Let us all acknowledge that we're watching America's descent into fascism and doing nothing about it.
Watch your Democratic leaders in Congress stand by and do nothing but complain and appease.
There will always be the would-be fascists in society, that's a constant.
Whether or not there are leaders to oppose them varies. Or do we have to wait until the only opposition option is open war?
They're making a lot of money in the stock market due to their position, they won't jeopardize it.
Unfortunately, leaders of both parties are owned by or are identical to the wealthy donor class. The two parties are just different factions of the donor class.
To the extent donors have corrupted the Democrats, it’s been on pushing niche leftist issues like the climate and gender activism, on which donors are disconnected from the electorate, and to a minor degree crap like the carried interest deduction.
> The two parties are just different factions of the donor class
This is lazy nihilism.
All they can do is talk. And filibuster in the Senate. And they did filibuster the budget.... And the Trump administration has updated web pages with statements that explictly blame the Democrats for the current shutdown. And mandated OOO messages from furloughed agencies contain language blaming the Democrats.
Do you want Democrats in Congress to resort to violence? I don't think ends the way you want...
Obstruct. Shamelessly.
Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens. Democrat states generate federal tax surpluses—gum up those payments. Filibuster everything.
You know, the stuff the GOP does.
It feels like the idealism of some on the left is failing to understand the prisoner's dilemma, and so they just keep losing. There's probably as many or more people from centre right to far left who'd be just as interested in sticking it to the right (let's just call it MAGA), as the right has been interested in owning the libs.
I get that the election says otherwise, but I have a hunch that MAGA isn't nearly as popular as they think they are. I suspect a lot of people are just tired of the wet noodle Kumbaya politics from some on the left, upset with the status quo, really upset with the economy, etc.
Do you ever come back from this though? No idea...
I’m generally critical of the left. But this is one game they got right. It’s imbeciles hiding behind the cowardice of aimless moderation who are sinking America. The left is ready to fight.
> Do you ever come back from this
Yes. See: Andrew Jackson. The American Whigs. The British Whigs. The New Deal.
What you don’t get back from is a lack of opposition.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/us/politics/russell-vough...
I hope you're right. By idealism, I meant not fighting dirty. There's this moral superiority / higher ground thing with some politicians, that while I admire it, I doubt it's the right attitude for the moment.
For example, the retaliatory gerrymandering proposed by some democratic states is the right response IMO, as horrible as gerrymandering is. In fact, they should probably stop apologizing for it and just take a page from MAGA and sell it as "sticking it to MAGA" instead of calling it a necessary evil.
Honestly, whom? Because I mostly see cowardice being draped in morality.
Is it, this is just a hunch, but I’d imagine Texas or Ohio republicans stand to gain a lot more from redistributing districts than democrats in California do.
There is a lot of informed vote counting on this question. Going off a hunch is unnecessary. Commenting off it a waste of time.
The democrats are simply too weak willed and divided to survive in that environment.
What Enlightenment-era philosophy? (Political civility is not an Enlightenment value. If anything, it was the opposite.)
The "idealism" of the left is increasingly just bigotry. There is a small set of people and problems they like and a large set they dislike or are simply disinterested in. This becomes indistinguishable from fascists who seek racial superiority for a particular group. It's not there yet but it's certainly going in a direction.
The left hates the south, hates poor white people, hates rural people, hates men. The left is comfortable with open expression of this hatred. The left has a severe sense of "we know better than you" superiority and confusion as to why folks "vote against their own self interest".
The left forgot that they made most of their societal progress by slowly normalizing things instead of loudly shoving changes in people's faces. The left wants to fight a culture war and when they win something they look for more things to be angry about accelerating divisiveness instead of slowing it down.
The left doesn't want everyone to just be people, they've grown increasingly obsessed with categorizing people and then demanding performative celebration of new categories, you can't just be a person you've got to have a collection of adjectives.
The active left are mostly bored people who want to fight for other people's problems and feel inadequate letting those people do it for themselves.
The bigotry and divisiveness of both active sides of the political spectrum are becoming indistinguishable, the silent majority is leaderless. There is no one standing up rejecting both extremes arguing for sanity, rationality, and fairness.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité should be the goals we're fighting for
In the Weimar Republic there was the Iron Front with this flag with three arrows representing opposition to monarchy, fascism, and communism and what we need is some modern version of this opposed to the divisiveness, authoritarianism, and rejection of reason common across the political spectrum of America. We need the center to unite and reject both poles and return to a sense of individual thought and decision-making in our leaders instead of one thought per party.
About detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union. Which I really wish would happen. Unfortunately the Union will not break because both separating parties would have to split national debt and nuclear arsenal. So we (Democratic states) are stuck with the deplorables....
