And I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, so I don’t know what value your impression has, but a lot has been happening:
The feud with MTG has blown up.
Special elections are not looking goof for the GOP.
Republicans in the House have resigned, and there are rumors that more are coming.
Trump’s health issues have finally penetrated the MSM and have become a major topic of discussion.
Trump is no longer to fake health in public, and he’s falling asleep in meetings regularly with the whole world watching. Among many other issues.
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.
The general chaos, scandals, and fuckups are having a cumulative effect. When “business as usual” is really bad, it typically does not continue forever.
Its easy to predict such things without actually defining exactly what ‘imploding’ and ‘coming apart’ actually means. Without clear previously well defined events and characteristics , any negative thing that happens, no matter how small, will be held up as proof and vindication.
Yes, eventually, Trump will no longer be president; are you saying this qualifies as ‘imploding’?….or are you predicting that he’s going to be removed from office before his term expires? Are you predicting specific cabinet members or the VP to leave? Losing midterm elections is pretty standard for the sitting president, are you predicting that Republicans losing midterms is something out of the ordinary?
Its the same I’ve been hearing the last several years about “Russia is losing the war!”
He serves as the point of focus, worship, etc., of the Deplorable base. They are not going to accept another leader, therefore making his ongoing presence necessary.
Miller is certainly a major clown himself. Even if one were to concede that he is a strategic mastermind behind the scenes (which I do not, but it’s a debate that can be had), he certainly makes an utter fool of himself in front of them every time he appears. Vance is an idiot across the board, in my view.
That’s a bit of a twisted parallel, conceptually. I was wrong about the election and therefore felt no vindication. In this thread, I am saying that Trump has failed to do what Hitler did, and I feel vindicated by what has happened thus far. He has failed, and he has no stamina left to undo this failure. Further, in disagreement with your opinion above, I would assert that the people waiting in the wings are not able to take over from Trump and implement a fascist takeover, one big reason being that the avatar of the initiative, Trump, is now more of a drag on things than a support for them.
I’m hoping the midterms are a huge success for the democrats! With any luck the White House has bunker and he uses it accordingly!….They say history repeats itself?
I think the OP covers everything in adequate detail. The things that are happening now are not small. Sure, I could start an “Are Trump and MAGA imploding?!” thread, and we could go through it all again, but I think Trump’s failure to be Hitler is so obvious, and his prospects going forward so poor, that a simple statement of my opinion to that effect is sufficient as an update to the OP.
This is arguing beside the point, inasmuch as any of the above certainly hamper Trump’s ability to effect a fascist takeover going forward but need not be assessed in order to demonstrate whether Trump has already failed in such an effort.
Whether Trump can continue to sustain an especially shitty but by some definition “normal” Republican administration is a different question.
I made the comment about MAGA imploding because Trump is doing even worse than I had expected, making the OP seem (at least to me) more correct than ever.
I came across this post on my social media feed, so take it for what it’s worth, but I felt better reading it:
“I had a European gent in my comments who said ‘Dark Times? America you are BEATING BACK FASCISM. These should be joyous times. You are winning a fight in mere months other countries have taken decades to win’”
Although I feel, personally that we are a ways from “winning”, I do need to keep things in perspective.
Thanks for that. Yeah, I think it’s a combo of the good guys beating it back, and the perps being too stupid, ill-prepared, and socially awkward to succeed in the first place.
My definition is either one dramatic decline in Trump approval polls, or steady small decline.
From mid-October to mid-November, he declined, with some recovery lately:
So in no way I see has Trump already failed.
My guess is that there eventually will be significant inflation due to tariffs, probably next year. That could do it. But it’s not enough yet to cause any real coming apart.
Another measure would be if the Supreme Court started ruling against his being a dictator. But it sounds like they are going to do just the opposite. Politico yesterday:
Now, it could be worse. In the UK, the far right, thoroughly Trumpy, Reform party has consistently outpolled all traditional parties since May. We can be glad not to have that situation.
Re last post, if he is no worse than slightly unpopular in November 2028, the GOP ticket will win fair and square, I know sone here doubt it, thinking that Trump has a secret sauce Vance lacks. So I could be wrong, but that’s my prediction.
Beyond that, I think the people of Greenland and Panama are a lot safer with Trump’s approval at 20 percent than 40 percent. Again, I could be wrong, but it seems reasonable. At 20 percent approval, generals will argue back.
