Anyone else want to burn it all to the ground?

Yep

Hey – great to see you @syz !!

And yes, I’m am truly frightened by what is going down.

Hi Syz! Great to see your nym again.

Depends on what you mean. Too many forest fires lately.

I’d like to reset the Supreme Court, at least by ejecting the justices appointed by the most criminal and terrible POTUS we’ve ever had. I think those in the Senate and Legislature and other positions of power who supported him despite his giant lie about the 2020 election, and his attempted coup, ought also to be removed from office.

The gerrymandering should all be abolished, too.

So should any remaining Trump appointees to government agencies, unless approved by the current administration. Way too many corrupt appointees during the last administration (q.v. the post office).

We are officially sliding down the slope to theocracy !

Thanks Moscow Mitch and the Tangerine make-up guy also known as Hitler wannabe.

Hi! No, I don’t want to burn anything, but I am horrified by the direction the Supreme Court is moving the country. Scary times. Even if the country corrects itself, it will take years. We are in for some bad times. A lot of people I know have their passports at the ready.

The court is just another symptom of what the country has come to be about. The standard for everything defining the country now hovers between mediocre at best to notably substandard. Pick any indicator you want, the schools, roads and bridges, or appointees to the highest court in the land. The place decays predictably as its residents visibly dumb down.

We still need the Court for commerical issues.

But on social issues – they are so far on the dark side it isn’t funny.

What I’d like is a clear path forward to reverse the reversal and avoid this slide into craziness.

Vote blue in the primaries and November. (check)

Write your congress people and express your outrage. (check)

Donate and/or offer to help those in need of safe healthcare. (check)

Maybe join a protest or boycott evil companies. (check)

But then what?? This is not and easy or overnight fix and there’s clearly more dismantling of progress to come. So, what else can be done??

I’d just like to say hi @syz!

I’m saying f*ck this shit and going camping for five days to forget about all the bs.

No but I’m willing to vote 3rd party and roll the dice.

No.

Emotionally, it’s a mainline hit that relieves the outrage and sense of betrayal. Rationally though it leads nowhere, without a clear idea of what should replace what you tear down.

I hate everything about what our politics does to our humanity and our freedom. But the solution will have to involve a political strategy with definite and practical goals.

Breaking shit is easy. Putting it back right is hard, but it’s what matters most.

@KNOWITALL voting third party is a vote for the Trump party!

Hell no. That’s how you turn a big problem into a catastrophe. @JLoon has it right. So easy to destroy, so very hard to build back.

Yeah we are fucked.

Hi, @syz! Welcome back. Stick around, why don’t you? We’re pretty small now, but we’re still kickin’.

Burn it down? If we wanted to do that, we could just sit back and let Russia’s Sauron take care of it, with assists from our Saruman and his orcs.

Sam:
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding onto something.

Frodo:
What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam:
That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

 
We’ve heard some amazing reports and testimony over the past couple of weeks, from people who think it’s worth fighting for and are doing so honorably and bravely, on both sides of the January 6th Committee’s desk.

If we the people have no idea what to do, maybe now’s the time to look toward those who do and follow their example in whatever way we can.

Every single Democracy throughout history, without exception, has only lasted 200 years before evolving into something else.
We are past due for something to happen.
We will evolve into something else or our system will be tested, adapted, and possibly improved upon. It has to!
We are due! (Like Obama said; “Change is coming to America.”)

Not really. Sometimes I wonder about whether it’s time for revolution, but it’d have to be nonviolent, or at least ideologically consistent for me to get behind. There’s a lot of anger but I’d need to be armed with ideas as earth shattering as the Communist Manifesto to actively work for the downfall of the state.

Right now, I just have hope. Hope that the axiom is true, and we’re just on the sorry end of it right now: good times make weak people, weak people make bad times, bad times make strong people, strong people make good times.

@Smashley, nice quote. I found this by Googling it—probably the original, don’t you think? It’s worth saying twice, and louder:

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”
— G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

(I wouldn’t fuss over the “men.” It hasn’t been that long since since generalized references to men were understood to mean people, mankind, humanity.)

@Jeruba – The men part is a bit of a misdirection these days. It’s clearly about strength of character, not physical strength or machismo. All that a dumb asshole has to do to is use the men quote, snap a picture of a topknotter walking a tiny dog and hit share. Strong people, I think evokes that strength of character.

I really don’t care about textualism, that’s a living quote there. People will eventually mangle it and attribute it to Mark Twain anyways..

Or Abraham Lincoln, or Albert Einstein.

Well both the far right Republicans and incompetent Democrats in power have been doing that for the past couple years already.

Nope.

@Tropical_Willie I’ve heard that all my life, and it’s just getting worse.

@KNOWITALL
You are absolutely correct. The two party paradigm works perfectly to keep any outside parties out of the spotlight and this excuse has been used forever. But the lesser of two Evils is still evil and we keep playing this game and continuing backwards.

It’s becoming increasingly tempting!

I don’t care, I will keep voting third party for POTUS and whoever is the best fit in local elections regardless of what party they represent.

Hi Syz. So good to see you.

At this point, a real revolution is the only thing that will change the failed experiment of America.

How different would it all be if all matters of National importance were put to a simple majority vote by the people?? From President to Congressional representation
to abortion to gun control and so on.

No electoral college, no Supreme Court — just the will of the people.

I don’t think you can quite yet declare America a failed expeience. It’s always had its glaring flaws, but the tendency overall until recently has been the gradual recognition of those failures resulting with accumulating societal pressure to correct them. The vast majority of us would recognize this as progress. Those who don’t, however somehow manage to emplace those of their ilk at the switches which govern us, with predictable results.

@cookieman
And let stupid people decide as well?
You know…., them.

I mean, it’s going to break whether we purposefully do it or not. We’re on our way to becoming 50 separate nations (and I’m not even convinced that’s a bad thing). There certainly won’t be another Civil War to preserve the union.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in 2024. Now we know every election is going to be hotly contested with accusations of fraud. We might finally have the kind of violent elections you see all the time in fragile, third world democracies.

In either case, more people are waking up to the idea that “voting harder” can’t solve everything.

People are realizing that the least democratic branch of the government in the US having final say on everything might be a problem.

The SCOTUS should be reeled in. It not their job to make laws. It is we the people’s
job to make laws.

They can’t think critically.
They are out of touch with
reality.
They couldn’t even run a
lemonade stand. So…

It’s their land.

https://youtu.be/EZdMXoeCZ3Q

@WhyNow
Don’t you mean it’s the lobbyists job to make laws?

^^Sadly you are correct. That’s part of the swamp… not elected yet making laws.

They should not be able to tell women what to do with their bodies. I think it is wrong and will lead to many women getting hurt or worse.