• Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Listen to him. He is not lying on this one. Make sure you vote or there will be no more democracy, even this extremely flawed one is better than a dictatorship.

    • Endorkend@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      The lie is usually accompanied by a truth.

      In this case the lie is that he’ll give up the power.

    • Alto@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      The people who support him sure as hell are listening. They absolutely want a Sulla figure to take full control and purge who they consider as undesirable.

      • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Little do they realize that as soon as they cease to be useful to Trump and his ilk, they too will suddenly be considered “undesirable.”

      • Phoenixbouncing@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Because that worked out so well…

        Less than 10 years after Sulla was dead the republic was run by bleeding Crassus and Pompey.

        • Alto@kbin.social
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          5 months ago

          They’re not a particularly smart bunch, that’s for sure. Especially considering who ended up being targeted in the prescriptions.

    • Tire@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      There’s no downside for Republicans. If he succeeds they get to be close to the throne. If he fails they won’t be held accountable. It’s a win win for them because we don’t hold politicians accountable.

      • Thecornershop@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        He’s also pretty much guaranteed to be dead in less than ten years, so all those narcissistic Republican assholes assume it will be them personally that takes the throne when it happens. So of course they support him.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        There are many downsides for Republicans, they just aren’t thinking they will be effected like everyone else. All states rights are void on day 1. He doesn’t give a shit about constituents.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Those idiots are no students of history and it won’t be a win-win for them, either. If he succeeds, it is as likely as not they end up on the short end of the stick, too. These kinds of things always tend to end up that way.

    • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The lying bit is where he claims that he’ll only be a dictator for one day. How many dictators have given themselves ultimate power and then gave it up willingly after a single day?

      If Trump regains office, he’ll assert dictatorial powers. Maybe we can survive this via a mass uprising, but it’s unlikely. It would be like needing to survive open heart surgery, chemotherapy, and five organ transplants all at once. Could a patient survive this? Maybe, but the prognosis wouldn’t be good and even if they did, they’d be in horrible shape for quite a long time.

      The best way of surviving Trump is to make sure he never gets close to the White House (or any other position of power) ever again. And, while we’re at it, vote against any Republican who kisses up to Trump. (So, basically, all of them.)

      • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        He’ll only be a dictator for one day because he’ll declare himself emperor and disband the rest of the government.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      No, we should actually put millions of vulnerable people at risk to preserve our very important ideological purity and my ego-driven stance that the US is irredeemably wicked ok? Also, I am definitely not a troll trying to get Donald Trump elected by pretending to be a leftist, so don’t at me or whatever.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The disgraced former president, who is currently facing more than 90 felony charges in four separate jurisdictions and is scheduled to go on trial in March for attempting a coup to keep himself in office after losing the 2020 election, promised to spend his first day of a second term ruling as an autocrat during a town hall broadcast on Fox News ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

    god damn

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If Trump is reelected, he will immediately replace everyone he can with Red-hat toadies, and then sign a barrage of dictatorial, overreaching executive orders, most of which would likely be unconstitutional. Lawsuits would naturally follow immediately with the courts placing those orders on hold until they can be adjudicated. Trump’s toadies, however, will go ahead and act on those orders regardless of the court’s decisions. Some of the toadies will subsequently be arrested, of course, for any actions that are illegal. Trump will then pardon those toadies which will embolden all the rest of his Red-hats since they will now believe, rightly or wrongly, that they will be pardoned too. Trump will then keep signing even more orders as Democracy dies burning.

    • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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      5 months ago

      If Trump is reelected, he will immediately replace everyone he can with Red-hat toadies

      This isn’t a conspiracy. This is a fact: Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation

      Although the system appeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced the goal of cultivating competence and expertise

      Such a reliance on holdovers and bureaucrats led to a lack of agency control and the absolute refusal of the Acting Attorney General from the Obama Administration to obey a direct order from the President.

      Congress should also consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place.

      Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

      During their terms, the three Republican commissioners have demonstrated with their votes and their public statements that they believe the FEC should not overregulate political activity and act beyond its statutory authority, construe ambiguous and confusing provisions against candidates and the public instead of the government, and infringe on protected First Amendment activity

      Federal Election Commission

      Leeja Miller - The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this)

      • ZombieTheZombieCat@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Clicked on “Department of Education” and this is the first sentence:

        Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.

        The second paragraph praises Milton Friedman, someone who should be up there with Kissinger in terms of what a disgusting piece of shit he and his followers are. If anyone wants to know what’s about to happen to the US, read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine to see how it’s gone when we’ve had our “free market capitalist” hands in other countries’ business. It makes me physically ill. I hope all the gEnOcIdE jOE people understand what this place, and several other countries, will look like with trump in office.

    • grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I think it’s important to remember that he could care less if nothing works so when say replace, what he might actually do is just remove.

      He could cripple the federal government and just not replace people.

