“But over time, the executive branch grew exceedingly powerful. Two world wars emphasized the president’s commander in chief role and removed constraints on its power. By the second half of the 20th century, the republic was routinely fighting wars without its legislative branch, Congress, declaring war, as the Constitution required. With Congress often paralyzed by political conflict, presidents increasingly governed by edicts.”
Aside from this being a little fucking melodramatic and defeatist, the thing that really bothers me is the implicit assumption that if only we’d all just vote blue no matter who we wouldn’t have this problem, like the Democratic Party hasn’t been kowtowing to and enabling those same oligarchs to undermine our democracy. It’s like they’re standing in the rubble of a bombing and saying, ‘This is happening because you chose the short fuse on the bomb, if only you had chosen the long fuse we
wouldn’t have noticed this happening quite so quicklywouldn’t be having this problem!’Don’t get me wrong, boom tomorrow is definitely better than boom today, but it’s important to not forget that there was never not going to be a boom.
The only way to have time to stop the bomb from going off is to choose the longer fuse. We didn’t even give ourselves a chance to replace neoliberalism with socialism, people let fascism win in 2024.
Stopping the bomb from going off is wishful thinking, but I agree, that’s why I said 'boom tomorrow is definitely better than boom today`.
It’s not wishful thinking. It was possible, but hard, to make a course correction, but we failed to even give ourselves the time to do it.
The longer fuse was still a fuse and was picked over and over for so many years without anything else done. At this point other then being able to say “don’t blame me I voted for kodos” there is little value in the “long fuse” party. The us needed real options outside of fascism vs fascism lite.
Neoliberalism isn’t fascist lite, but it does lead to fascism. I doubt I’m alone, at the time anyway, in thinking Obama was at least a progressive candidate. Hindsight is 20/20. Obama was yet another neoliberal. But considering American history, electing a Black president whose slogan was hope seemed like we were bucking trends, when in fact we were doing more of the same.
It has become more obvious now with two Bernie runs and three full Trump runs that neoliberalism is a sales pitch for the scam that is late-stage capitalism. But it’s not for a lack of trying people have been picking the long fuse party. This country rejected Hillary Clinton twice, probably not for the right reasons in all cases, but at least some people were looking for alternatives to what they saw as Bill Clinton’s version of the Democrats.
We need socialism. And I can’t guarantee we would have gotten there in one or even two more general elections. But if Trump showed us anything, it is possible to co-opt a modern political party with a populist narrative. What Trump did to the Republicans is what Bernie tried to do to the Democrats. Someone else younger, I don’t know who, needed to be given a chance to do that and we did not create an opportunity for them to even try.
How much time would you need and what would you do?
I effectively answered this in the comment to M0oP0o, but I’ll go into more detail here. We needed one or two more election cycles for a candidate with a populist narrative about progressive and socialist change to co-opt the Democratic party. By co-opt I mean totally control it, the way Trump has taken over the Republican party. This would be hard, since the owner class has a class interest in stopping progressives and socialists and supporting neoliberals and fascists, but it wasn’t impossible. As far as policy, the short answer is a serious of constitutional amendments to ensure majority rule in all branches of government and mandate worker own corporations while also completely redistributing wealth.
Considering the death toll and the long term destruction to the Earth’s environment a four year Trump term would cause, it seems like it would be worth it to go for a political Hail Mary. Especially when a christo-fascist regime starting with Trump will undoubtedly last much longer than four years. The damage will not be constrained to America, but will be global.
Not mention people seem to forget that before Nazi Germany was defeated it conquered most of continental Europe. Even if it doesn’t happen in the next four years, this fascist Trump administration is laying the ground work for conquering North America. People on lemmy tend to use the word imperialism a lot when describing America. So they jump ahead to assuming that American empire is dying when it is American democracy that has died. American empire is getting started now. In the sense that America, as a fascist nation, is going to exert itself on everyone it deems to be in its regional sphere of influence. I don’t know how long it will last, but it’s going to take a lot to stop North America from becoming a one to one match with America.
