I hope all goes well for you and your family.
Years ago I signed up for one of those Comcast bundles that included a landline which I never used.
I finally disconnected it since it only gets scam calls.
I need to contact them to remove that bit but calling Comcast is akin to summoning the dead.
It’s on my to do list.
Hahaha. Yeah.
And now back to - The compendium of horrors. “The next Trump administration”
LOL - I had actually dipped into this thread to make a comment about the compendium of horrors but I got distracted. I am so easily distracted these days thanks to covid brain fog.
I was browsing a couple other forums over the last few days and there is a lot of speculation, panic, fear and everything else you can imagine.
The biggest horror for me is the constant state of chaos that will be unleashed despite any incremental damage to my life.
Even if I manage to avoid reading or listening to the news it inevitability pops up somewhere. The only way to avoid it all is to disconnect from the internet totally which I just cannot do at this point.
At one point a couple nights ago I had myself whipped up into an ER level state of anxiety. I got that under control and avoid going to any other sites except this one and occasionally Reddit for the moment.
You can compromise. As a former news junkie, I have literally avoided all access to CNN since the night of November 5. It’s impossible to avoid all mention of Trump, of course, but it’s better to get it in small doses, and laugh at it in a disconnected sort of way. Yes, you can laugh at those who, through evil intent or often just through stupidity, perpetrate man-made tragedies. Sometimes it’s the only way, and is definitely healthier than impotent anger.
The DoJ made their bed.
On the more general topic of stupid voters and unintended consequences, which may lead one to wonder how and why so many Americans voted for this shit-show of clowns, criminals, and chaos, I already said in several threads that I have little patience with academic analyses of such – implying that there’s some fundamental divide over ideology – when the problem is simply that these voters don’t fucking know anything.
I said this in another thread that’s now closed, so I’ll repeat it here:
The amount of divisiveness that different ideologies can create is inherently limited if all political parties are reason-based and base their policies on facts rather than self-serving propaganda and scare-mongering.
Trump won essentially on a vast pile of lies that voters were stupid enough to believe – that immigrants (even if legal residents) were a threat even when they’re a net economic positive, that the economy was terrible even when it’s great and the stock market is at record highs, that Biden was somehow personally responsible for high inflation even as the Fed cuts interest rates because the US is managing inflation better than the rest of the world, that coal and oil are the future because global warming is a “hoax”, and on and on. Thus do demagogues always rise – on a platform of lies. I thought Harris would win because I couldn’t believe so many Americans could be so gullible.
I mention all this not only because it’s true, but because last night Bill Maher cited an article from USA Today saying that the most popular Google searches on election day were variants of “did Biden drop out?”.
Now that, as Bill said, is what you call an informed populace! 
This snippet from another article (emphases mine) cites similar stories about the most common searches on election day and the preceding Monday:
X user StatisticUrban noticed the phrase “who is running for president” started trending late Monday night. The breakdown by subregion shows that the term isn’t popular in swing states (Pennsylvania is the 21st most popular subregion), but rather surging in places like Mississippi and Alabama. Searches for “did Joe Biden drop out” rose exponentially Monday night as well. On Tuesday, terms like “is trump a republican,” “can you vote without registering” and “can i vote online” began to trend. “How long does it take to vote” is also currently trending, specifically in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Another fun popular search is “what color is republican.”
Yes, folks, this is the Trump constituency – well-informed, well aware of the nuances of important issues, and having them all well prioritized.
They voted for it. They got it. Let the shit-show begin.
I think I read that wrong.
Thanks for this. Impotent anger is a good description. I guess I can laugh for awhile. But when it starts tearing my life apart I’ll have to come up with a different coping method.
I’ve been watching shows and reading for now. Feel a good deal better. Baby steps.
LOL I would love to hear what you read.
That summoning the dead was on your to-do list, I surmise. I read it that way at first.
ETA: changed “raising” to “summoning.”
OK that makes sense lol
Specifically, Ramaswamy has proposed eliminating funding for all federal programs for which the Congressional authorization has expired. Generally, federal programs receive an authorization from Congress that specifies their legal authorities, structure, operations, etc. for a set period (usually 5-10 years). And then Congress appropriates monies to these agencies each year to fund those operations.
