Political Discussion and Commentary

Arm yourselves.

Regardless of whether this is the case or not.

America is in steep decline and there are about to be a whole lot more desperate people out there.

If this were the case, the United States would not be united for very long. I expect several states would outright reject the authority of the federal government by then, at which point civil war would likely erupt.

I give you guys until July 4th this year. You don't have years...

I largely agree, and have been saying for years that people are drastically underestimating what a second Trump term will look like. The only counter I would say is that, while Trump is immensely powerful, and the opposition complete chickenshit, Germany and Italy are not the norm. There were unique historical conditions that made the fascist conquest of those countries so complete so quickly. Generally the country falls into some inbetween.

There are a lot of different interests at play in the US, a lot of institutional inertia, a lot of capital that does not support Trump yet(although capital will follow fascists if they think it the best way to crush workers).

Trump does have a genius at understanding postmodern media, and is himself sorta the incarnation of postmodern, which means an ability to feed desire and fear in his followers. But he looks woefully incompetent at the present moment, which is not inspiring for people to commit a fascist coup. He is also incredibly ill disciplined and fickle. The Nazis at least felt the need to deliver some material returns for workers with vacations to Spain and such. Doing everything you can to tank the economy and put yourself in an incredibly weak bargaining position with foreign nations as your economy collapses is the opposite of inevitable, indomitable strength.

Trump wants to mimic Hitler by sacrificing the longterm stability of the economy for shorterm growth(it's what every Republican does), but he has perhaps irreperably annihilated his greatest assett, faith in US credit, finance, and the petro dollar. He was in a situation unprecedented outside the modern US, being able to print huge amounts of money without the risk of hyperinflation. Hitler instituted huge deficit spending(and wealth robbed from those persecuted), to fund a boom in industrial production that lowered the unemployment rate. It was like a sugar rush, to continue required the use of massive pools of slave labor and the constant influx of stolen wealth.

The reason he paused tarriffs when the bind market became unstable is because the bomd market generally improves when stocks are unstable. People move their money into seemingly bedrock stable assets, US bonds. Those slipping, and the risk of foreign holders offloading huge amounts, would cause rates the US can borrow at to increase. With the tarriffs, this could further erode faith in US debt, which could enter a doom loop of rising interest rates requiring more borrowing to print money leading to further erosion into absolute armageddon until the US can no longer basically print money for nearly free.

The situation Trump is leading us to is closer to Weimar hyperinflation than Nazi sugar rush. Add onto this, if he actually tries to remove Powell for a loyalist, it could destroy 50 years of built trust.

This made seem ancillary, but it is vital to an overt authoritarian move. If doomsday pops off, he will try and use the military to put down unrest. The sheer breadth and lack of accountability of emergency presidential powers should be the front page story of every newspaper right now.

It is worth noting that Hitler never abolished the Weimar Republic. He trotted the Reichstag out every 4 years to reaffirm his Ennabling Act mandate. He never broke the law. He totalized his control of the branches of government, industry, and academia and used his mandate as a permission structure for the middle management to continue serving the Nazis. Trump is currently attempting the same thing, threats of investigation of congress, gutting the deparments, and arresting a judge while not ruling out arresting Supreme Court Justices being the most notable examples.

Trump could use the instability he causes to consolidate control, but I think it would be unlikely. Declare sedition and a national emergency, take control of media, set up road blocks, mass arrests, freezing opposition finances, occupying blue states. But a strongman needs to be seen as the only viable solution to a crisis, not the cause. He has a cult of personality built for around 30-40% of the population. Hitler had institutional backing, from the army, capital(night of the Long Knives was explicitly to gain these), and from the middle class. He lowered unemployment from 30 to 5%.

All to say, the worst thing for an aspiring strongman is to give an order that is disobeyed en masse. And with a tanking economy, instability, chaos, the people opposing Trump will come from a large crosssection of the population. Soldiers will not see a threat to the country in the protestors, they will see their moms, brothers, friends, and sisters. And in the Russian and French Revolutions, soldiers refusing orders against protestors proved pivotal inflection points.

Miller has suggested building a core military group of extreme loyalists from across the government. Terrifying, but America is massive, and during mass protests would be barely noticable outside all but the largest cities.

Masse defections, coupled with chaotic leadership(Trump is incapable of any other kind), a tanking economy, and mass protests would force the institutions Trump had almost cowed to grow a spine. To avert complete chaos they would have to reassume powers they have for decades handed over to the President.

So where does this leave us? Well, probably somewhere inbetween, further erosion and institutional rot, further corruption and capitalist capture. An escalation of the creeping illiberalism without a complete fascistic collapse.

Formerly when the US has reached crisis points caused by capital's evisceration of all life to market forces, waves of reform stabilized the boat. If Bernie would nit snuffed out by Dems, he could've transformed the coalitions, won the working class back, brought back a barely tolerable equilibrium, and removed the material conditions responsible for fascism(capitalism's domination over the government and working class, and thus its complete commodification of land, money and labor- side note, everyone should read The Great Transformation to get a handle on what is happening). But he lost, and we went down the rabbit hole we have avoided prior. But this also dialectically creates the conditions for its own antithesis. Trump will likely cause catastrophy without taking us a the way. The persecutions, deportations, stifling of speech, corruption, destruction of the common good, will open possibilities for radical reform formerly thought impossible. Already there is strong majority support for removing the Dem neoliberal old guard. Schumer would likely get wrecked by AOC. Talk of mass organizing and mutual aid, mainstream democrats calling for general strikes and mass disruption. This could give us a completely transformed democratic party that looks to Blair Mountain rather than the G8 and technocratic finance bros for its inspiration. If the Democrats actually ran on real change to oppose this they could create a generational New New Deal coalition of white and blue collar workers. The Dems held the house with one interruption from '31 to '95. Universal preK, college, healthcare, worker protections, and a litany of other things that could push back the markets from social life.

We could also be looking at the Marius or Sulla to some current 23 year old Caesar. But I think there is a strong argument that Trump would need to radically rethink giving the working class literally nothing besides spectacle and theft in order to consolidate power. Sorry for the length

There’s a long list before they start fucking with liberals. Yes, it’s coming. But first:

• “illegals” (currently happening)
• “parasites,” people on SSDI, SNAP, Medicaid, and in HUD housing (hey look! That’s me! 🫠)
• trans / non-binary • protestors and high-profile political opponents
• registered Democratic voters

This is why I have bought more ammo and slugs for the 12 gauge. Keep safe guys, and don't let them take you. If they do, you're already dead. So take some with you.

No.

Your view doesn’t need changing. It is accurate.

Currently 52% of US voters believe that trump should be impeached again. I wouldn't say it's impossible that the trump regime aspires to put liberal citizens into concentration camps, but I would say that they don't have the numbers or the logistical capability to accomplish it.

There are about 2-3 police officers at most per 1000 US citizens on average. The US military has about twice the amount of active duty members as the total of US police officers. Military is 2-3x as large as police in other words. So you could add them all together for a worse case scenario of population versus cops & military, and you'd have 8-9 versus 1000 average ratio.

They could start some shit, but they don't have the numbers to finish it. They can't take us all.

Eventually, yeah, they're preparing for that. However, I think the federal government will collapse before they get much past hunting "illegals."