The only shock I have is at the people who are shocked, surprised, outraged...
They literally told us everything (Project 2025) and how can anyone claim ignorance after 2016?
Part of it is they are not nearly as unified as they pretend. What Trump wants, what Vance wants, what Musk wants, and what their donors all want are not necessarily lined up.
Last time it was a slow and steady drip of awful. This time, they put all their cards on the table immediately. That's been easier to mentally prepare for than not knowing what new thing they'd dream up.
They are. The jig is up. We’ve all got their number this time around because we watched Kamala’s brilliance in the debate. She pulled the threads right out of his psychotic fabric.
Exactly. And TBH, some of these policies (immigration for example) have been enacted for years. Not saying this regime ISNT going to be worse, but immigrant rights have been squelched since Obama. Black communities suffer enormously, the poor are just dying or homeless.
One hundred. I had to unfollow someone here who was upset because I was telling them that we had strategies in place and that I wasn’t going to get hysterical. He also ignored all the information I posted about what ICE can and can’t do. I have two brown kids so shouldn’t I be more worried?
I've said this a bit already, but a thought I've been developing is that a difference between Trump2 and prior "leaders" like this is that the playbook used to be: "The more bad you do/WANT to do, the LESS bad you try to look like you're doing on the surface" ...Trump is sort of the inverse?
i.e. here the "gameplan" is to do "What we can get away with" - which is all bad, still! - while hyping it for "lib triggering" coverage so the base gets their cruelty fix and the real bosses get the real payouts (stripping fes services for cuts and cashouts)
Basically, they're gambling that it "matters more" that 'The Libs are crying about the announcements' than that the announcements actually do/don't do anything, because "Your pink-hair niece on Facebook is SEETHING ha ha" is 'the show' MAGA wanted out of all this.
This is the Trump we all know and dread: unabashedly corrupt, proudly cruel, and out for blood. If you were hoping he’d pivot to statesmanlike dignity, you’re about four years late and several IQ points short.
The "I'm the idiot that will do what everyone knows is bad" trick only shocks once.
After that, he's just another liar lying about being a liar.
Rapey McRacist shot his load last time.
Not just you. So far a lot of theater, proclamation, and toothless mandate. It is just the first week and their appointees aren’t in place yet, so they get a mulligan for now.
Yep. Probably also because I’m avoiding Twitter like the hellscape it is this time round, but I see measurably less “haha owning the libs” and a lot more “wait, no, I’m not mad you’re mad”
The response to Musk criticism is telling too. Such low energy gaslighting happening.
Yes. We’ve seen all of this. And we’ve seen how bad they are at making new things happen. There is very little they can do to actually rattle me at this point. I have shit to do that matters. Not interested in the attempted distraction.
7ish years ago I was so depressed about all this. And then what gave me hope was this is just the end of the US being the center of awesome research and so on. Some enterprising places will take our places. Progress will continue, it never belonged to us exclusively. Happy for them tbh.
They’re focusing it on direct and contract Federal employees. I understand there’s nothing quite like seeing a barely veiled threat show up in your inbox of an afternoon…
Those are the only sectors of labor they have direct leverage over. The rest of their agenda requires voluntary compliance which they may or may not get.
They want to live like it's 1950 but we as a culture have moved past that. They think we're all just going to roll over and let them drag us back into the past and it's like no we've been living in the present for decades now.
These aren’t bright people. A 2011 report from a progressive immigration group said it would take 70k new law enforcement officers to deport all undocumented immigrants. He can’t pull that off. Also he goes too tough on deportation & the business community goes nuts,
It's not that the stuff isn't big and awful, even-- the birthright stuff and freeing the J6 crew and nuzzling NIH is all terrifying-- but it's also pretty much what he'd said he would do and advocates are calmly taking the logical next steps.
He didn’t have a blueprint last time ( project 2025), nor a super rich tech buddy who showed why he could be confident about winning and smarter people around him problem solving, so he’s calmer & cockier but not chaotic.
And yes, this. And re: prep, we (folks who oppose him, just in general) have spent the last three months reminding ourselves that shock and awe will be their move.
That we need to ration energy and manage the impulse to panic.
Understanding that anything out of him is intended to demoralize is really, really helping. We all spent so much time reacting last time. More people just put his ass on mute and get the gist from people with energy to spare for his nonsense.
Not only do we know how they operate, but we still have at least some connections on the local level from the last time around. Some may be dustier than others, but it's not like we were all caught flat footed like in 2017
The shocking thing to me is how UNPREPARED they seem for the crew that wrote Project 2025.
They were supposed to be coming in with this grand master plan to shove it all through on Day 1, that's what they told reporters on background. Constantly!
I'm surprised by that too and I have a theory that it's connected to Trump's managerial style of making his underlings fight for his favor + loyalty only goes one-way.
