I’m feeling so uneasy with everything I’ve been seeing. I keep thinking about what we will be this time next year, and if shit hits the fan, what is your plan? I’m queer and was politically active in 2020, so I would potentially be considered a political enemy.

The only blueprint I can think of is what you do in an active shooter situation; Flee, Hide, Fight.

I know there’s that romantic notion of “don’t be a coward, get out and protest”, but I remember the brutality of the 2020 protests firsthand, and even then I thought “thank god I’m going toe to toe with the CPD and not the CCP”. Next time is going to be different. The president now has authority to send drone strikes. Protests and riots don’t stand a chance agains missiles and live rounds.

Flee- I have an Uncle in Montreal who my family could potentially use as a way to at least temporarily escape the chaos. The hope I’d have is that Canada and other countries would accept American refugees, however that’s not a guarantee.

Hide- If borders are closed, lay low and move away from major cities if possible. If civil war breaks out, try to get away from the violence even if you think your side will win. Todays losers may be tomorrows victors.

Fight- If cellular data/ social media algorithms can keep track of you, and surveillance can make sure there’s no movement, this would be the last resort of desperation. I guess if possible try to either find a group for safety in numbers, or conversely go guerrilla as groups of resistance would make easy targets.

Sorry my mind is running and I’m getting scared.

  • MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Don’t underestimate the US military, as an ally. They are primarily younger, and the upper echelons are educated and all take their oath very seriously, to defend the Constitution, from enemies foreign and domestic. Of course there will be factions that will stick to Trump, like certain national guards, but that will fracture command and weaken our ability to react internationally. The military understand those implications, the potential literal end of the world. In the end, they push the button, not the president. The lower ranks have no desire to fight American civilians either, it’s antithetical to everything they are taught, and the age range is generally people in their 20’s and 30’s.I trust a Marine, a soldier, an airman, a seaman heheh, coast guard too, oh and the spacemen, way more than a cop, to do the right thing.

    A vet.

    • Sazruk@lemmy.wtf
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      5 months ago

      I had a similar conversation about this with a Marine yesterday, and I definitely trust the lower ranks and their commitment to the American people, but it is after all an authoritarian hierarchy. I’ve heard of privates coerced into taking vaccines under the threat of disappearing, and if soldiers can fire on their own civilians in other countries, I have every reason to believe they can here. And I know some of them readily would.

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’ve heard of privates coerced into taking vaccines under the threat of disappearing, and if soldiers can fire on their own civilians in other countries, I have every reason to believe they can here.

        you know you’re deranged right? either you’re dumber than dogshit for believing this when you read it below the BATBOY headline, or you’re sick in the head for making it up.

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          It was a threat… I don’t actually believe that an officer would do that no matter how high their ranking. It seems pretty obvious that they just wanted the private to fall in line so they didn’t give him any other options. But this was told to me by a vet and it happened over 20 years ago according to them. Maybe the guy was delusional but he seemed deadly serious when he told me.

          • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            It was a threat…

            if this happened - and I’m REALLY FUCKING DUBIOUS, they should have been reported to their command for a fucking UCMJ inquiry.

            I’m going to assume he was delusional and leave it there.

    • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      The US military’s entire existence is so they can attack other countries to keep rich americans rich. I dont think they will now suddenly change and care about the life of anyone not rich.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        5 months ago

        There is that fact, but also a lot of the military are contracted to remain in service or else go to prison. Many of them are there against their wishes simply because their contracts last for years. They are often drawn from poor backgrounds into signing exploitative contracts very young through lies. That is quite different to police where remaining in the job is a choice that pits you directly against your neighbours. There is a long tradition of soldiers becoming radicalised into anti-authoritarian and anti-war beliefs.

        That’s why people say ACAB, but not ASAB.

      • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Never underestimate dem/liberal gun ownership. We are just quiet about it and don’t make it our entire personality.

