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What bullshit is this? So any president can engage in insurrection as recognized by a court completely unpunished as long as they aren’t an officer in the military and “only a civilian”? Maybe this legal system does deserve to be burned to the ground if it’s that ignorant.
It's even weirder, because she is saying this phrase, "any office, civil or military, under the United States” does not cover the office of the president. Which is a terrible ruling as the president is a civilian officer and thus covered by section 3 of the Fourteenth amendment. The ruling comes off as a blatant misreading of the text.
Our government is being infiltrated by fascists at all levels. We need to vote the fascists out.
No, actually the germans voted the fascists in. Then the Allies WWII them. Who is going to WWIII America if we become a fascist dictatorship when our defense budget is larger than the next ten countries' budgets combined?
Americans
That's really optimistic. A huge chunk of our armed civilians are actively embracing fascism. Our over developed military isn't exactly sandcastle you can kick over either.
There's also a sizeable chunk, if not nearly all of military leadership that absolutely would not mobilize the military against the civilian population.
Maybe many of the lower enlisted don't recognize the fascism, but the higher enlisted and officers actually in charge know better than to forsake the oath of enlistment they've taken several times. They're repeatedly taught to refuse unlawful orders.
I have faith in our military leadership to do what's best for the American people and not whatever yahoo is in office when it comes to mobilizing them domestically. Perhaps that's naive.
I hope you're right but I don't think many have that same faith...
We can hope. At the end of the day, if what you say is true, democracy may depend on the willpower of a relatively small number of people to do the right thing. Because Trump has already said he intends to deploy the military to the streets. If he gets elected, it's not "if" the military gets involved it's "when".
you need to take a lot more drastic action than just voting, because your options are fascists or polite fascists
The Republican party is controlled by fascists. The Democratic party is controlled by neoliberals. Neoliberalism leads to fascism. That does not mean that neoliberals are themselves fascists. Neoliberals have simply failed to realize that their idealized society, if left to rot long enough, is the ideal environment for fascism to take root.
This distinction is important, because if we incorrectly write off neoliberals as fascists we are doing the fascists work for them by dividing ourselves needlessly. The truth is, we outnumber the fascists. In order to win, the fascists need us to see each other as the enemy. Instead of lumping everyone to the right of us politically with the fascists, we need to educate people about the dangers of neoliberalism and fascism.
We are in a race to educate and inform people. The answers to our problems are democracy and socialism. We need to spread that message to as many people as possible, before the fascists spread their message of division and hatred. The fascists have a head start, so we have no time to lose. edit: typo
I don’t get why these people say that both parties are fascist because I entirely agree that while Dems in the long term become similar, just with different values, it’s unclear to me how that muddies the political waters.
What people seem to be saying is that even if I vote left every time and even if leftist ideas take more hold, the right will still exist and both parties will swing us right regardless.
I fundamentally disagree. The very very first thing we have to do is make the current state of the right deeply unpopular. What I want to hear is far more Dems saying “this party has gone too far left, I’m republican now” and purifying the left by leaving. I want Dems and republicans competing in that way where conservative Dems slowly bleed to the other side. And then we vote further and further left until we become sensible.
Do I see that happening? Absolutely. But this next point is critical. I realize the meme about every election being critical. But this one truly is. America decides in a year: Fascism or no?
But I’d argue this election isn’t as important as the ones after it. Even if America re-elects trump, he can only do so much to slide us toward fascism(not to minimize). But if his re-election doesn’t cause outrage and huge political shifts, we’re doomed. Two republican victories in a row and this country topples in a big way.
I can't overstate how nice it is to see a hopeful opinion for a change. You are correct that it could take two elections for the fascists to takeover. The issue is that they could do it in one in theory.
If they win back the senate and take the executive branch in the next election they will control all three branches of the Federal Government. Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military against civilians. Also, the Republicans are championing this Project 2025 from the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Among other things, it calls for removing every nonpartisan member of the executive branch and replacing them with partisan yes-men who are only loyal to Trump.
https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025
Even more confused.
It's an inclusive or. In the US, if a member of the civilian government or the military engages in insurrection or rebellion they are ineligible from holding any office again.
