No Stupid Questions

It's going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it's clearly dead no hope.

It might be. Only time, and the actions of Americans themselves, will tell.

It's the biggest crisis in my lifetime. But we have survived other crisises, some-fucking-how, so maybe we'll luck our way out of this one too.

God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

• Otto Von Bismarck

Outside perspective: It doesn't have to be. It is the moment democracy, its values and its people are tested. The path towards open dictatorship and/or fascism is not set in stone. What is clear is that some setbacks, even catastrophic setbacks, are unavoidable. But as a whole the free-fall can be avoided and you can bounce back from setbacks, even if it takes time. This is actually somewhat universal, since it's not only the U.S. which is sliding more and more towards fascistic or anti-democratic tendencies. It's just that, like with so many other things, everything does seem to be bigger in the U.S. (and Texas).

Although I'm sure a lot are feeling economic pain and/or are generally under stress and uncertainty (IIRC 50% of households struggle to make an unplanned $1000 expense), and I don't expect it to get better under the new administration, the U.S. is still a federated system. If you look at what affects your daily lives directly, a lot more is done on a local and state level, than on the federal level.

From where I'm standing, organizing with like-minded people in your community around issues is the most promising way to go. Unfortunately the issues are back to basics issues like human rights and democratic principles, but that's where we are. This entails more than just protesting, but actively pressuring elected officials around legislation proposals. Suggest ballot measures (find out how such a measure gets to the ballot in the first place, because it's very different depending on where you are). And of course having people run for office and for the others to support them to get in, and get the anti-democratic forces out, once it is time. Don't succumb to the nationalization of local elections. People can be reached way better and more directly on the local level, when they can see it directly affecting their lives and talking to the people responsible directly than for anything happening in Washington D.C. Counter the anti-democracy spewing media outlets with true alternatives (maybe there's an entrepreneurial-minded person wanting to found a cooperative media outlet).

It sounds like a lot to do. But you are more, than you think. Even the disillusioned might be good allies. Take yes for an answer. And more people than you might expect have been part of 'the struggle' for a long time. Welcome them. And yes: Coordinate with and support other local actions.

Another view on what will happen with the federal institutions: Although Trump will put more loyalists than ever in powerful stations, there will remain many (even among the loyalists) who profit from the system's status quo. This includes the Supreme Court justices and ironically corporate goons. So in furthering their own advantage, they might resist things leading to an overall degradation. Of course they will go along with and actively lobby for anything that gives them more power at the expense of the general populace, but that is already the case. Again, if you make unlikely allies on single issues: Take yes for an answer.

Bottom line: Democracy and basic rights are ideas, made by humans. And they can only survive, as long as we believe in and fight for them. Always keep the belief, always keep on fighting. If you hit your head and fall down: Get back up. As the saying goes: This is a marathon, not a sprint. All the best!

It’s my point of no return. Leaving in two weeks forever. Good luck.

Right now my mind is at, "it very well could be, but time will tell".

Had Trump had the right people in places to make certain decisions, it could have very well ended in 2020 just as much. Well the world did change in a big way near the end of his term, with COVID, how he botched it and how he gave corporate handout after corporate handout which caused the inflation that Biden is being blamed for.

I've been still grasping for ways that the US still can be saved, which there are many, but they hinge on

1A. Trump going back on many of his worst promises and not doing them, because reneging is his thing, or

1B. Trump and his team being too incompetent to enact his agenda, or

1C. The backlash to Trump's unpopular moves creates disobedience within government, military and writ large, preventing him from enacting his agenda, and

2. Democracy not being rigged during his tenure, avoiding where elections become just as meaningful as Russia's or China's during the 4 years.

A plurality of Americans gave Trump and Republican facsism basically all the dragon balls of power, so it's up to him pretty much whether he can use them and the most Americans can do is organize and resist.

Earth will not care. Life on earth may suffer, but Earth will not care.

Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.

We don't know.

The US came back from a US president hiring private goons to spy on his political opponents.

The US came back from a US president illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund right wing militias in South America.

The US came back from a US cabinet member taking literal bribes from oil companies to give them oil drilling rights on federal land.

The US came back from a US president illegally firing a cabinet member and installing his own lackey.

But it didn't HAVE to.

I don't think there's really such a thing as a 'point of no return' for a Democracy. But it is possible to get to a point after which you don't return.

I think it's possibly the end of Western democracy. If Russia and China stroll through Europe with Trump's help, that's pretty much it, no?

Yes.

In my opinion we've already passed the point of no return and recent events have just confirmed as much.

This isn't about having differing political opinions. A profoundly unfit, amoral criminal with a very public history of being an awful person came along and started spewing extremely dangerous rhetoric, some of which is almost verbatim to Hitler's, and our society ate it up and made him president in 2016. This man, who leads a party who courts racists/sexists for their votes, utterly failed his tenure as president, bombing his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2 and presiding over the highest White House administration turnover rate in U.S. history. Since then he has become a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and illegally attempted to overturn our democratic institutions by various means.

This go around the American people were presented with a choice between that person, who only managed to make himself appear even more unfit during this campaign season, openly stated he is anti-worker rights, and is directly responsible for removing women's federally protected right to bodily autonomy, or a successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law, backed by a party that, despite misinformation, has a voting history proving they vote in favor of the average American FAR more than the opposing party....and Americans STILL managed to drop the ball and go with the CLEARLY worse choice. And when I say clearly, I'm talking about by every conceivable metric that exists in reality.

