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We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.
Joseph Goebbels
Couldn't keep a:
34 count felon
Child rapist
Fraudster
Tax dodger
Draft dodger
Grifter
Deadbeat
Wife beater
Philanderer
Classified documents thief
Obstructionist
Out of office... so why would they be able to keep a Nazi out?
Tax dodger
and draft dodger lol
Forgot that. Added.
The US government is not (and has never been) against fascism for ideological reasons. Fascism and American-style democracy go hand in hand quite well. Our government fought a war against fascists because they disrupted the global trade status quo and threatened US economic prosperity and that of our primary trade partners.
Technically even the time we did it only officially after the fascists declared war on us first. It was all lend lease, etc before that.
You're totally right, the US government and business elite were content to make money from both sides of the conflict right up until Dec 7, 1941 and the subsequent DoWs from Germany and Italy (once the US declared on Japan). They may have favored Britain and France in trade/indirect support somewhat before that, but that was more a result of historical diplomatic and economic ties, rather than any issue with the German political system.
Assuming America is a democracy is the first mistake. killing the native population, viewing non land owners, poc and many more as lessors. Let's not forget who wrote the constitution.
This is the result of ever-expanding executive power.
2A
This x1000.
Few things frustrate more than a fellow leftist who still refuses to arm themselves in today's climate. I truly believe that the world needs fewer guns, but read the room for fuck's sake. There are far too many people in the US that want our kind dead, simply because we exist. All they need is for their God Emperor to say the word.
Depends how you define "instruments". For example, there was a recent survey that we have something like 500 million, uh, instruments.
Oh nice, someone created a JavaScript-heavy website based on >100MB minimals.cc boilerplate to compose something that could well be made of a single HTML document.
What do you mean by "nazi"
Impeachment, but that starts with a 218 vote in the House and the House is on his side.
So you actually need majority to PREVENT the collapse of democracy, and if you don't have it, you're fucked? How the fuck did this country even manage not to succumb into dictatorship for such a long time?
It has been under corporate dictatorship for over a century.
^ this.
The president isn't in charge. He's existing within boundaries created by the wealthy.
The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn't fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.
At least in the US, we're in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they've taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it's a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on "look how bad the government is!" and make the government worse once they're in office, which feeds their cause.
tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don't want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we're doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don't kill it first.
Worse... The House makes the impeachment charge, that's a 50% majority vote.
THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.
That's the body which can't do anything because they're blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride a filibuster.
So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.
Trump's first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.
If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don't matter at this point. The trick is to not let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.
We’re ignoring the constitution already.
14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The man is an adjudicated insurrectionist. Congress just ignored their duty.
So yes, there “are” protections. Said protections are simply being ignored.
The mechanism was the election.
I mean, sure, impeachment and whatnot, but it's not like people didn't know who this guy was. I can give other institutions a whole bunch of crap for not getting rid of the guy the first time, but when you've given him a Supreme Court supermajority, both chambers of Congress and the presidency AFTER he attempted a coup I'm gonna say that's on you, guys.
The country just elected this guy knowing that this is what he would do. That's democracy.
Ah fuck you really going to make me infodump I hate you sm fr
Part 1: The Two Parties
In the 1960s Civil Rights movement a deep political polarization began which results in wealthy interests backing the Republican party more and more, President Ronald Reagan in return shifted the party away from unions and towards deregulated and low tax markets and industries, and when Democrats introduced a campaign finance reform to curb the issue in 1995 it failed but was reintroduced and passed in 2002 it furthered that divide yet again, that bill was then sued by Citizens United wealthy interests and the SCOTUS sided with Citizens United as a Partisan 5-4 decision. So now we live in a world where political divide has all of the wealthy interests backing one side whose policies are actually extremely unpopular but people are easily misled into not knowing the stances of people they are voting for, or misled on the repercussions of those actions.
Figure 1: Partisanship of Congressmen
Figure 2: Partisanship of citizens
Part 2: Legislative Requirements of the USA
The USA has steps to pass laws:
It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the House of Representatives, which is capped at 435 congressmen allotted very very roughly proportional to the state populations.
It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes, unless a handful of senators decide to filibuster it to delay the vote indefinitely, in which case the bill gets amended with concessions and sent back to the House for yet another round of voting. Filibuster can be bypassed with 60 votes which is basically impossible due to aforementioned partisanship.
The president signs it into law.
Now the problem here is that to remove a congressman, the president, or a supreme court judge: you need 60 votes following a successful impeachment inquiry. So it never happens.
Part 3: Foreign Interests
Influential media from the Murdochs, the Kochs, and the CCP are constantly pushing the USA further into the grave they've been digging for 50 years. China has always been a source of cheap labor and the relationship soured greatly following the Chinese influences on Korean and Japanese elections during the time those two nations were rebuilding following the World War era and were under the watchful eye of the US Military who were a central figure in the aforementioned conflict. This divide deepened with the 1984 Tienanmen Square Massacre where cities all over China were quelled by military forces being deployed on their own people. But far from being the end of it, the Pacific was still a prime trade route where the USA sought profits, and so Chinese influence continued to spread more as the days went by.
Part 4: Where We Are Now
President Obama was denied a lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year, giving the nomination to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was granted yet another lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year. The SCOTUS was thusly deeply conservative.
His court nominations allowed him to run for office despite not qualifying under the insurrection clause, because if the courts choose not to reverse a lower court decision that he wasn't barred from office then nobody is enforcing the law.
Billionaires bought or operated their own home made social medias in the USA, the CCP deployed TikTok campaigns to elect a fascist.
This isn't just a thing that happened which we were unprepared for. It's a thing that has been happening for decades which so many of us have been desperately attempting to stop.
The CIA can always assassinate a president who gets too far out of line, ~~like what happened to JFK,~~ but they don't tend to mind the right so much as the left.
It turns out that a handful of young land-owning white men from the 1700s, born almost 200 years before the advent of game theory, didn't actually properly anticipate every way in which the political system they were designing could fail.
The mechanism is impeachment. It's broken because of polarization.
It's funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it's constitution which was designed ~~by~~ in cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don't have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.
The mechanism is the three branches of power providing checks and balances and voting. But when the people elect them to all three branches. It kinda defeats the purpose
