what I want is for him and the rest of the Democrats, not just the handful of firebrands, to collectively represent our pain. If they can’t say the quiet part out loud because of “decorum,” then they are failures as leaders.

Thank you for speaking to this. That hits the nail on the head. It speaks to the general callousness of the Democrats as they cling to norms.

The way Harris told us to keep fighting, look over there at the stars, and then fucked off on vacation. And the way Biden was all to happy to meet with Trump like he was any other president elect.

Maybe they think this is their way to prove Trump wrong, that our elections are free and fair. It’s like they care more about meeting the bar Trump sets for them than they care about the American people. Maybe it’s their privilege. I’m guessing they’ll be singing a different tune when Trump has them in court.

TLDR I think personally I am still in the wait and defend myself camp. That seems to be a more useful strategy. It seems like labeling the Democrats as complicit goes against that. If the Democrats are complicit does that mean we would support them, Biden specifically, in a civil war? That’s not a rhetorical question by the way.

Can someone or a political party for that matter be said to be complicit through incompetence? The Democrats are definitely incompetent. Their reaching for moderate Republicans strategy is a useless failure that isolated their progressives base.

Biden, the Democratic consultants, and the Democrats in general seem more comparable to British PM Neville Chamberlain or German President Paul von Hindenburg than a Nazi collaborator like French civil servant Maurice Papon. Chamberlain and Hindenburg thought they could curb Hitler’s worst impulses and policies. They were wrong where as Papon actively helped Hitler.

We can’t live in a house made of good intentions. But is it useful to raise incompetence to the level of collaborator(which If I’m not mistaken is what complicity implies)?

At the risk of getting my ego involved, I’ll use myself as an example. I spent my time trying to get a Biden-Harris ticket and then a Harris-Walz ticket election win this cycle. My incompetence is different than the democrats, but it is incompetence none the less. Am I complicit in my own destruction since despite my best intentions and efforts the fascists took power? I did everything I knew how to do given the time and resources I had at my disposal.

The Democratic consultants are payed to be incompetent, but I’m not convinced they realize that. Merrick Garland could have moved faster to take punitive action against Trump. Biden could have appointed someone else or when Garland dragged his feet kicked him out and got someone else. Mitch McConnell and senate Republicans seem to think they can curb Trump’s worst impulses and policies.

Unlike myself, all of these elected politicians have power. Biden in particular has, in theory, sweeping immunity thanks to the Supreme Court. However, if Biden stopped the peaceful transfer of power and sent Trump to Guantanamo Bay there would be domestic terrorism at best and civil war at worst. Are we saying Biden, at this point, is complicit if he does not do this? Are we saying we would side with Biden in a civil war or in suppressing civil unrest?

To put it bluntly if Biden stopping fascism through executive action is what morality demands of him are we going to be riding with Biden? Because without popular support Biden isn’t lasting long with such a move. These are the questions that come to mind when I see the statement the Democrats are complicit. To be clear, the statement in question is not that they should be shamed, Democrats should be shamed, but that they are complicit.

So my non-rhetorical question is, is it useful rhetoric to say the Democrats are complicit in fascism? Are we prepared to argue that Biden should preemptively arrest this incoming administration? If that happened would you report strangers, neighbors, friends, family, and/or a spouse to the FBI if they said they were going to rebel against Biden?

Biden is complicit in genocide. I was still willing to vote for him and told people to vote for him. There were people on lemmy who were not willing to vote for and/or argue for Biden’s second term. I’m sure many of those people will agree with your argument that the Democrats are complicit in fascism. I doubt those people would be willing to fight with Biden in a civil war. They seem to want to the US to burn to the ground along with the 340 million people who live here.

I am an American and I would like to see my country and the people who live here survive. Whether we in theory took a proactive approach to stopping fascism or reactive approach to defending against fascism, it seems like a bad time. If Biden cracks down on MAGA and the rightwing infosphere it seems like everyone will turn on him. If Biden doesn’t and Trump takes power it seems like everyone will wish Biden had, but it will be too late.

This turned into more of a rant than I meant too, but I think these questions are worth discussing in the time before January 20th, 2025. I see people relying on legal arguments, on youtube, to argue that Trump’s second term wont be that bad. I don’t want to name names because I respect those people and what they do is critical to counteracting the right-wing infosphere. But, again, they seem to be relying on the idea that the fascists wont be able to enact fascist policies because the law will stop them. Or at least limit the fascists. The law hasn’t stopped Trump and MAGA so far. And it seems like with each small step the law will limit the fascists less and less.

