If you think things are bad now, then, brace yourself: it is about to get a whole lot worse. If you are alarmed at the speed with which the Trump administration has set about dismantling every institution of American government and every pillar of the international order, you must understand that this is not just the initial burst of activity, the “shock and awe” phase after which things will settle down: if anything, the pace will continue to accelerate.
The world has never before been faced with such a threat. The United States has handed the nuclear codes to a madman, a criminal, a would-be dictator and a moron, all in the same person. Whatever the purpose to which he directs these powers – to impress his dictator friends, to further enrich himself and his cronies, to seize absolute power or just to watch the world burn – we must hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is already distancing himself. The wheels of government are going to shut Trump down. He doesn’t have that much power.
…they said, hopefully.
One thing that concerns me that not many people have talked about is what’s going to happen to the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency? More and more countries want nothing to do with us and while the US dollar has a huge edge over any other currency, the US becoming a pariah is probably going to impact that.
I’ve wondered about this too.
The USA government has enormous debt, which grows every year due to an enormous deficit. But historically people have been relatively comfortable with just letting that continue to grow, because it is balanced by economic growth and stability (roughly speaking).
But now that the government is somewhat unstable… bad things might happen to the currency. The debt will continue to rise, but the productivity and stability that underpin it are eroding. It may collapse.
The RMB yuan is used in international trade by only eight countries, yet the Chinese economy is not going down the shitter. Has anyone credible tried to quantify the effect of the USD no longer being used as a reserve currency or in international trade?
It’s fine dude, Trump tweeted threats against any country that tried to get off the USD has the global reserve currency so therefore it definitely won’t happen. Or something.
Yeah, you can read about it in the project 2025 page online…we know what is coming…we have for a few years…
For those who want to watch as the progress bar of doom slowly progresses…
Thanks for posting this link. I had not read through Project 2025 before.
Is it just me or is the US heading into an economic recession? That thing reads like they are trying to destroy social cohesion, the environment, and probably the economy.
The design of that page makes it a bit too satisfying watching the tracker go up. Like watching an xp bar in a mmo bar go up or something. I’m almost rooting for it despite despising everything it stands for…
If Dems were smart, and assuming we have a fair election next year, they’d have their own “Project 2027” in the works right now.
Of course, no one would believe them because they’ll walk half of it back before they lose power again, but it would at least show they’re adapting.
What we need is a manifesto for Rollback 2016. Any executive order from Trump? Invalid. Any appointment? Rescinded and Trump, Vance and any Trump appointee is removed from office and barred from any public office for life. Any corporation or billionaire that supported Project 2025 is guilty of treason and will have their assets expropriated as compensation. All legislation passed under Trump is summarily repealed. All regulatory decisions made by Trump appointees, likewise. Networks and sites that have repeated foreign propaganda will be sut down and their executives barred from ever running another public corportation and from holding public office. Tax windfalls for the rich from Trump’s cuts will be reclaimed.
The Democrats won’t do it. Someone will have to.
If Dems were smart they wouldn’t have fucked Bernie in 2016
I think that is definitely the point where the US was at a crossroads.
people were literally going back in time to try to assassinate him before the election. that should give us an indication of how bad it is going to get.
Trump is going to get worse until he’s stopped. That has always been the case.
If was so easy dictators wound not have existed.
Iowa passed a law changing their state’s interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to be one that excludes Gender Identity, they claimed they were doing it in order to protect women. This marks the first time that a group was removed from a protected status.
Chaos and Anarchy will break out in the US soon, the bad kind though.
not chaos and anarchy. any disruptions to order and civility will get crushed.
What’s really got me sweating is the fact that we’re living in sorta good times. A lot of people are struggling of course, and serious issues are unfolding, but imagine what the world could look like if we get hit by the next Great Recession or Great Depression. Things could quickly go from very bad to much, much worse.
Living in good times? Tell that to the people getting deported. This clownery hasn’t directly affected me yet. Everything is fine.
Like I said in my original comment:
“A lot of people are struggling of course,”
The deportations are terrible now. Imagine how they’d be if the world fell into a Great Depression. I’d be legitimately worried about frequent lynchings of immigrants.
I’m no economist, but I hear the economists are not thrilled with what Trump is doing to the economy. We’re headed for a recession at minimum, if those folks are anything to go by.