        • variants@possumpat.io
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          5 months ago

          The issue is military and police tend to side with fascists, and fascists know this so it’s a 3 way fight

        • lennybird@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I can’t be the only one to roll my eyes at comments like this. Like in one respect I get it, we want to say we will fuck up the fascists. But on the flipside, what the fuck are you guys actually suggesting here?

          Bear in mind per Propublica reporting that the right-wing extremist groups want to incite a race/Civil War. They hate the fact that there is such a stark contrast in violence between the left and right and it’s making them look TERRIBLE.

          Bear in mind firearm manufacturers are actively trying to break into the leftist market to sell more guns. Pretty obvious.

          Forgetting the evidence that guns for all intents don’t make you safer. We need to use our brains before bullets, lest we’ve all already lost.

          • Skeezix@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            what the fuck are you guys actually suggesting here?

            There never is a suggestion. It’s never thought through. It’s all just abstract. Civil war is an abstract thought that can be talked about without anyone needing to consider how it would actually play out.

            So how does it work? Do conservatives from Texas take a greyhound bus to california, get out, and start blasting indiscriminately? Do they stop people on the street and randomly ask their political views before blasting?

            It’s hard to have a civil war when your enemy is ill defined. People arent going to be standing in fields with blue and grey uniforms.

            What is more likely to happen is simply clashes during protests .

          • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            As a liberal gun owner, I can’t agree more. I hate that I have to own a gun to feel safe. I have been within 1 mile of no less than 5 mass shootings, and in 2 scenarios where I had to put my hands on my gun ready to use in the last 5 years. My wife was 100 yards from the shooter at the Texas State Fair shooting last year.

            I own guns to protect my family. I also own them in case civil war breaks out and all my right-wing, crazy neighbors lose their shit.

          • Benjaben@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You seem to be taking an “either / or” approach here. In my opinion the left should do everything possible to avoid violence, and also own guns in case these efforts are unsuccessful. It doesn’t need to be one or the other.

            It’s really kind of a matter of definitions to me. In my view, there exist situations where a firearm is about the only way to prevent super bad outcomes for myself. Those situations are uncommon, there are many good ways to avoid them usually, and I hope to never find myself in one. But by definition, if I find myself in a situation like that, having a firearm available is the difference between having agency and having none.

            Some people feel that the likelihood of such a scenario is so small that it’s a bad idea to prepare for it. Maybe this is how you feel? I do understand that point of view, I simply disagree. I don’t really understand points of view that seem to argue there is no scenario where firearms are useful, or that we’re magically “past that” as a society (and to be clear, I’m not sure you’re taking that stance). To take one example, just look at the response to Hurricane Katrina as an example of how flimsy our law and order really is. Once a situation is bad enough to overwhelm the existing structures we have in place, all bets are off and rules for behavior evaporate. We’ve seen this happen, in our country, in our lifetimes, more than once. I don’t understand the derision - why eye roll?

            • lennybird@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Fair points.

              I view it mostly as either/or chiefly for two reasons:

              1. The statistics to me suggest that the possession of a firearm generate greater alternative risks than the probability of the positive use-case we all imagine in our heads. For me, I am not in a bad neighborhood. Nobody is out to get me. Despite how bad things have become, we are a long ways away from some civil war. So to me it’s a net-negative.

              2. Any time focused on firearms is time taken away from focusing on preventative measures to shift this country in the right direction. One more phone conversation with a friend or relative on the fence to alter their vote to me is far more impactful at preventing what we all come to fear.

              I roll my eyes because some people get very gung-ho akin to the whole “fuck around find out” vibes of righties that I cannot stand. Big talk almost yearning for civil war when they’re focusing on the wrong things.

            • lennybird@lemmy.world
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              Ah yes, I’ll have my Mini-14 and 1911 and fend them off as the mighty hero as the nation burns to the ground!!

              You probably slipped about 20 steps where you could’ve had more viable impact at preventing that. You also are probably distracting yourself with hero fantasies when you could be more focused on something else.