People have already had to defend themselves against the fascists in the MAGA movement. More of us are likely going to be put in a similar position. It seems like we’re better off defending ourselves after Trump gives the order to send us to the camps. All the evidence from recent conflicts seems to show that the aggressor loses popular support quickly. However it seems like with this peaceful transfer of power next January we are about to test the limits of what popular support can do. Especially if Trump can drone strike the population into submission with immunity. But despite that, that risk seems unlikely, and thus waiting and defending ourselves is the more useful strategy.

Saying the Democrats are complicit seems to argue against that strategy. Because there doesn’t seem to be anything else Biden or the Democrats could do at this point to stop Trump that doesn’t involve relying on Presidential immunity. Democrats in Congress would need Republicans to use Section 3 of Amendment 14 to block Trump and there doesn’t seem to be any chance of that happening.

We’re not dead yet. So we’re still fighting.

Without industrializing the North could have lost the war to the South as they would have been more evenly matched. The North needed to win the political battle, the war, and then after the war, the culture war. They won the first two, but we are still fighting the culture war.

My point is the North employed violence in the form of a successful military campaign to maintain the Union. Where the North failed was following up with a re-education campaign to squash southern propaganda, such as the myth of the Lost Cause.

The Federal Government’s current preferred medium of communication is UAVs. They leave little room for further discussion and semantics.

Also, the North’s industrialization which allowed the North to outman, outgun, and outrailroad the South.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/industry-and-economy-during-the-civil-war.htm

A jaywalker doesn’t petition the town council to cross the street illegally. They jaywalk. A state seceding could involve as little as a governor declaring their state left the Union. At that point the ball would be in the Federal Government’s court to set the record straight, to clarify that the state in fact did not secede.

They can be North Texas, West Texas, Central Texas, East Texas, and South Texas.

As we learned from the American Civil War, the southern states were incapable of seceding. However this isn’t the question at hand. The above user asked this:

What’s the process like?

There is no such process.

States can not secede from the Union. That was Lincoln’s rational for reforming the Union. Since states didn’t have the right to leave, they had never left to begin with.

https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/secessiontableofcontents.htm

And before anyone brings it up, Texas cannot secede.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/29/texas-secession/

Namely, even though they were all, broadly speaking, Christians

The majority of the founders were deists.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214

Although orthodox Christians participated at every stage of the new republic, Deism influenced a majority of the Founders. The movement opposed barriers to moral improvement and to social justice. It stood for rational inquiry, for skepticism about dogma and mystery, and for religious toleration. Many of its adherents advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state. If the nation owes much to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is also indebted to Deism, a movement of reason and equality that influenced the Founding Fathers to embrace liberal political ideals remarkable for their time.

it was only a matter of time before someone whose religion was not agreeable to take over and start doing things that you don’t like

Not just a disagreeable religion, but any religion.

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state/

Both Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison felt that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty. The two were aided in their fight for disestablishment by the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other “dissenting” faiths of Anglican Virginia.

The christo-fascist MAGA movement is not consistent with the origins of our nation and the Constitution despite originalists claims to the contrary. We are not a christian nation, but a secular nation. All religions, including Christianity, were deemed dangerous to mix with the government.

I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it in your argument, but these misconceptions are what the MAGA movement will use to push christian nationalism on all of us and to exclude people based on their faith or lack of faith.

How about a seminar on tariffs though.

I guess I forgot some people knew what to expect from a second Trump term and would plan accordingly. It would have been nice if this guy had sat these people down and had this talk before the election.

At best this is confusing cycling the fascist drain as a repeating pattern. At worst it is apathy masquerading as insight. Fascists kill people in death camps and don’t hold democratic elections. We’ve held on this long because we’ve been paddling against the current. Millions of people stopped paddling this election. Now we’re hoping fascist incompetence clogs the drain long enough for us to get away.

We’re going to be lucky to get another election. If we still have a democracy the effects of this next Trump term will outlive the next four years.

Trump got three justices onto the Supreme Court in his first term. These aren’t going to go in and out of power. They are going to sit there until they die. Trump could get another three Supreme Court nominations confirmed in this next term. Their influence is going to shape this country for thirty years or more.

He promised to jail his political opponents. The Democratic Party might not exist in four years and if does it will probably have shifted to the right. They won’t be a moderate challenger in any sense.

An oligarchy of billionaires has rallied around Trump as dictator. Project 2025 is going to give Trump an actionable agenda and an army of loyalists in government positions to execute it for him. Republicans control the Senate and are on track to take the House. The Republicans want to shape this country for decades to come.

