As Americans that believe in the Republic, what exactly are we supposed to do about this? Should we continue to implore congress to take action against this lawless behavior?
I also told them that working on legislation for protecting George C Marshall's house, and protecting bourbon, are not valuable uses of their time given the destruction currently being waged on the US Government.
I'm trying to restrict my spending as much as possible. No new car, no vacation (or at least nothing big), limiting eating out, etc. I'm cutting back on as many unnecessary expenses as I can, and being mindful of what businesses I do spend my money on.
If you are a Republican but don't approve of how the GOP majority has basically rolled over and abdicated its duty as a check on the president, remind your congresspeople that they owe loyalty to their constituents, not to other politicians. Taxpayers pay their salaries.
The Democratic party is also in desperate need of repairs if you are interested in direct political action. They have been self-destructing over the past couple of years, plagued by infighting, deer-in-the-headlights paralysis, political tone-deafness, and incompetence in messaging.
In addition, the increasingly authoritarian shift by the Federalist society ought to make room for a new counterpart promoting the rule of law. IANAL but have always wondered why the Federalist society had no similarly prominent opposing organization.
They got us here. The party needs to be gutted.
Democrats did screw up by not allowing the people to choose the candidate. They also screwed up again by not preemptively creating safeguards in case Trump won, and by not strengthening the elections. Too many ballots were thrown out.
Now they are further enabling this by basically displaying no opposition.
If you are in a red state/district, first step would be to contact your elected federal rep(s) and tell them that you're displeased.
Use language like "Trump was elected to correct Biden's overreach, but he's now overreaching in a much worse way." Put it in language where you frame things like a 'Constitutionalist' and 'limited government'. The stereotypical small-government, Originalist GOPer.
If you come off sounding like a Democrat they'll probably ignore you, but if the (so-called) 'grass roots' MAGA folks are thought to be upset then you'll probably get more traction.
Or you'll just be ignored regardless.
In France if they'd raise the price of baguettes by 10% you'd have strikes from teachers, public transportation drivers, dock workers, train drivers, doctors, trash truck drivers, &c. all at once, after a week it would be complete chaos and the government would have no choice but to negotiate
In the US everyone is playing their little game on their side, decades of free for all capitalism at work
That was an unexpectedly good turnaround vs the first statement. Damn, I was not expecting to have such a hard laugh.
You should also add "social" media to your picture. I think that has ravaged whatever was left of social cohesion over here.
What you can do is get out votes. People knocking on doors is still one of the largest drivers of votes so if you organize those systems they will listen to you.
I think more people would benefit from forming Super PACs and using that as leverage in pushing political change with parties.
I'm going to write essays to those I care about and also coordinate action plans with like minded individuals to be ready for scenarios of neo-nazi rallies or certain extreme behaviors, should they occur in my city.
I'm debating protesting solo with signs along our roads; someone did that recently in my city and said they had to flee because Trump supporters surrounded him and threatened him. But it needs done.
Oligarchs are always greatly outnumbered.
The only thing that is genuinely effective is mass movement. A coalition of labor unions could shut down all of Elon and Trumps businesses in hours. Block the entrances to the factories. General strikes, boycotts, that kind of thing. It’s not actually that complicated.
Instead the modern Democratic Party is in love with appeals to the referees. They think that if they can just convince some court or The NY Times editorial board or a 75 year old former republican special prosecutor they’ll win.
As we have seen that approach is a total and complete failure.
If someone in opposition was able to generate mass collective action however the change would be swift. Nobody is really trying that though.
I think they need to split their approach into two.
One for to keep Their base energized.
One to use the system and protect itself. The courts, the local elections.
What is being taken out are the systems that run the country. The dems have to be the one to defend it.
But frankly, I think the battleground is a media battleground.
The problem is the actual leadership of the Democratic Party isn't on the side of working people at all, and is actually actively hostile to those in favor of classic labor policies.
Don't get me wrong the other side is absolutely not on the side of working people either, that's more than apparent.
The entire dynamic we're seeing right now is a battle between two competing groups of elites. More on that concept here: https://www.compactmag.com/article/doge-as-class-war/
But with those caveats out of the way, a bona-fide labor movement could make short work of all this bullshit. Unfortunately the purpose of the modern Democratic Party appears to be to occupy the place in our system where a labor party is supposed to reside.
It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies. Being invested in the details of how paper-pushing agencies are structured is a very elite concern.
To some extent yes. But also those issues have big implications for working people. It's possible to talk about them in a way that inspires and builds a movement, or in a way that makes people feel stupid and excluded from the conversation. Often they choose the latter.
> It's also not obvious to me that a bona fide labor movement would take a particularly strong stance on an executive order curtailing independent agencies
It should be absolutely obvious why the labor movement might be opposed to what is literally the largest layoff in American history.
And I'm not sure it's a fair assessment to say union members 'barely' lean Democrat https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/17/key-facts...
> There’s very few groups outside of the Democratic Party infrastructure which are polarized enough to take a side.
The last 2 presidential elections saw the highest turnouts since 1968. It seems like people aren't having a problem picking sides.
* Supporting the Democratic Party against its main opponent is very different from supporting it in its own right. There's a lot of people in the US who would prefer for Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader, but very few who look to him for cues on what they ought to believe or fight for.
* There's very few spaces where the Democrats are dominant enough to form a nucleus of mass resistance. 50-43 among union members is a nonzero lead, but if you go to your union local to organize an anti-Trump protest, that 43% represents quite a lot of voices who won't agree with the premise that there's anything to protest.
This reminds me of a supreme Court ruling a few years ago where the rights of native Indians had been trampled on in Oklahoma for 100 years. The court said something like "well, now that you bring it up--stop it!"
checks notes
Castrating the other 2 in an effort to consolidate the third! Yeah!!