Look, if you haven’t figured out by now that Trump is a pathological liar and you can’t believe anything just because he says it, I don’t know what to tell you.
I don’t know what to tell you because this is fucking stupid
Firstly, he’s president now, so his words matter, even if he’s lying. If the president declares war one day, we don’t get to play the “seriously, not literally” card – his words have consequences in themselves.
But secondly, as we’ve all pointed out to you many times at this point, many of the crazy things Trump has said, he’s then done. Maybe we’re lucky and this won’t be one of those times. But that’s a crazy justification for handwaving it.
No doubt he is a liar but he can and is acting on these things as best he can. He’s doing the shit he talks about. Or trying to.
As president, especially since the Supreme Court gave the president almost carte blanche to do anything and since he also has congress in his power, what is stopping him?
Whack-a-Mole managing to be more calm than me 
It’s the Pit, I was getting my mosh on
This isn’t directed to anyone in particular.
Can we, a group of folks that appear to be smarter than the average bear, take a beat and take stock of the things he’s not accomplished ? The lawsuits he hasn’t won? The EOs that are being challenged? donnie’s stupid shit is constantly thrown in our faces; I’m pretty sure everyone here has heard all the negative crap, we all know what’s at stake. Neither side has any more idea what will happen than anyone else. At this point, defeatism seems self-imposed. I understand fear and venting, but at some point it’s just a drag to read through the doom forecasting.
I have to assume that folks that hold this view are probably not doing anything to turn the tide. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but it follows that people already gearing up for defeat probably aren’t working on a solution.
Continually calling it that will never make it that.
Just so you know.
One more point:
Not everybody that complains about their marriage is headed inexorably toward divorce.
Not everybody that complains about their job has checked out and is bound to quit.
Why do you need people who are in the midst of an ongoing hail of gunfire to actively celebrate each bullet that misses? Why is that a reasonable expectation?
If you don’t like the threads that discuss the actions of the Trump administration, then – Doper to Doper (ie, I’m not a moderator) – wouldn’t it be easier and better for you to avoid those threads entirely?
Right. When, for example, an innocent man and perfectly legal immigrant, is sent to an El Salvadorean prison and told he can probably never return, I’m not about to start celebrating that that hasn’t yet happened to everyone.
But somehow it’s better if we don’t ever mention this. Apparently.
We are at the mercy of people who excuse their admitted mistake of disappearing an innocent man (Kilmar Abrego Garcia, deported to the El Salvador prison despite no convictions on any crime) by citing “traffic violations” as justification.
And Vance is perfectly comfortable stating that someone with “traffic violations” should be whisked out of the country and incarcerated for life in a brutal prison with no hope of ever getting out.
This isn’t a hypothetical that people here are “hyperventilating” about.
It’s reality.
But somehow it’s better if we don’t mention it, because mentioning it is indulging in “outlandish doomsday scenarios.”
Just so you know, AI gives the following as the definition of ‘defeatism’. I don’t have to make it that; that’s what it is.
Defeatism is characterized by a pessimistic and resigned attitude, where individuals believe that success is unlikely or impossible, leading to a lack of motivation or resistance.
Not everyone who tries to find the potential positive in this shite situation is denying any of the atrocities happing.
Still bored?
And? It’s “AI”. Anything it says is baseless.
But you and (primarily) Smapti are the ones doing the accusing, and – even under the dictionary definition that you provided:
There’s an and in there, not an or.
Many of us are concerned. I think we have abundant reason to be concerned.
Must you characterize that concern as either pessimism or resignation. Can’t you accept what most of us tell you is in our heads. Does it advantage you, somehow, to presume to know our thinking better than we do?
And what of the concept of just ignoring these conversations entirely if you either cannot grok, or don’t support, their existence?
Why do you believe you know where those conversations will lead? On what basis do you think they’re far more likely to render most of us suicidal and comatose rather than clarify our understanding of the situation and possibly spur us into some sort of action?
Do you think resisters and freedom fighters refrained from discussing what they saw happening in their countries and coming to them and their compatriots?
I literally don’t get it, and your explanation … didn’t explain anything – at least, not to me.
There’s a term that got coined on LBC of normalcy bias.
That, while it’s true that there’s a human tendency to alarmism and saying the sky is falling, there is also a tendency sometimes to not want to accept that things are really that bad. “You’re telling me this rapidly rising water is a tsunami? Get real!”
Such that those of us just calling a spade a spade get accused of panicking.
A lot of analysts recently, people I respect and normally have a good take, have done some version of the “Stop calling it fascism” article.
Where they go through the elements that define fascism, and in every case have to concede trump has publicly said he wants to achieve it, and has succeeded to some extent, at breakneck speed. But, we can’t call it fascism because he hasn’t successfully implemented it 100% yet…it’s not yet wartime Germany.
I think they are bright enough to know the flaw in this reasoning, I think they just can’t bring themselves to accept the situation we find ourselves in. And, because fascism has been used hyperbolically in the past, well, it must be hyperbolic now.
Well said David.
I am happy when I miss a close call, but more than anything, it worries me, and I reflect on how in the hell I let the close call happen in the first place.
Those close calls generally make a person take more responsibility and be safer. That is not happening in the USA.
Hold my beer, and watch this, does not often work out.
One reasonable question is how much time we have to stop him. Smapti says we should primary ineffective Democrats and get better leaders. I agree, but I simply don’t think we can afford to wait until 2026, so how can we do this on a timescale that’s effective? Same issue with the courts.
Nobody will stop him, or even slow him down much, until 2026. I’m reasonably confident that 2026 will see a blue wave, but governing the hollow shell of a once decent country. I don’t think it’s doom-posting to say that, because that’s where we are. April 2025 through January 2027, we only have the politicuans, judges, legislature, and courts that we now have. Voting doesn’t stop that until Nov. 2026; what does? Protesting? Non-compliance? Sober suited investment bankers with wealth and actual economic clue?
That’s not even actually a definition.
Supreme court rules, in a 9-0 vote, that Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned.
This is of course, great news. And I think it does go into the column of support for the view that Trump is not Supreme Leader yet.
OTOH, this had become a high profile, and clearly unjust, case…reversing it may just give rhetorical cover for the idea that all the other deportations and imprisonments are not indiscriminate. I guess we’ll see whether this establishes a precedent or was just to quell some of the outcry.
Fair point.
We’ll also see if he actually gets returned.
I saw in another thread that Team Trump is pursing the idea of making part of that El Salvador jail into sovereign territory of the US. If that happens, they won’t need to return the guy because he’ll already be in the US. Creative incompetence and malicious compliance. Does SCOTUS have a mechanism for dealing with that?