Of course, the challenge is convincing the electorate in red states that Trump’s antics regarding Greenland are catastrophic enough to warrant his removal, given the stranglehold MAGA has on the Republican electorate.
Protests. Riots. Strikes.
Y'know, the sort of thing that toppled Yanukovych in Ukraine, lotsa Middle Eastern dictators during the Arab Spring, British rule in India, Soviet control over the Baltics, etc etc etc.
Your politicians are use- and spineless. It's time for your people to step up.
It is a virtue of Americans that they are unemotional and resolve disputes at the ballot box. America got rich because it grew at a modest 2% per year almost continuously for more than 200 years: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/theres-one-thing-we-can-alway.... Nothing is so important that it can't wait until the next election.
If people don't like what Trump is doing, they'll go out and vote in 2026 to reign him in, and then will vote for the other party in 2028. Even during the Civil War, Lincoln stood for reelection. And even with the Confederate States not voting, it was a vigorously contested election. Lincoln's margin of victory (about 10 points) was lower than in 12 elections we had in the 20th century. Reagan won reelection by almost double the margin that Lincoln did while he was Commander-in-Chief during the Civil War. FDR and LBJ won reelection by more than double the margin.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
For the sake of the country, I hope that this is finally the red line that will get enough Republicans representatives to finally have the courage to rein in Trump, at least on this issue.
I’m a Californian. It’s one thing for me to write Alex Padilla or Adam Schiff; they’d vote to convict if they have the chance. But they won’t get a chance unless people like Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham say “enough is enough,” but I don’t live in those states.
I have an American friend who keeps complaining about Trump. There was a protest in his city, but he didn't go because he had a BBQ to attend that weekend.
Seriously, this isn't fun anymore and Americans should be extremely concerned and start acting one way or another. It may be symbolic but it's better than nothing, if only for peace of mind.
I don't have any friends who don't vote, really, and the midterms might not come soon enough to do anything here.
My senator had a head injury and reversed all his opinions for some reason, so I've called his office a lot but he's very pro Invading Greenland now, and pro criminalizing his voters. Unhelpful guy.
I would start preparing for all of this to happen, and tell your friend to get his passport up to date.
Representatives can draft articles of impeached for the President.
Senators can start impeaching various Secretaries like Defence ("War") and Homeland Security. Or all of the Secretaries really, since they're not upholding the Constitution themselves by not invoking the 25A to get rid of a mentally unstable President.
Where are all these much-vaunted "checks and balances" that I've been hearing about for so long?
The much vaunted checks and balances rely on Congress and the supreme Court checking the executives power. Since the presidents party controls both, this doesn't happen. The Imperial Presidency has been absorbing power from the other branches since the 90s, and we are pretty close to the end of that process right now.
Have protests ever stopped the creation of a dictatorship, in history?
> build momentum until this can't be ignored?
Your answer to "how do we stop this" is "do something until it stops."
> perhaps write to congressmen?
"Dear official who actively supports subverting our democracy: Please don't."
> attend townhall meetings and ask questions to your representatives?
Filed under "Rearrange the desk chairs."
> try to raise awareness to your friends who don't vote?
This (alone) would have the ability to change things... but at this point, they are hiding that shameful fact. Non-voters and supporters of third parties in the US are effectively supporting the status quo.
You didn't suggest this, but I already employee a spicy bumpersticker that complains about Trump, and give stern looks to the screen when the news reports on abuses of law.
They do have the ability to change the course of actions. But even if it's just symbolic, massive protests would show the world that Americans aren't all in favor of the regime in place and some have a functioning morale compass.
That is, in part, a major aspect of resistance, yes. Protests on the weekends are great for community engagement and visibility, but constant pressure and activism are necessary. I think Minneapolis is a great example of how people should react when the situation gets bad. But even before that, getting involved in local organizations so that you're ready to help your neighbors is huge. For those of us not in Minneapolis, a general strikes would be great.
They have in my country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2009_Moldovan_parliament...
And in Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
And in many other places.
Either you're being obtuse or you need to seriously reconsider how you communicate and how you expect others to read it.
Instead of saying "you're being obtuse", say "It seems that you're being obtuse here because ..."
> reconsider how you communicate and how you expect others to read it.
I think the problem is firmly on your side. If we're discussing potential approaches to dealing with political leadership that's on track to start a massive war and possibly get millions of people killed, violence is inherently going to feature in those conversations.
Where would you even draw the line? If a hypothetical leader of a country came on the TV suggesting that we should build large camps where we will kill all the jews, would it be okay to shoot them then? What if we replace killing the jews with re-educating gay people?
> I think the problem is firmly on your side
The fact that you're getting downvoted and flagged to death would lead me to disagree. It seems most people didn't interpret it as you intended, which is a failure of communication on your side.
The fact that I did not choose to tailor my communication to the people obsessively fighting their ideological battles on the internet does in fact not indicate a failure on my part.
There's simply no way a reasonable person can read my comments and reach the same conclusions you have.