However, many federal programs have had their authorizations expire over the years and not been reauthorized – some for decades. Besides veteran’s health care, other programs in the same situation include biomedical research, Head Start, NASA, and the State Department. But Congress continues to appropriate funding to these programs each year because they’re perform important functions. It’s ridiculous to think you could just sweep all these programs off the table without creating a disaster for our country and constituencies who depend on them.
So, because the Congress has been failing at their one critical job—making sure that important government functions are authorized and funded—we should put hundreds of thousands of civil servents suddenly out of work and tens of millions of people not able to access resources that they have long been promised, provide vasr public benefit, and upon which many are dependent because of illness and injury in service of the nation?
I was incorrect in calling these people ‘fascist’; they are nihilists. They literally believe in nothing.
Stranger
I guess I’ve never tried to do a full list of the horrors that I expect could potentially happen. Here’s a potential list, that is surely incomplete, and in no particular order. And I don’t really know how much of the below will happen. It could depend on how much pushback occurs early in Trump’s term, both internally in his administration and externally. Hope I’m wrong on just about all of this…The below is a worst case maybe. The “best case” is that Trump gets distracted by his usual chaotic life, and by various conflicts within his own orbit, and alot of the stuff we’ve been hearing is just bluster that will blow over. In that case, the “best case” is just more tax cuts and maybe a cutback of the civil service…
-
Ukraine aid will cease. Trump will pressure Zelensky to accept a “peace” deal that favors Putin.
-
We will again leave the Paris Accords on Climate
-
We will leave NATO. Good luck to Poland in fighting off the next invasion of a sovereign country from Putin.
-
We will implement large tariffs on almost all imports, with exceptions made for certain countries that flatter Trump.
-
We will create concentration camps for illegal immigrants. They will be managed by our military.
-
Our military will go into all states to apprehend “illegals”, and dare blue states to defy them.
-
Legal immigrants and even US citizens will get swept into the concentration camps.
-
The “DOJ” will crack down on Trump’s political opponents with bogus criminal charges. Law enforcement entities, such as the FBI will become the enforcers of MAGA-world and lawless in their own right.
-
Trump’s political allies will try to sue media companies out of existence that cross Trump.
-
There will be military court-martials for some that defy Trump’s orders.
-
There will be protests in Blue Cities, and Trump will use that to declare Martial Law, and he will turn the military against protesters.
-
ACA subsidies will be cut back tremendously and effectively gutted, causing a surge in uninsured.
-
More tax cuts for rich people.
-
The civil service will be gutted with firings all over the place in DC.
-
There will be a surge in hate crimes. LGBTQ people will be targeted more than at any time in the last 10 years. Asians will be targeted. Antisemitism will explode. White Nationalists will feel emboldened like never before.
-
China will feel emboldened and invade Taiwan and we’ll do nothing.
-
Putin invades the rest of Ukraine that he didn’t previously take, and we’ll do nothing.
-
At some point in the next 4 years, our economy will go into the tank.
-
In 2026, there will be a blue wave that hits and the House will flip to the Dems. They will impeach Trump again. The Republican Senate will do nothing.
-
In 2028, America will elect a Democrat, and Trump will use his power to overturn the election. SCOTUS will go along with it because of some slickly worded, high-minded bullshit. JD Vance will be sworn in on 1/20/2029 as the next President.
-
By 2029, we could be a fascist autocracy with some nominal “democracy” that’s meaningless. There will be no meaningful resistance left, as the political left has been jailed, media has been muzzled, and universities have been turned into megaphones for the regime.
-
By 2029, Survinga & family will live in another country. Don’t know where I’ll be safe. But I can afford to leave if I have to.
I’m going to copy this off and see how much happens. My guesstimate is around 50%.
I’m gonna say closer to 5%. If Trump even gets anywhere close to #6 on that list the result would be civil war.
Really? Who, pray tell, will lead an organized uprising agains the military’s overreach?
Please remember that we ALREADY have concentration camps, or rather, places where large numbers of immigrants are concentrated… er, housed all together, pending the next step. Perhaps it would be good to define the term.
What does this mean? What is the nature of civil war in the 21st Century?
If Trump were to deploy the military into blue states and start rounding up citizens? I’d be expecting my state legislature to pass articles of secession.
The military itself, for one. You’d be looking at widespread mutiny in such a scenario.