              Forgetting the fact that mere possession of a firearm in your house elevates your risk of everything from a safety accident, domestic homicide, suicide, etc. That are probably all more probabilistic than you defending yourself from roaming right-wing mobs.

          • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Guns dont mass murder people, mass murderers do.

            Blaming guns wont fix social injustice and wealth inequality, so you’ll just end up creating the next unabomber or OKC bombing.

            Shit will only get worse if we dont focus on the underlying issues.

            • Waldowal@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Well, more accurately, mass murders with guns do. I’m not saying we ban guns. But let’s not ignore half the issue. It’s mental health and easy access to weapons of mass murder. Some gun control makes sense. Doing something about mental health makes sense.

              But you’ll never see a Republican vote for either. Government provided mental health programs? That’s communism! They are fine to let both problems run rampant.

            • Lemming421@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Guns dont mass murder people, mass murderers do.

              Sure, but the guns help.

              Try for a mass casualty event with some knives. It’s doable, but you have to work for it.

    • Zeppo@sh.itjust.works
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      I sure haven’t. That’s a deluded conservative thing… they say they need guns to defend from an overbearing government, then they’re the idiots who vote for freedom-infringing authoritarians. It also hasn’t made sense in decades at best, given that they’d be gravy seals fighting army or police with their handguns while the government has helicopters, grenades, night vision, comm systems (like, they think they’d have cell service in a civil war?) and so on. Maybe some organized group could pull off an Iraq or Afghanistan style resistance, but it seems unlikely.

      • Fondots@lemmy.world
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        I’ve dabbled in ham radio a bit, comms is something that at least some of the right are thinking about with these kinds of things, there’s more than a handful of right wing doomsday pepper lunatics in the ham radio circle, if you ever decide to listen in on CB radio chatter, there’s a good chance you’re gonna hear some lunatic ranting about conspiracy bullshit, I’m pretty sure I saw some pictures of guys at 1/6 with some baofengs (cheap Chinese ham radios, pretty much every ham has one or two kicking around)

        I remember when I first started looking into ham radio, I was googling some stuff, clicking into a whole bunch of different results not paying too much attention to where I was, and I found one forum thread that was actually pretty informative until halfway down the thread someone said something really unhinged about race wars or something, and no one called him out about it and some even agreed with him, so I took a look at what site I was on and it was the stormfront forums. Nope I out of there really quick.

        Also not the only experience I had like that, few of my hobbies and interests have significant overlap with the right wing lunatics fringe since I’m into some outdoors camping and survivalist type stuff, the algorithms try really hard to suck me into crazytown sometimes.

        • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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          Honestly. I wish we had more leftest prepped stuff. The darknet hacker scene (privacy is a mixed bag) is decent IMHO, but as soon as you want to prepare for disasters (canning, homesteading, HAM radio, reloading, guns, etc) ALOT of the content and social media is a mix of ethno or Christian nationalism bunk.

          We, the left, really should be interested in this stuff. This is how you provide mutual aid in disasters. How you help the marginalized avoid oppression and how you raise the cost of faciest take over.

    • Lightor@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Civilians with guns against an actual military would never work, it’s just some fantasy those on the far right have.

      • TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It doesn’t seem like you’ve read much about insurgencies and rebel groups. It doesn’t actually take much firepower to inject enough chaos into the system that you cause issues with traditional militaries. One person with a rifle could keep a FOB alert and wasting resources for a couple of hours in Afghanistan. IEDs placed by individuals or small groups caused absolute terror in Iraq.

        These types of things are unlikely to “win” a war. But if you make it costly enough, the other side will decide it’s not worth fighting. The point is not to engage in head-on combat, that’s suicide.

        Or hell, look to the tactics of some of the rebels in the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.

        • Lightor@lemmy.world
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          Yes, I understand how an occupied enemy force is hard to dislodge. I actually was in the USMC for 8 years and was stuck in 29 Palms with nothing to do it in the middle of the desert but operation Mojave Viper over and over as groups cycled through. War in the middle east was hard because of ROI and a lower tolerance for collateral damage. You remove those and it’s not even a question. Just drop bombs and roll tanks.