Here's the same conversation we just had, simply with the US replaced with another country. Perhaps it'll help you understand just how ridiculous you come across as to someone who isn't emotionally invested in the culture wars:
Commenter 1: Why are residents of Germany letting Hitler go rogue internationally, risk going to war with basically everyone else and also murder all the jews?
Commenter 2: If you can think of a good way to stop that absolutely terrible thing from happening, I'm all ears
Me: You could shoot him
messe: I'm no fan of the German administration (I live in Denmark and am LGBT), but leave that inflammatory rhetoric off of HN.
And before someone brings up Godwin's law or something equally silly, we're literally talking about superpowers fighting over Europe here. Hitler is a perfectly fitting comparison.
We're presumably accepting the premise that the country is going to "go rogue internationally and risk going to war with Europe, Canada, or South America?".
Would it similarly have been a horrible thing in your mind if someone had shot Vladimir Putin in January 2014?
That abdication has lasted decades and led to what is essentially a cascading failure across multiple levels and wings of government.
But the reality is that he still has significant public support, from a public who get most of their current events from filtered, biased news media. In that way, we've actually become remarkably similar to Russia under Putin.
Honestly, this looks very much like 1930s Germany. I really wish that weren't an exaggeration.
They don’t view anything that is going on as incorrect or “the wrong direction”.
A good discussion on the topic is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jooEsmOOm2k tl;dw - authoritarianism and conservatism directly impact your cognition and ability to reason about the world and prefer abductive reasoning and avoiding new information.
"Republicans don’t want to hear this, but there’s a pretty long-standing body of social science research that indicates people who have right-wing attitudes, particularly regarding religion and epistemology, appear to have lower cognitive capacity." (and it gets worse with age because you do not receive new information)
Which, leads us to simply morals and ethics. Two sides with two different views who both are angry at the other for not having their views.
That’s not to say both are right, but there’s surely one side that has a lot more care for us all as humans vs thee.
Americans don't care because they don't have to. In Germany, 40-45% of GDP is exports: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location.... In the U.S., it's just 10-11%: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location.... Exports to the EU are just over 1% of GDP. To put that into perspective, if exports evaporated completely, that would wipe out just three years of American GDP-per-capita growth. For Germany, it would wipe out more than two decades of GDP per capita growth.
That not only means that 90% of America's economy is domestic. It means that most people have no exposure to the rest of the world through their workplaces. To the extent they do, that experience is with Canada and Mexico--we have twice as much trade with those countries as with the EU. Canada and Mexico have essentially zero meaningful leverage over the U.S. So even for the relatively few Americans who have some exposure to the rest of the world, most of their exposure is to relationships where America is the utterly dominant party.
The myth of the American Dream (reinforced by the prosperity gospel and fused with the modern conservative movement) has turned greed and hierarchy into “virtues.”
What’s strange is that the people selling it (Trump, Musk, etc.) come across as profoundly miserable.
If you think the average American has any real control over what comes out of the White House these days, I have some ocean-front property in Kansas City to sell you.
Now when we've both shaken off our much pent in sarcasm, what would you say to them?
ICE has recruited a lot of those people - you don't see as many weird paramilitary militia groups as you did back in 2020. So I guess it technically worked as intended here. Unfortunately that means more jackboots with "don't tread on me" flags on their unmarked vans.
As a foreign-domiciled holder of US assets, my vibe is that losing the rule of law would indirectly lead to significantly more financial suffering.
How well did bond-holders fare, getting out of the last Lebensraum era?
Evidence of that:
> Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries
However the amount of US treasuries Denmark holds but privately and publicly did decrease by 20% or so over the last yea which I guess is something..
Canada is still the top 5 holder of US bounds..
The only viable way to do this would be for the EU to fully switch out of USA/USD into China/BRICS but Russia won't allow it and who is going to buy EU's exports? Not China.
But that analysis of viable options is for rational and competent leadership, so who knows.
TO solve
> need the swap lines by the Fed to stay afloat
?
This is about as nonsensical as it gets.
Meanwhile, the bond holders that don’t sell, can wait it out until the bond pays out or the selling mania stops, and the price returns to equilibrium.
We get nothing done in the EU because we are all prisoners to 27 different voting populations, and nothing moves forward if even one of them opposes it
Trump's policies seem to be aimed at devaluing USD and harming the US and its allies.
I guess maybe this pressures the other powers that be in the US that don't take the threat seriously to do more to stop him?
There are some, but not as many as you imagine.
I never realized there was so many people that enjoy watching their family get beaten bloody, ie. Stockholm syndrome
That's sadism or something, not Stockholm Syndrome which is about victims forming psychological bonds with their abductors, named so after it happened in Stockholm in 1973.
I think it's less about "like to see someone get beaten" and more "see someone who thought they owned the world and could bully others around, crumble under their own incompetence is satisfying", or something like that. Personally, I think it sucks, but I do understand how others can see it in different light, considering the long history of meddling with others.