I've said multiple times that Trump's incompetence served us well the first time around, and I was worried that wouldn't be the case this time. Maybe I worried too much
I feel like they had figured out the Main Character positions, decided to fire everyone below that and replace them with Heritage Foundation home-schooled loyalist junior staffers w/o considering that those people don’t know how to do these jobs. Giving me big let’s have this 20yo rebuild Iraq vibes
“This order does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
Thankfully they’ve been telling us what they were going to do for a long time. They even printed it out for us. So there’s no shock and certainly no awe. It’s more just sadness at how absolutely petty they are. Those most shocked are probably his supporters wondering where the cheap eggs are.
The commentary from judges—even shitty conservative judges like Chutkan—about the J6 pardons doesn’t lead me to believe the courts are as much of a walk in the park for all this bullshit as some people think.
With enough speed, anything can be broken; but the fuel required to maintain that speed is unobtainable. Let us hope their refueling period takes too long to be effective.
Issue here is that Trump truly doesn't believe in using congress for anything. He's just going to rule by EO and if the bribes are good enough he might sneak it past the court.
It's deliberate: they intend to make it impossible for ICE to do the work that's demanded of them, to justify deputizing white supremacist militia gangs who would happily do the work of brutalizing immigrants (and anyone else who isn't sufficiently white) without pay (or accountability).
Like their leader, these guys are nowhere near as smart as they think they are and they are lazy. Still dangerous but a lot of their bombs will be duds as they didn't actually do the prep work.
The first day was very rough, but I’ll tell you this we’ve almost made it through week one and somehow I feel calm because I just don’t think you can panic the entire time
What’s already happened is obviously bad and extremely hurtful/evil, but there’s just a desperate aura about the whole thing, not to mention an insane lazy sloppiness.
Maybe it's because the system is more robust than they figured, and that there is more good (or at least better than evil) guys in that system that aren't just gonna fall aside and let it happen.
I don't know what it would take to 'shock' me after the last 8 years after Trump 1, the pandemic, the betrayals and disillusionment, the Nazis, the rapid enshittification of everything, etc.
I mean, if they drove a tank down my street, I'd be more pissed off than shocked at this point.
I agree. It’s like we liberals were anticipating everything to be awful on day 1 and as a result I’ve seen…some overreactions, perhaps? To every little thing and I think we need to reserve the anger for in a few months so we don’t get burnt out.
Yes, but we also have to remember the people he’s trying to shock and awe are the same people who actually believed that students identifying as cats use litter boxes in school…
I think his previous term and the near year of advance warning with their playbook has made us much more resilient and battle tested to meet the reality. I take enormous comfort knowing we have half of all voters in solidarity firmly against this in ideology and action.
It's hard to succeed at shock and awe when they announce it in advance. Most of the shock comes from them actually doing what they said they were going to.
Honestly, we knew every single thing that they were gonna do. Seemingly I am stunned, but also not surprised at their obsession with trans people because this is always what they do and always what they live for. They cannot help themselves in hating on the most vulnerable people.
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You just need to imagine any other world leader doing the exact same thing.
They literally told us everything (Project 2025) and how can anyone claim ignorance after 2016?
That said, they could just be finding their legs and shit could get real bad soon enough.
Not everyone—some are still "shocked"—but every serious person I know has spent months preparing.
So yes rest, but then fight
After that, he's just another liar lying about being a liar.
Rapey McRacist shot his load last time.
The response to Musk criticism is telling too. Such low energy gaslighting happening.
It's going to suck, but these low-rent, chintzy wanna-bes always fail.
And there are more of us.
There’s a lot of panic going on, as a lot of vulnerable people are in danger of losing their livelihoods and careers.
(But there’s also networking and resistance-planning.)
All the monocles got dropped in the first term. Now everyone (including judges) are just tired and bored with the schtick.
So much of the bullshit is just a shameless power grab.
All of us already knew what they were going to do. Only the idiots that support him didn't.
I have mixed feelings about this
That we need to ration energy and manage the impulse to panic.
And we seek to be managing that, mostly?
https://bsky.app/profile/supernovaparenting.org/post/3lghd53kgck2g
Not only do we know how they operate, but we still have at least some connections on the local level from the last time around. Some may be dustier than others, but it's not like we were all caught flat footed like in 2017
Meanwhile we do know what he's capable of and are acting accordingly
They were supposed to be coming in with this grand master plan to shove it all through on Day 1, that's what they told reporters on background. Constantly!
👐 infrastructure week 👐
I've said multiple times that Trump's incompetence served us well the first time around, and I was worried that wouldn't be the case this time. Maybe I worried too much
They got something like, what, 308 people TOTAL in their big Day 1 round up? NATIONALLY?
“This order does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
But even that takes time to plan and implement from the moment the Commander in Chief gives the order.
Congress GOP is already balking at their economic initiatives?
https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-task-force-thwart-conservative-project-twenty-five-1921149
What’s already happened is obviously bad and extremely hurtful/evil, but there’s just a desperate aura about the whole thing, not to mention an insane lazy sloppiness.
I mean, if they drove a tank down my street, I'd be more pissed off than shocked at this point.
Project 2025 was well advertised.