What will be the "last straw" in the administration's assault on our country / democracy?

The BBQ Pit
21

Of course they will. That’s why I referred to “internecine bloodshed.” I did not say civil war. It won’t be that widespread or organized. It will be more like the Baathist rule in Iraq, or Hoxha’s dictatorship in Albania, or the Shah’s control of Iran — a fiercely violent minority fueled by a cult of personality maintains an iron grip on power, with rumblings of dissent and occasional pockets of resistance that trigger regular demonstrations of power as the dissent and resistance are quashed.

Democracy is essentially dead in the U.S. but for the final reflexive twitches. To the extent ordinary people generally recognize this, they’ll just keep their heads down and try not to get caught in the crossfire, same as any other authoritarian regime throughout history.

22

The last straw may start by Trump brutally suppressing the many peaceful mass demonstrations against his regime, and will also contain additional outrages as having popular on-air personalities arrested for having criticized him.

23

I fully expect that at some point, California will be depopulated with the mass use of nuclear weapons. They hate us that much.

I also expect that the reaction from the rest of the country will be a combination of “Oh well, wasn’t us so who cares” and “the liberal/gay/commie scum deserved it”.

That is how far I think MAGA can go without it being “the last straw”.

24

This. Remember, Kent State caused a lot of Americans to rethink their positions on the Vietnam War. “Four dead in Ohio,” as Neil Young sang.

ICE or the National Guard opening fire on US citizens at, say, a protest now? There will be a lot more dead than four, and that might well be the tipping point: “What the hell? The government is shooting Americans for exercising their First Amendment rights?”

And when Americans hit that point, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

25

That was a long time ago; nobody cares if protesters die anymore. They could just drive tanks through the protest marches and turn them all into meat paste, and the public will just shrug and say at least that clears up traffic.

26

Agreed. It turns out The Marching Morons wasn’t fiction after all.

Every one of the people you mentioned is someone whom the magaflatearthers want to see arrested and deported, if not worse. If any opposition (read: Democrat) tries to go againt that, they will be arrested and deported, if not worse, also.

And we’ve already seen what hte maggot magat-in-charge and his accomplices will do if the opposition areas of the country do not cower to him.

The country will continue, but it will no longer be a democracy.

Nope. Too much of the country already wants ICE and the military to do exactly that in the “opposition” areas of the country.

Far too much of the country already wants the “opposition” areas of the country to not have free speech. They won’t care.

And it takes someone with a working knowledge of our government is set up, how our system of government came to be, and why and how we felt the need to revolt against the national government and declare independence to look at what’s happening now and understand what’s going on instead of merely parrotting the maganaut lines.

People are going to die. People are already dying because of the toddler in the White House. It will only get worse, but it won’t be the “opposition” (Democrats, if you haven’t noticed that in this post yet) running to magaflatearther areas of the country to kill. It will be the administration using the mechanisms already in place reflexively and impulsively.

27

I think that if the president ever tried to overturn the results of a valid election, maybe by sending protesters to attack the Capitol when the ballots were supposed to be counted, then that would be the last straw. It would be too obvious that he’s trying to become an authoritarian strongman and even his own party would rise up against him.

But, that’s pretty extreme. Since that could never happen, if he had anonymous masked goons pulling people off the street and disappearing them into jails overseas or even in Florida where they have to eat like dogs, I think people would see that as a step too far and rise up.

But, that could never happen here, not since the 40s anyway. OK, what if he put his own personal lawyers into the Justice Department and made them in charge of investigating his perceived enemies? That’s such an obvious strongman move that people wouldn’t stand for it.

But, that’s obviously ridiculous. Clinton had to apologize for just talking to the head of the Justice Department briefly, so those kinds of obvious conflicts of interest could never happen. OK, how about if Trump went after news organizations with lawsuits (while those same companies had business with administration, I don’t know mergers or something) and kicked people who asked tough questions out of the press pool? Too obvious, really, that would never happen.

Maybe if he fired anyone who gave him bad economic news so that official news will always be rosy going forward? Again, I think that’s too obviously authoritarian for a strong democracy like the US.