It is theoretically possible to get out of this in the next elections, but it was highly unlikely before Trump’s inauguration. Now that he’s trying to tip the scales in his favor in future elections this becomes even more increasingly unlikely. The nature of fascist regimes is that the dictator prioritizes loyalty over everything. Which means competent individuals are completely overlooked for consideration in hiring and appointments. Hence fascist incompetence. We cannot rule fascist incompetence out, but we cannot predict where it will strike. Incompetence could cause the fascists to lose at the ballot box, but it could also strike when they try to invade a neighbor. Since we don’t know when or how an opportunity will arise we have to keep an open mind so we can exploit it when it does.
The 2024 election was our last scheduled opportunity to defeat fascists. So we really should have given it everything we had while we had a chance even if it was a long shot. We don’t know when we will get another now. It might be in 2026 and 2028 with elections. Or it might be in 2029, in a completely hypothetical scenario, where after winning a third term Trump dies of old age and infighting creates an opportunity for rebellion. We’ve gone from having a regularly scheduled opportunity to try to make things better to who knows when we get another. And we still have to do all the same work we had to do before, but it will be harder because now we have to defeat a fascist regime first.
I mean, nobody who paid attention actually thought the democrats did enough. The whole point was to buy enough time to hopefully shame them into doing something progressive instead of token concessions, but it’s a moot point now.
That’s been failing for the 30+ years during which I voted blue, why does anyone imagine it would suddenly start succeeding now?
Then the equation is still fascism now vs fascism later. Fascism later was still worth a shot.
Every time I see people trashing the vote blue no matter who people, I just see “democrats suck so we might as well have the fascism now.” Which if you’re an accelerationist then sure.
No doubt, I’m not saying fascism now is better by any stretch (which is why I said ‘boom tomorrow is definitely better than boom today’ in the comment that started this thread), I’m saying we should be pissed about the fact that our only choices are both fascism and do something about it.
Not to be churlish but does gay marriage just not count as progressive now? Or marijuana legalization? Exceptions to the rule possibly, but pretty fucking big exceptions if so.
A bit, sure. But while I’m happy people can marry whoever they want, it’s not meaningful change for like 90% of Americans. It’s not economic change. What little they’ve done there in the past 30-40 years has been weak, stop-gap, pared-down versions of good progressive ideas. How’s that universal healthcare going again? Oh right, we got the ACA instead which did some good things and helped some people, no question, but it didn’t change much for most Americans.
What I don’t get from the American people, who have always portrait themselves as champions of everything with this attitude now of “there was no way to avoid it because we are legless turtles and all we can do is vote blue or red and hope our daddies do right by us”
True, the last election would not had saved you but anyone with a firing neuron saw this coming 40 years ago and you all did fuck all to avoid it while still making ignorant jokes about the French being cowards
Yeah, I’ve been expecting this shit since childhood. Weird now how the people who raised me to see it coming consistently voted to make it happen.
that sucks brother
there’s a reason The Grapes of Wrath has that turtle section in it…
Take North Korean propaganda, paint it red white and blue and give it a specific set of “freedoms” and you’ll have any answer of “how”. We’re literally made to be this way. Even those of us with a “firing neuron” are a result of this propaganda, granted just not in the intended way. Drowning and understanding why we’re drowning ends the same way.
Indeed, although anyone who says they knew what shape this would take 40 years ago was either a liar or a time traveler, I’ve been watching it go to shit for my entire life. I too tried voting blue for 30 years only to watch them unwind and fall apart when the chips were down. Now I favor rather more extreme measures, but most Americans are like ‘waah, I keep choosing the lesser evil, why do we keep getting evil?!’