The base is essentially irrelevant by now. They just don’t realize it. They serve some usefulness for the midterms, and that’s about it.
In my opinion, you grossly underestimate both of them. Miller is completely running the drug boat and immigration aspects. Trump is just the face. Vance is Peter Thiel’s puppet and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Smart or stupid doesn’t really factor into it. He is doing exactly as he is told.
I’m not sure what failure you think you are seeing. The dismantling of government agencies, the complete disregard for the legal system, the assault on fair and free elections, American troops stationed in US cities, Border agents monitoring license plates to track the movement of citizens, even actual war crimes are being yawned away. From my perspective, they are achieving everything they have set out to do so far and are just getting started. This country will be unrecognizable from its former self in another 3 years, if not sooner. I share none of your optimism.
A year ago, I was being ensured by people on this board that by now, we would have invaded and conquered Canada and Greenland, gay rights nationwide would have been rolled back to pre-Stonewall levels, abortion would be illegal nationwide, there would be no more elections anywhere in the country, and this board would have been shut down and all of us would be in jail, and that I was a naive fool to think otherwise.
I wasn’t predicting. I only listed things that have actually happened. Much of the stuff you mentioned were mere smoke screens to get people distracted while they actually did the things I listed.
Which is being undone now that Elon is out, the courts are reversing his acts, and the government is begging the people he fired to come back to work.
And yet Kilmar Abrego is still on US soil, “alligator Alcatraz” was shut down, judges keep shooting down his attempts to federalize the National Guard, he hasn’t been allowed to fire the Fed chairs, the Supreme Court is probably going to take away his tariff gun, and his vindictive prosecutions of his enemies have all been dismissed.
Where has this happened? Does Mayor-Elect Mamdani know about it? Or the Democrat who was just elected mayor in Miami for the first time this century?
The National Guard spreading mulch on a lawn in front of a federal building is hardly “American troops stationed in US cities”.
Who’s yawning? Not the Republicans on the Armed Services Committee who are demanding answers.
Only if they fail. If America does fully transition to fascism it’s Thiel and his fellow oligarchs who will become irrelevant. He’s just too stupid to see that money won’t help against somebody who can just order it all confiscated before having you executed.
It’s the great fallacy of the pro-authoritarian wealthy; they are too convinced that money intrinsically equals power to realize that they are trying to destroy the very system that makes it powerful.
I don’t entirely disagree but Putin’s oligarch system works for the oligarchs as long as they understand who’s boss. If America fully transitions to fascism Thiel may survive money intact but with a different power dynamic.
This makes no sense. Hitler was able to get away with as much as he did as soon as he did because he was popular, and he remained so until Germany started losing WWII. It’s only if a fascist takeover has already happened (it hasn’t) that Trump, in theory, doesn’t need the base.
I don’t necessarily disagree with what you say after this, but you don’t explain how I underestimate them.
Quite plausible, but Miller is still an ineffective idiot. Those initiatives are not successes.
One idiot following another, then. Thiel is kookoo for Cocoa Puffs. A gay man supporting nazi-adjacent “Christianity” and babbling about the antichrist to the media. Mmm hmm, a real puppet-master, this one. (He’s rich and can still do a lot of damage, but I don’t think he’s coherently leading anything.)
It all goes back to the OP: Hitler had achieved total power within months; Trump has not made progress toward that goal. He has proven that a demented malignant narcissist fully enabled by his party as well as a coterie of nutso techbros and podcasters can do immense damage, but he has utterly failed to establish his own fascist Reich.
Bad stuff, indeed. A disgrace to our country and proof via stress test that our political system needs a lot of fortification (i.e., an ass-ton of constitutional amendments at the very least, preferably a reconfigured constitution altogether).
It’s random slop that antagonizes half the country at least, and it doesn’t follow the playbook of successful authoritarian regimes of the past (namely, hit hard and fast and pretend that the entire population is on your side. Trump and crew are doing the opposite.).
Who says I’m optimistic? The country has long been unrecognizable from its pre-9/11 self. But the politics is just a very unpleasant overlay on the real issue: the coming undone of late-stage capitalism. And for that there is no solution in sight.
Yeah, it’s cause and effect. A rational man wouldn’t do that; suborn the government for their own desires yes, but promote people who want to kill them, no.
Really, it’s one of the things that makes these people so dangerous; they are not rational, and don’t even recognize the consequences of what they are doing much less care about them.