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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I remember being in so many discussions with Green Party voters, "I'm writing in Bernie" twits, and various other Unicorn Brigaders who all insisted that the Supreme Court wasn't a big deal, that Kennedy and Roberts were sane people, that they could "vote their conscience" and there would be no consequences.
I think it's pretty telling that they couldn't trust Clinton enough to vote for her, but could trust the conservative members of the Supreme Court to do the right thing.
Soldiers follow orders. It's what they're trained to do. And that's ignoring the fact that Trump's hard-on for the army makes him very popular with certain segments of it.
Do I think that Trump is going to declare martial law? Not really. Do I expect the military to actually revolt if he did? No.
There is no magic fix to this problem. Trump is going to get a second Supreme Court Justice. Liberal progress in the country is going to be set back for decades. Democrats taking Congress in November—which is being treated as such a sure thing that I'm prepared to bet good money it won't happen—will not turn back time and undo this.
Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jun 27th 2018 at 3:40:57 AM
We're not in a dictatorship yet, and I think it's very difficult to hash out the likelihood of that from where we're standing. While I don't want to make light of anyone's fears, I don't think that panicking helps anyone.
Oh God! Natural light!We don't need to be panicking about becoming a dictatorship. We need to be panicking about Trump turning American social and legal norms back to the 50s and 60s.
Also, for the love of God, stop hoping for the military to save you. The Army isn't going to depose Trump. Which generally speaking, is a good thing. Once an Army steps into politics once, it doesn't usually step back.
Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jun 27th 2018 at 3:45:41 AM
The amount of self-delusion it took to decide "Clinton is worse than Trump" will forever awe me. The amount of drugs that a person would have to take for that to seem like a reasonable statement is just remarkable. And it gets even more ridiculous when you move to the subject of the Supreme Court because even a basic reading of history would tell you that Clinton would, at worst, pick the kind of people Bill and Obama did, while Trump would have to be persuaded not to appoint a member of the Klan.
That's privilege blinders for you I guess.
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I don't know what it's called, but what's the phenomena where people who are moderately on your side are perceived as being worse than the ones who are actively and strongly opposed to everything you want?
For a lot of people "center-left/right" is more infuriating than "reactionary far-right".
Edited by LSBK on Jun 27th 2018 at 4:05:58 AM
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They might not overturn it, but functionally, it's not going to matter for a long time. A court that exchanges Kennedy for another Gorsuch, let alone somebody worse, is going to write a lot of bad precedent, and undermine a lot of previously written precedent. You can expect a lot of the sneakier abortion bans pushed by states to suddenly be constitutional. You can also expect an uptick in Court support for bigotry, and for Trump to get the chance to push through ever uglier versions of his Muslim ban.
It's not even a case of thinking the centre-left is worse than the far-right. Since as previously noted, Clinton was not a centrist and Sanders was not the far-left. It was a case of misogyny coupled with "she won't give free college and free weed, man. Must be the Devil."
Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jun 27th 2018 at 4:06:39 AM
Also sometimes worded as "a heretic is worse than an enemy."
Though again, not really the case here, because while the worst elements of the Unicorn Brigade like to position themselves as the far-left, they're not. For the most part they're privileged white college kids who can't figure out that their issues aren't everyone else's issues.
I know I keep asking questions about Trump's approval ratings, but now I'm curious what the numbers would look like if they hosted a 'disapproval poll', cutting out those who are merely neutral/flip-flopping on Trump and only leaving those who explicitly disapprove of him. Would the disapproval numbers neatly line up with the regular approval ratings? I feel like at some point, if that many people openly and proudly hate your guts while in your country, you can only force so many of them into line.
Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jun 27th 2018 at 12:15:33 PM
Those sell-by-dates won't stop me because I can't read!There were a lot of ostensible leftists feeding us right-wing BS during that fiasco. That most of them were white men was not an accident—though as a side note, nothing is more irritating than some of the Clinton bashing college girls I met. "You can't say it's misogyny," they'd repeat again and again, while constantly checking to make sure the bro-dudes they were running with saw them being "the cool girl." I ran into one of them at a friend's birthday party, and I have never met anyone so utterly try-hard. "I could tell you so many things about all the terrible stuff Clinton's done," she dutifully parotted, while I tried not to scream and tried to figure out why my friend liked this person in the first place.
Edited by AmbarSonofDeshar on Jun 27th 2018 at 4:20:43 AM
I don't think it's very fair to chastise me for my commentary and decision. It's not like I'm planning to go around telling everyone I meet "vote, but it won't matter in the end"—on the off-chance that the Blue Wave can happen, and then we can fix or stop at least some of this nightmare, I would never want to sabotage things like that. I was also never going around being an enthusiastic cheerleader trying to convince people to vote, protest, get involved, etc., so my being silent wouldn't be depriving Democrats of support either. The simple fact is, I don't know enough about politics, or how to get involved, I'm not good with people, I wouldn't know what to say, and my ADHD/Asperger's make it so I just generally have trouble functioning in society as it is. I've been trying to stay abreast of what I can understand, to see if there's any possible way I could help, but seeing as I'm pretty much broke all the time there really isn't anything I could do to help besides vote.
Plus, if Social Security and Medicare do get gutted, I'll be dead anyway. So at this point the only thing I can do for my sanity is to vote when needed but otherwise give up, stay silent, and keep to my hobbies and entertainment. I am not going to discourage anyone from doing all they can to fight this, nor was I encouraging it before, so my decision really affects no one but me, and for the better. At least this way you won't have to worry about me popping up with gloom-and-doom every so often.
Donald Trump is becoming the Malignant Plot Tumor of US politics and he goddamn loves it!
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Where exactly have you been looking and what data do you have to support your belief?
Because there is very real reason
to believe that a Blue Wave is more than possible (if not actively probable).
Frankly I think it's rather likely that calling it a delusion is strongly counterfactual.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 27th 2018 at 4:18:54 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

Even if he does get some followers from the army and marines, I imagine trying to make a police state or (especially) use the armed forces to put down riots or protests would result in widespread revolt among the military.