You know, DOGE, fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored. Is there any way out of that or is it over? Is the USA done?
In the short term: Yes. Unless the US military decides to remove a sitting president but that is extremely unlikely.
In the long term: Yes, but also no. Fascism is extremely inefficient and expensive and the US is destroying its own economy and pushing away all of its allies and former trade partners. Things will get very rough but it will not last forever. There will be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.
Unfortunately this has been a long time coming. The United States has never really been united and it was only a matter of time before another possible civil war loomed on the horizon.
You are being way too optimistic. A lot of people will needlessly die, not only from violence but also disease, starvation, suicide and natural disasters.
It is also with saying that America will be a different thing on the other end of this. No crumbling empire comes back the same.
Personally I think this resurgence is a highly specific cultural moment that is coming as religion dies off and the white population of America teeters toward minority status.
Since the US birth rate began to decline (natural phenomenon that happens to all developed nations) its strong immigration has held it up. But that has had an accumulating demographic effect. White people lost their official hegemony a long time ago but now they are facing the prospect of losing their simple majority and it scares the living shit out of them. It’s not just because privilege sees equality as oppression. It’s also because they know that they have treated others incredibly badly, and deserve to be castigated should they lose power.
That’s why this Trump admin is so ugly. It’s the death spasm of a dying culture. That’s why this Trump admin is hollow at the center: it’s backed by a group that has no future and can only harken back to the past. This is why this Trump admin is openly undemocratic: they no longer have the numbers to play the game.
This too shall pass, but at great cost. The USA is the greatest political prize there has ever been and it won’t be let go of lightly.
I would say it’s been coming since BEFORE the civil war.
People always take my words out of context when I say that life in general would have been better for everyone long term if the south won.
People take that to mean that I’m pro-slavery. I’m not. If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)
But if the south had won, and been able to leave the union? I feel like they’d have made the worst possible choices for their country on a repeated basis. I feel like their country would have crumbled and disolved into multiple smaller countries. The united states would have continued expanding out west. Texas is probably the only former state that wouldn’t have crumbled.
The rest of the confederate states? They’d be struggling to survive, last in the world in education, terrible healthcare, basically a bunch of 3rd world countries. But the rest of the USA? SO MUCH HEALTHIER FOR IT!!! All these cancers trying to tear down OUR country today, wouldn’t be part of our country. They can go fuck up the country of Alabama. Go nuts.
The pure amount of butterfly effect policies that would be different is mind blowing.
To me, the south winning isn’t about slavery. It’s about taking this large lump sum of the worst people in the country, and cutting them free like you cut away a tumor to get rid of cancer.
This is complete hogwash speculation. You have no idea what would have happened to the North if the split had been permanent.
I mean it’s very obviously speculation because nobody has a crystal ball to see the outcome of decisions that never happened. It’s just an interesting thought experiment and something to ponder.
You haven’t factored in the the north’s economy was based on manufacturing things using materials from the south. Industrialists got rich from it and that’s a major factor in why New York cops were returning slaves before the war.
The Industrial Revolution was powered by coal from the south.
Before the public works and refrigerated train cars that made California a farming state, a lot of food was grown down there.
You’ve convinced me. I hadn’t thought if it quite that way.
(The previous comment was unedited at the time this was written, just in case)
What if this is karma for invading and taking half of Mexico? There weren’t slavers or shittier-that-usual people in the region before that.
You should read about the Spanish missions and their treatment of the native people on the west coast. But also the Mexicans weren’t innocent of things either. They were constantly having political violence and even voluntarily returned monarchies. (yes plural)
As. Mexican, I agree with you. The conquistadores weren’t people of the highest caliber, and while the catholic monks were better, their mission was evangelizing at any cost, even if it meant killing people who didn’t want to. Even prehispanic people could be brutal.
The main difference between colonial Mexico and USA was that slavery wasn’t a thing here, because the evangelized became full-fledged catholics, having a saved soul and all. Something unthinkable for the slavers, who justified their acts because blacks “didn’t have souls”.
Mexican creoles, the hacendados, found a loophole: Catholics could still be exploited by crushing, multigenerational debt. That’s why we had a century of turmoil after the revolution(s), right after the century of turmoil after our independence from Spain.
Guess my point is: by the time USA invaded and forcefully took half our country, we didn’t have slavers (the hacendado’s loophole was gone), and definitely didn’t trade humans as things. Your south brought back evils that were gone at the time.
Yeah that’s true. The American South was exceptionally evil. I don’t think we’ve ever properly processed that as a country.
I mean, if the united states is getting karma for invading and annexing other peoples land, SURELY you’d think there would have been some repercussions from Native Americans, right? Hell, even Canada arguably has some leeway to give us karma if that’s the case.
