...all the things we took for granted, gone, poof. I'm still terrified I'm gonna lose my medicaid and that will be my final nail... no meds = bad things and I will rather shuffle off this mo0rtal coil than live in my body when it's not in remission.

Until then, we fight where we can and prepare to fend for ourselves. I'm glad we are heading into spring/summer if only for the respite from freezing temps and weather. I know summer will be full of it's own hell. But maybe I can get a leg up on the garden, stock up, maybe get a generator for next winter cuz it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Low information voters make the difference in the elections. They are either prejudiced, blind to reason, brain washed, willfully ignorant, or afflicted with other issues.

sane washing over the last 2-9 years. This is a long-planned effort in the US which has been recently joined by global oligarchs and authoritarians previously thought fringe.

The world is pissed at us not just for the 2024 election but for allowing a slow degradation of democracy and concentration of wealth and power over decades.

The voters that didn't vote for harris based on her demographics alone was enough to sink her. There are too many closeted racist, sexist and low info voters to gamble with to run any minority in the next cycle.

a Village that has been amassing for a while.

there was going to be no stopping them or going back. There is no "they will get better" or " they'll listen to reasoned argument, studies and factual proof". They will not. We are going to face this for a very long time.

once made the comment ... you can not deal rationally with an irrational individual. I have always considered those words to live by and have remembered them since he spoke them when I was in my early 20s. These magats and the administration are irrational people. There is no way to deal with them rationally. They don't speak or think "rational"... what can we do to get their attention?

of MAGA willing to listen to him.

does not understand "soft power."

Presidents Flunkie and Junkie.

It's all fucking over. We're going to be thought of as a pariah state because we are. We deserve all of it.

And I do really mean respectfully. Seriously.

The GOP has total control. Yes, I realize that there have been points in the past where the GOP controlled every branch of government. The difference then was there were still enough Republicans who, as repugnant as their political positions and policies may have been, still insisted on following basic constitutional principles to prevent a dictatorship from taking hold.

I'm thinking here of people like Liz Cheney and Mike Pence. Hell, even Dubya didn't try to claim some sort of fraud had occurred when the Republicans got hammered in the 2006 midterms. I believe he said words to the effect of "that was a real shellacking," and then went back to all of his own awful policies and positions. Now, every last Republican shows total fealty to Trump. J.D. Vance especially- and he has said he wouldn't have certified the 2016 election if he had been President. Believe him.

In my opinion, the sooner we realize the US is already a dictatorship in the true sense of the world- not hyperbole, really a dictatorship- then the sooner we can figure out the best way to deal with or overthrow said dictatorship. I'm sixty years old so I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but maybe.

champion against trump. Her father was one of the original pushers of the "unitary executive" theory. Kept pushing it and pushing it. He knows it, inside and out. Hell, HE wanted to be the unitary executive by diminishing W's position. I'm sure Liz and her father are close, and she has grown up understanding her father's policies and ideologies. I'd have been horrified if I'd been her. But I wasn't raised like that. Anyway, understanding where the Heritage Foundation wanted to take this theory, and how far they'd push it, and then seeing trump deploy it, I think it actually scared her to realize trump would change the unitary executive into a true dictatorship. He'd bastardize whatever sugar coating the Foundation had put upon this ideology... if I were a Heritage member, I'd be hanging my head in shame, if not from a noose on the highest tree I could find.

Angry at those who didn't vote at all! Too.

opposition and we have the right ideas.

Needed to hear that today.

... it's ten thousand times more disastrous than that. As unspeakably evil as Trump and his Gestapo are, those who could do something, but won't are even worse.

Chanted our enemies. But we were done in from within.

done from insiders. I just couldn't believe people weren't arrested on Jan 6 for storming the capital. And then it took forever to even get trials started, regardless of evidence. And then the puny, short sentences that were handed down for most of the insurrectionists were a slap in the face of every veteran and every true patriot in this country. I'm remembering those true believers in other countries that emolated themselves in protest of whatever communist edict had come down on them... and wondering if we're going to start seeing an uptick in protests in the U.S. Not that I'm saying anyone should set themselves on fire, of course! but simply marching isn't going to do a damn thing and trump will just close the blinds on us as he gives the order to the cops to start shooting us... or arresting us and sending us Guantanamo Bay, El Salvador, or "out to the desert" with no water.

