Canada did it too, so moving there might not help.
I would also classify some of the non-voters as “stupid and irresponsible”. Or at least as ‘behaving stupidly and being irresponsible’. There are times when ‘hell I don’t want to vote for either of them so I’m not voting’ is sensible behavior; but I really don’t think either of the last two elections for POTUS belonged in that category.
I don’t think it’s at all an empty calorie answer to the people thinking ‘it can’t happen here’. It has happened here, within living memory. We didn’t take it further, and we’ve backed off since; but this country is still entirely capable of locking people up for entirely wrong reasons. (On a smaller scale and in a more scattered fashion, we’re still doing it, in prisons. Yes, some of the people in there need to be in there; but we lock up a staggering percentage of our population.)
As a European citizen, I’d be scared as hell about the US’ foreign policy under Trump, because the US - due to its size and power - has a solid interference with world politics.
What would happen inside US borders wouldn’t affect me, but I’d probably feel sorry for the US populace.
One of my siblings was just in Portugal. At least around major cities and tourist areas he said it was hard to find someone under the age of 50 who didn’t speak English. Rough estimates by the ever-reliable internet claim that about a third of people there can speak it to at least passable fluency, with the percentage rising the more urban/touristy and younger you go. It’s said that ex-pats can get by in places like the Algarve (the south) without speaking a word of Portuguese (though obviously it would behoove folks to learn at least the bare basics)
I read one of Heinlein’s juveniles, Podkayne of Mars, and she said the best thing you could do would be to learn “thank you” in as many languages as possible. So Portugese for that is “obrigado” if I remember correctly from the book.
Yes and no. The WW2 internment showed how fast in organizational terms people could be rounded up into camps. But that was an ethnically defined tiny minority who found themselves largely friendless or even despised, and the rest of the populace overwhelmingly approved their incarceration. I can’t think of any group today that wouldn’t have tens of millions of Americans howling in outrage on their behalf.
The question spifflog asked was “Where are the gulags and concentration camps?”
My answer was meant to show that just because there currently aren’t any concentration camps doesn’t mean there can’t be plenty of them pretty damn quickly. Whether or not they can round up a lot of Americans and force them into those concentration camps is really another question.
I am pretty language challenged, but i learn “hello”, “thank you” and “excuse me” in the primary language of every country i visit.
But you left out one important part. We don’t have to 100% guess what life would be under Trump. We know what it was like, and that was my point. We had 1,460 days of a Trump presidency. We saw some good and we saw some bad. What we didn’t see was what I asked about, “gulags and concentration camps.” Does that bear watching? God damn right it does. Under Trump, Biden, Washington, Lincoln or who ever is in the While House.
But this thread seems to drive us all to start the caravan out of the country while there is still time!!! And that is hyperbole.
Stay and fight those assholes. Do I love America? Enough to fight those assholes.
They continue to push people around. It’s time to push back.
The illiberal, autocratic, authoritarian, anti-Democratic nonsense was exponentially back-end loaded.
And I’ve seen no signs of that trend having abated since he – grudgingly – left office.
Yes, we did: as has been said previously in this thread, for would-be immigrants.
There was enough uproar to eventually shut down the worst of it; and the blurry line between necessary temporary housing and camps full of deliberate mistreatment helped. But that’s how such things get started. People have to be eased into it.
Also anti-democracy nonsense; though you may have meant that.
Sorry. Yep. That should have been a “small-d” democratic.
That’s because this time Trump is telling us in advance that he plans gulags:
NEW YORK (AP) — A mass deportation operation. A new Muslim ban. Tariffs on all imported goods and “freedom cities” built on federal land.
Careful. You get to deduct your foreign income taxes which, in the case of Canada at least, are considerably higher than US taxes. So I end up filling out the return and paying nothing.
In all seriousness, did the good outweigh the bad and, to what extent, how much?
Under Trump 400000 died unnecessarily of Covid:
If he’s elected he will probably take the US out of NATO, and he and his ilk will throw Ukraine to the wolves, and much more.
What we saw in the 1461 days of Trump’s presidency was his trying a lot of stuff and not succeeding because there were adults in the room. He has made it clear that there won’t be any the next time. Also, the entire top level of the civil service will be replaced by Trump kiddies. And then he will try to cancel the 2028 election–and maybe succeed.
And so it begins.
The general sense by many ever since the Jan 6th debacle, where he appeared to back a soft coup based on lies, is that it will not just be more of the same incompetent mess. Rather that there will be a dramatic escalation into a faux democracy/demi-(or not so demi-)authoritarian state.
Now, I’m not a catastrophist. There are people on this board who think democracy is already doomed in the United States. I’m not one of them. There are also people who believe democracy in the U.S. is just hanging on by its fingernails and a Trump win will be the straw that breaks the camels back and usher in the darkness. I am not one of them.
But even at my most pragmatic I do think a second Trump term represents an existential threat to democracy in the U.S. greater than any that has come before. I don’t think the country is as fragile as some, but I am certainly not foolish enough after bearing witness to the last decade to mistake it as robust, either.
It is entirely possible a second Trump term would be just a profoundly shitty presidential regime that will harm many, directly and indirectly, through the implementations of a variety of horrible, wrong-headed and cruel policies. And then we will move on and try to pick up the pieces four years later. But it is a fact that it could be considerably worse than just that. I’d rather not find out.
This. Exactly.