Hmmm maybe for common folks like you and I. But there have been plenty of literature warning about this, it is our own fault (talking in general, not just about America as I am not American) not to heed the advise of those who actually looked into this. For most of us, it is not that it was impossible to predict, it was more like it was much more convenient to believe the comfortable lie than to face the harsh reality
The world is absolutely flooded with people warning about literally everything all the time. Sometimes a few of them happen to be right; that doesn’t make them prescient, just lucky. Broken clocks, and all that. Whose advice do you follow? The guy who says fascism is on the rise, or the guy who says the economy is going to unrecoverably tank? Does it matter that both of them have pretty good evidence to suggest that they might be right? Or that there are 400 more books released in any given year that claim that fascism is on the decline and the economy is booming like there’s no tomorrow, and that they also have pretty good evidence to suggest that they might be right? This is the nature of prediction: it’s all down to how you interpret the signs and signals.
The more recent you look the more that becomes the case, but 40 years ago anyone who said ‘in 40 years we’re going to have a fascist dictator of a president who wants to ransack the courts he packed’ or whatever would just be one more whisper in the hurricane.
If everyone on the outside looking in had been saying the same thing for decades and continually been proven right- I dunno, I’d probably listen to them at some point instead of calling them alarmists and flipping them the bird for daring to weigh in on your problems.
If such a mythical creature exists then feel free to correct me, but meanwhile I’m going to wonder how they have been accurately predicting the future for 40 years and aren’t the most famous person on earth? Like you get a couple billion dollars in the bank and every motherfucker who knows how to operate a keyboard is asking your opinion on stupid shit, how is this guy not on the front page like every day? Elon Musk has only been publicly-known for like 15 years and I can’t buy a pack of smokes without hearing about his opinion on some bullshit or other, so your guy must be flying way under the radar.
I’m so sick of these high tower pseudo-big brain “told ya so” comments. “I saw the end of the US before it’s inception. I saw the end of the US when humans migrated from Siberia 16,000 years ago!” Well, you are so smart and I’m so proud of you, but you aren’t adding a damn thing to the conversation.
Because even after the facts are laid bare, you still seem unable to take any responsibility for it and the entire world pay for the mistakes the people of the USA make
Brother, I didn’t do shit. I’ve been vehemently against Trump since 2015. Do you blame Vladimir the grocery store clerk for Putin?
no, as I wouldn’t blame your kids because their ancestors rolled over and let democracy die
That’s exactly the problem. And I am obviously generalizing
What exactly could I have done? Be specific.
Here are two good articles about what to do
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/trump-fascism-what-to-do
https://itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do-nothing-20-things-you-can-do-to-counter-fascism/
Kinda shitty to assume all Americans are responsible. There’s a lot of people here who tried to keep this stuff from happening and fought against it, and still are. If it’s not cool to paint the French with a broad brush it isn’t cool to do that to everyone in the US.
I’ve been hoping to hear some sort of glimmer of a thought from someone that when America does wrestle control back from the fascists, and history says you will, one way or another, that you don’t just rebuild the same system that produced Trump and his techno-fascist mates in the first place.
This interview was the first time I’ve actually heard it.
IDK why people are so hopeful of fascism falling within their lifetime?
The fascists in power now have technology in everybody’s pockets, even your light bulbs for crying out loud
They can track you within feet across the country. And a lot of this stuff, you can’t really avoid. You can’t really go off the grid if you want to have a normal job now
Not only that, look at China. China is still here and has been for quite some time…
Buttigieg is establishment democrat. Actually listen to him instead of doing what most people do, which is stare at him and wait for him to “say something gay” and then be impressed that he’s such a great orator. He’s never advocated for the social and financial overhaul that the US needs. He’s argued that the system is sufficient for our best outcomes, the same system that is currently on fire.
This reminds me of Obama so much. On one hand it would be nice to have another leader who unites the country, but Obama wasn’t necessarily good for our nation’s long-term future. He was not a leftist or advocate for the poor, he was also establishment Dem/Liberal who passed every opportunity to create real and lasting change in the country.
