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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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God dammit, they had to fucking miss
Part of me wishes they didn't, part of me wonders who would use his martyrdom to do even worse.
That last part is the terrifying bit, honestly. Trump is an egomaniac with the attention span of a toddler. He's an unguided projectile of spite and vanity.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
The potential for lasting damage goes (even further) off the scale. I shudder to think what that might actually look like.
Honestly, in the event Biden loses, the best hope the US has is Trump's general incompetence.
During the early pandemic, I was 100% convinced he was going to declare a national state of emergency as a pretense for a kind of coup. It would have been easy to have disproportionate military occupation of population centers like NYC, enforcing curfews, enforcing distancing and masking, while generally fomenting unrest through non-military groups. Throw in some old-fashioned resource scarcity by restricting shipping in the name of quarantine and, baby, you have a stew going. Once people are incited to riot, martial law is easy to justify.
Instead, the Republican party doubled-down on the dumbest plan possible - literally betting on the stupidity of their base - to secure political power. The sheer greed, ego, and narcissism in the upper echelon of their leadership has them stepping on their own feet half the time, and I'm convinced we're lucky for that.
It's a good thing the Republican leadership is as incompetent as they are morally bankrupt, but that doesn't mean they haven't managed to stumble their way into pushing the US to the brink of a dictatorship. As the KGB used to say, a lot of them are "useful idiots" which can be orchestrated by careful external manipulation.
This is the same line of reasoning that created the “Allies actually didn’t try very hard to assassinate Hitler, because they realized he was a really bad tactician” conspiracy theories. Basically, the reasoning is that while Hitler was charismatic and had a massive cult following, he wasn’t actually that good at making tactical decisions in war. So the allied powers didn’t really try very hard to assassinate him, because they feared an actual competent ruler who would potentially take his place.
Basically, “never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
I'm not onboard with that conspiracy, as there were certainly attempts on his life throughout his reign. But I do agree with the relevancy of that Sun Tzu quote.
By 1943 Hitler was making such poor decisions it would've actually benefited the Nazi war effort if he had been removed from power.
A head that size is a sniper’s wet dream.
I'm a flaming liberal, but I'm honestly revolted that, as I write this, your comment has a bunch of upvotes and no downvotes.
This man wants to do things that will make me and many people i love dead or suffering. How do you not understand how we could feel this way?
Because if you start justifying these kinds of things, they will eventually be turned against you and next you know it, your own political representative is being shot at because their opponent's supporters are feeling threatened just as you are (whether they are truly justified in feeling threatened or not, doesn't matter).
Democracy does not work with violence.
EDIT: I'm really curious about the downvoters: do you really think murdering your political opponents is justified? The goal is to vote out the fascists, not become fascists.
Republicans have already been justifying it. It was only days ago that a Republican said [paraphrasing] "theres a revolution already going on and it will be bloodless if the left doesnt interfere".
Republicans have already been justifying the death of BIPoC, trans kids, the queer community, Palestinians and anyone who opposes their genocide.... the list goes on. And its mealy mouthed liberals that always say shit like "oh but we shouldn't start justifying using violence, even in defence" from their positions of privilege.
WTF do you think is going to happen after November, whether Trump wins or not? They have been laying out the justification for using violence for 4 fucking years and you've slept through it, hoping its just some nightmare you'll wake up from.
How do you think your form of 'democracy' was achieved? You ballot box is awash with so much fucking blood that you would piss your pants if you had a tiny inkling. And most of it is from those who your country mercilessly crushed for you to have it. You dont live in a democracy. You live in a military/prison/pharma industrial corporatist state that masquerades in a trenchcoat as a democratic Republic
I'm not sure what you're saying - since they are justifying violence, you should too? That doesn't seem sustainable, unless your goal is a civil war.
EDIT for your edit: I am not from the US so I'm not sleeping through anything, I'm just watching from the sidelines. My form of democracy was actually introduced quite peacefully, all things considered. But that's neither here nor there.
Let's say you're in school, and you're assigned a lab partner and told the requirements of your project and that you need to compromise both individual's ideas to make it happen.
