Part is likely translatable to “if these men aren’t stopped, we’re headed to roving death squads,” which seems decidedly not hallucinatory at this point. The remedies are a grand awakening of republicans (hallucinatory), supermajority midterms (hallucinatory), violence/coup (less hallucinatory)
I mean I'm not saying it's likely, but I have to imagine that things *can* get bad enough that even this craven republican Congress can be convinced to impeach.
I guess it depends what "this" means. If the courts kill Trump's more brazen power grabs and Republicans lose their trifecta then Trump will be a lame duck. That may happen sooner rather than later.
Yes.
I just tried to reply to this but got so long I think I’ll just leave it at that and think about quoting you. But either way—understand that as my enthusiastic agreement.
If he accidentally fired/betrayed enough militia dudes (because they’ve been soooo careful with selecting people to fire) I could imagine a messy mutiny scenario playing out — or perhaps a reversal of the threats that potential-pushback Rs have not doubt received.
I'm seeing 63% republicans don't support trump anymore. It's time to impeach. The republicans are supposed to carry out the will of their people. Impeach and heavily lean on repubs to do their job.
there exists no procedural remedy the Supreme Court would accept, and he rules out extralegal action. that leaves us with nothing but a supermajority in 2027, and even that he declares unacceptable relative to a 14th Amendment solution even I would consider only marginally legitimate.
I will give it this, a supermajority is not *mathematically* impossible this cycle
(idk who we are subtweeting--there is a person whose name is a chamber of Congress who I blocked--but i think some 14th Amendment solutions are necessary, however they require a trifecta)
Much of the power of MAGA comes from the utter terror that GOP electeds live in, and I really don't think that Vance will be able to summon that kind of energy. He will almost certainly be faced immediately with a GOP Congressional caucus that remembered where they left their balls.
It's going to end up with Don Jr and Vance and ... I dunno, Kash? fighting over the throne. The world's stupidest GAME OF THRONES knockoff, in other words.
it seems pretty likely that musk is gonna grab the third rail with both hands and every member of congress is gonna get more hell from their constituents than they ever believed was possible
does the GOP respond to that pressure by reining in trump/musk? or do they go all-in on fascism?
Their factional politics will get extremely weird once a few do. I'm not optimistic that means that we'll clear the thresholds we need to clear, but we'll be well into the realm of undefined behavior
They’re legislators, so they’re cowards, and they’ll need to feel secure in their actions despite the thousands of credible death threats coming their way
well this kinda digs into House/Senate Conference behavior, because unlike the Democrats, Republican moderates are extremely tied into leadership and thus them crossing the floor is *huge* — or you get leadership on side
Which seems more likely in the Senate, but even then Mitch *really* struggled to get the extra 10 votes from his Conference for bipartisan legislation to ward off Manchin and Sinema giving into hardballl
I did think that governors acting in groups could provide that sort of parallel institution to rally around.
Building parallel institutions is a good reason to start holding some governors’ summits or governors meeting with foreign leaders on “economic” junkets.
Like, state governors making treaties with other countries is also wildly unconstitutional, if you wanted something even individual governors could do to expand the cool zone
Who said anything about treaties? Handle it like how Taiwan does diplomacy, make an unofficial agreement with the other party and then you both go back home and pass domestic legislation to effect your side of the agreement.
The breaking point was when Yanukovych killed 100 peaceful protestors. They’re still arresting the goons that carried out his illegal orders to this day.
It was a peaceful, sustained protest. The regime overreacted, and the population and elites alike turned against him.
We may end up with lots of individual acts of violence rather than anything organized. It is in the formal sense a chaotic situation - could tip in any number of directions.
the GOP is being put between a rock and a hard place. it is being held hostage by Musk's money and Trump's base. However it is also a backseat driver in a crackhead uber being driven off a cliff. they are reacting now by saying "oh, we just won't do town halls"
I think it’s very funny they are trying to do this at exactly the same time as record numbers of baby boomers are collecting social security. Excellent plan
honestly not familiar with what the Rada doing in 2014 during Maidan, I guess Party of Region was in government but only had a plurality of seats? which is different than what we have
The Maidan was always well ahead of the politicians, the Rada was just trying to keep up with events. In the end even the Party of Regions voted to remove the President who had fled the country.
Yeah, the opposition in Rada were really only figureheads of Maidan protest.
They had no control or influence over them. They almost completely betrayed the protestors, if not for Yanukovich getting cold feet and Putin completely miscalculating everything due to his paranoia.
Tbh me and everyone around had a feeling that the state tucked up a big time, and responce was even worse. Only then people from his party abandoned him.
They got very divided, many of the now Poroshenko party were before in party of regions (also Poroshenko itself was one of the creators for party of regions). Don't know if this is applicable in US, since strong two-party system.
Honestly, I thought this would end with disgruntled, super angry, former intelligence, special operations, specialized law-enforcement, or veteran taking Loan wolf actions
Things are just gonna get so bad for so many people and they’re gonna be fucking pissed
Think of all the money he could save with Secret Service protection instead of paying for private security to keep insane MAGA guys from trying to kill him!
Particularly once the recession/stagflation sets in. If we hit 20% unemployment I'd say it's virtually guaranteed, because that's getting to Great Depression levels.
Unfortunately I think something unexpected and heinous will happen (Musk's idiocy kills astronauts, Trump orders military to fire on high schoolers protesting peacefully, something shocking like that) and Republicans flip against MAGA immediately to save their own hides but never fix the damage done
Elon Musk being de facto president wasn’t exactly foreseeable a year ago so I’m not taking anything off the table but not going to kid myself that there is an easy fix here
depends on what "this" is… it's unlikely that anything will remove Trump from office other than his own biology… but certainly the trajectory can change with an opposition party taking control of one or both houses of Congress… and using it
Comments
I just tried to reply to this but got so long I think I’ll just leave it at that and think about quoting you. But either way—understand that as my enthusiastic agreement.
(idk who we are subtweeting--there is a person whose name is a chamber of Congress who I blocked--but i think some 14th Amendment solutions are necessary, however they require a trifecta)
does the GOP respond to that pressure by reining in trump/musk? or do they go all-in on fascism?
Building parallel institutions is a good reason to start holding some governors’ summits or governors meeting with foreign leaders on “economic” junkets.
It was a peaceful, sustained protest. The regime overreacted, and the population and elites alike turned against him.
It’s possible.
They had no control or influence over them. They almost completely betrayed the protestors, if not for Yanukovich getting cold feet and Putin completely miscalculating everything due to his paranoia.
Things are just gonna get so bad for so many people and they’re gonna be fucking pissed
If impeached and removed, at this point I think Musk would just say fuck off
and the disease may be terminal