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nemomarx parent
Good strategy if voting is still allowed in 2028, not super useful if political violence bubbles over into a coup or such.

The scale of the protests is encouraging, but I remember the mass protests under Bush were about as large, and the war continued and he stayed in power. Organization needs to do something with the mass of people who are out in the streets to direct them.

miki123211
Voting is always allowed. No matter how corrupt the country, no matter if it's ruled by a dictator, even in a "Free Democratic Union of Independent People's Republics", there's always going to be an election sooner or later.

Whether the elections are fair and the opposition is even allowed to field a candidate... now that's a different story.

bobthepanda
The real bellwether will be what happens in House elections in 2026.

Trump was already divisive enough that the Republican majority in the House shrank in 2024.

Tadpole9181
And yet they hold every single branch of government.
matthewdgreen
And this was their chance to demonstrate that they could govern, maybe even grow their gains with some demographics. They're not doing that at all.
Tadpole9181
Like every other time? I'm not holding my breath. They're not even bothering to condemn a political assassination anymore.
ethbr1
The chance to fix that is in 2026 at the ballot, and preparation every day until then.

The whole "there won't be elections" hysteria is exactly because the current MAGA movement is scared shitless of being rejected again.

Furthermore, if Trump-y candidates do poorly in 2026, he'll be a lame duck president with little political clout for his final 2 years.

Politicians are many things, but charitable to unpopular people without power is not one of them.

NemoNobody
Well said - this is exactly what we have to do. The Blue Wave is coming - every state.
Tadpole9181
Like the Blue Wave I was promised in 2024? When we took the house or senate or presidency? Invigorated, of course, by the Presidential candidate threatening war on allies, the revocation of addition rights (following the death of RvW), etc?
computerthings (dead)
immibis
Trump promised his followers won't have to vote any more. Why would he promise that if there will be fair elections in 2026 and 2028?
ranger_danger
Because he tells his people what they want to hear, no matter how big of a lie it is.
mrguyorama
Because Trump reliably makes at least one statement in support of ANY point in possibility space.

You can pull-quote Trump saying literally anything, from being pro-gun to anti-gun, pro-queer to radically anti-queer, literal child molester to saint.

His words literally don't matter, because he says them all.

Pay attention only to his actions.

ethbr1
Because he was talking in terms of things his base wanted already being accomplished by 2026 or 2028?

I swear, as a liberal, the amount of pearl clutching and out of context nefariousness everyone frets about is insane.

1. Strongman opponent's speech, rather than leaping to extremes immediately

2. Understand Trump, moreso than other politicians, says all kinds of things he doesn't intend to do

Tadpole9181
I mean, I'm voting and I'll tell everyone to vote. Support my preferences publicly, of course.

But given the combined discrepancy between Harris vs the Attorney General in every single county of NC, the Elon contact for those voting machines, and Trump saying it out loud, I'm kind of at the point I'm not sure if the last election was legitimate. I don't have a lot of hope for 2026 or 228 since we're already past "the US military is deployed against its own citizens and make an extra-constitutonal arrest" stage with no consequences. Also the "disobey the Supreme Court" stage. But I guess we'll see and it'll be a great day to be proven wrong.

Though, I hardly even called America a democracy before that given the intense Gerrymandering, a lack of an established right/obligation to vote, and completely disproportionate representation in legislation. The whole system is a joke in it's design.

ethbr1
Some wisdom: There are and have always been problems with American democracy. Yet at the end of the day vote counts and protest counts are the things that change the country's trajectory.

Part of the toxicness of current news media is the "And this can never be changed" doomerism.

Bullshit. Everything can be changed. It just takes action and convincing others to take action.

Tadpole9181
Protests mostly make people feel good, but rarely invoke change. MLK did not accomplish his goals through life, it was the violence that followed that precipitated actual change. Did RvW protests stop the SC? Did Palestine protests stop our involvement with Israel? Did Occupy Wall Street work? Did the LEO system get reformed after the massive Floyd protests? No. Not a single one of those protests with tens of millions of total participants worked.

France didn't preserve their retirement age by walking around with signs. They had to get disobedient. Break shit, stop collecting trash or running services.

Shockingly, people who are going to fuck you for power or money could care less if you're upset about being fucked. And now that the majority of media in America is controlled by 7 billionaires and they've spent 30 years justifying shooting or run over protestors, they're calling the bluff and betting Americans will roll over and take it.

And they're probably right.

NemoNobody
Ah, and secured the Blue Team Generational power - tbh, with how liberal this country is going to become overnight, all this might be worth it.

The last gasp of conservativism.

NemoNobody
Why did you pick Marx?

Rhetoric doesn't match. Marx literally said that the only for the working class to overthrow their oppressors (business owners) was to make them not a live.

He was very radical.

nemomarx OP
I find Capital to be a fairly moderate look at the situation - a lot of it is essentially an economics textbook. Marx was almost an optimist compared to the power capital has today, if you look at his predictions.

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