Buttigieg is currently touring the right-wing spaces and dropping his messages there without resistance because he’s advocating for preserving the wealth in the country. He’s tacitly being endorsed by the billionaire class. They want a return to normalcy, and Buttigieg may have exactly what the country needs to get there, which is clear messaging, hypnotic blue eyes and an appeal to many men’s latent curiosity about what what a strong homosexual male even looks like… or if nothing else, an avenue for libs and neo-libs to feel performatively progressive by dropping his name. It’s enthralling to the masses and we should all be terrified.
He is going to be a strong candidate if we have elections again, and I would take him over Trump, but we need to understand what he is. He is NOT our leftist savior, he’s barely more progressive than a liberal savior.
I want to make it clear, if he’s the final candidate against like, Mecha Trump or Don JR or Vance or someone equally absurd, we all better push Buttigieg’s booty up that hill and I will wave that rainbow flag along with everyone else. But we have to understand that it’s a band-aid on a massive infected wound that’s bleeding out.
I’m not gonna disagree with any of that, as I’m not super familiar with him. I’m just saying it’s the first time during this entire Trump fiasco I’ve heard anyone even suggest that maybe we shouldn’t just revert to the pre-Trump status quo should anything ever actually be done about stopping him. I’m hoping others are saying it, I just haven’t heard it.
What section does he mention it (if just one or two)? Don’t have the free time for listening to the full hour, unfortunately, but I am curious (if you don’t mind, of course).
Yep, we now basically have a one party system. Both sides are controlled by the 1%. We need a party that will get rid of the 1%, but that will never happen. They learned their lesson with FDR and watch for someone like him just to make sure he doesn’t get in to office.
I… I’m conflicted. Buttigieg talks a great game, I like much of what he has to say, but at the same time when he was in the 2020 primary I read an article that talked about how he had the most corporate/PAC support of any candidate and I wonder… does he actually believe what he’s saying, or is he just charismatic enough to pull off seeming like he does and he’s just like every other career politician? And also even if he’s 100% sincere and he wins the white house in 2028, he doesn’t have a free hand because the money required to win a national election comes with rather sturdy strings attached, so I don’t think he can accomplish what he claims to want.
But it is, I will admit, rather refreshing to find a Democrat who does in fact have some good-sounding ideas about how to make things better instead of just ‘vote for me or the world will literally blow up!11’
Watch his messaging when he tours FOX and other right-wing podcasts and youtube channels. He talks to the right without without resistance or pushback from the hosts because he’s advocating preservation of existing systems instead of actual overhaul to our nation’s policies and financial systems.
He is likely going to be our next Obama. Charming and beloved by many, but secretly propped up by the billionaire class who want to keep feasting from the table of status-quo. Obama was a great leader, but as a president, he passed on very real opportunities to make lasting change over and over. He didn’t exercise his power in any remotely overreaching way even when he had house and senate. He didn’t pack the Supreme Court and didn’t enshrine rights in any way that would protect people. He could have rammed single-payer healthcare through and been hated and loved by many, probably impeached, but we would have had something great from it.
We really need to do better as a nation understanding the different between leadership and management. And we need to pick people for our local and community elections that have these qualities. They are the ones who prop up the larger system and the ones who largely run unopposed because people are far more fascinated with Buttigieg’s dazzling blue eyes than what their local comptroller believes.
Yeah, I just watched the ~hour long interview he did with Jon Stewart that someone posted, and like it was all good-sounding ideas that may do some good but don’t meaningfully challenge the status quo. Which is a pretty good summary of Democratic policy for the last 40 years. I’ll give it to him though, he’s definitely charismatic (I can’t help but like him even though I think he’s not very far left of, say, Hillary Clinton who is a full-on neoliberal) and he could probably win and be a damned sight better than the current administration. But also that’s maybe not the best long-term because we need the system to fail messily as it is right now to wake people up to the alternatives. I hate advocating for accelerationism because even if the harm caused in the short term is outweighed by the harm prevented long-term, I still have a hard time advocating for things that I know will definitely cause harm.
