(Disclaimer: I voted against Trump and anyone who supported him in my state.)
The truth is it’s unlikely anything historically big is going to happen in the US. We saw what Trump did last time he was in office, and it was really bad, but it was recoverable. The fear isn’t that it’s likely, but that it’s far from a non-zero chance, and there’s very little we can do about it. That uncertainty is scary when we’ve had a relatively good time in recent decades.
Will we see a sudden shift toward a state where you can get jailed or murdered for being a dissident? Maybe, but probably not.
Will we see an escalation of the wars involving Israel, such that we see a WWIII and/or the first nuclear strike since WWII? Maybe, but probably not.
Will we see economic collapse causing widespread hunger and homelessness that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression? Maybe, but probably not.
The only thing that’s really a guarantee is that we’re another four years away from dealing with climate change, and while that’s massive for humanity down the line, individuals currently living in the US are probably going to be mostly fine. Not to say nobody will be affected - hurricanes, floods, fires, and so on - but it won’t cause catastrophic failure of society in the near future.
We saw what Trump did last time he was in office, and it was really bad, but it was recoverable.
Except putting people in cages at the border and separating children from families. Many families still have not been reunited.
Except the million people that died from Covid-19 due to the government putting the economy over human lives.
Except the stuffing of judicial positions, including the supreme court, that same court that basically made him a king and free from any consequences from all the laws he broke.
Except for our air, land, food and water becoming more toxic and polluted due to Trump’s rollback of EPA protections.
Except all the pregnant women who are dying or forced to carry their rapist’s baby due to that packed court overturning roe v wade.
Except the people of color who rebelled and rioted during the george floyd protests but then the government showed up in unmarked vans and took people away, while the police shot more innocent people and busted heads, and almost nothing changed for the better regarding police violence.
Except the trans people who are now illegal in the state of Florida for having a driver’s license that matches their gender identity, or the bounty on trans people in a town in Texas, or the governor of Texas trying to get lists of trans people to hunt down and prosecute. Or insurance companies refusing to cover trans-related healthcare. Or trans people being shunned by their peers and excluded from sports. Or the violence against LGBTQ people that’s doubled in the last year. All enabled and emboldened by Trump and Trumpism.
I haven’t recovered from any of this shit.
With or without Trump, the new normal is fascism in America. Every american needs to fight every bad policy, every bad law, every bad decision, every threat – every day – until there are no more fascists in power.
Let me be clear here. If we have a global nuclear war, that’s not recoverable, because every human on earth will be dead. If we enter a fascist dictatorship with today’s technology, that may not be recoverable, because we may see the permanent end of anything resembling a democracy.
I’m not saying there weren’t horrific atrocities committed during Trump’s reign. What I’m saying is that so far, there’s a chance future generations can live better lives.
Counterpoint (and please, I am literally begging you to talk me off this cliff): Trump didn’t know anything about being President the first time. I believe that he thought Presidents could do whatever they wanted. The team he had around him, while you can call them assholes and pieces of shit and every other name in the book, understood how the government and the Presidency worked and were able to reign him in.
All of those people are now gone and he will be surrounded by purely yes-men. He will promote the Generals who will be loyal to him, not the country or the Constitution. Couple that with the newfound Presidential immunity, and Trump has all but free reign to do whatever he wants. He will also appoint judges, like Aileen Cannon, who are loyal to him. Those judges, thanks to the Supreme Court overturning the Chevron deference, will now be the “experts” instead of federal agencies.
I do agree that there probably won’t be a sudden shift, but there will be a shift and we will feel it in almost every aspect of our life. He supposedly promised to put RFK Jr in charge of numerous health agencies and campaigned on getting rid of the Department of Education. And I very much recall at least two instances where he said this is the last election you’ll have to vote in. Is he going to find/create a way to suspend the 2028 election and stay in power? Who’s going to stop him?
It is worse.
Trump started with either incompetent yes men who didn’t know how to govern or competent yes men who tried controlling the damage that the President caused.
You now have a group of coordinated people who see Trump as willing to agree with whatever as long as he looks good enough.
And I very much recall at least two instances where he said this is the last election you’ll have to vote in. Is he going to find/create a way to suspend the 2028 election and stay in power? Who’s going to stop him?