I thknk you are. I just read through the Project 2025 stuff and it does seem to point to a recession.
As a non American with investments, I’m glad I read it.
the extent that Trump has gone to remove barriers to committing atrocities likely corresponds to the extent he intends to commit them
This will end with blood in the streets.
Yeah but who’s? I have a bad feeling it won’t be theirs, it’ll probably be the vulnerable and the enemies of the MAGA.
The opposition to the MAGA cult can’t just sleep for too long on letting them terrorize everyone’s livelihoods since they’ve gotten the backing and enabling of their ‘leader’. They won’t sleep to upset everyone’s lives.
it’ll probably be the vulnerable and the enemies of the MAGA.
Well, it’s starting with ours. It’ll end with theirs.
Tap for spoiler
Damn this is the edgiest shit I’ve said since I was in high school, holy fuck
Dude, I’m Canadian and I’ve been anti-gun since I’m about 2, and now I’m seriously considering getting one. The world we are in right now as nothing to do with the one we born in, edgy is not what it use to be.
MAGAs are going to be hit hard with the cost cuttings and job eliminations. Sit back. They are the ones who are violent and they will take that violence to their source of problems when they wise up enough. It may take them awhile to work through the propaganda and bullshit though.
Some are waking up and getting on board. We struggle with the same issues, assessment of cause and cure are where we differ.
They are the ones who are violent and they will take that violence to their source of problems when they wise up enough.
They’re as likely to direct that violence at us as against their leadership. They’re authoritarian enablers who want to be abused. Most of them will never wise up, let alone rise up.
That’s the whole point of starting off with scapegoats. “Ermagod, the transgirl trying to use the bathroom in another state raised the price of eggs”. Or of course “we’re breaking up families and sending children to concentration camps at Guantanamo because they’re criminals “ and even “Canada deserves it because we need to stop fentanyl”
Will they ever wise up though?
Scoreboard shows these people, the most violent among them, are disconnected from reality and blindly trust Trump and his cronies.
I can’t even get my MAGA mom to believe Musk did a Nazi salute. “Apparently he was throwing his heart to the crowd.” Granted, she’s not politically engaged, she just listens to my dad who stopped watching Fox News because it wasn’t conservative enough. So yeah.
MAGA are willing enough to storm the capitol, they’d be easier to convince to “rise up” than any liberal i’ve ever seen.
Rise up against whom though? Their violence is not driven on principle. It’s out of trust and loyalty to a con man who told them to “fight like hell”. What makes you think they’ll turn on him? Other than a tiny handful of folks, when have the leapords eating their faces stopped them from offering their faces up on silver platters at the leopard’s feast?
I wouldn’t bet on MAGA suddenly waking up to class conflict to the point of guillotines unless Trump points his grubby little finger at them.
What a world that would be.
MAGA are predominantly fatter and older, we can take them!
You may be surprised.
Can we just… not? I know this is where everything is headed, and the Republican SCOTUS, Congress, and Executive have been slowly dismantling protections and getting laws in place to make this legal, but there has to be some other way before it gets there.
inb4 “just protest”, they don’t give a shit. A national strike would start to do something but still probably wouldn’t be large enough or last for long enough for them to care.
And more hateful and violent. More vengeful and racist. More armed and stockpiled. More members of the police. Etc.
Are there any left wing militias?
The idea they’re all dumb and y’allqaida rednecks is a joke that people have been playing on themselves.
And the punchline is not funny.
do you think the left are advertising themselves?
Its more likely to be guerrilla style warfare, at least thats my guess.
The process of global de-dollarisation,much talked about, is being hastened far sooner than I think most people (at least those not privvy to whatever intelligence existed on Trump and others’ motivations and intentions) expected.
The question as to whether the country with the largest military in the world can accept a much-reduced international role (and much reduced share of unearned global wealth to go with it), without kicking off a kinetic world war three will likely be answered shortly.
Trump and Musk appear wide open to exploitation/manipulation, without anywhere near the required experience or intelligence to maintain the US’s international position.
