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A Coup Is In Progress In America (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 1 day ago by ooli2@lemm.ee to c/usa@midwest.social
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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 23 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (4 children)

I hate that I'm typing this...

People need to start buying weapons right now. It's not that I think we're at the "take up arms" phase. It's that I think we should be ready before they keep us from being able to.

With all the shit they're pulling with federal databases, I expect people are going to start being added to NICS (background check database) for political reasons.

When you get a NICS denial, there's no explanation of why it's was denied, but you can't buy a gun.

And it will alert the FBI that you tried.

[–] TelxonHacker@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 7 hours ago

As a Libertarian who voted Democrat in the last several elections, I agree. tRump is not as pro 2A as he claims, he's fine with "his" people being armed, but I could totally see him trying to block others from gun purchases, especially if he sees them as "enemies" to his cause.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 10 points 21 hours ago

Yeah they will absolutely try to deny gun ownership based on political affiliation

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

If that happens. Theres going to be a huge influx of gun shows.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

FYI, the "Gun Show Loophole" isn't a real thing. Dealers still have to fill out a 4473 and run a background check at gun shows. There's even a checkbox for it on the 4473.

What there is is a private sales loophole, where individuals can sell a gun on the secondary market.

That doesn't require a gun show.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Private sellers are not required to do background checks according to federal law. States are free to require private sellers to do background checks, but half of the states do not require them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

That's what I said. Prialvate sellers are not dealers, and private sales don't have to be performed at gun shows.

And there are still legal requirements. For instance, it's illegal to sell or gift a person a pistol if they live in a different state.withput going to a dealer and transferring it through them with a background check. You also cannot sell or give away a firearm that isn't legal in the state in which the transfer is taking place or in the state of legal residence of the person taking ownership of the firearm.

When I was in firearm sales, we had spreadsheets for every gun in our inventory listing the states of residence in which it could be legally sold.

Additionally, you have to follow the transfer regulations of both states. So if someone from New Jersey wanted to buy a hunting rifle from the store where I worked, we had to run a New Jersey background check, fill out New Jersey paperwork, and review their New Jersey firearms license. If there was a waiting period in their state, we had to honor it.

If private sales are banned (NICS check requirements are private sales bans because civilians don't have access to NICS) in someone's home state, buying it privately in a different state is a crime.

Fun additional fact: In Texas we also had to report to the feds anytime someone purchased more than one semi-auto centerfire rifle of 22 caliber or greater in a 5-day period, or more than 1 handgun in a 5-day period. That's a regulation only in effect in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Stop being pedantic. The only reason there is so many dealers at them is because of all the private sales in the first place.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

They are a common meet-up place for private sellers, but it does nothing for dealers. The secondary market is bad for dealers.

You really don't seem to know what you're talking about.

[–] SolidShake@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Lmao no conservative in this country would be for a gun ban. Ever. They might suck the orange balls but they suck their gun muzzles even harder while saying the 2nd amendment out loud. This scenerio would never happen.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 11 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Conservatives aren't the ones that will be banned. They'll target liberals and the conservatives will joke that the dems should be happy for finally getting gun control for themselves.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 9 points 18 hours ago

US gun control started under Governor Reagan when black people started buying them.

[–] andxz@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago

That won't happen as long as they make sure you can buy all the guns you'd ever want as long as you stay on the RIGHT side of anything political.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

From Trump’s POV it’s actually a heist. He’s going to take everything that’s not bolted down.

[–] djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 day ago

The coup happened decades ago. They're now comfortable enough in their power that the mask can come off.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Its going to take more than a protest march or office meeting with representatives to undo it. May as well face that fact and prepare

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Well who gave them the foot in the door? Some decisions are not so easy to walk off huh

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 112 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Part of the issue is that elites have already bought into the coup. You don't eviscerate the US government without making sure the rich are on side first.

That's why so many CEOs publicly made gestures of support for trump just before and after the election.

The only way to stop the fascists who already have control of the courts, the government and the rich would be mass mobilization of a significant % of the population, or a military counter-coup.

[–] M137@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like some of those CEOs must have done so out of fear or even blackmail. I really think some of them dislike Trump as much as many of us, but they were invited to the white house and were told something like "If you don't show support, by words and money, your company won't have a place in America ". I know that some, like Tim Cook, are even part of groups hated by Trump, LGBTQ in this case. I just don't see him and some others doing it out of their own choice.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm sure that some of them choose to participate in fascism only reluctantly. Nonetheless they determined that fascism was ultimately in their best interest and threw their support behind it. That's as much "their own choice" as anything is.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People voted for the coup. People were warned, they were told it would happen, it was all documented in writing, they had a fucking website with the "we are going to do a coup" plan. People had a beta version 4 years ago. People still voted for the coup. And if you look at the world outside of lemmy, people don't care about the coup.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Less than 35% of the country voted for republicans in an election where PACs alone spent 5.6 billion dollars to lie and buy votes, and that doesn't include the amount spent on election interference by us and foreign oligarchs.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 4 points 17 hours ago

The 30% who didn't vote made a conscious decision, so I don't buy the 35% argument. You could also say that less than 33% of the country expressed their disagreement when asked.