I’m exactly where you are, assessments included.
I was never an accelerationist and thought at one time it was the laziest of ideals, but now I’m seeing my whole nation dissolve into the investment portfolios of a small handful of people and wondering exactly what kind of consequences my countrymen actually need to experience before they realize how incredibly important it is to take part in, and be aware of, how motherfucking democracy
worksworked. Our people here have the memory of goldfish, and either didn’t remember the last time they got screwed by republicans broadly, or were so distressed by the contention and gravitas of the election cycle that they tuned out and stayed home… with the rest of the 45% of eligible, registered voters who stayed home.To say nothing of the weakest, flimsiest excuses people gave for being lazy about taking part in democracy. You saw tons of it right here on Lemmy. “I cannot in good conscious vote for anyone who won’t take a stand against Israel.” Uh huh, sure buddy, your post history is entirely video games, I am having a hard time believing you’re regularly out there on the Gaza strip handing out aid and food.
Our country really needs a hard slap across the face, and sadly I don’t even think this current situation is doing the trick. The slap that will be hard enough to get people out of their couches will be a real bad one that I don’t wish on anyone, but I feel like it’s inevitable either way. One way is boiling to death slowly, the other is jumping into the fire. I can’t decide which is worse, but the outcome will be the same.
Yeah, too many people in the US are still fat and comfortable with their lot in life, not even dreaming of what could be but stuck in the daily grind.
And I mean I made the same argument many times re:Israel - my standard for whether or not I can vote for someone has been reduced to a binary ‘supports the Israeli genocide in Palestine, yes/no’; it’s an extremely low bar, but both major candidates still managed to ooze under it somehow - but I did at least vote for not-fascism (for what good it did me living in a deep red state) which is more than I can say for most of those folks.
But yeah, we need something to wake people up, and my estimation of what that will take grows increasingly dire as the country goes to shit around us and still people are like ‘No this is fine, we can fix this by voting!’ Nah, the days of voting fixing a damned thing have been over for 20 years at least. And yeah, while the outcome will be the same, one of those is unfortunately going to hurt a lot more than the other, so I’m still reluctant…
I just keep repeating to myself and others, “Nobody is coming.” Even if people made better choices last November, it would have only been delaying the inevitable consumption of the nation that we’re seeing in full mouthful right now.
Even if we got the biggest, boldest grass-roots movement started, it would immediately be swallowed by the existing political Machine & Spectacle, which would either digest it (Remembering that time Tim Waltz was forbidden from calling Republicans “weird” anymore) or they would destroy it with the same old “amplify both sides to the point which reasonable followers tune out” tactic that the KGB pioneered.
Somehow all arrows point to a future where the constitution has become a nifty relic somewhere, everything is privatized, climate change is in full-swing and people are really feeling the shift, while America is suffering through a catastrophic but slow, steady decline to the point that President/CEO Baron has to install a firewall around the US so the citizens don’t see news from Europe or China and how their quality of life is. This could be in 10 - 15 years.
Put away gold I guess, I dunno man, I’m tired.
Yeah. It’s sad to finally give up the last shred of hope that maybe this will all sort itself and somehow get back on track, but the track is now a smoking crater and there’s nowhere to even build new track 'til we fill that back in.
The US has been doing this for the entirety of my life at the very least, and I’m in my 50s. They did it with the USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, etc (not saying all of those places had great quality of life tho.) That was the whole thing with Domino Theory and containment - not just containing the spread, but containing the ideas behind propaganda and sanctions so thick that Americans couldn’t even access the truth of the matter, that way they wouldn’t get any bright ideas about eating the rich and nationalizing industries over here.
It’s definitely exhausting.
The d’s had 50 years to come up with their own plan. And they did nothing. We had a choice of different sides of the same coin and here we are.
Even if they had the time frame that Republicans had with drafting and promoting Project 2025, they could have had their own. They knew it existed, only Trump pretended it never existed and was a hoax.