The GOP shut down the government in the name of repealing the ACA. Texas’s governor took immigration--a federal prerogative--into his own hands [1].
They stopped when the courts told them to. I’m not suggesting Democrats ignore the courts. But push them, like the GOP has.
> detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union
Not at all. The point would be to trigger court cases and gum up the works. Not to permanently detain or freeze funds.
Court cases did not stop DOGE from destroying significant parts of our government.
How the heck are Democrats supposed to stop us from bombing Venezuela? Trump is the rightfully elected commander in chief
Okay, then the Democrat governor wins. I’m not seeing the problem.
> How the heck are Democrats supposed to stop us from bombing Venezuela?
They’re not.
Step one is Democrats need to stop overfocusing on foreign policy. Nobody cares about foreign policy except for comfortable wonks.
Except for all the people who insisted that trump wouldn't get us into foreign wars and demonstrably haven't turned on him now that he bombed Iran, helps Israel do pretty awful things with the explicit goal of turning Gaza into a resort, and possibly has turned to helping Ukraine in it's war, which was literally a point that Democrat politicians pushing for that exact same outcome took serious heat for.
The voters want aggression and pain and harm to those they dislike, especially if Trump tells them to dislike someone. The democrats cannot cater to that desire without just abandoning all the things that make them not republican politicians. Even if they literally adopt republican policy wholesale, they still will not be elected.
The problem starts with what American voters want. As long as they want "Not democrat" and "Big strong man", democrats will not have power. I mean sure, they should probably stop putting up black woman for the presidency if they want even a chance of winning something, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Democrats are demonstrably better for the economy, and have been for a very long time, but republicans are still voted in on the back of "Better for the economy"
The exact Americans who claimed they wanted to vote for "Free speech" are pretty happy that Trump will be compelling speech on American college campuses. If the Supreme court strikes this down, they will not turn on Trump, they will turn on the Court.
>Okay, then the Democrat governor wins. I’m not seeing the problem.
Then Trump does it anyway, and the republicans in congress do not impeach him for doing crime, which the Supreme court has said is fine. The democrat governor "wins" on paper, as people continue to be deported and silenced and oppressed. ICE still roams like the SS, with no identification. Next election, Trump says "look how the left tried to stop me" and gets more votes.
Reality doesn't matter. Rhetoric does. Democrats don't have to be "Right" to get into power and fix things, they have to be popular, really really popular because of gerrymandering, and significant portions of the country make "democrat bad" significant parts of their identity.
Yes. That's my point. American voters don't care about foreign policy. Pretty much no federal election in peacetime (i.e. absent a draft) is decided based on any foreign policy.
> democrat governor "wins" on paper
You're describing Democrats reacting to Trump. I'm describing them taking initiative. If the Democrat governor is taking initiative and they ignore the court, their initiative stands.
The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law. States can do these things only if states refuse to obey federal laws. This would work only if states would secede from the Union.
When they take the initiative. That's the point. The current political environment strongly favours taking the initiative over reacting.
> The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law
Yes. So are the things Trump has been doing. As you say, one can "do things first and deal with push back from the courts later." That's what the GOP is doing. I'm saying Democrats need to do the same (or concede the game).
We can remake the judiciary to have more teeth later, when everyone is in compromise mode or one side has won.
It will be interesting to see if this causes a war between the US Federal forces and whatever local armed forces the states could muster.
It wouldn't. It would provoke Trump into an overreaction. But war takes two to tango, and Democrats aren't--and shouldn't be--ready for civil war. (If Trump spent the next three years fighting Gavin Newsom for jailing his ICE agents, that's a win. It means he has less time to do something else.)
The minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force.
BTW - this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody. If Gavin tries to use California's forces to protect him against Marshals then US Federal Government will use military force to detain Gavin.
If ICE start shooting at cops, we've won the battle.
> minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force
Sure, that's the overreaction. Nobody is ordering police to shoot back.
> this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody
Sure. I'd guess he wins the Presidency if Trump does this.
Ordering state officers to detain ICE agents for breaking state law isn't criminal. Newsom's trial would become the media sensation of the next few years. Not whatever nonsense Trump conjurs up on a daily basis to earn media.
In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war. (which makes me wish we could separate from the deplorables peacefully. Unfortunately we cannot)
It wouldn't be ICE shooting at cops, it would be an ICE agent (or group of agents) shooting a cop attempting to detain them. (The easiest reason for the arrest would be enforcing California's new mask law.)
The optics--shooting a cop--are bad. The precedent--violently resisting arrest--is bad. The entire situation is so dumb that I'm doubtful even the goons they're hiring at ICE would think it's a good idea.
> do not think Gavin wins the presidency if Trump puts him in custody
The track record of any elected being put in jail by their opponent, internationally and across history, is a massive jump in popularity.
