A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40 prisoners on death row. The section’s author, attorney Gene Hamilton, advised that Trump “do everything possible to obtain finality” on the current list of people until Congress forces them to stop. Hamilton is the vice president of America Legal First, a group of former Trump lawyers bent on attacking “woke” companies, headed by Stephen Miller. Trump’s approach to the death penalty stands in stark contrast to that of President Joe Biden, who has openly opposed the death penalty, but done little to move forward legislation to reform or abolish the practice since entering office.
For those of you not in the know Project 2025 is Republicans plan to turn the USA into an authoritarian state.
There’s a series of detective novels I’ve been reading for years. Bernie Gunther is a WW1 veteran who joined the Berlin police force in the 1920s, and left when his Jewish boss was fired by the Nazis. Author is Philip Kerr.
In one of the novels, Bernie runs into an old cop pal and they have a drink. The cop tells Bernie that there were about 30 executions in all of Germany the year before the Nazis took over, and there have already been over 200 this year. The cop wonders how far it’s going to go?
Yes. Each book is a stand alone, but they do go in ‘historical’ order.
Slightly off topic. Max Allan Collins Nate Heller books are ‘hard boiled historicals.’ The latest "Too Many Bullets’ covers the Bobby Kennedy assassination.
Thank you! You just gave me a whole new series to dive into. Super excited.
The death of Bobby Kennedy was the end of hope for most boomers.
It went 1967; Summer of Sam on the east Coast, summer of love on the west
1968; Bobby Kennedy murdered
1969; Woodstock - essentially a cultural stag party.
70s was getting married, weed, cocaine, Eric Clapton
80s made babies, "didn’t sell out, they bought in ", Reagan, more cocaine, believe it or not, more Eric Clapton
Then, always pushing the boundary, the 90s gave us Eric Clapton songing a song about his baby falling out a window and dying while Clapton was high as fuck on cocaine.
Super pretty song, prob one of the best songs ever performed. Fucking Eric Fucking Clapton.
I might have to check that series out. Thank you.
It actually reminds me a bit of Babylon Berlin, a German noir show which was based off the Gereon Rath series by Volker Kutscher.
Seen it. I usually hate TV shows with subtitles, but this one kept me going.
I need to watch it again, I think I’d understand it better the second time.
Look, can we just collectively agree – all of us who are left of center – to work together and set our differences aside until after this election? Now really isn’t the time for us to be divided. We need to first curb stomp the fascists, so we don’t all get killed
I don’t disagree…but the party-line Democrats have been telling progressives exactly that since the Clinton administration.
Again, to be clear: I’m happily voting Biden this November, but the Democratic party has become very good at doing just enough to keep their core loyal while also doing nowhere near enough to keep the country out of constant existential peril, effectively cultivating that crisis as a (pardon the pun) trump card that they then use to tell progressives “what you want is less important than the current crisis! Just go along with us in this election and we pinky swear to do more for your causes!”.
They know if they move left they’ll be displaced by a combination of progressive candidates and centrists, so they have basically adopted the strategy of keeping the right just dangerous enough to be credible while keeping their left flank secured with a drip feed of snail’s pace “progress”.
Israel-Gaza conflict aside…what makes you unhappy about voting for him?
I have to admit that I wasn’t thrilled about voting for him in 2020, but I also have to admit that in the intervening years he has at the very least met my expectations in most areas, and shockingly, he’s exceeded them in a few areas.
As I get older, I’ve learned from experience to temper my expectations in a president, and with those adjusted expectations, I am surprised to find myself feeling better about voting for Biden in 2024 than I did four years ago.
I can’t really disagree with you. The issue is we have reached the actual point where the current crisis dwarfs all others. Maybe I was just younger then, but it didn’t feel like we had such existential threats in the Bush and Obama years. I remember people said that Romney winning would be the apocalypse, but it’s laughable to say that would’ve been the case in hindsight.
I think what we can take heart in is that we’ve been seeing a gradual increase in progressiveness in the party. And not just a small constant increase, but a significantly growing one. There are a nontrivial number of Congressional members who are incredibly progressive, and they’ve shifted the mood of the party notably leftward. The Inflation Reduction Act was a historic level of climate spending, to the point that Europe felt pressured to pass similar legislation. And the IRA actually closed the corporate tax loophole too – large corporations raking in billions in profits now have to pay a minimum 15%, even if they could previously loophole their way to $0.