And Hawaii.
And technically Puerto Rico, and the Somoa Islands, and Guam.
Even though Vietnam isn’t, nor has it ever been a US territory, they still know what it’s like to be invaded by us. We were never trying to take land for ourselves, but we WERE trying to take land for our cold war ally. We just failed is all. And yet…for everybody reading this from a country that ISN’T America, here’s the weird thing. In our schools, they teach vietnam in history as if WE WON. Which I assume the rest of the world easily see’s how absurd that is. Here in America? There are PLENTY of people who think we’ve never lost a war. There are people who defend the 2001-2020 invasion of multiple middle eastern countries as a war we won. Some of them think it was multiple wars in a short amount of time we won. Others think it was one continuous war that we won. But those people exist. I’ve met many of them.
Now, with all that said, NOBODY calls them freedom fries. Nobody. Never even heard of a single person who calls them that. It was a 2 week thing on tv, and then everybody just shrugged and called it stupid. Which is exactly what I’m hoping this whole gulf of america/mexico thing is. Just political theater, and then it’s over because it’s stupid.
To be fair though, Texas seceded once already and within a year or two was begging to be taken back. They probably would have crumbled too.
deleted by creator
That’s like every alt history book ever.
Lol. Americans continuing to vastly overestimate their contribution to WW2
On the one hand… First World War would’ve ended very differently.
On the other… Maybe eugenics would already be discredited by the 20s with how it went in Dixie.
I mean WWII was salty Europeans fighting salty Europeans over European salt. Nothing for America to get involved in.
I didn’t even mention the Second World War, because the first would’ve been different enough to make it having happened in a familiar form into unlikely.
Yeah I wanted to say WWI and mistyped.
Did you forget about the part where the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? You couldn’t have kept the US out of World War 2 with a trillion dollar payoff. The country wanted blood.
Oh shit I added an extra I for some reason. I mean WWI. WWII was definitely an American problem too.
Lmao, this is why Arabic numbers are superior to Roman numbers.
The US arms shipments to Britain, and later after the gun runner ship Lustiana, hoping to use its civilian passengers as a shield in breach of the rules of war, led to American popular support for joining with the Allies, which they eventually did to push Germany to defeat despite the newly Sovietised Russia withdrawing.
And it might be that Dixieland and Yankeeland would support the Allies and Axis, and WWI would have had an American theatre, too opening in 1915 or so. And any major war fought in North America in the 20th century would totally alter the form US neo imperial power and hegemony took, if any at all, in the latter part of the 20th century.
As a minimum, a different US would alter how Versaille and Balfour treaties were made and what who agreed to.
You say this but it’s hardly just the south that voted for trump. As you mentioned, the butterfly effect could have changed things dramatically. Things still could have turned out worse for everyone.
Though things are pretty crap now so I can definitely relate to your thought process.
How exactly would slavery have died out “naturally” in a union made up entirely of slave states who’d just fought and won a war to defend it? I get your point about letting the south stand in its own so it could fall, but you are too casually sweeping aside the issue of slavery. “Yeah yeah - that would pass naturally - now let me tell you my MAIN point….”
Northerners weren’t simply more high minded than southerners concerning slavery - industrialization lessened their dependence on slaves to the point where they could abandon slavery without the economy crumbling.
Presumably this would happen in the south as they industrialized as well.
Agriculture still has not eliminated manual labor, son.
Oh OK
Yep the South was invested in agriculture, to this day a labor-intensive sector, largely due to advantages in climate and geography which were basically fixed. So how again would slavery have spontaneously ended in the South again? It’s a question - please answer it.
Frankly, it’skind of the opposite: the slavery part of the argument is obvious, simply because IIRC the model of chattel slavery the US south operated on was only viable through the constant flow of new people to feed into the meatgrinder. The “better off” part is kinda dubious.
I’m afraid you do not recall correctly. One of the features of American slavery is that it was population self-sustaining. You can see #4 on this UNESCO page. I like the way they put it: American slavery created a people where there was none before.
If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)
Do you have access to some alternate timeline or something? Where can I get this secret information that you have?
Yeah big [[Citation needed]] vibes here
The civil war itself destroyed the south’s market for cotton. The number of slaves that fled was ever increasing and the war made it even easier.
If the north and south were separated they would have continued to come north but would then be asylum seekers.
The north of the south would have been the main producers of economic growth as mineral exports from that region exploded after the civil war. Based on this alone it’s not certain the confederacy would have actually collapsed.
It would take someone with deep historical knowledge of that era to make any realistic predictions of what would have happened.