[–] FolknForage@lemm.ee 2 points 21 hours ago

“Democracy…If you can keep it”

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[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 100 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is an emergency, and it demands emergency response from every American with power or influence. The window for effective resistance narrows with each passing day. History will judge harshly those who had the capacity to resist but chose instead to wait and see how things develop. The time to act is now, before the mechanisms that would allow effective resistance are completely dismantled.

The alarms are being sounded, and not just from this publication. If nobody that has even a shred of power does anything... well fuck.

[–] Chocrates@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (12 children)

What can I do? Shit posting hasn't helped.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago

What can I do?

Depends on how much you you value you freedom/life, cuz the things that need to be done could put both in jeopardy. Leave your cell phone at home.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

What Lenin did was far worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

We aren't going to fix Traitorapist Trump's enshitification by using Lenin's far worse enshitification of Russia as a guide.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

why are you linking me to obvious us propaganda? lenin oversaw the one of the biggest and quickest jumps in quality of life for people in history.

if you are that intent on rejecting socialism, i don't know what to tell you. we never properly defeated fascism without it.

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

why are you linking me to obvious us propaganda?

Why should anybody believe you when you have to use an easily disproven lie the very first thing you said because there is no legitimate way to explain the horrors of what happened in the USSR? The author was a Soviet citizen who never set foot in the USA until after his entire 3 volume series was published. He had collected a lot of material because he was a 7 year victim of Stalin's Gulag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

[Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn[a][b] ⓘ (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)[6][7] was a Russian author and Soviet dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".[8] His non-fiction work The Gulag Archipelago "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies.[9]]

Khrushchev himself personally approved of Solzhenitsyn's previous book about Stalin's Gulag. Was the leader of the USSR also peddling "obvious US propaganda"? LMFAO.............

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-prophet-and-the-commissars-2008-08

lenin oversaw one of the biggest and quickest jumps in quality of life for people in history.

The author shows over and over in his book that the roots of Stalinism go right back to Lenin.

[Solzhenitsyn painstakingly laid the theoretical, legal, and practical origins of the Gulag system at Lenin's feet, not Stalin's.]

How is randomly arresting people in places like train stations and libraries in order to fulfill a police arrest quota from the top dictator a "jump in quality of life" LMFAO! Lenin and his party started the biggest enshitification of any country in history. Who the f*ck would ever want to live in a country where such as things as arrest quotas of random people exist? You would literally be risking your life every time you left your apartment.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

still quoting literal US propaganda. you have to break free from it if you want any chance of doing anything about your fascism.

the advances in healthcare education and overall well being in all metrics for people living in that time are a historical fact.

Stalinism

stalinism doesn't even exist lmao, please actually study some history instead of scanning wikipedia for anti-communist sentiment.

there are plenty of valid criticism you could muster about the soviet union without showing how ignorant you actually are about it.

but then again, if you and most other us people did, history wouldnt be repeating in your backyard.

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

still quoting literal US propaganda.

I'm quoting literally Russian sources. You responding that 2+2=5 doesn't help you at all. Even if there is a rare person who doesn't already know that 2+2=4, they can easily look it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

[Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn[a][b] ⓘ (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)[6][7] was a RUSSIAN author and SOVIET dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”.[8] His non-fiction work The Gulag Archipelago “amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state” and sold tens of millions of copies.[9]]

there are plenty of valid criticism you could muster about the soviet union

Yes I really don't get why you chose to make yourself an irrelevant fossil. There is plenty of reasonable critiques of capitalism you could make without defending the USSR which was every bit as bad as Nazi Germany. You defending Lenin and Stalin is going to be rightly viewed exactly the same as another guy coming here and defending Hitler. If you are socialist, the smartest thing you can do is to do everything you can to distance yourself from Lenin and Stalin. The world has already seen what their version of "socialism" looks like and it is absolutely horrible. In order to taken seriously, you would need to make it very clear that your view of socialism has absolutely nothing in common with Lenin and Stalin.

Solzhenitsyn wrote about 2000 pages on the Lenin/Stalin Gulag.

https://archive.org/details/TheGulagArchipelago-Threevolumes/The-Gulag-Archipelago__vol1__I-II__Solzhenitsyn/

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[–] glitchdx@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

If nobody that has a shred of power does anything

why would they start now?

[–] RagnarokOnline@programming.dev 71 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (16 children)

Top comment from Mike Brock’s blog (where this diatribe came from):

Right now it feels we have a growing chorus of people raising alarm, but very few people proposing any specific actions that are commensurate with the scale of the crisis? I appreciate your work and I don’t mean this flippantly, but do you have any proposals more specific than “resist” or “do something”?

This comment is my thought exactly. Brock isn’t wrong, but he’s just blowing real hard and hoping the house falls down.

All this blog did was piss me of, but it didn’t point me in a direction.

(But thanks for posting, OP.)

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

Its because its against TOS everywhere to say what must be done, and people are too afraid/divided/poor to do it.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago

You're not allowed to speak the obvious answer.

[–] MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

The founding fathers would have you join a mass of people outside the homes of the legislators demanding they take action or suffer consequences.

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