I wish things were faster. Gaza in particular has highlighted to me just how frustrating it is for things to only improve at a snail’s pace. And specifically with Gaza, I don’t think the progress is actually amounting to material changes.
We are seeing material changes in other areas though. Healthcare could be a hell of a lot better, but as someone who relied on Obamacare for a few years, things have actually improved for people. The important thing is that we don’t lose heart, and that we keep pushing for better. The US has a rich history of leftists persevering to accomplish women’s suffrage, civil rights, labor rights, and gay rights and equality. As long as we press forward, just like they did, we’ll be successful. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice and good.
If we could just bury the fascists for good, we could start to make serious progress.
Pretty much. This is going to keep cropping up until we deal a decisive loss to fascism. They need to be beaten by huge margins.
Huge accumulations of capital are incompatible with democratic governance.
That’s the issue we are not willing to solve.
Fascists are simply people passionate about infinite capital accumulations. The fascists protect the billionaires by channelling the populist economic discontent toward all manner of scapegoat issues.
If you don’t like fascism you must work to outlaw, and make culturally unacceptable, extreme wealth accumulations.
https://www.philosophersbeard.org/2012/04/what-to-do-about-rich.html
The far left calls anyone right of far left- fascists… so no, they have no intention to work together. They’re so far left that they’ve completely circled around into right wing lunacy.
Ah yes, they’re so intense about fighting capitalist oppression they’ve circled around to… checks notes defending police brutality and advocating for the further privatisation of every public good and dismantling all worker protections.
The difference between “eat the rich” and “feed the rich” is really just one syllable, right? Almost negligible.
(Also, no, they don’t call everyone fascist. They just don’t think being liberal is enough for change, when the “liberals” of the US have a history of complaining about the things they don’t stop the regressives from doing. There’s a difference between calling people “naive and spineless” and “actively pursuing oppression”.)
I will say that there is a marked and growing distain for mixed liberal ideologies. There is a lot of this idea that every socialist needs to be some kind of pure strain to count or take basically the Marxist definition as the only viable one. It kind of ignores a couple of centuries of Socialist thought. A lot of people basically think “means of production” means nothing less than everyone working in a co-op and discounts a lot of past socialist wins as “not socialism”. It’s an important thing to remember about Marx, the world he lived in was very different. Damn near everything at the time was privatized. Water, sanitation, post, fire service, public health and public health regulatory bodies… None of that existed under the perview of Government auspice. Socialist strains more to the legacy of Robert Owens, Daniel De Leon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and other ethical socialists have had significant wins. Some places took it further than others but the one thing that was allowed to happen in a lot of places was complacency. The 1980’s and 90’s created a liberal fervor that has continued to walk back a lot of significant wins made by the Socialist movements of the early 1900’s and the civil rights movements… But because a lot of the functions of Socialist wins have become the air we breathe people do not associate them with socialism anymore. The issue with peaceful integration is that private gains are always incentivized so complacency cannot be afforded.
It seems weirdly controversial but Non-Marxist socialists exist. Marx was one very popular voice in a sea of people with somewhat related but sometimes contradictory ideas. Some philosophers have been retro-branded as proto-socialists because they existed before Marx who just coined the term. Looking at his contemporaries there’s good reason why he became popular. A lot of what was out there was much drier, committed to peaceful reform. It didn’t tap into people’s anger or emotion in the same way. Right now we deal with a lot of that issue on the left. It is an old struggle. People who are bombastically angry and turning around and biting people for not being “enough” of something. Not fitting a narrow definition. Half my issue with Communist parties I have looked at joining is they aren’t great at being collaborative. Increasingly I have found the argument around “centrism” to stop meaning “people who support the basic status quo” which it seemed to have evolved to being interpretable as for a minute… To a more worrying definition about anyone willing to work across any ideological lines set down by the one guy people bothered to read.
This use of “centrism” as though it’s a plotable point on a map seems to me a worrying fiction. The post moves to create division and self satisfaction where none need exist.
You buy into pretty much the same propaganda, and are equally as dangerous to democracy… so-
Yeah. You’re pretty much the same where it actually matters. The rest of it is irrelevant.