That’s why I said it’s possible, I just don’t think it’s probable. People are loyal to Trump until they’re not. Nobody’s loyal to him because they like him or they think he’s a good guy, or because they think he’ll bring the country prosperity. They’re loyal because they think they can get something out of it. Most people aren’t in a position where they’re willing to give up literally everything to help this particular asshole become a dictator. Those that are are typically incompetent - see anything and everything related to stealing the 2020 election. They tried a LOT of things, but nothing came even close to working.
So they’ll try again, and I don’t think anybody’s doubting that. And I don’t think our institutions are particularly strong, but they’re probably strong enough to stop that kind of incompetence from leading to a dictatorship.
On top of what you just mentioned, rather than Trump surrounding himself with incompetent toadies and yes-men, I think a lot of smarter, more powerful, and more dangerous people have taken the last 4 years to worm their way into his ranks.
He’s established himself as a useful idiot. During his first 4 years we saw the idiot part glaringly. It was scary and embarrassing, but we scraped by and experienced a few years of relatively boring politics. My big worry is that we’ll see the useful part exploited much more effectively this time around.
Realistically… what do you expect to be radically different this time in comparison to the four years Trump has already been president?
He had pretty much that his first two years. Maybe not the judicial branch, totally. But, he had both chambers of congress. They could have done a lot but didn’t because of incompetence, a little dissent and fear of electoral reprisals.
Now, they’re more organized and possibly more unified behind the rat-fucking that’s planned.
If they move too fast they’ll lose the House in two years. If they slow boil, we’ll all be cooked before we know it.
I’m not as doomer as everyone else for the short term. It’s the long term I’m worried about. He might get 2 more scotus members, and he’s going to do everything in his power to undercut any attempt to tackle climate change. And that includes his scotus picks who will almost certainly declare any needed attention to address climate change as unconstitutional.
They’re organized, have begun implementing the government takeover that they’ve worked towards since Reagan, and he’s officially been given immunity for anything he wants to do by the Supreme Court before entering office.
All of these plans have nothing to do with Trump, they’ve been being laid since Reagan and Nixon. Trump just stumbled on them, openly exposing them to the world because he’s such an extreme narcissist he MUST brag about anything he even thinks gives him power. We stopped it the first time, and had a chance to correct, but enough of the population has been drinking the Republican propaganda Kool-aid through Fix News since it’s inception. Fox News was started explicitly as a response to Nixon’s impeachment to provide an open partisan propaganda network for the Republican party. Nixon was going to be just fine until the media started educating the electorate, who demanded something be done. Congress was completely fine with Watergate until that point.
Last time, I don’t think Trump was expecting to win. He ended up needing to scrape together a cabinet, and a bunch of those officials were old-school Republicans who chafed at all the crazy stuff he wanted to do.
This time, the Heritage Foundation is preparing him, and the new Senate will rubber-stamp all his appointments. He will pick people who intend to “dismantle the administrative state”. Grover Norquist famously wanted to make Government so small he could drown it in fhe bathtub. He might get his wish.
100% his plan the first time was to lose, talk a lot of shit and complain. Sell a bunch of merchandise and try it again over and over, grifting millions from idiots.
You can see it immediately when he wins. Both his and Melania’s expressions when they get the news show that winning wasn’t the plan. It’s also why he immediately started talking about fraud. He didn’t have any prepared talking points for winning, they were all based on losing and using that to power his next scams.
Not much will change, this guy has been president before, he spend more time on the golf course then in the oval office.
I expect lots of embarrassing speeches and truths/tweets, but other then that the purple party autocrats will be running the country like they always do.
He’s also not going to even try to do half the things he said because he’s a pathological liar
Yes, there’s an awful lot of hysteria about Trump, when in reality he’s just a shit president.
There is some panicking prompted by the horrible things he’s promised to do but probably can’t, but:
-He got Roe v. Wade overturned, stripping rights from Americans while also being responsible for a 3% increase in infant mortality in the US, the first significant increase in decades
-about as many people died of COVID as voted for Jill Stein, and while Trump isn’t responsible for all their deaths he significantly worsened the problem.
So I’d say beyond shit
Right now, this is what I am telling myself. Let’s just hope he is only as bad as he was the first go around, and not as bad as he has been claiming he will be on the campaign trail. He is the lyingest sack of shit to ever hold office. Let’s cross our fingers he was lying about most of the shit he promised his cult.
We’ll be fine. Yes shit will be fucked up but democracy will not die. We’ll try again in 2028 and thankfully Trump is capped out after this. Maybe midterms will show some shift
Naive.