I guess we’ll have to wait to see if Trump does anything really outrageous and find out how the country reacts.

28

Obviously, yes. That’s why I specifically referenced prior examples where a minority entity is imposing control (e.g. the Baathists). I never suggested that a transgression of democratic norms would cause that group to consider its loyalty, or that widespread resistance would result. I specifically said the opposite.

To be painfully, explicitly clear: I foresee three broad parties in a near-future America.

The ruling cadre. They will enact and celebrate repression.

The minority opposition. They will occasionally attempt to resist the authority above, but will be imprisoned, deported, or killed in response.

The much larger unaffiliated population. They will dimly recognize things are not as they should be, but will not actively align with either of the other parties. They will cooperate with the ruling cadre to the minimum necessary to avoid scrutiny and retribution, and from time to time they might cluck their tongues and shake their heads at some especially bloody example of repression. But for the most part, they’ll keep watching their innocuous regime-approved entertainment and going to their jobs every day. Just like the same people did in Germany in the late 30s, in Albania in the 60s and 70s, etc etc etc.

29

This. I’ve posted several times that Trump can only commit one “sin” which would get the MAGA base to turn against him. That would be if he became a liberal. Of course if that happened, that would be a good thing and by definition would mean that the country is no longer under assault by Trump. I don’t actually believe that will ever happen, it’s just a hypothetical “what if” to the question of what could MAGA to turn against Trump. In the real world, we’re going to just keep on the current trajectory unless the Democrats get lucky several times in a row.

30

It looks very much as if Trump will remain in office until the end of his term, unless health problems intervene. He will certainly work to ensure that there are no further elections. The system will then be based on loyalty to Trump and his entourage and, to a not insignificant extent, on corruption. This means that professional careers will not be based on competence, but on loyalty and nepotism. Already, a former TV presenter has been appointed federal prosecutor, and an experienced statistician has been dismissed because Trump does not like her work. This trend is continuing in the fields of economics and science, with the US losing its leading role in these sectors. People are worse off economically, and reduced health care is taking its toll. A few Americans are successful in this system and, as in other dictatorships, form the upper caste. The rest of the citizens are sinking economically, turning to their private lives (TikTok, streaming, gaming) and resigning themselves to their fate. The US has no tradition of organized political opposition; there are no urban guerrillas, no armed resistance. People are accustomed to prosperity and comfort and consider this standard to be their birthright. They do not entertain the idea of having to fight for it or for their individual freedom. There will be a more or less poor proletariat and a rich (political) caste. There are many examples of this type of society around the world, and in the future, the US will be one of them.

31

It depends a lot on when Trump dies, and how far down the rabbit hole we are when that happens.

Vance may not be the mesmerizer that Trump, and if Trump dies before democracy is completely dismantled, MAGA may crumble under Vance.

It happens. Oliver Cromwell had a deathgrip on England, and then monarchy seemed dead, but his son couldn’t hold on to the protectorate, and soon the monarchy was restored.

Russia isn’t a good example of anything. The brief democracy under the very end of Yeltsin to the beginning of Putin is the only time Russia dipped its toe into democracy. The end of the Soviet Union was not a restoration, it was a paradigm shift, and a lot of people couldn’t shift with it, even when they wanted to.

I think it’s not a stretch to wonder if he won’t make it through this term. Running for a third, if he somehow pushes through an amendment that reverses the 22nd, and is alive to run, will not work, I think, because he will lose a lot of 2024 voters who were “protest” voters who didn’t like Harris, who worry about his making it through another term, and don’t like Vance (or whoever his VP is), and because there will either be a lot of abstentions, or a very popular third candidate.

The last straw in any event, will be that bale that is trying to replace Trump when he dies. When this happens, matters.

The last straw for me was his second election. If it were not for the war in Gaza, I would have moved to Israel. My son is 18 and out of high school. I don’t even care if my husband didn’t want to go with me.

32

Right. IMHO the reason this is so is that we hadn’t needed one for a really long time. The last time we had a POTUS that reached that level of being bad for the country was likely before even the grandparents of the oldest Americans were born. It took Abraham Lincoln to fix the damage that those POTUSes did. It would likely take someone of that talent to fix the current mess, and I don’t see anyone out there that comes even close to being the next Lincoln.