Unstable times ahead.
global de-dollarisation
This is the real problem for us in the US. Currently debt doesn’t matter: that’s stupid and short sighted but it doesn’t matter. I’m not entirely sure what global de-dollarisation means but US debt is going to matter a hell of a lot more when we’re treated like any other economy
De-dollarisation is the dismantling of the dollar’s role as global reserve currency, which is intimately tied to the petrodollar arrangement, which caused the world to buy oil in dollars for the last fifty years.
I welcome any corrections/clarifications, but off the top of my head, the petrodollar arrangement was an agreement that Richard Nixon’s government made with the Saudis in the early seventies where the Saudis agreed to only sell oil in US dollars in return for military support. The agreement was a fifty year deal.
In order for countries to buy oil they needed dollars. This was and currently still is via the selling of US government bonds, which has allowed the US to fund its deficits by printing more and more US dollars. Ultimately the world has paid for that US spending. This ends with the end of the US dollar as global reserve currency.
Trump is showing in real time that the US cannot now be relied upon to provide security, so that half of the petrodollar arrangement is dead and gone. Would you fund the enemy’s military spending? Plenty have. And when you wanted to try and sell oil in a currency other than dollars you got a whole lot of freedom!
This de-dollarisation very much suits the likes of Russia (for historical reasons) and China (for sound economic reasons) who do not want a world dominated by the US.
Trump is playing into the likes of Putin’s hands fantastically. Not only is Putin getting what he wants from Trump in Ukraine, Trump is also voluntarily dismantling America’s position as global leader. I don’t know if he is a Russian asset, or if he is just so stupid, or believes the US should be an explicit oligarchy.
Buckle up, the future is not looking good for the US. Countries that have relied on the US are facing a period of serious instability.
The chuds at the top (most of them, anyways) know that this will likely lead to ww3, and that’s been the plan. The US is the preeminent military power, so they feel safe, and there’s a shit load of money to be made in war and instability.
The chuds at the bottom voting for US isolationism don’t understand just how much an interconnected world benefits them and how bad dedollarization is going to be for them. But then that goes along with a lot of people not understanding the benefits of concepts like soft power, humanitarian aid, foreign assistance, etc.
If the people at the top’s plan is actually WW3, then they’re stupider than they let on.
Sure, in theory it’s profitable, in practice though? All you’re left with is a wrecked world that’s worse to live in in every possible way, and that’s assuming nukes won’t fly
It’s literally the broken window fallacy, which to me has always been a dead obvious problem. Stability, cooperation, and peaceful progress and development has always, and always will be, much more beneficial to everyone in the long run
These people are literally enemies of humanity
then they’re stupider than they let on
That’s a certainty.
These people are literally enemies of humanity
Yes, they are.
God, I so wish that an average American was smart enough to realize this. I feel like all they care about are their gas prices.
The chuds at the bottom are rooting for dedollarization, because they put all their life savings into $TRUMP
Are they already that stupid? Maybe I give everyone be too much credit but I assumed the ones putting money into $TRUMP are wealthy people playing the patsy to launder bribes
Well money laundering just became defacto legal so good times. /S
Even worse, the chuds might be dead of malnourishment, preventable vírus diseases, violence, before the consequences of dedollarization hits them
The process of global de-dollarisation,much talked about, is being hastened
China has a thriving economy without the RMB being anyone’s reserve currency.
I’m not really sure what your point is. I assume you are saying the US can have a thriving economy and not be the global reserve currency? If so, a couple of points:
-
The US’s debts will come due as it loses global reserve currency status. Do you think it can pay those debts?
-
US and other capitalists outsourced production to China due to the lack of collectively bargained labour agreements and environmental protections. It was cheap. Are you saying the US could ‘Make America Great Again’ by making it a sweatshop!? Because I don’t think that is what Trump voters had in mind for themselves.
-
Here’s a few of my predictions ftom election night and the following days:
… "Edit:
Just wanted to add this moment of realization from a CBS news personality.
He was talking about how people shouldn’t be afraid, that America is the oldest democracy on earth, that democracy wil survive, and things will be OK…
… And he continued on talking about how trump likely has full control of the government, the house, the senate, the courts, and an immunity ruling.
After the last words came out of his mouth he looked at the camera and paused and said, (paraphrasing) ** " I’d like to maybe take back the first part of what I said, we should be afraid" **
I promise you he will order shootings on 5th avenue.
