I highly doubt the left will do anything uncivil. How can they win back the country? Is it too late?
It’s over.
“Civil” centre ground/moderate politics are dying across the western world and the far-right are making big gains.
Messages of unity and other kumbaya shit be damned, give me some uncivil and nasty leftist politics to give the fascists a taste of their own vitriol.
I highly doubt the left will do anything uncivil.
Firstly, undestanding what left actually is would be a good start. You’re not talking about the left. You’re talking about liberals. Liberalism isn’t left. Liberalism is right-wing, and always have been.
The actual left is very happy to be “uncivil.”
Secondly, a good second step would be to finally accept that liberals, and liberalism in general, has never, and will never, oppose fascism.
Those are two very basic things you can do right now.
The left is such a small population in the US, it’s irrelevant. If we are to believe Trump’s rhetoric, any group that becomes too much of a nuisance will be deemed “the enemy within,” and be shot.
The left is such a small population in the US, it’s irrelevant.
And yet this “irrelevant” left managed to beat the far-right off the streets despite the far-right enjoying the support and protection of the police, not to mention luxurious funding. You don’t have to believe me, you can hear it from a Neo-Nazi himself.
It’s almost like… if you were to stop paying attention to the liberal gaslighting you might realize the answer was right in front of you all this time.
So the way it looks now, Trump has won the presidency, and his allies will have the senate and house of representatives, and they already had the supreme court. The three branches of government will not be working as checks on each other’s power, unless we get very lucky and the various factions that make up the GOP split. This is obviously very, very bad, but there are still some checks on presidential power.
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Trump’s last term was a clusterfuck. Things may just be so disorganized that he struggles to actually get what he wants done.
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The states have limited power to defy the feds. While case law does state that federal law supercedes state law, that doesn’t mean all States will immediately cooperate wholeheartedly. Obviously a court battle will eventually get to the supreme court, but that takes time and requires a single panel of judges to beat multiple states into line on each new policy.
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Governments do have a small amount of caution when it comes to their people. One thing the crazy conservatives had right this whole time was that fundamentally, nobody was ever going to come for their guns because nobody wants to force a confrontation with a bunch of armed lunatics. In the same way, they’ll probably try to avoid massive riots and general strikes simply because it isn’t worth the fight to whoever is responsible.
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Citizens can resist. Go to protests, donate to political advocacy organizations (the ACLU will have its work cut out for it), and for Christ’s sake, go vote! Show up every year, just not every 4 years. Without the cooperation of congress, his power would be significantly curtailed.
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If nothing else, terms are limited. In 2 years we can swing congress. He isn’t going to be able to pass a constitutional amendment to do what he likes before that. If we swing congress in two years, it will slow him down significantly, and then we can replace him in 2028. Hopefully people will actually keep showing up long enough after that to reverse all the damage he’s likely to do in the next 4 years.
The states have limited power to defy the feds.
Case in point: legalized marijuana. That said, my fear in regards to states defying laws is:
- Targeted attacks by MAGA terrorists, particularly regarding anything LGBTQ+ or reproductive healthcare related.
- The fed withholding federal funds to punish states that don’t fall in line.
The former is particularly concerning as police and the national guard are predominately right-wing. My state passed the SAFE-T Act to address abuses in the police/justice system. Naturally, various police departments weren’t happy about this, and through obtuse interpretation of the act they’ll claim they can’t legally do vital parts of their job – something I’ve seen multiple times first hand. Refusing to do their job competently in response to MAGA terrorism isn’t hard to imagine.
The later gets tricky. Most of the states that would push back against unjust federal laws are also states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in aid. The “obvious” solution withhold tax dollars going to the fed to make up the difference … which would be next to impossible in practice. Even if states mange to do it they’d be playing into Republican hands by defunding essential federal services.
Win back? This country was bought and paid for long before any of us were alive. We keep fighting against the oligarhy for liberty and freedom like we’ve always done.