Edit: I’m guessing you’re a straight with male with no children or family who are lgbtq.
Only part you got right is a straight male.
You are the naive one to think 1 moron can destroy America. Trump can not be a moron and a master manipulator at the same time. The reality is he is too stupid to break anything beyond what can’t be fixed. We will have to rebuild in 2028. Yes there will be hardships but nothing we can’t fix. The only thing he fumbled hard with was the COVID response. So here’s hoping we don’t have another pandemic
This is such a dumb take. Just the fact you didnt mention something as clear as Ukraine’s genocide shows you have no idea what a corrupt idiot can do. He will be manipulated and it’s going to cause irreparable damage to society.
This is my thoughts as well. He is a really good bullshitter but isn’t able to get anything of substance done (for the most part). As long as the Republicans don’t get super majority, they won’t be able to do to much damage. My biggest fear is him getting more supreme court picks. I believe that’s going to cause the most lasting problems for our country.
What you’re missing here is that he has an openly corrupt supreme court behind him and everyone who was willing to tell him no is long gone. We’ll see how it plays out but it’s going to be hard to come back from this, and the Democrats are going to have to start paying attention and actually doing what voters want or there’s no hope for them.
Yes. Yes there will be. Even if everyone who voted for Trump is OK with it if you think the rest of America is just going to be ok with dismantling elections you’re being irrational.
trump just barely failed to steal it last time, this time he has the fucking supervillain crackpot team behind him.
If he wants to do it, all he has to do is make the call.
He has the executive, he has the house, he has the senate, he will most likely completely have the supreme court, there is literally nobody to tell him no anymore.
I took this attitude the first time Trump was elected, and boy was I wrong. Not this time. Now, I’m seriously considering what his options might be for eliminating the election in 2028. He needs to clean the military brass of people disloyal to him, which he can easily do as Commander in Chief. Once he’s got a loyal military, there’s virtually nothing he can’t do; and this SCOTUS will let him do anything he wants, so long as it aligns with the view of Evangelical Christians, who have been wanting a theocracy for decades. He can conjure the specter of “Democrat corruption” to justify eliminating any opposition politicians as an official act, completely re-stock the FBI with loyalists to wage any legal battles he needs to make his actions seem legitimate and “official,” and arrest any problematic judges under the same “corruption” myth so that he can then replace them with loyalists.
Honestly, we’ve seen this playbook before in countries that are now dictatorships and Trump has already made it quite clear he wants to be a dictator. There is absolutely no reason to be convinced this will not happen. It might not happen, but there’s no reason to think definitely will not.
Someone joke bet $500 Michigan will be blue with a +4% lead so I think I’ll joke bet $500 it will just be a repeat of 2016-2020 except 1.5x worse and then by next election maybe the DNC will learn to run a normal primary again and promote a popular candidate who actually promises to meet constituents’ demands instead of ignoring them.
Also someone on this community asked what everyone would do if Trump won and I said I’d probably make a collage of a years worth of my comments telling people ignoring genocide would cost Democrats the election.
So I guess I might go do that now and say “I told you so” to everyone who told me I was wrong.
I wrote that Biden dropping out of the race would be a big mistake. My “I told you so” is worth about as much as yours.
Him dropping out wasn’t his biggest mistake. Him choosing to drop out months after the primary process was his biggest downfall. He basically fucked the democratic party because he couldn’t swallow his ego and drop out when it was clear his popularity among the country was dwindling even in the party itself. Every advisor he had said “hey you likely shouldn’t run again” but he stayed, Hell fucking Obama even told him “yo you aren’t going to win this”. His stubbornness to run for a second term is what killed the chances of a democratic win here.
additional note: I don’t blame him though, like I could not imagine working my entire life up to that moment, and then having to say “I wasn’t the change I wanted to be I need to let someone else take the reins”, it must have been such a blow to his self confidence. The fact that he dropped out at all was a show of strength. I don’t think him dropping out at the point he was in changed the outcome overall, the damage in my eyes was done as soon as he decided to continue with the primaries knowing he was losing support
I’m fairly certain Biden would have done the same if not worse considering his lower popularity that resulted in Democrats switching to Harris.
Had they planned this out and done a primary, there’d probably be a new candidate who would have done better and possibly won.
Of course that would involve letting people decide their candidate which is a big no no and too expensive to rig and risk losing anyway just like Hillary’s campaign.