          I’ve also seen how we can take over a country or city in a matter of nights. I’ve seen buildings leveled because there was a singular shooter in them. If you roll APCs down a street with an armed patrol squad there isn’t much you can do. Sure you could make IDEs, setup daisy chains and such, that could take out a patrol for sure. But that just gets a bigger, more aggressive response that will not be so easily pushed back.

          And let’s be clear, the middle east has been at war for generations upon generations, it’s part of their life at this point. Bill who hunts deer sometimes is not a battle hardened fighter. Hell, people who sign up for war, get training, then ramped up for deployment still freeze up in combat.

          Also, civil war tactics don’t work anymore, hell,guerilla tactics barley work. We have drones, night vision, thermal, air support, satellite imagery. If the US military did actually attack it’s people, and members of the service actual did comply, it would be an extermination not a war.

          To your point about one person looking out for a FOB. First, I don’t know how one person is covering every possible line of attack and approach vector, but that side. One drone or fly by could destroy that entire rebel FOB in second with not a damn thing you could do, with no warning. What is your defense against fighter jets or a blackhawk? Shoot small arms at it?

          • TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Sure, if they’re willing to just destroy everything then it’s less of a solid tactic. Will the American military be so willing to just destroy the places they grew up in? Perhaps. Will they be willing to shoot the neighbor they grew up playing with? Perhaps. Will they be willing to level the school they have so many fond memories of? Perhaps. And if so, then yes, that’s game over.

            The US military has historically been pretty terrible when it comes to insurgencies. But obviously they haven’t been fighting in their own backyard.

            It’ll be interesting either way. I sure hope it doesn’t come to pass.

  • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    A better question would be what are you going to do to make sure the orange Mussolini doesn’t win?

    Make sure you, your friends, and your family are Registered to vote.

    Make sure everyone you know gets to the polls on our before election day.

    Become a poll worker.

    We need to make sure we vote in numbers too big to steal. In 2000 the election was handed to Bush by the Supreme Court because of one state. Looking at the last term, the court would absolutely find a way to shift the election to the con in chief if it was just one swing state with irregularities.

    Talk to people about project 2025 and what it will mean. This is how the guardrails from 2017 are removed. This is how we start a Christian theocracy. If we vote blue all the way down, the Dems may be able to put stronger rails in place. If it’s not Project 2025 it will be Project 2029. These conservative think tanks have been doing this since Reagan, but this is by far the scariest.

    Talk to friends and family about the Biden administration wins. It’s not just Biden you’re voting for, it is a continuation of his administration.

    Bottom line, this is likely the most important election of many of our lives. All of us must participate.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago
      • saving the economy,
      • forgiving school loans,
      • cutting insulin costs (THIS SAVED SO MANY LIVES IT’S BONKERS),
      • stood up for unions & labor (FIRST PRESIDENT TO EVER WALK A PICKET LINE),
      • increased overtime for millions,
      • ended federally subsidized discriminatory mortgage lending,
      • went after airlines, cable companies, phone companies, concert ticket sales and hotels for their fucking ridiculous hidden fees!,
      • brought back net neutrality,
      • he’s gonna try to tax billionaires!
  • Sparkles@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    My kids both have autism and higher needs. I also have this population of clients. I can’t just uproot, honestly. Sit back and have a drink. Continue to teach the kids skills for stay-at-home careers and maintain a low profile.

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    “On Tyranny” has some great guidance on this, as well as some guidance on how to do what you can to help put the brakes on it happening.

    TL;DR there’s quite a lot more, but stay off the internet, get used to making small talk, making eye contact. Know who’s in your community physically and who has your back. Renew your passport, make friends in other countries if you can. Make friends. Stay off the internet.

    • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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      It’s really hard to make friends in other countries without the internet. Gonna have to go back to ARPANET.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        He didn’t actually say stay off the internet; that was my oversimplified retelling. A little more complete but still oversimplified version would be: Be careful and don’t share more than what you think is safe to share, and try to focus on the real world as much as you can. The real world doesn’t have mass surveillance in quite such a prepackaged and straightforward fashion, and it is where all the real outcomes good or bad will eventually take place anyway, so prioritize it as much as you can.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      5 months ago

      Curious: Why “stay off the internet” ? It’s mentioned twice, so I’m assuming for a good reason.

      Is that a mental health thing or a keep from being profiled/targeted thing?

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        It is soo easy to forget about just how much identifying metadata you leave on the internet just by reading stuff.

        You know the cookie banners you see? Those that claim to let you opt out from being tracked by advertisers?

        Yeah, those are just the overt tracking mechanism, tracking pixels are far far more insidious.

        Lets backtrack a bit, back when Facebook started getting big, companies started embedded Like buttons on their webpages, cool right? You could just click the Like button and it would help you post a link to your Facebook feed to the page you were visiting.

        Seems fine, right? What’s the issue?

        It would be fine if the image of the Like button was stored on the local web server hosting the rest of the site.

        But it isn’t.

        It is stored on Facebook’s servers, it is stored in a way that every single Like button has their own ID, so every time you load up your favourite website about abandoned radiation experiment sites it makes your browser send a request to Facebook’s servers as well and depending on how the request is sent they can at minimum log that your IP address loaded the Like button with the ID number X, the ID number X is tied to the specific webpage you visited.

        Then you go and do some research on impotense and how to cure it, the pages you read all have Like buttons as above, but with their own ID numbers, Facebook now knows at a minimum that you are a man who is interested in science, technology, society and modern history, you may also suffer from impotense.

        Well, you keep browsing the web and read local news, well the Like button is also there, and with the ID number Facebook can add an area of interest to your profile.

        It keeps going like this, but with one huge important change, people are starting getting warey of the Like buttons and Facebook in general, so they simply remove the button, while introducing the tracking pixel, a 1px*1px transparent picture, it works like how the Like button loads, and keeps generating data for Facebook.

        Facebook is not alone in this, I just used them as an example.

        You can read more here:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_pixel

        This is also not even getting into browser fingerprinting.

  • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’d like to try to assuage your fears regarding a protest meeting missiles or drone strikes. Yes, the President can order drone strikes with impunity. It’s been that way since the first use of drones, early as the Obama era (maybe earlier, but I was a bit young then).

    However, this does not apply to US soil. One of the benefits of state sovereignty is that federal armed forces can’t operate on US soil. National guard gets involved, at the governor’s request, but they don’t have missiles or drones. Police are barbaric, but they also don’t have missiles or drones.

    So I don’t think we’d see much of an escalation in terms of weapons of violence with regards to protests when compared to 2020.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If he declares it an official act, then it’s not illegal. Drone strikes are pretty official.

      SCOTUS fucked up super-sized

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        He can order it all he wants, but that doesn’t mean any branch of the military has to actually carry out an obviously illegal order. All it means is that he theoretically “can’t” get prosecuted for trying.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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          Soldiers swear an oath to the Constitution to not commit illegal orders, regardless of who orders them.

          The issue is that the president cant issue illegal orders anymore. Since hes the commander in chief of the military, his orders are an “official act,” i.e constitutional.

          The supreme court has said that the president can order military executions of anyone at all and the military can no longer legally refuse. The above is constitutional, because the people who decide what is constitutional said it is.

          • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            And a huge proportion doesn’t.

            Dont underestimate how many people join the military at 18 for financial/career reasons and often end up living overseas and meeting people from different backgrounds. It’s not as conservative as people might imagine.

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              I know that many do not, but I have no idea what the actual proportions would be. Polls are iffy.

    • dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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      5 months ago

      However, this does not apply to US soil. One of the benefits of state sovereignty is that federal armed forces can’t operate on US soil

      From the Project 2025 wiki page:

      In November 2023, The Washington Post reported that deploying the military for domestic law enforcement under the Insurrection Act of 1807 would be an “immediate priority” upon a second Trump inauguration in 2025. That aspect of the plan was being led by Jeffrey Clark, a contributor to the project and a former official in the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ). Clark is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 partner. The plan reportedly includes directing the DOJ to pursue those considered by Trump as disloyal or a political adversary

        • dactylotheca@suppo.fi
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          Clearly “the system” isn’t capable of handling the threat of right-wing extremism and something needs to be done, but anybody murking Trump would probably make things worse, not better. He’d become a conservative martyr, and they could point to his death and say “see, we told you they’re violent” and use it to deepen hatred and oppression. This is what happened after the failed assassination attempt on Robert Fico

      • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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        I was unaware of “Project 2025”, interesting read! While that does contain multiple concerning ideas, this is far from a reliable manifesto. Additionally, ties have been drawn to the Trump campaign, but these are loose ties and appear primarily to be op-eds. Trump has also disavowed ties to this “publication”. Lastly, that “Washington Post report” is another one of those vague articles featuring “according to sources familiar”.

    • SonicDeathTaco@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Haven’t been following the news, have we? What you said was mostly true a week ago. Now, NO ONE has legal protection under U.S. law against crime committed by an American president.

      • Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        While this may be true, and a drone strike may be ordered on US soil, the President will not be the one controlling the drone, not directly in command of that person. The UCMJ supercedes in the case.

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          5 months ago

          Any “official order” of the president is lawful now. As commander in chief of the military, he can indeed “officially order” drone strikes on US soil. The soldier following that will be following a lawful order. The UCMJ will not apply.

  • yrmp@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’ve been saving for a down payment for a house for two years. It would appear my money is not wanted in the USA. I also have dual EU citizenship. My plan is to improve my spoken German and take my family overseas.

    As an atheist married to a Salvadoran woman with whom I have two hispanic children, I feel like after they run out of illegal immigrants we’ll not be far down the “committing suicide with two bullets to the back of the head” list. Or maybe we’ll just get sent to a camp that treats ADHD if you catch my drift.

    I visited Germany in 2022 and was very impressed with the walkable/bikeable infrastructure and ICE trains even if they were late on occasion. The food wasn’t my favorite but the culture and people were kind and they still seem to value rule of law and societal decorum to a certain degree. The idea that making a nazi salute in public is jailable/fineable is really how it should be everywhere but “free speech” yadda yadda…

    I have wanted to leave the US since 2003. Just didn’t have skills or money until now. I’m still going to struggle with a language barrier and finding a job with A2 level German. That’s my biggest issue right now I think.

    My mom moved to the US not knowing English. How the turntables have turned.

  • daddyjones@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    As a non American living outside of the US; I’m much more concerned about a second Trump term.

    The first one was mostly just annoying, funny and embarrassing for you guys.

    This time he’ll be taking over with war in Europe and the whole Israel/Gaza thing. There is quite a lot of damage he can do…

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    5 months ago

    Stay and vote. The way I see it, Canada is fucked if PP wins anyways, and will be hurt by Trump regardless. Europe is fucked if the alt right wins in France and hobbles Germany in the next couple elections. Nigel Farage is going to parasitically eat the conservatives from the inside out in the UK. Trump will pull put of NATO, which means war on Europe’s doorstep and probably all of south east Asia if China decides they don’t mind war.

    Running isn’t going to work. Voting and protesting and political action is what will keep us all at peace and ever vigilant against populism and later, fascism. All hope isn’t lost. We still can undo the damage and categorically reject hate and corruption that is threatening democracies worldwide (and already dooming authoritarian countries with massive population gaps and economic damage)

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Keep saving until I can get a used car, so I can stop renting to drive Uber. After that, rapidly save up a buffer using the eliminated rental cost, and then get my second career started. Sales, I’m thinking. Lots of outside sales requires having one’s own car.