      Eventually, they will get replaced but he could do a ton of damage by removing any politically appointed officials, auctioning off those positions to business interests, and having them fire everyone they can (or will, really, becuase I think you’d be going to court over this).

  • Diotima@kbin.social
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    5 months ago

    Oh, so he only wanted to be a dictator for the FIRST day. Got it, sir.

    That anyone supports this fetid fecal stain is beyond my comprehension.

    • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      He revealed that significant Americans are also fecal stains. Anyone who supports Trump at this point is dead to me.

      • kromem@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        If you had told me ten years ago that a double digit percent of the US population would actively cheer for ending democracy in favor of monarchy I’d have thought you were nuts.

        It’s been very disappointing in my fellow citizens.

        • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Ten years ago people WERE saying that… but it was just the maga precursor tea party goons saying that democrats wanted to make Obama the king. It’s always been projection.

      • Facebones
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        5 months ago

        100%. It’s not political anymore, it’s moral.

        I’ve been on the outs with my dad since 18 (36 now) but over covid didn’t block him when he sent a friend request on fb. I ended up blocking him due to a comment he left on a post and my aunt bitched me out for blocking him over “politics.” The comment? “those protesters wouldn’t be a problem if we just gunned them down.”

        Last time I saw my best friend from high school, he called me a libtard for describing my one stop shop healthcare at the VA and mentioning I’d like everyone to have that simple experience of - See doctor, run tests, get meds, go home.

        These are people I just don’t fucking want in my life. Everyone screeches about cancel culture, no you’re just a tedious asshole. Like with the comedians, crying about cancel culture to sold out stadiums. No you’re not being canceled, there’s just only so many ways you can make the #OneJoke of “trans women are men LULULULUL” before it gets old.

    • acceptable_pumpkin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      And yet the trolls or naive people here are saying that they won’t vote for Biden because he hasn’t flown over the Israel and slapped Netanyahu. Yes it sucks what’s happening in Gaza, but not voting, or voting for Trump will be oh so much worse.

      • Diotima@kbin.social
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        5 months ago

        Biden may not be as bad as Trump by far, but he’s not a good candidate. If Trump wins, it’ll be in large part because the Democratic elite once again put forward a bad candidate with bad baggage instead of finding someone that would energize those outside the core.

        • MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s incredibly depressing we need to be energized in order to stop such an incredibly clear and obvious threat to democracy. Biden isn’t my first choice by any means but the idea that I’d have to be convinced at this point on how to vote is insane. Yes the Democrats should be doing more and messaging better. Yes we need better candidates. But the Republican party is now an existential threat, we have to avoid giving them power at all costs. That has to be priority because that’s the only way forward.

          • Diotima@kbin.social
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            5 months ago

            Then they need to pick a candidate who will appeal to a broader base of voters. This idea that Biden, a neoconservative only appealing because Trump is batshit crazy, is “owed” the candidacy is lunacy. If the priority is defeating Trump, then they need to select someone who can succeed with a healthy margin, not a candidate who has lost enough of his swing voters to make his victory extremely questionable.

            Reality? Democrats… or at least the DNC… feel that they are “owed” those votes. Every time they lose, they blame third parties, voters who abstain, sun spots, dark sorcery… anything that will allow them to avoid introspection. It’s time they took responsibility, listened to the people who could actually win them this election.

            • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              “They” being the millions of voters who select Biden as the nominee? Or are you just removing their agency because they didn’t vote for the guy you liked?

              • Diotima@kbin.social
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                5 months ago

                Is that what we’re calling the extremely undemocratic process of nomination in the DNC? We do not select our candidates, the party elites do.

    • xor@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      it was hard to believe anyone supported him before… but now it’s surreal…
      feels like a weird nightmare…

    • Iwasondigg@lemmy.one
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      5 months ago

      Decades of systematically undermining our education system by the party benefiting from the dumb-as-dirt electorate who will gleefully vote for a dictator. Now they’re banning controversial books, such as ‘The Dictionary.’

    • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Most of us do, and have been screaming it for years.

      But the main issue here is that some of us are just catastrophically stupid.

      • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Gerrymandering and disenfranchisement are tools the right uses at every possible chance as well, so we not only have stupid people but they’re being actively manipulated by bad faith actors.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      About 1/3rd of the country realizes he’s dangerous, 1/3rd are apparently fine with it and actually think a dictatorship will solve all their problems, and the other 1/3rd are apathetic and will probably ‘both sides’ themselves into letting Trump plunge the country into third-world status and letting Russia/China/autocrats run roughshod over the rest of the world. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we’ve gotten here in the short span of four years, as if people have already forgotten how shitty 2016-2020 was and all the felony crimes Trump is currently on trial for.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That last third is basically going “well he made gas prices go down”. They don’t, or can’t, grok the bigger issues that Trump had, and instead really only focus on what he’s done for THEIR LITTLE CORNER. They don’t care about his crimes, or whatever else he’s been dealing with, what they care about is that under Trump, things mostly seemed economically stable, and 2020 was just a blip that “nobody could’ve navigated better” (a lie propped up by a lot of GOP lawmakers, and sadly even a lot of Democrats who didn’t want to challenge Trump too hard).