For instance, the likelihood of the confederate states not further splittering isnt known. And then there are issues such as if the west coast or other regions would do attempt the same break from the union.
There are all sorts of trade imbalances that would be in play. But it’s hardly an idle thought experiment. There are simply too many pieces.
All these years, preppers may have been right. Having a well supplied fortress of your own can turn out to be very handy.
It’s still a shitty situation. Really what’s a shitty situation with an extra 20 kg of coffee in your basement, but still a shitty situation? The prepper fortress is a very unrealistic thing to try to strive for anyhow for anyone living in a city, majority of people. It’s the widespread doomsday mentality and the downward spiral of the conspiracy nutheads that got the USA where it is today anyhow… Good luck hanging on in your basement for 10 years. That’s easily how long it can take if it goes full fascist. Even then, hard to compare, the implosion of a nuclear armed superpower has only happened once before in history (Soviet Union), and that shit ain’t over yet either, Ukraine is a direct continuation of the process. So they’re like 35-ish years in, where USA seems to be heading now. Abandoning NATO is the equivalent of the implosion of the Warsaw Pact.
It’ll take decades to repair it
Not even close to being done. Right now the biggest changes are a reduction in non law enforcement/immigration government staff and contracts being paid out. The biggest thing coming down the pipeline is Trump clearly wants to free himself of the courts and congress. But it’s far too early to say he’s won that. And even that wouldn’t be the end of things. In the US the states have a lot of autonomy. They are actually the ones responsible for holding elections. So let’s look at a worst case scenario, where he tries to say we shouldn’t have elections.
The first thing that’s going to happen is all the blue states are going to tell him to fuck off and hold them anyways. The second thing that’s going to happen is some red states will also do so, although they’ll likely be less coarse with the language. Then a few more red states will be pressured into having elections by massive protests of people angry they can’t vote anymore. Then while Trump is having a fit because there’s no real way for him to stop this process, we get to learn about a fun feature of the US Congress. There is no law requiring it to meet in D.C. Trump would likely try to claim whatever is left over is the real congress, but without having been elected the Constitution is clear that those states forfeit representation until they hold an election.
So we’d be left with a House that is majority anti-Trump, after all, he tried to make them irrelevant at best. In the Senate we’d likely be looking at something of an even split in 2026. There’s probably 5-7ish red states that would hold elections anyways and combined with the blue states and senate democrats leaving DC they would be able to convene elsewhere with a majority to declare rules of the Senate without Trump’s interference. The new Congress would likely swiftly vote to impeach Trump. The remnants of the old one would protest this but they don’t have any legal power. Only the backing of Trump and propaganda power.
This leaves Vance with a choice. This would be by design because our democratic party leaders only appear to be stupid when convenient. Vance can throw his weight behind Trump and get impeached himself or he can order Trump removed from the White House thus acknowledging the primacy of Congress. If he chooses the first option then Congress simply repeats the process and the presidency goes to the next person in line, the speaker of the house. Yes, Congress can effectively vote one of it’s own members into the White House at any time. This president then declares an emergency and orders the military to secure DC. The military loves process, and loves the Constitution. It is highly likely this order would be followed.
However all would not be well, it’s not a fairy tale. It would likely be the start of an American Insurgency that would take decades to root out. It would certainly be the end of the US as the hegemonic world power. Our Aircraft Carriers would rust in port and our projection of soft and hard power over the world would wither. But we would still be here, just much diminished and never the same in our lifetimes. This is certainly scary but if we all do our part this is as close as we would come to losing our democracy. Far more insidious is the threat of slowly revoking the right to vote. They’d start by raising the age, then by requiring you to not have any debt of specific kinds, then by making harsh punishments for illegally voting, and other such things until voting is effectively restricted to land owners. Certain factions would like to get it to white christian male landowners but that’s probably a decade or more down that line if at all.
Notes -
Why wouldn’t he just send in the military?
2028 isn’t enough time to purge and train enough people to make the military loyal to him. He would be mid project on that at best and the states could effectively counter him into a stand still with their national guard. This would make many people stay home, but the determined voters are likely to be anti-trump because that’s the change incentive. Loyalists will feel like the elections don’t matter.
What’s stopping SCOTUS from declaring the elections invalid?
The states. SCOTUS is only relevant as long as they have reputation of being an impartial arbiter of Constitutional Law. That opinion is already in the trash heap. They could not make such a decision today, or after 4 more years unless they spend the next 4 years setting themselves as at least a mild opposition in a long game. But they haven’t shown that kind of patience.
What happens in Trump surrounds himself with thousands of armed loyalists in DC?