I feel like we've got to do something jaw droppingly different, but I have no idea what, in order to wake people up. We have to put a pin at this place in history and go no further until things change to the lawful once again.

Using subliminal indoctrination and neurolinguistic programming techniques with the right wing media infrastructure. I guess Fox, Newsmax and News nation to name a few that were willing to destroy our country and democracy.

History will not be kind to the orange Hitler and his fellow repuke nazis. ( if we survive this)!

We are getting to a point where maybe only force and revolution might save us. I am not sure that regular democratic procedures will save us. I think that our democracy has been overthrown. We will see if there are fair elections on 2026. I am skeptical. I am not sure that we will survive the next few years. It has only been two months of this stuff. It is just going to keep getting worse unless something is done.

My timing was off but Trump has learned his lessons. As I learned in law school everything is a construct. The government only works if everybody agrees to obey the rules. If they don't, and they get power, we're all f*****. And here we are. I agree with your assertion... regular Democratic procedures will not stop this maniac. So far only one person has the right method to combat this nightmare...go Luigi.

I agree with you. We have a legal right to defend ourselves. If a government becomes oppressive, we have a right to abolish it. This is stated clearly in the Declaration of Independence, our founding document. Certain uses of force can be lawful and justified. You have to be careful stating such ideas here on DU. I have had a couple of posts removed for doing so. But I think we have to stop being afraid of talking about the possible use of force. I think that it is foolish not to. There is probably not going to be a soft way out of this situation. Anyway, thanks for your comment.

I just posted we need to do something totally shocking in order to get people's attention laser focused on what is happening. There's so much, and so much chaos, and so many people wondering if they're going to be thrown out of job or see their checks disappear, it HAS to be shocking to break through all that stuff. The Buddhists have a history of setting themselves on fire to draw attention. I believe the last person to do so that I can remember was someone in Greece, after austerity and banking changes hit their country over a decade or so ago. I may not be remembering that exactly, tho. And I certainly don't want to see anyone set themself on fire! But it does have to have shock value in order to shake people out of the shock and stupor. I just don't know what. And trump has now demeaned any action (as far as I'm concerned) by just labeling it TDS.

I do wonder about slipping something into the water supply that would change mental states for the better. A friend came up with the idea of substituting a med for trump instead of the ones he uses. And gods almighty, I HATE even thinking of myself talking like this!!! this really is not me. I'm a gentle person who is so thoroughly into the Earth and its critters. I move spiders outside instead of killing them when I find them in the house. THAT'S the kind of person I am. That trump can push me to this point, is telling. It's not derangement syndrome... it's PTSD... and way too many of us are suffering under it because of him!

I am personally pretty dedicated to nonviolence and democracy. That said, the Trump Musk Regime does not abide by either nonviolence or democracy. They do not care about the law and the Constitution, but rather see them as an obstacle to their goals. So it may take some sort of justified use of force to stop all of this. I hope that there is a better solution, but right now I don't see it. In any case, thanks for your comment.

This is a continuation of the Jan 6 insurrection. They view it as their own version of a revolution and are quite willing to use force as needed. But actually they are reactionary and their new Trump-first regime is based on repression. They are dismantling the structure of democracy, replacing it with bad faith politics, official lies and propaganda (just read official whitehouse statements) and almost everything else from the fascist playbook.

Resistance is starting; beginning with a few strong progressive voices and a rejection of the weak “we..will..win…” mini-chants of the gerontocracy. It will take more than the usual party political maneuvers and ad campaigns. It will take a native resistance movement and it should include normies as well as progressives (I know, progressives are normies) and a whole lot of lawyers, with a focus on democracy. If we think Democrats will win without a big, solid movement behind us, we are going to live in this dystopia forever.

bad, and then you still have an entire party which is compromised to deal with.

Bernie is doing townhalls in republican districts and AOC has social media.

Groups like anonymous and any antifa action (amorphous, leaderless) are going to be most effective at fighting fascism, but they will not be coordinating it here on DU.