When the word 'office' is first mentioned in section 3, 'civil or military' is specified. It's clear then that 'officer of the United States' has the same connotation.
An insurrectionist, who took an oath of office, is disqualified from assuming the office of the president and an insurrectionist will be disqualified from holding any office if they committed their insurrection while being president.
Here is the full section:
Here is a link to the fourteenth amendment for reference.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment
Oh I was clear on that after your first reply, just confused how that ruling could have possibly occurred given all the text and the actions by Trump. If she were in his pocket, she wouldn’t have acknowledged he engaged in insurrection in the first place, so WTAF, judge?
edit: like… did he cross his fingers behind his back when he took the oath of office for president, so it didn’t count? What the actual hell.
I don't know if you've read this comic, but I would say the judge believes in the message around the red, bottom left hand circle, on the second page, very strongly.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html
Also like, spoilers I guess, if you do read the comic and are behind.
I don’t know how to spell it but there’s a Marge Simpson aggravated noise in my head right now.
It's some hardcore lawful evil nonsense.
Lmao, I had to check which board I was on for a second.
~Germans, 1920
Yeah, we need to vote the fascists out of office. Otherwise we will end up like Nazi Germany.
I'm not going to assume. What do you mean?
I mean germans who didnt like hitler might have had faith in democracy a little bit too long.
In a true democracy, people have the ability to throw their democracy away. Hitler won an election to gain power. He was able to do that in part because Fascism was an entirely new political ideology then.
We have the advantage of knowing better. The trick is getting everyone to identify Trump as the fascist he is. Our democracy is only as strong as we are all informed.
It is of course too late for voting once the fascists complete their takeover. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet.
In a true democracy we wouldn’t be limited to voting for wealthy individuals who had been in power all their lives. This is oligarhy with elements that keep kids beliving they have some kind of freeer freedom than people in the past. There is hardly anything democratic about a party convention deciding who the population will even have a chance to vote for.
Tell that to MAGA idiots who are gonna vote for Trump again. It doesn’t concern them that we are worried. We cannot protect them from their own stupidity. Even if we try the system is rigged by the rich who rather exploit their stupidity for more money and power than protect them from stupid things they are bound to do.
Remember, there is no justice for trumps extremely illegal and undemocratic behavior simply because the rich and powerful decided he might still be useful.
In short the democracy they keep telling us we live in is a facade to a system where few make the choices that matter and leave the illusion of choice to the many to keep them docile. We make them rich and they make us suffer.
Helping people to stop being fascists is a good thing. We are going to need to get on that too. But at this point, there are still so many people who haven't fully realized what is going on yet.
I'm aware that the wealthy have a disproportionate influence in our democracy. But we will still have a democracy. If the fascists win any of the next elections our democracy will be an illusion. The oligarchy of tech giants will be in complete control of our lives under the guidance of a christofascist state.
They can make it worse if we lose our democracy. While we can only make it better with our democracy.
I think historically we made things better by revolting, not by democracy and I don’t think this time will be different.
I hope you’re right though, I’m still voting in my country but I don’t think I believe in good will of any of the sides. If lesser evil is our only option we’ll still eventually end up in hell.
In order to make this society better we’d need to change so many things it would basically be a whole 180. For one we’d need to fix public education, but in every country I know of it has been only eroding over the decades. Instead all the money goes to the elites and the proletariat gets dumber and dumber, to the point of electing fascists. What’s the point of voting „left” if the „left” still takes a piss on public schools and teachers? If not this election or the next, the nutters are gonna (democratically) win eventually.
In the US, we are going to be one election away from a fascist takeover for a while. We are circling the fascist drain. The point is we can have a better future, but only if we fight for it with the tools at our disposal. With voting, protesting, and spreading good information. Our only chance is to vote in Democrats and independents on the left like Bernie.
If the fascists takeover there are no guarantees. Even if a revolution succeeded there is no guarantee what we would get. Revolutions can just as easily cause a country to go from dictatorship to democracy as they can cause a country to go from dictatorship to dictatorship.