We select a new capital and wish him the best of luck dealing with DC. There is no law requiring DC be the Capital. The Constitution doesn’t even require the states to give up a district, it only provides the legal possibility. There’s no need to engage in that kind of a conflict. Such a group would be arrested bit by bit by Maryland, Virginia, and Federal authorities until it could be resolved swiftly.
Thank you for this. It’s so easy to feel hopeless in the face of everything that’s happening, which is exactly what they want.
Yeah, there’s still quite a few good paths here. I can’t guarantee we do what’s needed but I can show how if we demand it from our leaders and publicly support them it becomes really hard for Trump and friends to reach their goals.
I really only lurk on Lemmy, but I felt the need to comment. Thank you for writing this. I’ve been stressed out since the EO was announced. I felt like we were doomed, but this gives me some hope. Even if this doesn’t happen, I feel better knowing there is still a way to possibly course correct.
This is actually one of the more pessimistic courses. It’s probable that Trump gets enough push back that his legacy consists of massively handicapping the civil service, screwing up the economy and our alliances, and then peacefully transferring power to a democratic party president.
One of the other things we need to do is seriously organize to support a more left candidate in the 2028 primaries. Part of this shock and awe is meant to make us give up, not only resisting Trump but also in organizing within the Democratic party.
is seriously organize to support a more left candidate
Americans need to start organizing the network for a general strike and start writing a new constitution.
A new constitution is a really bad idea until we can do a lot more organizing. Conservatives have been practicing for a convention for at least 20 years. If we called one right now they’d steamroll the liberals and we’d have an actual king again.
The flaw with this scenario is that it assumes Trump would try to simply cancel the elections. Instead, he would be more likely to regulate them in a way that makes unseating him impossible. For example, federal regulations might be implemented that required states to use voting machines, voting machines that are produced by corrupted companies. He just straight up steals the election through rigged voting machines. Or they mess with registrations and voter purges to a level more than the amount that already got Trump elected this time. See the SAVE Act..
Or alternatively, the election systems themselves will be unaffected. However, the candidates will be carefully managed. Any Democratic candidate that would present a significant threat to MAGA will be arrested on trumped-up charges. The courts will miraculously cease to give the Democratic candidate the same leeway they did to Trump when they “didn’t want to interfere with the election.” Or he’ll manipulate the Democratic elites so much that they end up electing someone even more conservative. They end up running Ted Cruz or something insane like that.
Remember, even the citizens of the Soviet Union got to have elections.
He can certainly try, but he can’t pass laws about elections without Congress, which brings the filibuster into play.
Arresting the party leaders of the opposition also generally doesn’t work if you do it more than once or the situation is already very politicized.
At the end of the day it’s going to require us to be in the streets no matter what he tries. Our state leaders need to see that they have support to stand up to Trump.
The problem that I keep seeing here is people saying “well, he can’t do that.”
Stop that. He can do it because nobody’s going to stop him. I mean, you surely don’t expect that little shit Mike Johnson to tell Daddy Trump no. The constitution itself isn’t going to rise up out of its case like Godzilla and crush him. The judiciary isn’t going to come and enforce their decision in person. That just leaves the military. They’re either going to coup him, or not, and I’m expecting the latter case.
That’s not what I’m saying. The entire point here is that he does not have the physical power to interfere in state elections without an act of Congress. The states would arrest any federal agents trying to do so. This isn’t a “gentleman’s agreement” that nobody is enforcing.
Does he not have a way to replace the state agents with ones that will do his bidding?
No, in the USA States have a limited form of sovereignty. They elect their own officials and hold all powers not expressly given to the Federal Government. So while the President has some law enforcement agents, most of them are actually employed by the State Governors and Counties/Cities. The Governors have a Secretary of State that is also elected who are responsible for running all elections in the state.
So if Trump tried to make an Executive Order that only Republicans could vote, (this is meant to be an extreme example, it would backfire hilariously in real life), the states could legally ignore it. However if Congress passed that as a law and the Supreme Court upheld it then the states would be legally bound to prevent anyone not registered as a Republican from voting for federal offices.
The thing is the Republicans don’t have enough of a majority to just pass any law they want. So it’s very unlikely there will be an extreme voting law in the next 2 years. So if federal agents showed up trying to enforce an Executive Order from Trump it is highly likely they would be arrested by the state or city police for interfering in voting.
if Trump tried to make an Executive Order that only Republicans could vote
The way authoritarians have done this before is arrest enough of opposition party members. Other ways of blocking members of Congress to show up for a vote could be travel restrictions due to a state of emergency because of a terror attack for example. You can combine this with other methods.