Every time you try to make a suggestion, they immediately say no and suggest something that isn't even graded for the project, and refuses to budge until you compromise. When you don't compromise, they threaten to tell the teacher that you're not compromising. As you try to hold your ground trying to get a good grade for both of you, they just keep doing whatever they want and making more threats to you: they'll take your lunch money, they'll beat you up after school, they'll pop your bike tires, etc.
When you tell the teacher, they tell you to stop overreacting and you need to learn to work with others. After school, your science partner punches you and says you better agree to XYZ tomorrow. You tell the teacher they hit you, and you're told you need to stop exaggerating and learn to compromise and work together. Every day that week, your science partner makes good on each threat after school, and every day you tell your teacher, they tell you to stop exaggerating and learn to play nice.
On the last day, you punch the kid back, really hit him, break his nose kind of punch. And you're punished: the teacher says you shouldn't have resorted to violence, your partner says they were the true victim in the project arrangement, you get a failing grade because everything you compromised on didn't meet the requirements, but your science partner still got an A and wasn't punished for anything he did all week because "the rules don't apply to them the same way, they're troubled/have a lot going on at home/whatever excuse."
That's the current state of US politics: Republicans are justified in any and everything they do because they're "special," but Democrats have to follow all of the rules, all of the time, even when the other side of the aisle refuses to even listen to them or the centuries/decades of legal precedent. And they, the Republicans, still win because that's just how the fucking system works.
Any bloodless revolution is done through an implicit threat of violence. It is just the losing side being smart about how they lose.
I tillegg om du er dansk, vil eg påpeike at Danmark mista eineveldet sitt då dei tapte Napoleonskrigane i 1814, som også var grunnlaget for Noreg sin uavhengigheit og demokratiske grunnlov.
It doesn't work if all parties aren't participating in good faith, either. What then?
I don't think that's true. Obviously you need elections that can be trusted (and despite everything I don't think elections results are being tampered with too significantly) but if there are bad faith actors (like Trump) then just... Get people not to vote for such an actor. Should be easy enough seeing as they're a bad faith actor right?
Well no, because people are poorly educated or brainwashed or scared or bigoted or hateful or afraid or all the other reasons that people in the US might vote for Trump. The problem is not Trump, the problem is the people voting for him. That's also why shooting him is a bad idea, it only entrenches his supporters even further (aside from the fact that shooting anyone is generally a bad idea).
Democracy requires nonviolence and an educated and informed population. The US fails on both accounts.
HAHAHAHA oh damn my dude go and read any history book.
Our "democracy" IS violent, it just isn't the ruling class experiencing the violence. Every day our society is upheld by violence. Violence over seas (231 years of war, support of genocide, coups, and interventions) and violence at home in the form of an increasingly more powerful police state.
This is just the direct forms of oppression like guns, bombs and jackbooted thugs. There are also sanctions that starve people and IMF loans that impoverish people. These all uphold our standards of living, the united states cannot exist with the impoverishment and exploitation of others.
Political violence ≠ fascism. Violence is what people turn to when they can't achieve what they need by merely talking and voting. Cf. every revolution, ever. Including the American one.
Killing fascists makes you a fascist?
Do you not realize how terrible it is that he missed? You of all people as a "flaming liberal" should be the most angry. This essentially secures trumps presidency, its the best thing that could have happened to his campaign.
First of all, that's bullshit. As I said in another thread:
Second, my political activism stops short of murder. Apparently that doesn't go far enough for you. That doesn't make me a troll.
Dont get me wrong, assassinations are stupid and rarely accomplish much of value. No single human is responsible for the state of our society, it is much more institutional than that. Only a dismantling of the current systems could actually inact change. HOWEVER, if trump was murdered I would gloat and I feel no shame in that.
Also them missing is gonna make MAGA people really annoying for a while
Yeah you are definitely a lib alright.
This comment section is so fucked!
You libs drone all the time in every media how the guy is an enemy of democracy, second coming of Hitler and needs to be stopped for any price. Yet you are "revolted" when someone taken it seriously.
The problem is not Trump, the problem is the people voting for him. Trump should be stopped through educated and informed voting, that's how democracy works.
Unfortunately the US is not known for its education and good unbiased information. But that is the underlying problem that needs to be fixed, and shooting Trump does nothing to fix that and will only serve to replace Trump with someone equally bad (or even worse).
Are you saying people should start shooting trump voters instead of trump?
tell us something we don't know