    • Nefara@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      He was no less a fascist in 2016, but there were enough checks on his power that he mostly managed to simply be incompetent and chaotic. He bungled Covid response and gave free handouts to billionaires, sold who knows how many state secrets to foreign entities, but there are a lot of positions in government held by actually qualified and competent people who waylaid his whims. Conservatives have been carefully putting the pieces into place to prevent this from happening again, for instance reclassifying higher ranking government employees so that the president would be able to fire/dismiss them without cause. If the leader of the FBI attempts to investigate him again, they could just hire a new one who won’t. The supreme court being full of right wing extremists is another purposeful and deliberate step to undermine the checks and balances system. Conservatives want kings, and they weren’t prepared the last time Trump was in power. They will be able to do much more damage this time.

      • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        There isn’t exactly a single candidate in the past ten years I would’ve called competent. In 2016, every last person running was out of touch, the only thing that enormously benefitted were the memes. Which is why I often mention my biggest qualm with Democrats, that in 2016 they wanted votes so badly they shunned third party voting as “throwing away your vote”. Uhm, no, throwing away your vote is what we’re doing right now. If the system wasn’t simply a monarchy with two choices and if people voted honestly, this is a situation we wouldn’t even be thinking about. I feel sorry for nobody.

      • pewter@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        there were enough checks on his power that he mostly managed to simply be incompetent and chaotic

        There were no real checks. He had way too many Republicans in Congress for there to be. Most of what protects America is gentleman’s agreements that we all assume a normal president wouldn’t defy.

        If the leader of the FBI attempts to investigate him again, they could just hire a new one who won’t.

        That is literally what happened last time. The house (where Republicans are a majority) wouldn’t pass a bill that makes firing the FBI director illegal so there’s no real difference.

  • BlazarNGC@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    We are pretty much screwed any way you slice it. Make sure you’ve got a trusted network of people, make sure you’ve got your passport renewed. Make sure you’ve got some coins stashed away.

    But also, get into local government. Go to a city meeting. It sounds dumb but if you’re not involved then you’re not informed and have no power. A lot of cities have the power of ordinances that can make life less hellish.

    Look up climate feedback loops cause we’re already over the edge on that crap. Ain’t nothing to be done except start living underground.

    • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      Look up climate feedback loops cause we’re already over the edge on that crap. Ain’t nothing to be done except start living underground.

      We can still lessen the effect. Every .1 degree less average global temperature rise helps.

      • ditty@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Yeah that .1 degree might stave off the extinction of several animal and insect species for a bit

        • BlazarNGC@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Y he permafrost is melting in the tundra of Canada and Siberia, once we hit those methane pockets…it’s bad y’all and individuals can’t do nothing. It’s basically a greenhouse gas time bomb

  • Taako_Tuesday@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Hey. We got through the last trump presidency. If it happens, we’ll fight like hell to protect the ones who are most vulnerable, and we’ll figure it out. Personally I am still hopeful that it won’t happen. We all need to vote and not get complacent, but this panic is good, electorally speaking. One reason Clinton lost in 2016 was that a lot of people didnt take trump’s chances of winning seriously. Biden’s polling low right now because leftists are mad at him (and rightly so). But as the election starts to ratchet up more and more, we’ll hopefully see people fall in line on at least keeping Trump out of office.

    I hate it, personally. I hate that we get government-induced anxiety every election year, just to get people to vote the way they should. All this attention on Trump and Project 2025 is meant to force the undecideds to choose where they stand. If you’ve already decided how you’ll be voting in November, take a break for your own mental health. Last election cycle I made myself crazy listening to political podcasts, checking 538, analysing polling data. I can’t do it this year, so I’m trying not to get too deep into it.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Germany got through Hitler and the beer hall putsch, go read about what happened next time when he regrouped and tried again.

      This would NOT be the same thing and you (and folks like you) really need to accept that.

    • meep_launcher@lemm.eeOP
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      5 months ago

      I will note that not everyone got through the last Trump presidency. Clinton would have had an actual response to Covid because she wouldn’t have disbanded the NSC unit that would have saved most of the 1.1 million Americans who died of Covid-19.