250 years is not a bad run.

But our democracy is over now.
Ironic on the 250th anniversary of our democracy.

of all the pollyannas who think 'everything will just be fine, you'll see'.

Realistic points of view are often uncomfortable.

Dems have no real power, so of course they seem impotent to people not paying attention.

here's an example. Blue slips. Dick Durbin honored that policy for republicon senators even after they refused to do the same for Democratic Senators.

Time and time again, we are "nice". That's why it's easy for the media to push that image.

And many see the contrast with times that republicons are in the minority yet manage to successfully obstruct and thwart Democrats anyway.

We need to fight the same way, or we will soon lose it all.

done important things in the past year, like shut down the govt over ACA subsidies, shut down DHS over ICE tactics and getting Epstein files released. And they won in the latter two cases.

It's tricky, because Dems need to show they can work within the system to get things done and not be seen as harming the country, while still obstructing the administration.

....when they're IN power as well. See Merrick Garland. I hope he's happy now and has all of those pearls he clutched safe somehwere.

Blaming Garland is BS.

Giving Garland credit is BS. He did NOTHING for 2 whole years. Sat on his ass. Jack Smith should've been appointed in January 2021!

easily convicted of many serious crimes and almost certainly thrown in jail.

SCOTUS didn't interfere until 4 years in. Check the timeline. Garland screwed around and clutched his precious pearls and DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for 2 whole years. Then he appointed TWO special counsels to investigate BIDEN AND HUNTER BIDEN.

cases would've gone to trial before the election if SCOTUS did fuck them up.

it does take time to build a strong case against a former POTUS.

Also of course Dump was helped massively in the classified doc case by fucking Aileen Cannon.

Did there need to be much of an investigation of January 6th? Couldn't he have found the backbone to appoint special counsels immediately to investigate that? Did he need to wait 2 years to look into it?

It doesn't matter what SCOTUS did YEARS later or what the stooge judge Cannon in Florida did. Hell, Cannon may not have even been the judge if Jack Smith had been appointed TWO and a half years prior.

This is Garland's fault and failure. There's absolutely no reason to go easy on him. He is emblematic of why people are upset with the establishment Dems.

I don't.

Also the legal system is just slow and favors rich people like the orange shit who can just keep appealing.

You can blame Garland for some of this problem but putting all the blame on him is fucking ridiculous.

You skip over EVERYTHING to get to the SCOTUS.

I'm not even reading your responses anymore because I already know what you're going to say. You're just making excuses.

You can only focus on the SCOTUS while skipping directly over the fact that Garland DID NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for 2 years.

SCOTUS NEVER ruled on 75% of the indictments.

You've never actually responded to the fact that Garland is to blame for this.

I said more than once that Garland deserves some blame.

Still, ultimately he was NOT the main problem, and we can agree to disagree on that.

I think it's clear SCOTUS played an important role interfering with his prosecutions.

Another big problem I didn't mention here, is that the Republican party NEVER took these charges seriously and used their media apparatuses to continually undercut the justice system. Hence half the country downplayed the charges, even for the Manhattan felony convictions, which were soundly agreed on by the jury.

Ultimately the GOP-MAGA-Trump cult is a massive lawless organization that is wrecking the country.

I'm not sure why you can't bring yourself to see the big picture. You just can't put the blame where it's deserved. Apparently, something in your mind just can't bear to blame Garland. He will go down in history as one of the worst AGs ever......a coward, a terrified, incompetent, little shrew, afraid to do his job.

There has never been a more straightforward, obvious case to prosecute than the crimes we as a nation watched LIVE ON TV on January 6th. A first year law student could've prosecuted that case. Any AG or prosecutor in the country could've taken care of it. Gift wrapped and presented on his lap with a bow. Even the ultra corrupt Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham admitted Dump was guilty and stated the DOJ should take care of it!

But no, you don't see it as Garland's fault because of what came after. Have you stopped to think that what came after was CAUSED by Garland's pathetic non-action? Do nothing and just hope the GOP will exile Dump? How naive. Garland gave the GOP time to sow doubt and come up with propaganda just like they always do. Who would have imagined?

Because of his utter cowardice and just plain terror at doing his job, we now have Dump back in office. He sat around dithering, going after the scum foot soldiers from January 6th, all of which are pardoned now, instead of starting with the main culprit. The buck stops with Garland. Garland decided not to do his job. The 2nd Dump term and all of the horror it brings lies on Garland's table.

Unlike Dump, BIDEN didn't interfere with the DOJ. He didn't even want to give the IMPRESSION that he was influencing or coordinating with DOJ.

It appears based upon your question that you prefer the current regime under Dump. So I guess you would prefer that Biden had interfered with the investigations under Garland?

As a Dem who has apparently been alive during the duration of Biden's term until now, I'd hope you were aware that Biden did not influence the DOJ. So this wasn't a genuine, honest question. You knew the answer, I have to assume.

You knew that the buck stopped with Garland.

You know Garland as the AG was the head of the DOJ.

You know Garland was in control of ANY investigations into Dump.

You know Garland is to blame.

Please stop wasting my time with this.

Realism says things are bad, even very bad, but by facing up to each problem with open eyes, we can tackle the problem.

Defeatism says that things are so bad, that we should just give up and accept that they will never improve and we can't do anything about it.

Realism is good because it brings focus and definition to solving problems. Defeatism is giving in to hopelessness.

right here who seem to eagerly look for things they can call "defeatist" to silence critics.

for believing that we can and should push back strongly and steadily against the destruction of democracy.

