The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn’t fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.

At least in the US, we’re in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they’ve taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it’s a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on “look how bad the government is!” and make the government worse once they’re in office, which feeds their cause.

tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don’t want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we’re doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don’t kill it first.

If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don’t matter at this point. The trick is to don’t let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.

If people democratically voted to end democracy, what are we suppose to do?

I mean imagine if you could impeach the president without a majority. That would be the death of democracy. Just to put things in perspective: The GOP democratically won both houses of Congress and the presidency and because of DNC incompetence also has the Supreme Court. Them being able to do whatever the fuck they want is, in a way, democracy working as intended. It’d be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.

Worse… The House makes the impeachment charge, that’s a 50% majority vote.

THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.

That’s the body which can’t do anything because they’re blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride A filibuster.

So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.

Trump’s first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.

It has been under corporate dictatorship for over a century.

Well the country didn’t previously have a legion of mouth breathing retards screaming at the top of their lungs about micro-aggressions and declaring that the nation was illegitimate. I’d also question your metrics for deciding now that he’s an openly Nazi dictator, other than parroting what you hear from other people social media accounts.

This isn’t Germany where they can just arrest nazis. First amendment (unfortunately) also apply to hate speech. 🤷‍♂️

You’re calling for military generals to have the power to remove the government? Effectively a military dictatorship?

That seems unwise.

America doesn’t have a law forbidding the Nazi salute. It’d be against the first amendment.

… and half the country is extremely enthusiastic about that.

There’s the reason nothing is done about it. It’s probably not actually half, but enough people didn’t speak up early enough, and so this has become the loudest voice in the room. Unless, and until that changes, the whole world is in for a rough ride.

I thought it was twice? I mean, that doesn’t detract from your point, and I don’t even disagree. I just want to make sure the details are set straight.

Actively spreading hate towards the LGBTQ community and making some of the most marginalised people isn’t nazi enough for you? What a sick world we live in.

He’s got to golf at some point.

That is what the people of america want. They look at what bernie sanders offered, said he was a radical commie totalitarian terrorist and went for trump overwhelmingly." You are fucked in the head as a people and you absolutely deserve your country to be a shitshow cause you like it that way.

This guy has been impeached twice and convicted of 34 felony charges. So we actually need something physical to stop him.

Your first question is pretty philosophical. All I can say, is that most representative governments place a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.

A military takeover based on the desires of a minority of citizens would violate that principal. I don’t think any reasonable person can call it saving democracy.

Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote

Who should have the power to make that decision?

Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?

Or maybe have something like an electoral college?

Or the army coups, if things get too far?

The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.

Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.

Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.

Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.

Then maybe they should have their own shithole country and stop taking our tax dollars.

That is by design. If the “majority” of the country wants the US to be Nazis, that is the direction it will go. That is how a representative democracy works. The flaw was the founders assuming retarded puppets would not be elected by even an uneducated public. But, they also didn’t plan for automatic weapons either. Well, they sort of did, they said we should be rewriting the constitution every so many years so it can evolve with the times, but we chose to enshrine and misinterpret it like a civic bible. Oops.

I think the US is beyond fucked already. The fact that Bonespurs could get elected president not once but twice is a clear sign that America’s collective intelligence has dropped below Idiocracy level. A complex society can withstand a lot of stupidity as long as there are enough people who can keep the opportunists in their place, but that’s not true anymore. I’m not just talking about people who voted for him, I’m including the several million people who voted for Biden in 2020 but refused to vote for Harris in 2024. They were the safety net that decided to fold itself up and go home. We’re done.

Trump has said that Elon “knows those computers better than anybody … And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide”.

First of all, we know that to be false because we know Elon doesn’t know shit about computers. But, aside from that, there are multiple possible interpretations of what he meant, anything from “Elon rigged the election” to “Elon ensured the integrity of the election”.

My policy is “Don’t believe anything Trump says about anything”. I don’t change that policy when he says something that I want to believe is true.

Where did you hear that?

Are you ready for some tearing up and redoing of constitution now?

I know about Jefferson and his 20 year automatic sunset phase for laws at all levels, except for Constitutions, charters, and other founding documents that can be amended. Hadn’t heard that Franklin wanted to sunset the Constitution itself as well. Not sure that we would have lasted this long if Franklin had gotten his way there. I do think that Jefferson and Madison were on the right track with the federal, state, and local laws though. Tyranny of the dead and all that.

That’s a non sequitur though, unless you’re suggesting a tyrant would nuke the population he wanted to rule.

The nuke is a bad example of the sheer power of the modern American military. It’s also a bit outdated. That legal mechanism was drafted when many other modern weapons and tactics were not even dreamed of. Just a couple days ago the US military announced its strongest armor yet.

But I agree: your assault rifle may save you from others with an assault rifle, but it won’t do shit if the military comes for you.