If you think I, we, us, anyone will be OK, like the half of the nation that elected him, you haven’t been listening.
People voted for an economy and against scary immigrants.
They also get the storm, the purge, the accelerationists, the camps, the executions, the prisons, smothered hope for the last possibility of saving this earth from environmental collapse.
They literally want Armageddon.
I mean actually fucking literally.
Once you learn how many in the Republican party, and supreme court, are members of NAR and 7MM - literally groups with the purpose of bringing Jesus back.
Nobody is going to be OK ."
https://lemmy.ca/post/32433434/12637803
…
I believe his (and Putin’s) goal is to destabilize (destroy) the western order, devalue the current global currency (USD), crash the central banks, fully shift economic power eastward, inflate crypto.
Tariffs on all north American trading partners will cause harm to the entire continent and beyond.
If none can trade, none can profit. If the tarrifs go to gov, with this admin, will they really?
The only thing pro wall street will be how they siphon off whatever wealth is left, pump and dump, crash and burn.
https://lemmy.ca/post/33768636/13042232
…
And here’s a little freebie from Alexander dugin - Putin’s philosopher and author of Foundations of Geopolitics - about Curtis Yarvin, trumpism, and monarchy.
https://alexanderdugin.substack.com/p/in-the-united-states-three-completely
…
The end is nigh, my friends. Very nigh.
7MM?
And American still just going to whine on the internet and do nothing about it.
If anything this has completely vaporized the “checks and balances” democratic system everyone was so obsessed about.
Americans need to update the constitution where people have the power to dethrone a dictator as of right now theres nothing right?
I was thinking about this last night. If we fall, can (do we have the will) we write a better Constitution?
They already have it.
The 2nd amendment.
Ah yeah, my semi automatic hunting rifle is really going to stop the armored military and the drones, and the mass data collection. Me and 1000 other people sure will make a difference right up until they shut off the internet and mow us down.
Tanks, jets, and rocket launchers are good against other armies. They’re pretty shitty against anonymous civilians. It’s why the US lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And in the US, the civilians would have 2 other advantages:
- A military that would be more reluctant to kill other Americans on American soil
- The enemy wouldn’t be the military, but poloticians.
We live in a budding techno-fascist police state. Your argument depends on anonymity. That is almost completely lost on the modern America. Hong Kong is one if many examples over the last 15 years. They’ll find you. They’ll disappear you. Sure. Buy yourself a gun and load up on ammo. It will do you lots of good when they break your door down if you actually prove to be a credible threat.
People don’t have to be part of an organized, traceable resistance when everyone has guns and the targets aren’t military in nature.
United Healthcare lost its CEO to a random dude lone gunman while he was walking down the street.
The idea is to make everybody a potential threat to those who abuse power. But one side of the political spectrum decided that guns are bad and disarmed themselves, so 90% of the guns are owned by fascists.
The US has way better surveillance of irs own cotizens than it had of Afghanistan. They will send Homeland Security after any militia before it becomes a credible threat to them.
If the end result is the same, fighting is the only choice.
Search for “Winter on Fire”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNxLzFfR5w
can’t get it without logging in
I agree that a full scale war against the US military using small arms is probably not likely to go well for those attempting it, but assassinating a president is a different thing altogether. America has assassinated many presidents.
Luigi mangione is being tried as a terrorist with the maximum sentencing of the death penalty
Just sayin’
What Luigi did was just.
However, the 2A is specifically, ahem, targeted at removing government.
The 2A was about maintaining state militias to catch runaway slaves and to suppress slave rebellions. The south wanted it, the north didn’t care. At the time the amendments were being written, here was little to no discussion of the idea that an armed citizenry would be able to resist state tyranny. They had just fought a revolution and had a very clear idea of what it took to break away from England. It was a lot more than farmers with hunting rifles or posses of slave-catchers.
I’m not saying that armed resistance is not necessary. I’m just saying the 2A was never really for that. But there are many examples of barely armed citizen’s movements overthrowing governments. Without compliance, without legitimacy, their power can be broken.
I’d somehow never heard this argument before, so I found some random article about it: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2023/06/slavery-militias-and-methodologies-thoughts-on-carl-boguss-madisons-militia
I can’t speak to the quality of the source above, but they argue that your basic thesis is true, but is not the full story. All the former colonies (including non-slave states) wanted militias instead of a peacetime national military, which was as much or more of a driver for adoption of the 2nd amendment than the idea of using militias for appearing slave rebellions.