The struggle against authoritarian oligarchs currently taking over the country and trying to take over the world seems impossible to win sometimes. There are so many setbacks, so many insane things going on at once, so much money and power on the other side. But they are fallible human beings, not gods. They can be defeated.

It takes a united effort and determination to seize every opportunity, exploit every weakness that we detect in them, and keep on resisting.

Who said, 'everything will just be fine, you'll see'?

"The American experiment is over" is realistic?

Both sides corrupt billionaires wealthy donors lobbyists oligarchs Wall Street superPACs AIPAC ANYPAC neoliberals status quo warmongers coastal elite establishment centrists ignore working class not progressive identity politics Trump listens to working class rigging old guard corporate Dems true roadblock to progress don't stand up to don't fight for earn my vote hold feet to the fire take my vote for granted teach them a lesson vote my conscience lesser of two evils but I just don't like her but he's old but the price of eggs my vote doesn't matter anyway uncommitted revolution solidarity both sides.

What could possible happen.

Giving up and walking away with you tails between your legs. Shame on the defeatist and shame on not trying. As a nation, we've been down before and got back up! We all are better than this and this gets posted on Memorial Day! Double shame!

I read the opposite, the problem is those who have power but done nothing.

Democracy died here already. But acknowledging that isn't being defeatist. It doesn't mean we should stop fighting against the fascist authoritarian regime. We have to build a better government and society. We have to keep fighting, together, with all we have in every way we can.

The collapse of the financial and economic system loom. AI debt will level everything. We build anew from the ashes.

...are not leaders or are "too emotional" to do so, or whatever. Not after Trump. Not before either, but Trump just put the cap on their invalid arguments.

But it's been challenged in the past and we're still here. The Civil War, the Great Depression, the anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the atrocities that were committed during it. We will get through this the same way we got through those, determination and hard work because failure is not an option.

Anything else we do is just building a temporary dam. Article V. Maybe the only thing that will provide the motivation to fundamentally amend (more than just bandaid) the constitution will be when we hit rock bottom - and I mean rock bottom. One, private money needs to be banned
from elections. Two, bodily autonomy. Three, right to privacy - which means inter alia, no surveillance state. Four, right to basic healthcare. Five, right to a standardized world class education for all children K-12. Six, absolute separation of church and state. Seven, curtail presidential pardon power. Firewalls between the president and the DOJ. Create and fund virtually untouchable independent agencies charged with ferreting out accounting fraud and corruption. National secrecy cannot extend to more than 20 years before public disclosure ( accountability for those involved before they die). Representatives and senators must put their money in a blind trust. Penalties for defrauding the public include inability to run for election or to even serve in government - forever.

leadership in science, education, medicine, engineering, and foreign relations is gone. The America I knew and loved died in November 2025.

And he publishes on the evil, dreaded Amazon!!

#blueskybannedbooks Check out my podcast about publishing, self-publishing, writing, or are interested in a different kind of movie review. Hosted by award winning author and #1 Amazon Afrofuturistic Science Fiction writer Mark Sneed. Click the link below. www.buzzsprout.com/2502980/epis...

— Mark T. Sneed (@marktsneed.bsky.social) 2026-05-25T21:36:56.268Z

They all have their own opinions, but I don't have to waste my time reading them.

forget that we get to choose."

Heather Cox Richardson

Those who are stating the obvious are spot-on. The first step in turning this mess around is to turn out for the midterms in numbers so high that the GOP redistricting, their dirty tricks, and their voter suppression tactics will not work. If we can't even manage that, we deserve what we get. No excuses!

He is mini-Bezos.
Bezos sells us Fascism with a fake smile; Sneed is selling Despair with a fake frown.

Know this: all marketing is lies

We can all see it is over, and those violently denying it in this thread just seem to me to be simply showing their understandable reluctance to look at the fact that it is obviously over.

BUT. This disaster has shown us the unworkable parts of our system that need to go. These show us the road to build a better system if we have the will. Whether we have the will is the unanswered question.

The biggest fissure is that our system depends on its participants having a modicum of decency. We have learned that at least a third of our countrywomen and men don't have that decency. So depending on that decency just won't work anymore. That's done.

We can build something different when we regain power by first addressing those areas this third have exploited. The areas where they have been able to pillage the country for their own ends. That includes corporations and politicians. This requires a concerted effort to PROSECUTE the offenders without mercy. Our mistake in the Biden years was not doing that. Inevitably, I will be accused of trashing Biden for saying that. It's not trashing. Some of us saw his mistake in real time. A lot more can see it in retrospect. He made a mistake. People do. But the appointment of a "go along to get along" prosecutor has had disastrous consequences. This time, if "Just move ahead" is the road taken, it will truly be the end of anything resembling a Democracy.

But also, somewhere down the line when things settle into the new system - because it WILL be a new system, for better or worse depending on what WE do - we need to look at WHY so many of our countrywomen and men are such shits. Why there is no honesty, no character on the right. Bring back civics classes and make them mandatory in high school. Address the income inequality that makes the weaker among us create enemies of their neighbors. This is a lot more elusive than the goal of prosecution, and it's beyond my psychological understandings, but it is something smarter heads than mine need to address.

The same group that will accuse me of trashing Biden will take issue with my saying that WE have to fix this. They will say republicans broke it and therefore should fix it. Which is asinine. Of course they should. But that's not how the world works. They won't. We all know they won't. So if we want it fixed, we have to do it ourselves.

Step 411.5 "What if someone says the experiment is over when it isn't?"
Continue to Step 412.

why post a piece declaring its's over and there is nothing we can do about it?

Which dichotomous assertion do I take at face value?