You might have 5 arrested on made up charges, 4 can’t leave their home because of protestors blocking them, 3 are blackmailed, 2 are bribed to stay away, 1 is murdered. This could even start with one or two members of congress getting murdered. Then a state of emergency is called including. Tragically not all members can make it in time to vote in the emergency session.
if federal agents showed up trying to enforce an Executive Order from Trump it is highly likely they would be arrested by the state or city police for interfering in voting.
Trump doesn’t need to succeed in all states with this or even send in federal agents. There are enough state governments run by MAGAs, who will fall in line.
Things don’t need to be properly done. Some chaos as cover and the slightest plausible deniability is enough.
So you end up with some kind of election reform, that’s not accepted by all states. This means the president can declare a further emergency and suspend elections until further notice. Alternatively only elections run according to the new rules are accepted by the federal government. Non compliant states can hold elections, but they will be declared invalid by the supreme court.
You seem far more hopeful than me, and far more intelligent, so I am going to try and hold on to a sliver of hope.
Man that read is some high grade level Hopium of the best quality dang if only the DNC would do half of this instead of rolling and die with a billionaire cock in the mouth.
I’m probably not smarter than you, this is just in my field of study. And to throw a little water on it, it depends on people doing things. We can all sit on our couch and watch the ministry of newspeak broadcasts or we can be in the streets. Our leaders are humans and we can’t expect them to act in a way that endangers themselves without visible support. But it actually takes a heck of a lot to kill a country. We aren’t anywhere near that point yet. Get mad, get in the streets.
Historically, it has to get worse before it gets better. It’s gonna suck for a while, but I have faith that humanity will come to it’s senses when things start getting bad enough. I hope this whole mess will be the catalyst that leads to great change in humanity in the future.
Not just them
Have you read about US History? I recommend looking at presidents Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon.
yes the country is going to cease to exit tomorrow. i know this is “no stupid questions” but damn dude
Been screwed.
Chump and Elon just accelerated shit.
This was always gonna happen.
God I hope so
laws being ignored
its like reagans term, but 100x worst, because they are being worked through with russia backing all these groups.
Communist revolution
So long as there is people living in a place, having kids, and trying to improve their lives, the places will remain. The government may change, social structure’s get overhauled, but the same fact that people are having kids and building a life means those places are unlikely to go away. The old republic is dead. We have supreme court justices taking bribes then passing judgments saying they can. We have the position of President where anyone in it can legally say “I was doing it for my country the laws don’t apply.” And get away with it. The United States of America as a Democratic Republic, is over. But there still exists a United States of America that has transitioned to a Democratic Empire/kingdom. So to the question; “Is the USA screwed?” The simple answer is No. It will continue on so lobg as the population does. Is the Democratic Republic of the United States screwed? Bitch be dead, screw the corpse if you like.
There are some seeds of hopefulness this week.
20% of savings will be put towards a “freedom dividend”. With cuts to military.
Freedom dividends is answer to everything. Disempowers government discretion, empowers people. Sales taxes and carbon taxes directly funding dividends becomes progressive taxes. Transferring “conditional poverty welfare” to dividends is path to eliminating homelessness, and not having a 50% clawback on work income that is a huge work disincentive.
Progressive versions of UBI/freedom dividends is just a higher amount with higher taxes. But a conservative version that still tries to maintain (as close as legally allowed systemic) slavery, is still a path to a long term sustainable fix for country.
End to proxy war on Russia.
Facts genuinely support that US/NATO controlled/manipulated Ukraine into provoking war on Russia. By far the most demonic war the US has ever started, with specific objective of diminishing Russia to the last Ukrainian. That Blackrock can get cheap land and resources in the end does not help Americans. Nothing about this war helps world. Climate sustainability cannot be a 2nd priority to war, and oil industry profits, and forcing massive diesel use and refinery terrorism to operate the war. Pure demonic hatred/mission to destroy/destabilize Russia is not going to get it to cooperate on energy transition. Before Biden, they were cooperating with Europe to mutual benefit.
Massive war spending increases from NATO to match forced Russian/China production increases is not path to human sustainability, or even a path to likely victory over Russia/China. Getting the DNC to force us into candidacy of the most republican/neocon/zionist candidate possible makes all progressive policies impossible due to lower priority. Both a small UBI, and war de-escalation, means having a progressive alternative have a chance, instead of appealing to the Dick/Liz Cheney wing of the democratic party.
I wont give a knee jerk response to it. a country the size, economy, and history of USA doesn’t get done for by one President. While Muskrump will cause plenty of institutional damage and suffering on American and global populace, USA will come out stronger and better nation at the end of this (whenever this ends). Case in point, Germany before WWII and Germany after WWII
