Does it feel like the fascist state that the conservatives have been screaming warnings about for the last 10 years is actually coming to life with the dictator that they recently elected?

I am waiting for the first arrest for lèse-majesté a la Trump.

Yes.

It feels that way. I am more troubled by the result of this election than of any election in my life.

Me too @flutherother. I’m just going, “Can that REALLY happen?? HERE??”

I am cautiously optimistic. It will be awful for a while, but then things will balance out.

The republican fascists are going to overreach. They always do. And they are going to lose the tiny little advantage they had in the electoral college in 2020.

The House and Senate – House in particular – are going to overplay their hand, thinking they have a mandate. And the population will reject that.

It will be a terrible couple of years, but the pendulum will spring back. The republicans will screw themselves. They always do.

Every single democracy throughout history without exception has only lasted about 200 years before becoming something else. I really feel that this is the end of ours.

Yes. Usually, I enjoy irony, but there’s too much at stake here to find any of it funny.

Just sitting back waiting to see what happens. Kinda like watching a train wreck

@kritiper That is a myth perpetuated on the internet, especially by Americans many of whom believe their democracy the oldest in history. Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man all have local parliaments founded in the ninth and 10th centuries, when Vikings pillaged, plundered and set up legislative bodies on the sea-islands of far northern Europe. Iceland’s national parliament, the Alting, dates back to A.D. 930. These democracies have all but been ignored because of their size, but they are the oldest democracies just the same..

As a side note, officially women did not have a vote, but in many Viking cultures the women held the keys to the home treasury and carried a lot of influence upon the opinions of the men in their lives. In this way they influenced the affairs of state.

Not yet. But any stressors from the outside due to an inexperienced megalomaniac inexperienced in foreign policy and going his own way against the advice of the agencies in our government have long experience and know history. These stressors could certainly cause a chain reaction that could get us a form of fascism by consent of the people, especially our scared, generally ignorant population. Look at the changes incurred after 911—the Patriot Act and restrictions on travel, for instance. This could easily happen.

@Espiritus_Corvus Right or wrong, I still feel that this is the end. (And the resource I referenced was PBS credible, not internet related.) We are now playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded revolver. And it’s your turn!

See, that’s the thing, pal. A lot of people feel the same way you do, enough to make it the end instead of doing the hard work of reaching a consensus as to what is wrong and working to fix it. If the American people continue to allow our democracy to be whored out by corporate interests and not turn it around then, yes, we will have thrown a good democracy out the window.

It’s up to us, because we can no longer trust our leadership. When you go up against an opponent either in game or real life, you never, ever begin with a defeatist attitude. Do this and you’ve lost before you step onto the gridiron. People need to remember this and remember what is at stake. Attitude is a big part of winning. A bad one makes you blind to opportunities that arise than can allow you the win.

What would England be today if Elizabeth 1 had decided that the overwhelming numeric forces of the Spanish Empire weren’t worth resisting and she just cut her losses and allowed the King Spain to take the British Isles? She had no Navy to speak of. Why should should she have resisted?

What would England be today, if Churchill hadn’t fought blindly against the overwhelming forces of Nazi Germany before America came into the war?

We need to remember that good triumphs, that it can triumph and we need to stop being such pussies about it.

“Hey, there’s a hell of a good universe next door. Let’s go!”

The answers to my questions above are that they resisted against overwhelming odds because they believed in and loved their country and weren’t going down without a fight.

This is a test of the American citizen’s belief in, love for, and resolve to preserve those elements of their system that are increasingly in danger. Do they have the will to fix their country? They won’t fix it if they believe that it is too late and unfixable. That is surrender.

@Espiritus_Corvus I too take hope in the fact that so many people are outraged by the actions of a few.

Yes, people are now actually seeing how the whole thing is threatened. Will they remain passive, or will they address the problems that have been stacked against them for years? —and demand their democracy back. We’ll see. I don’t want violence and I believe there is still enough democracy left for them to do it civilly. But it’s war just the same, and it will take an enormous effort, and it should be fought with the same resolve and the same unity as if we had been occupied by a foreign force with an opposing ideology.

@Espiritus_Corvus I think it’s a little too late to do any fixing, pal.

And I say that we cannot afford to think that way.

What happened to us, kritiper? We like to brag how America will never go down without a fight, that it would be worse than losing the battle. Who have we been talking about all these generations?

The fight, the struggle, is here and now, in this generation. The window for civil action is quickly closing and almost everyone sees it, on all sides of the political fences. Why don’t we have the resolve not to allow thieves to take away our most important asset, the very thing that makes us a nation of people and not slaves?