At this point it isn't about Democrat vs Republican or Trump vs Kamala or Biden. It's about the American people. We are not a society of intelligent voters. We have failed our responsibility as citizens in a democracy by being too lazy to learn and by allowing misinformation to mislead us and emotions to cloud our better judgement. We are not engaged in responsible involvement in our own politics. We gleefully elect people that only offer hate and fear and lies, despite how hard they try to prove how awful they are to us. And THAT is why we have passed the point of no return. If you remove the parties and the politicians out of the equation, you still have a society that fails at responsibly preserving a democracy. That gives in to hateful rhetoric and fear. That wants to get the better of the "others".

There is no happy ending for a society like that. A society like that can only decline. This was not an election about one political ideology against another. It was an election about morality. And we categorically failed that moral test.

There are excuses. We've been through a lot. Lots of people are desperate. Desperate people make bad decisions. But the bottom line is we don't live in a society with a majority of responsible adults making responsible, fact-based decisions about the most important things.

In the arc of history we may end up reaching a better place, but personally I believe we're embarking on a decline that will most likely last the rest of our lives. It simply isn't a problem that can be fixed short term. And we're about to experience a sort of deconstruction. A deconstruction of norms. A deconstruction of institutions. A deconstruction of education and safety nets. And those things take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build back, because it's easier to destroy than it is to create or maintain.

Buckle up. Try to find happiness where you can. It's probably not getting better anytime soon.

For democracy? Yes.

The longer the rubes hold on to this pipe dream that the dems can make a come back the further we will slip and longer it will take to recover. Unfortunately, I don't think democrat party members will ever give up on the democratic party and they will spend all their political goodwill investing in this farce of a party long after the elections are still free and fair.

Say, free and fair elections survive by some act of god. That doesn't change the fact the GOP can beat them handley in a free and fair election. The only thing trump needed to cement his win was the Supreme Court to sign off on everything. Given immunity all the road blocks trump had before have been lifted.

We have till January and you will see what the executive is actually capable of, with limp dick biden kicked to the curb.

The terror that will be trumps deportation methods will have your jaw drop and I'm not kidding. We tolerated kids in cages, Abu Ghraib is coming to America and our own sex trafficker and chief will begin some truly despicable shit. You better believe media capture is part of it because there is no way other country's will be let in on this side of the veil.

I'm not a doomer. It's not hyperbole. Im not an oracle and would pay my with my own life just to be wrong.

I still am hopeful though that my countrymen can snap out of it and quit dismissing reality in real-time, allowing us an actual chance at resisting this upheaval. If we wait till the midterms though, this shit is cooked, packed, and on the shelf.

If you want to say, look at American history, I'd quickly defer you to the 90s. Whatever we might have once been we are no longer that. We are consumers educated by infomercials who only know reality TV and "influencers". Coke was the first plague, Springer the second. Followed by real world and road rules. All of this media "culture" stripped us of what it ever ment to be American. No one sits around and wanes intellectual about the founding fathers unless you're a fashie supreme court justice or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Today, in 2024, the Apprentice is more American than George Washington.

There was a time when a single black women sitting at the front of a bus could change a nation. Today Rosa would hit the front page of reddit on a Wednesday and fall off by the time Europeans woke up to see.

Of what?

Not really. Not to be dismissive of the harms of a 2nd term trump.

But you have to understand what American history has been.

People were literally enslaved in the early days, then the country was literally at war with itself over slavery. Then Jim Crow and Segregation. Black people were lynched. White mobs would kill black people.

Chinese people were targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and banned from entry, some were US Citizens too and they weren't except either.

The US had a major economic crash in 1929. Got into 2 world wars. American Citizens of Japanese ancestry were literally arrested and held in camps because of their ancestry. Went through cols war, the red scare, mccathyism. People randomly getting accused of being "communists" and arrested. Unions get cracked down. Protests were brutally suppressed, more violently than in modern day. Black people protesting for their rights and took a bus down south got burned. Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. literally got assassinated.

That is the American history.

And here we are, through such a shitty history, democracy survived, and voting rights expanded to so many people. First to Black people, then to Women.

Back then a majority of the population supported segregation, institutionalized racism. But today, a majority of people are okay with interracial marriage.

I have high hopes we can survive another trump term.

It won't be pleasent, but we'll survive.

No. People always want some apocalyptic ending, but there's always a chance to make adjustments in various ways. It's just that some solutions, the ones that are less painful and involved less people's lives getting destroyed and less death, some of those solutions become increasingly distant.

And look, if you go back and check out the history of unions and labor rights in the US, it was a bloody history. I think we might be looking at that repeating itself. And that's only if we're lucky.

From an outsider's perspective, I think a lot of people think you guys sailed past the point of no return back in the 80s.

This is based on nothing but vibes and my observations but I think so. We were cooked the moment we elected the clown the first time, just been a slower slide than I anticipated. In truth though we already had the disease at that point but it was then it became terminal.

I desperately want to be wrong and will do what I can to prove myself a moron. Fingers crossed.

It would seem that way. The people elected a guy that tried to overthrow democracy

How do you recover from that

Progress isn't a straight line, and sometimes there are setbacks on the way. I'm disappointed, of course, but I'm optimistic that we'll manage.