33

We had better hope that “And Then There Were None” by Eric Frank Russell, also published in 1951, isn’t fiction either. 'And Then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell
I can’t find a link to the original short story. This link is to the book The Great Explosion, where Russell reworked the original to fit it into a novel-length book. The original is better. You can listen to it here
Reading - Eric Frank Russell - and then there were none (1951)

The collapse of empire is terrible for many, but from its ashes may spring hope and rebirth. Helping prepare the next generations while we try to hang on through the chaos may be the best we can do. As the saying goes, we have to save our pessimism for better days; hope is a practice, not a state of being. Figuring out ways, small and large, to pull away from the empire is key. It won’t be pretty and we older types will suffer as the old infrastructure continues to fall apart, but we can help those who will resist and rebuild.

There is hope in the protests around the world, in the growth of alternatives, in growth of awareness, of people engaging in new ways of thinking and being.

34

Yup, America is collapsing. There is no last straw.

35

…there won’t be one.

For many people, the breaking point was George Floyd. It inspired massive protests up and down America.

And the movement got SMASHED. Literally. In the press. By the cops. The Defund movement got pilloried, even the Democrats denounced it, President Biden proudly announced at the SOTU that he was going to “Fund the Police”.

For many people the breaking point is what is happening in Gaza.

And that movement got SMASHED. The campus protest movement in particular, under both Biden AND Trump, got smashed by the cops, students were silenced, lost their degrees, got kicked out of their accommodation, got suspended, and entire universities lost their funding.

People need to realise that many people have already reached their last straw, they have been fighting back for a very long time, and most of us didn’t give a damn. The people we laughed at years ago chanting “ABOLISH ICE” were 100% CORRECT. We should have listened to them then. Its probably too late now.

The history books will recognise that people did try fighting back. But those movements were crushed not just by the oppressive state, but by complicit media and institutions. That this current iteration of Democrats are mostly barely indistinguishable from old-school Republicans, and that they helped usher this in.

We are all in the grips of 24/7 propaganda. NOT just from the likes of Fox News. But “liberal” institutions like the New York Times, the Washington Post. That makes it hard to escape. Just think about how the protest movement, how progressive ideals, are presented by the media. How a headline can completely recontextualise how we think about something.

And then realise that we are completely fucked. Because every time a new movement will spring up, it will quickly get shut down. And most of us won’t even realise it’s happened. I don’t think most people here have any idea what happened in the campus protests last year. But it’s an example of how free speech can be ruthlessly shut down with barely anybody really noticing.

36

Yup. The EU signs a trade deal that promises nothing at all of value, tariffs are still high with the EU, and the NY Times’s headline is “Trump is winning his trade war.”

37

It occurs ot that the SOB actually is winning the war, the war he is playing.

This has nothing to do with him actually negotiating a great deal for the United States. For a normal president, that would be an indicator of success. Not for the felon.

The success that’s he’s going for, and he’s getting it, is simply seeing the markets of the world react to his bloviations. Any change in the market that is connected to his opening his mouth and making a pronouncement is automatically a success to him.

And it’s gone straight to his bigly empty cofefve head.

38

I’m sure he thinks he’s winning, but why the NY Times would play along is beyond me. The headline should read “Tariffs stay historically high while the EU makes meaningless promises”.

39

I’ve said it in other threads, but the main lesson I learned in the aftermath of January 6, 2021 was that I have no idea where the line is. In the immediate aftermath it appeared as though the Republicans were finally going to turn against Trump, but in the days that followed they changed their mind. It’s going to take a major catastrophe for Americans to do something about the corruption. Very high unemployment, bread lines, loss of homes, dead children because we can’t effectively respond to a pandemic, etc., etc. Even then I’m not sure if that’s a final straw and we might just find a convenient scapegoat and blame them.

40

Half of Americans are fascists. Of the remaining 50%, half of them say things like “it’s not that bad.” They have this childish belief that someone will fix it.