I think we could use a period of citizen-slavery. That it would fertilize the tree of liberty more than anything else. It would make us hungry again, appreciate the loss. But then slavery would be too late, so we must envision it on our own, to put the fear of God—no, the fear of the worst of Man—in us again. Or spend the next vacation in a country like Haiti, not in the resorts, but among the people and their conditions and political repression. Whatever it takes to bring reality home to America.

It’s not as bad as the 20’s and 30’s yet, but all democracies around the world—especially in Europe—have taken a sharp turn to the right, a precursor of fascism. They are being threatened like no time since WWII. So, we aren’t alone in our experience. But it may be that we must lead the fight to recovery. We like to brag that we are among the world leaders, a leading democracy among the democracies. Maybe it’s time to do lead and not just talk. It it takes a bit of an ego trip to get us started, that’s fine with me. The fact is, whether or not we do lead in this struggle, the sooner we get started, the better.

I seriously don’t think we have any choice in the matter and I wish more people would awaken to this. because if we don’t start using the last bit of our democracy available to us to fight within the existing institutions, the next generation will have the horrible choice of fighting their own formidable government under arms, or surrender to slavery.

We have a great organizational tool that no generation every had before us, the internet. Whereas our used signal fires, drums, and notes delivered on foot and horseback—and only a generation before ours—the short-wave, radio, we now have this wonderful new tool. We can ally ourselves with others in the same struggle around the world and compare notes, share strategies. But, at the moment, it is used as a source of entertainment.

I understand that more has to be taken away before 360 million Americans will forget their differences and get down to the business of dismantling that part of the political structure that is not in their interests. It is not too late, @kritiper, it is never too late. Fate can be a great ally, as great as the north sea storms that saved Elizabethan England from the Spanish Armada after they had resisted, albeit feebly until the worst winter of the century arrived. As great as the resolve of the British that preserved them long enough for their cousin, their former enemy, to assist them to victory.

It’s just getting later.

That’s it in a very big nutshell.

This here would be the equivalent of 1933 Germany – Louisiana Republican: Americans should run all Muslims out of business and anyone who employs them

This is tarrot reading of course, but to me, what’s in store is the breakdown of the American social contract, as the Trump admin takes down one agency after another and more and more people ask themselves “what’s in it for me?”

Also, Trump has already unleashed the forces of hatred during his campaign, and more of that is certain to follow with Bannon as his main counsel. Haters will feel empowered. A sense of creeping anarchy will develop as hate crimes pick up momentum.

So i don’t think Hitler is your immediate future. Rather, more people like Dylann Roof, more murders by cops and more politically motivated killings are in the cards.

Too much violence and disorder can lead to dictatorship though, further down the road, once the army (and most people) get tired enough with random violence and decide that order, by any means necessary, is preferable to the sort of cretinocracy that brought Trump to power.

Something else I find crazy…he is blatantly, obviously filling positions with people who are blatantly, obviously, going to be working for their own best interests, and not the interests of the country.
He continues to be involved in things that are a serious conflict of interests.
I think back to when he said, “I could shoot someone in broad daylight and I’d still get elected!”
I mean he did EVERYTHING he could to ensure that he would not be elected…and he was elected any way.
His choice of cabinet, and the way he is living as though nothing has really changed, is taking that insanity even further. He is obviously continuing to thumb his nose at the country. Worst case is he’ll get fired, which is what I think he wants. Best case is he and his cronies will be worth twice as much in the end, as they are now.

@Espiritus_Corvus If we were to really do anything (about climate change, for example) we would have gotten our shit together long before now. And this is true of our democracy as well. Say what you will, but what we have left to do is much too little, much to late. It is the nature of the beast that we are, to use it all up until all hope is lost and all that is left is a fight, all right. The fight to fix blame.

I disagree with the premise of the question. Conservatives don’t warn of fascism. They warn of socialism. Fascism is what they want. They want to meddle in people’s private lives by allowing discrimination by race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. They want to let industries do whatever they want without regard to environmental standards or workers’ rights. They want to place restrictions on the right of free speech and the right to vote. Expect all of this under fuhrer president Trump.

Fix as in neuter.

I applaud @Espiritus_Corvus. Well said.

We will have a period of great difficulty, but this is not the end. We have tools available to us that the Germans of the 30s did not. We will use them. We already are.

Cynicism is a lazy man’s argument.

Fair enough, @LostInParadise. But on the other hand, they also scream about the government interfering in THEIR lives. You know, the gubment is gonna lock the citizens up in FEMA camps. They can’t fly the American flag in areas where flags aren’t allowed.

Yes. What lostinparadise said.