I disagree. I’ve met plenty of people who are far left and are all in on working together to stop Trump. Don’t be swayed by the terminally online, vocal “leftists”. We don’t know if they’re even genuine people, and they’re assuredly the minority.
I don’t want to be judged based on a false stereotype, and I don’t think we should judge them on a false stereotype either. The far left is antithetical to Trump.
I’d love to believe that is the case, and I’ve no reason to not believe you, but unfortunately- the online representation of the far left is the vocal one. And there are a lot of them. This situation gets helped when you and the ones you represent join the rest of us in standing them down.
I’ve never seen any leftist vs. leftist conversation. And it would go a long way in warming the waters regarding public opinion.
No they haven’t, and you’re likely just one of them new Russian AI disinformation bots anyway
They want blood. No matter the route. If I can ask anything of my fellow liberals is that you arm yourselfs. I’m not saying we take to the streets with weapons. I’m saying we should all be prepared for the absolute insanity that may ensue if he actually wins
When the nazis came to power, they forcibly took away the guns of their victims. They’d send a squad of SS to your house, surround it, and force you to give up the gun. If you didn’t, they’d kill you, if you did, they still got you in the end.
Some of their victims hid, refused to give up their arms, and fought back. They didn’t survive.
If guns were the answer to dealing with fascism and authoritarianism, germany never would have had the holocaust.
The first thing the nazis did, was purge the bureaucracy. Taking away guns was no concern, at all.
Privately owned guns played no significant role in the nazis’ rise to or hold on power. Anything else is simply marketing by american gun sellers.
Some of their victims hid, refused to give up their arms, and fought back. They didn’t survive.
About 10-15,000 jewish germans survived the holocaust by going underground in Germany. They were colloquially called U-Boote or Illegale. Of course, that has nothing to do with guns. Guns were, after all, handed out to any able-bodied male.
If guns were the answer to dealing with fascism and authoritarianism, germany never would have had the holocaust.
That is only partly true. Germans are only a small fraction of holocaust victims (<5%). The victims overwhelmingly came from eastern Europe, particularly Poland and the Soviet Union. The holocaust happened in the wake of the advancing Wehrmacht. A more far-sighted response to german war preparations would have made a difference. A lesson one must bear in mind in today’s world.
Yeah, it’s a fucking joke to assume that guns are a hedge against fascism. They’ll take your guns or shoot you. Maybe there’s some protection in being an organised group in the moment, but if they want to get you they’ll get you.
Part of the reason the Nazis didnt face too much resistance is because a possible major for of resistance got purged before their rise. The Spartacists got purged pretty thoroughly by the Freikorps who also used it as an excuse to purge other similar groups.
Also guns would be one of many different tools in such a resistance scenario, alongside things like car bombs and just stabbing people. Its just convenient to have a long range weapon that requires little training, mind you stealing a gun or manufacturing one would also be viable i guess.
There will be insanity if he’s allowed to run at all.
There should be no way for people to participate in a democracy they have attempted to overthrow, and these fuckers are absolutely going to try again. It will be a shitshow. I hope the US justice system comes through, but it will be a very dangerous time for America if Trump and his cronies are not prosecuted for their crimes before the next election.
Even if Trump gets prosecuted for 1/6 before the election, there is ZERO chance it’s completed before the election. There will be appeals carrying it on for YEARS.
That being said too, there’s nothing in the charges that would disqualify him on conviction. There SHOULD BE, but there isn’t.
Ideally I’d like to see Congress get their shit together and get a Constitutional amendment that says “Convicted felons are inelligible”.
That would solve the problem right there. Convict him in the Stormy Daniels case, problem solved.
No, I don’t think it would be good to strip felons of their ability to be president. People who protest too hard can get felonies. People who steal too many diapers and infant formula for their kids ($2k worth, which is lower threshold every year due to inflation) can get felonies. The felony system is deeply corrupt. We should restore felon’s right to vote.
We need to fix the issues that elect someone deeply unpopular like Trump in the first place - like gerrymandering and uneven delegates. A vote should just be a vote. We should have approval voting (similar to ranked choice). More fascism isn’t the answer.
we should all be prepared for the absolute insanity that may ensue if he actually wins
We should also all be prepared for the absolute insanity that will ensue if he loses. I fear we will have a more violent insurrection this time around and maybe even local violence in some areas.