If the DNC had its own Project 2025, something like “Project End Fascism” it could have worked. Instead we got “Maybe 100K for new home owners. Not gonna go after the corporations buying every home.”
Yeah, reverting to the do-nothing corrupt situation before Trump will do nothing to prevent a resurgence of fascism. It was fertile ground for it before, and still would be.
Bullshit. If Gore won, there’d be compost powered cars and shit. Hilary was pushing for Obamacare since her husband was in office. Biden was all about stimulus to working families. We’ve been living if the New Deal over half a century.
That part’s mixing up two different plans. The healthcare plan that Hillary came up with when Bill Clinton was in office was overly complex, would have delivered even less than Obamacare (which was Romneycare rebranded, with a few tweaks-- Romneycare was a response to Hillary’s disastrous plan), and didn’t make it through Congress. It was a red flag that Hillary didn’t have what it takes to lead any complex effort (such as the Presidency).
LOL. It’s a good thing there was such a competent alternative to vote for then.
Can you imagine if the party didn’t actively work against him in the primaries?
yeah let’s be real, people fell for Trump’s brazen rhetoric, even if it was all an empty facade that you could see miles away if you just looked at his CV objectively
This is what I don’t get: what brazen rhetoric? He can barely string a coherent sentence together when he isn’t merely bullying someone? What kind of fuckwit gets persuaded by that? Don’t answer that.
Yup, they have no positive vision for the future anymore since they’re so far up the oligarchs’ asses they can’t see past the end of their nose. And people still choose the ‘lesser evil’ and then act like they’re somehow surprised that what they got was still evil.
The cut taken by parasitic middlemen?
What we really need is MORE Middlemen to keep a closer eye on all those brokies and make sure they’re not getting too much. That’ll stop the waste, surely.
Oh you didn’t hear? You can’t say oligarchs because American simpletons need to hear “king” instead because we have a long history of fighting kings and definitely not because the term oligarch applies to more than just Trump but instead better describes the cozy relationship between money and power in this country and illustrates that the rich have captured the government.
That’s exactly why I use it.
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Reminder that Clinton pushed for Trump to be the nominee as she thought she would win easier with him. Trump is a non-zero amount of Clinton’s fault.
Playing hot potato with a bomb, passing it along between various administrations and congressional members, and none of them were going to get hurt. It was always going to explode with the victims being the 99%.
Hillary should never have been the candidate. The only rationale for choosing her was that it was her turn. Anyone who expressed admiration for Henry Kissinger like she did is unfit for office.
Indeed, on both counts.
Yeah, it’s definitely melodramatic. I just enjoyed how it laid out the actions of Trump that got us here, as well as describing the expanded role of the Executive.
Fair.
So cute copium, but it’s over. You can discuss what we can do with the next empire? I’m over this one and good riddance honestly it was cringe at the end.
Here’s a radical idea: let’s not have one. Let’s instead have a society that is committed to ensuring that the needs of all of its citizens are met instead of just those of the capitalist class. Voting (blue or not) will never get you there though, because both parties are on the same corporate dark money IV drip. This shithole is the way it is because the people with all the money and power want it this way, and if you think voting will dig you out of it you haven’t been paying attention.
Or, you know, you could just primary existing candidates. That’s always been an option. Take over the infrastructure from within is not as hard as you make it out to be with how it’s set up.
You cannot change the government without the will of the people on some level.
Listen, I voted blue for 30 years and watched them steadily run to the right so hard the party leadership is sitting in Reagan’s lap now, primarying candidates does not change the system because all of the candidates are just puppets hanging from the same set of strings (otherwise they don’t have the funding to get (re)elected.)
Also you definitely can change the government without the will of the people, Trump’s doing a pretty fair job of that while his supporters go ‘I was in favor of deporting the bad people not my mom!’ or ‘I was in favor of firing the lazy government employees not me!’.
Melodramatic and defeatist?
On Lemmy?
Literally at this point I feel like that sentiment is the product of a successful psyop.