I see them as ideologically inchoate Keystone Cops barely held together via Trump’s cult of personality. I don’t think there is much there to work with. Before Trump, all they could do was bitch and obstruct. After Trump, I think they’ll go back to doing that, though probably less effectively owing to the lingering expectations (and shame) of MAGA.
Agreed, and I doubt he even understands what it is. He is a gut-level authoritarian, but he is not a visionary or a planner, which is one reason why I put his chances at becoming dictator so low.
Lol, I do enjoy your colorful phrasing.
Not sure the GOP comprises many “true believers.” Mostly just gutless opportunists. Any attempt to engage in genocide will immediately trigger a civil war. They will never get far enough to try. Without Trump, these fools have no rudder and no mojo.
People keep saying things like this, but I don’t see it happening. Most people would just ignore it or cheer it on, until their number came up. And it certainly wouldn’t happen over an external genocide.
Genocide starts. Gavin Newsom just goes, “Oh well.” No. He and Pritzker are already standing up to Trump. Action/reaction.
“Most people” didn’t even vote for Trump.
In the far less connected 1980s, people were constantly protesting Apartheid, among other things. Look at the protestations on both sides wrt the ongoing Israel/Hamas conflict.
If the Republicans decide to genocide California, Gavin Newsom (assuming he was still alive and in power somehow) would be one of the first to die when the nukes fell on our cities.
None of which is a civil war. I don’t think that’s ever happened over a genocide happening to somebody else.
So can either of you actually point to a time Trump has said the US should invade Canada, or that it should be forced to join the US through military action?
This isn’t a man who keeps secrets or is good at being coy. He’s very open about what he wants to do.
He’s a dictator who is working at consolidating power.
The reason I like the word dictator is that Trump has used it to describe himself. It might not be the best word here, where almost everyone is against DJT, but I find it defensible to use in mixed company.
I think the most important thing he needs to do to be able to fire on Canadian civilians without tanking in polls is to get real control over mainstream television (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) so Americans do not see the civilians being killed. He probably does not have a detailed plan, but suing them, and putting extremists on the FCC who might pull licenses, comes close. It’s not so much that he lacks a plan as that a whole lot of journalists are brave, so it is much harder to do than some think.
No real objection to this formulation. Trump has a certain image of himself in his mind (dictator, king, greatest POTUS of all time, etc.) that is at odds with most aspects of reality. And I agree that he is working in his own way on consolidating power, albeit quite incompetently.
He would have to shut down the entire internet in the US as well. We’d be in civil war territory at this point as well.
Personally, I think Trump is totally winging it. He didn’t have Leon’s support at this level until close to the end of the election cycle, so the whole DOGE idea has to be pretty recent. My fear is not that Trump has a plan and competent people to implement it. Rather, my fear is that, granted the fact that he is a petulant child who doesn’t understand what the results will be of pushing the legacy system (Congress, courts, military, etc.) to a particular level, and granted the near-fact opinion that he is surrounded by nutjobs similarly lacking in understanding as well as the intention to do the right thing, he will continue to push until something really chaotic and bad and unpredictable happens, triggering a Civil War, revolution, etc., which in turn will have bad and unpredictable consequences. An invasion of Canada is far down my list of worries.
I agree that the probability is larger, albeit still very small. Europe could annihilate Putin’s forces instantly, even without the help of the US. And yes, it’s an open question as to whether Russia still has nukes that work at all, and how many.
It does, since they would not be able to gain popular support. Which would prevent them from running it in the first place. Yeah, nazi mutherfucker Leon is there, but he wasn’t legitimately appointed, and he is wildly unpopular.
No, I just recognize that he’s an insane greedy narcissistic who wants everything he can grab. What he wants is complete control of the universe with himself as God. He can’t have that, but he can have Canada conquered for him.
And again, it’s not just about Trump it’s about the fascists in general. Something I’ve said more than once but you are ignoring.
That is the logic at work here: anything that can be seen as a cause of fear is to be maximized, but anything that can been seen as a mitigating factor is to be minimized.