I’m not saying we take to the streets with weapons
Then you’re doing nothing but shilling for the gun lobby, who immediately donate millions to the worst Republicans.
If you’re going to advocate guns, you should be willing to tell people what to use them for.
I mean that’s a pretty stupid thing to say considering everyone knows you’ll get your comment removed and probably also your account banned for explaining what should actually be done, what should actually be being done, right now. Maybe eventually everyone will get mad enough that mods will stop standing in the way of what needs to happen, but by then they’ll have pulled the plug on the internet anyway…
What a joke you are. Are we actually supposed to pretend your guns are more than cosplay props when you’re not even willing to risk being banned from anonymous social media to advocate your cause?
Well I’m not scared of being banned, so take your guns and your pro-gun astroturfing and fuck off.
A highly public series of rapid-fire executions gives Trump some very immediate media “wins”.
And when you review the list of death row inmates its easy to see how conservatives can twist any objection to execution as endorsement of police slayings, carjackings, kidnappings, and child murder.
Right-wing news will have a field day announcing “Daniel Troya, the man who murdered an entire family in cold blood JUST GOT HIS DAY OF JUSTICE!” with swooping infographics and blaring trumpets. Drag on some Project Veritas stooge with B-roll footage of a crying pink haired college kid and topping it off with “WOKE LIBERALS ARE SO OWNED!” and you’ll have a fascist feeding frenzy.
I’m saying we should all be prepared for the absolute insanity that may ensue if he actually wins
Real Helms Deep Hours.
execute death row inmates
= arm yourselves!
Americans are so silly, you’ll never outgun the US military
You ever heard of guerilla tactics? An authoritarian army doesn’t need to be out gunned to have a really bad time
You ever heard of guerilla tactics?
The country of Vietnam lost millions of its people to push out some 50-60k US soldiers. Quite a few of them died in hideous fashion. Burned alive by napalm. Poisoned by nerve gas. Tied up and thrown in a ditch, then buried alive. Tortured in prison camps for weeks, before succumbing.
We’re seeing the same shit play out in Palestine, under the Israeli occupation. Nightmarish brutality inflicted on insurgents, on neighborhoods where those insurgents lived, on friends and family with even the most tangential relationship to the insurgency. On people a thousand miles away who show the most pacifist support for human rights.
Can a guerrilla war win? Sure. Over 15-30 years, a persistent armed resistance can potentially overcome the cost-constrained and geographically removed military occupation. Will you live to see the end? Ho Chi Min didn’t. Sitting Bull didn’t. Che Guevera didn’t.
This is actually the incarnation of “Defending the Free State” IMO. To be clear, the right to bear arms does not mean you get to attack and overthrow the government, but to defend yourself (along with other states) against any state trying to impose tyranny. The federalist papers posited this (no they’re not law, and they certainly have other issues) and IMO it makes sense, even if it is a view shaped in a time that no longer exists.
Late edit: you don’t get to attack and overthrow the government because you find some policy inconvenient or irritating personally. Tyranny I think is pretty specific, and has nothing to do with government trying to push things like saving life on earth, incentivizing electric vehicles, someone asking for a different name than their birth gender, or trying to protect kids and everyone else from random or other actors with firearms intent on mass death.
Jesus: don’t abort those fetuses because life begins at conception.
Also Jesus: fuck these adults, let them fry.
Very cool and consistent, a serious political party here.
You frame it as a contradiction, but this is very nakedly the nature of a patriarchal theocracy.
There’s no real conflict between the view of a dictatorial Israeli King as someone who treats woman as chattel and endorses state execution of prisoners. This is all over the old testament and common enough in the New Testament Letters from Paul not to be remarkable.
Very cool and consistent, a serious political party here.
They’re deadly serious. It’s the 1980s all over again, folks.
I grew up JW, and all the scriptures used to fight against abortion are in the first half of the Bible, before Jesus is involved. To quote a certain former Trump staffer…
Jesus ain’t say that.
Most Christian denominations do believe that to some extent, though some (including my example) view them as strictly different beings, with only 1 true God. They view Jesus as next in the hierarchy but still below capital G God, and view the Holy Spirit as just a tool, like say The Force.
They love to appear tough as long as they don’t get their own hands dirty.