> In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war
The only real move if this is the path we're going down is a Governor trying to seize nuclear weapons. I don't think we are there. Not even close.
I must have hallucinated, say, that long period during Mitch McConnell openly stated he was going to prevent votes on any of Biden's judicial nominees (and followed through on that). Or the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed (and, after he failed to totally prevent it, to slow it down and waste Senate time) until he got unrelated concessions on abortion. Those are off the top of my head...
Not relevant—they held the Senate.
> the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed
Yup! Do this. Do this constantly.
Sort of.
McConnell found it necessary to prevent some of the nominations from coming to a vote, because he didn't have the votes to stop them. So, yeah, they held enough of the Senate to dick around procedurally, but not enough to win an up or down vote. Which is kind of not that different from a filibuster, which is also a procedural move you use when you'd lose an up or down vote.
And it's one thing to vote down a single nomination, and a different thing to categorically state that you're going to torpedo all of a President's nominations. If there's a Constitutional requirement for "advice and consent", then the Senate has a duty to engage with that.
McConnell had a majority in the Senate. That's a huge difference from Democrats today.
The relevant examples should come from when Democrats had a federal trifecta. The GOP still managed to fuck things up. That should be the inspiration. (But not limit.)
If he'd been confident in his majority, he would have just taken every nomination to the floor and had them voted down. He didn't do that because he didn't think he'd win. I mean, losing a floor vote is kind of the opposite of "having a majority".
And I don't think the Democrats in recent memory have had as strong a whip as the Republicans.
When McConnell refused to vote to appoint new supreme court justices, he was exercising the power given to him by the constitution.
You want Democrats to wield power? You have to give it to them first.
Our state's governor is a Democrat, and shes trying to sue the admin and fight it, but a lot of the shit Trump is doing is popular, so that might just result in yet another state going red.
Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan blasted the entire party out of the water by doing exactly what Trump does but cleaner. Jimmy Carter lost the election in a landslide so bad it nearly killed the party.
Americans don't vote for Democrats or empathetic policy. They had to adopt neoliberalist bullshit and "hard on crime" crap to get elected with Clinton, and despite running the country very well and doing good things for 8 years, the public still chose to vote for a literal dynasty who then got us into criminal wars killing brown people for made up things, set trillions of dollars on fire for no gain, and set the worlds energy economy on fire, and america reelected him after that was clear.
>Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens.
So you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't? Because you don't want to be shot and die?
Remember, that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop. She didn't even get the flag at half staff for a second, let alone the days that Charlie got.
Yes. I mentioned legal powers. Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
And in states, Democrats do have power. What they aren’t doing is using it.
> Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan
We’ve had two trifectas!
> you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't?
You just talked about legitimate power…
> that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop
Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
When? The 50 days Obama had a "trifecta" that couldn't actually pass democrat policy because 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
When Democrats had actual power under Clinton but again, that was neoliberal bullshit to try and have any power again, and despite doing very well, americans still rejected those politicians for literal political dynasty and reelected a war criminal who lied to their face to start a war.
>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Combined...
Notice not just the significant change in how we have more split governments now, and how "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians. Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats" which often includes people who are not even registered democrats (not in this graph though).
> Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
They weren't the minority. They were exercising majority powers.
>Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
I made no such claim to either. The voters have the power, and they have demonstrably decided that republicans deserve that power more. Democrats are told that they should change their policy, but research shows that voters just don't vote for you as much if you have (D) next to your name, regardless of policy proposal, and hopefully the previous few elections have shown that policy literally doesn't matter because Americans don't care about good policy plans or apparently real life.
There is a double standard. If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers.
So sure, lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things so they can all be put in jail and their states outright taken over by the current admin which is popular.
There is no short term solution. There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own.
The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well. History shows that will take decades, and significant suffering. You can ask the current remaining democrat politicians to sacrifice themselves on the altar of "Don't just stand by", but polling shows that doing illegal things to protect brown people or trans people will not win elections. Americans are not that empathetic.
The ACA?!
We wasted our trifecta under Biden, but that's the point.
> 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
Anyone who believes this doesn't deserve to govern. You know what we'd have if we had a few more Manchins and Sinemas today? A majority.
> "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians
Sure [1].
> Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats"
Source? Trump 1.0 was Republicans constantly falling over themselves. Even this time, McCarthy versus cocaine Chucky almost blew up the party.
> They weren't the minority
Republicans were in a complete federal minority when we passed the ACA, and in a legislative and executive minority in 2021.
> If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers
We don't know this! Obama was, erm, creative with a lot of limits. He won re-election.
> lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things
Totally unnecessary.