But that’s just literally the first article I read about it, so I dunno.
The other data point that’s useful is that, in the Continental Congress and in the political debates that led to the writing of the Constitution, there were constant complaints (mainly from the southern states) that northern states were negligent in maintaining the readiness of their militias. After the Constitution was written, this continued, and was one of the main reasons that US military leadership was predominantly southern: they got early military experience in their state militias.
The GOP shows that yes, you can say the quiet part aloud and still have supporters
I agree that what he did was just, the government which is supposed to uphold the 2nd amendment does not was my point.
Yeah lol that would never happen.
If americans can’t even form strong, lasting peaceful protests how could they form an armed resistance against literally the most advanced and powerful military in the world? Even US police is equipped with military APCs - what is your glock gonna do about that?
The 2nd amendment never made sense in the contemporary world. The casualty rate would be 1 to HUNDREDS just through sheer technological and skill difference and no uprising can possibly sustain that.
Removed by mod
Yeah but this sort of cartoon type of dictator is not realistic.
They always have some public support and as long as you lie and control some useful idiots it’s never going to be an ideal rise up people think it would be. It’ll be chaos with some resistance that’ll be marked as terrorists and nothing will be clear enough for “taking down some baddies with me” scenarios.
I’m just hoping it can stay duct taped together long enough for me to get out of country. I don’t know if it will :/ I’ve been doing the protest thing, donating to resistance efforts, boycotts, building community, been doing all of this for years. I’ve never seen it tangibly help and I’m one of the first to get black bagged if/when this goes full genocide (am trans). I can’t do it anymore, my body is aging, my brain is a disaster. I wish I could keep fighting. At least I can bring my labor somewhere else and stop letting my taxes fund the madness that is the US government
Thank you for doing what you can. It’s the only thing we can do. No one can save the world alone.
I hope you get somewhere safe.
stop letting my taxes fund the madness that is the US government
Surprise! FATCA taxes Americans no matter where in the world that they work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act
The shit thing, since I don’t make enough to actually pay taxes on my salary, is their PFIC and other rules. I can’t put money in my US retirement accounts. I also can’t use any of the ones here in Japan because, even if I just used them to put money pre-tax into cash savings, they all contain auto-investment rules that makes the target PFICs which are a nightmare.
There are exemptions for most of that if I’m in another country long enough, and ideally I’ll renounce citizenship entirely down the line
FEIE
Thank you so much for doing your part. I don’t blame you for feeling defeated. I hate defeatist attitudes, but it’s hard not to feel like that.
No no no no…we just need to run out the clock - it must be almost time for another election. Let me just check the calenda-… …SIX WEEKS? It’s been six weeks?!
Yeah, in 6 weeks we went from being allies, strong trading partners, and friends to honestly fearing an impending invasion. SIX WEEKS
Imagine what the next 6 will bring.
Dont brace yourself. Unleash your frustration and direct it at anything that proudly displays the star spangled banner.
The american people will have to stand up for themselves and it‘s gonna be hard and brutal. Cause no one else can help you with this.
I found the recent developments in Serbia quite interesting and it might help to get an idea what a widespread resistance from the people could look like. Video on Serbia
It’s going to require daily nationwide protests going on for months and months with national participation approaching 1-2% of the population (4-8 million) on weekends and clear and actionable demands (resignation of Trump and his goons and corrupt members of the judiciary).
From my experience living in the US, I don’t think this is likely (I do hope I am wrong). Geographic size can actually be managed by having many thousands of protest sites by key admin buildings all throughout the country. The bigger issue is perhaps a lack of experience “operationalizing” beliefs and standing up to a thugs and oligarchs.
When the Second Great Depression starts, that’s when shit will hit the fan. Once the bread and circuses end and the starving begins.
It could be like months away too based off them wanting to cut like a million fed jobs and dump a shitload of commercial real estate onto the market.
And unlike the first one, we now have 3 guns per person in the US.
This is gonna be some bad juju ahead.
I wonder if the European bars will have little “For the Cause” jars similar to how Celtic owned businesss has them to support the IRA here in the US.
