If there’s no hope. If there’s no way to get thru this.
Life is a bitch. It just is.
I’ve lived everyday of my life for just this day. I can’t do anything else.
I may not live through any night, literally.
When I wake up I say “Whew, another day!”
You gotta think about it like tomorrow may never come.
I know it’s cliché, but that’s how people carry on in very trying situations.
Empathy.
It is empathy that caused me to openly march for the rights of women while in the U.S.A.F. and get designated a " no re-up" code on my honorable discharge papers.
It is empathy that leads me to support as much as possible the rights of LGBTQ+ folk.
It is empathy that caused me, an atheist, to become part of a local Episcopal church to help promote a food pantry, a mini village for the homeless (in the parking lot of that selfsame church), and so much more.
It is empathy that causes me to fight for the rights of the LGBTQ+ and/or the disabled at science fiction and fantasy conventions.
I am a 67 year old married white male, but empathy means that my family is vast, and my family has needs that I gladly give.
Yes, that’s right. The 22nd amendment prohibits any individual from being elected to the office of President more than twice. Trump would need to repeal that amendment, which he can’t do without a 2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate. He doesn’t have close to that. As an added safeguard, the repeal would then need to be ratified by at least 3/4 of all the states. That’s never, ever going to happen.
Trump could try to bypass this by calling for a Constitutional Convention, but that would require approval from 2/3 of all the states, and any proposed changes would also need to be ratified by 3/4 of the states before they could take effect. Again, never going to happen.
To me, the most worrisome possibility is that Vance runs in 2028, nominates Trump as his VP, wins, and then quits. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know if the language of the amendment is tight enough to keep Trump from getting a third term through the back door, so to speak. However, I think this possibly is very unlikely. Trump’s ego wouldn’t permit him to play second fiddle to another man, even as a temporary measure, and even if he’d be rewarded with a third Presidential term for doing so. Plus, he’d be 82, and people are sick of gerontocracy. There’s plenty about this result that’s worrisome, but the prospect of a third Trump term isn’t one of them.
- Trump could bypass the Constitution by both he and Republican congresscritters ignoring it “for the good of America” followed by the Supreme Court sitting on their hands.
- Let us not ignore the Vance Problem. If(when) he takes power he gets two terms.
- And all this time the Right(ous) and Powerful are taking more and more.
Plus, I have doubts he’ll remain functional that long.
But by what mechanism could he accomplish this?
“We don’t care and you can’t stop us.”
Exactly. They do it simply by doing it, because they have realized that laws do not enforce themselves.
But his current level of popular support is far from overwhelming. We could stop him quite easily. In order for this strategy to work, Trump would have to lay an impossible amount of groundwork, including convincing an impossibly large percentage of the country that he should be President for life.
No, we can’t. He can just ignore anything we say.
Trump can’t use legal means to overturn the 22nd Amendment. He doesn’t have the votes. Therefore, to achieve a 3rd term his only option would be to summarily declare himself President for life. Any such declaration would instantly be met with a tsunami of mass civil disobedience so violent and sustained that it’d make the summer of 2020 look like a tiff at a little old lady’s garden party. He can’t ignore that, and if he tried it wouldn’t be long before he was assassinated. In order for Trump to have even the merest hope of accomplishing what you suggest, he’d need far, far more legislative and popular support than he could ever hope to get.
And he sure as hell ain’t working alone, is he?