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    He’s saying the quiet part out loud. And all the monkeys in his teabagger base that are supposedly all for “freedom” and “the Constitution” beat off to it.

    • Case@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 months ago

      This, I think, is one of the largest changes Trump instilled in his followers.

      They aren’t scared of being outed as a racist because the former cheeto in chief was always saying the quiet part out loud. Then his supporter politicians. Then his base.

      I’m balding, horribly, and as such shave my head. Otherwise I wind up looking like I spent a vacation in Chernobyl.

      The amount of people who are openly racist around me has quadrupled since 2016, easily.

      Makes me wanna see if there are any SHARP groups around locally.

        • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s a real thing. My brother shaved his head for a couple years, and then allowed what he could to grow back in because right around 2017, people started just engaging him on the WILDEST topics. I remember him telling me that one plant worker at his glass plant just started talking to him (a top-level manager) about the Great Replacement and how we needed to “be ready to get rid of those types” just while he was walking around doing safety checks for the day.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yeah, I’ve heard far too many magabrained just casually reference the “need” to cull the herd, purge liberals, get women back in the kitchen and under the boot of their husbands, put “those” people in their place (if not just outright murder/imprison them), and so on…

            There have always been people like this, but I’ve noticed quite an uptick in the number of them and how emboldened they seem to be since donnie came down that escalator.

  • mindlight@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 months ago

    “I promise. I’m just going to put it in a little bit. It won’t hurt. Just a little bit”

    Yeah… We’ve all heard stories like that and we know how those stories ended…

  • notannpc@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Every political story these days just ends in me saying “everyone who votes for ________ should be immediately launched into the sun”.

  • ThenThreeMore@startrek.website
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    5 months ago

    The time lines of America elections confuse me a bit. Is he campaigning for the election itself or is this still the point where his party (the democrats?) are choosing their candidates?

    • Sean@infosec.pub
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      5 months ago

      It’s still the primaries where the candidate for the parties are being picked. trump is part of the republican party but is likely to receive the nomination because apparently we learned nothing during the four years this trash ran the country, took foreign money, insurrection, treason, etc.

      • ThenThreeMore@startrek.website
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        5 months ago

        Thanks. With all the articles I thought I’d somehow missed him winning the nomination and we were on the actual election campaign.

        Your elections are normally in the autumn aren’t they?

      • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        because apparently we learned nothing during the four years this trash ran the country

        His victory wasn’t because his supporters were ignorant. They knew exactly what kind of shithead he was, they just couldn’t admit out loud they wanted the sexism, homophobia, racism and authoritarianism.

        Remember that when he was first elected, his support flowed out from the “alt-right”. They were nothing more than rebranded white supremacists, but the name change gave them enough plausible deniability to dodge deplatforming.

        When “Unite the Right” rolled around, many of them triumphantly tore of their masks, waved their swastikas, grabbed their tiki torches and started an antisemitic chant. One of them even started executing political dissenters then and there.

        But their “ha, we were nazis all along” celebration was short lived. They’d undermined their plausible deniability and their platforms were crumbling. Even Fox News was hesitant to put any alt-right figureheads on air. Even better (for us), many of them lost their jobs, girlfriends and families after their face popped up on the news.

        So the rule became “never go mask off”. They could be openly advocating sending Jews to concentration camps but if someone says “that is blatantly Nazi behaviour”, their reply will always “the left just call anyone they disagree with nazis”.

        They still want to do it. They’ll still try to do it. The vast majority of their supporters know they mean it and that’s exactly why they support them.

        But as long as they never say it out loud, there will always be an army of useful idiots giving the benefit of the doubt.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      For a country that prides itself on democracy, the process of picking party candidates Is decidedly undemocratic. Primaries weren’t even used at all until 100 years ago or so, and didn’t get used consistently in a binding fashion until 1972, after the shitshow that was the 1968 Democratic Convention.

      And this year is super weird. Trump is still technically campaigning for the Republican Party nomination but is so far out in front of his competition in the polls that he hasn’t bothered attending any of the debates. However, due to a dispute over election scheduling, Biden won’t be on the Democratic Party ballot at all in New Hampshire, and that election won’t have the same proportional power at the Democratic convention that other states have.

      New Hampshire’s Primary election also has the quirk that there are a lot of voters unaffiliated with either party, and in that state they can choose which Primary election to vote in. My favorite conspiracy theory of the moment is that the Biden campaign orchestrated the scheduling issues in New Hampshire specifically to give unaffiliated voters in New Hampshire “permission” to ignore the Democratic primary, and vote against Trump in the Republican one. Trump ignored all those debates out of the perception that his nomination is inevitable; even a close win by Trump in NH will be a big blow to that perception in following contests.