All of this turns the discourse around climate change on it’s head. Our models of what could happen are typically based on climate admissions staying the same or with efforts to mitigate them. Now we have an incoming administration who are going to pollute as much as possible. That’s not a repeating pattern. It’s a self-destructive process that ends with billionaires living in their apocalypse bunkers and the rest of us dead.

Wow, the turn around time on that was fast.

It’s because the Overton window is shifted to the right in the US.

If the Democrats were a better tool, that would be great. They’re neoliberals, they don’t listen to anyone. Socialists have been able to get into their primaries. One day we might even get one of them elected as the nominee. But we need to keep our democracy long enough to do that. And there’s a good chance we just screwed that up.

Harris called for a ceasefire multiple times and promised to do everything in her power to end the war in Gaza. Trump said Israel needed to finish the job. Harris was the correct choice to help the Palestinians.

I saw you were stuck parroting propaganda and still are, so I decide to try to reach you. Me pointing this out to you has clearly been upsetting. Who ever got you hooked on this wanted to debilitate you so you would harm your own interests and the causes that you care about. Hopefully you’ve been able to tell that I don’t think particularly highly of the Democrats. I see how they are useful and point that out to people. You seem unable to stop trying to sink Harris’ campaign. She lost. It’s done. If we’re lucky we will still have a two party system. In the event Democrats still exist in some capacity, consider using them to advance your goals, as opposed to spread propaganda about the Democrats at the expense of your goals.

The Democrats aren’t going to become the party you think you deserve. But they are the party we can use to achieve our goals. If we fail to leverage them effectively that’s on us. Spreading this propaganda is self-defeating. It’s an exercise in shooting yourself in the foot. The Democratic Party is what we have to move the needle to the left. If we insist on casting them in the most unfavorable light possible to everyone, we shouldn’t be surprised when no one wants to vote for them and they lose. Your time would be better spent targeting the Republicans with this stuff considering they are the people who want to kill us.

Obviously the Democrats would do better if they adopted a populist message. We can’t control the Democratic Party. But we can influence the rhetoric around how people view their vote. If we make the Democrats look like fascists who must be protested out of a moral duty, then we’ve done the Republicans a favor. If we point out the Democratic Party are a useful way to advance progressive and socialist causes over time then we’ve done leftists a favor. Let’s do the latter.

Of course we’ll see what happens next year with this. Seems like the party could die if it’s leadership are all arrested. If it doesn’t, let’s use the Democrats to our advantage. edit: typo

The ratchet effect is incorrect because it fails to describe the actual dynamic at play. Neoliberals move one step forward while fascists move three steps back. A fascist power grab followed by a neoliberal’s incremental changes appear to the causal observer as the ratchet effect.

The solution is not to disparage the democratic process, thereby denying ourselves the chances of ever getting progressive or socialist agendas implemented. But to recognize it is nonviable to ever allow fascists to win. Especially when you only have neoliberals to replace them with.

I should have come up with this sooner, but it really takes seeing the sword of Damocles overhead that is impending fascism to not give a shit what others think of you.

A politicians job during a campaign is to convince people they are worth electing.

Which is why American politicians stay in the American Overton window. Which is on the right side of the political spectrum. The way we made progress is by voting for the party that was the furthest to the left.

She became Biden 2.0 as her campaign went on,

DNC consultants, including Hillary Clinton, took over Harris’ campaign after the DNC and ran it into the ground. That’s not permission to give fascists a free pass. We are not Democrats. We don’t live or die based on what Democrat politicians do. We find a way to make their campaign work because everyone’s lives depend on it. There’s too much at stake to just throw up our hands and say both sides. Democracy is not we the Democrats, it’s We the People.

Anyway, let’s see, oh yeah: 94% of registered Republicans voted for Republicans in 2024, the exact same amount as 2020.

Yes, Republicans demonstrating they understand how democracy works as they dismantle it.

No one was duped, you sound weird and strange talking the way you do. It’s off-putting and makes me want to actively work against Democracy, because you’re doing exactly what I’ve been describing: dismissing everything I have to say while condescendingly speaking to me like I’m some misguided child.

This is you. Duped. Sounding weird and strange. Actively working against democracy because you didn’t get what you wanted. It is an incredibly childlike temper tantrum.

The options were Biden or Harris or fascism. Through our collective failure we have chosen fascism. As adults, it’s our job to take responsibility for what We the People had control over, which was our votes. Now if we fail to organize we will likely end up in death camps.

You’ve given up your agency the second you had someone to blame your misfortune on. I recommend you reconsider. There is again to much at stake to continue blame a party that is now going to prison. If we fail, we will again have no one to blame but ourselves.