> There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own. The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well
If Democrats can't use their state majorities and federal minority productively, they can't govern. The choice, then, isn't between Republicans and Democrats, because the latter gave up the game. (Biding time doesn't work when the other side is strategically repositioning to their advantage.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Uh, almost all federal taxes flow directly from business to the IRS or other federal agencies. Your payroll and income taxes? ADP/Paylocity send the funds straight to the IRS; they don't flow through the state.
That's something you can do right now, and encourage others to do with very little impact on your day to day.
Then, go to protests. Protests are best when they're non-violent and massive. These send the message to the people in power because in the end they are nothing but other people. Courage is contagious, get out, bring friends.
Then call your reps, you may not think they are listening, but they are. Call them at the local, state, and federal level and tell them what you think. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Boycott companies that kowtow to this administration. I've been boycotting Amazon for ages so that wasn't tough but social media and corporate media and a lot of these tech companies and a lot of other companies are run my megalomaniac out of touch narcissists who will bend the knee before risking their profits. Simply take the hit and stop using their products. Encourage friends to do the same.
It's not too late. Don't let them make you think it is. We are not 1937 Germany yet. Push back now. Small actions done in concert have real world effects.
Then... take the news off your phone and go outside and get some sun and make sure to take care of yourself.
Who exactly?
The roughly 40 million people registered with the party? Or th 8,000 Democrats holding elected office? Or do you specifically mean the 213 Democrats in the US House and the 45 Democrats in the Senate?
Be specific man.
more cowardice points for the people who have more power
No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival unless you're a millionaire (and we all know which side they're on). The result is that it makes the individually rational choice to keep your head down and just deal with it. We are at the brink, and there is just no other option than to watch in horror and pray you aren't affected.
I don't work for FAANG or make a huge salary, I don't own property, I don't have anything.
Most of us aren't privileged enough to be able to walk away from work.
I need medication to live a partially functional life. Am I supposed to just magically acquire that medication while I'm being fired from work, losing my insurance, and being arrested for daring to have a democratic opinion?
Hell, my state is mostly Democrat right now. Am I supposed to go live in another state for a while and get arrested there so the right wing news can cry about how liberals are literally invading other states?
We were screaming and crying about how all this was going to go down for decades. Some of us even back in the red scare days. We were called socialist and unamerican.
But no, "Both sides" You would cry, or "Free market" to prevent us from reigning in corporations that own our lives. "We don't need a software developer union, what if the guy next to me makes more money! I can definitely negotiate better against literal behemoths than a collective group of people!" You cried.
In both Germany and the USSR, a lot of people died making zero progress (and maybe even negative progress in some ways) liberating their country.
I just think, as long as Trump's rhetoric and claimed policy is popular, there's no "resistance" possible. Americans want this crap. They'll keep voting that way until they get it as hard as possible.
So many people are insisting that people like me have to rise up and take back our country, ignoring that our country wants this and chose this, multiple times.
McCarthyism worked. It suppressed speech and activity, and basically eliminated socialism in the US for a century. History is rhyming.
I don't have a solution.
- On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder
Keeping your head down and just dealing with it as a choice that you can make and it is the choice that they count on you making. But it's not the only choice.
We say as the richest country in the richest age of human existence, where most Americans have no practical constraints on access to food or emergency medicine, luxuries unimaginable to most of our ancestors.
More shocking is the mental block about even considering a third alternative, as if you're talking to against gravity or something.
Democrats across multiple state legislatures have retaliated against republican state gerrymandering.
Eh, Democrats crapped their pants in Texas. Crapped their pants in March. Haven’t yet excised Biden elements who straight up lied to the electorate from the party. The Constitution is being shredded, yet you wouldn’t know it from the generic ballot [1].
Bring back the Bull Moose Party. Between the death of conservatism in the GOP and the loss of a backbone outside the left among Democrats, there is room-maybe a need—for a Teddy in our politics.
[1] https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/ge...
Note that as we speak, AI is replacing junior roles and c-suites are bragging about doing layoffs because of it. There are zero restrictions to it's use in the workplace, and it will only get better at taking your work, year over year, while paying zero taxes.
You're being distracted by anxiety over immigrants, whose entry is limited, and who, well, do pay taxes.
Using non-college grads’ taxes to pay off college graduates’ loans is why we lose elections.
And giving a giant regressive tax break to college loan holders was literally one of the things that lost Biden the election.
If you're expecting progressive taxation from MAGA, or blue collar Republicans to vote for their self-interest, you'll be waiting a while.
We are in the grievance era. People view any spending that goes to an “other” as a wealth transfer from them to that other (even while most of maga don’t pay any federal tax!) so if you pick an other to support it shouldn’t be one as unsympathetic as white collar workers.
I'm more of a mind to just take that money and funnel it straight into unemployment coffers.