Especially with how fast Trump is declining mentally and physically. I’m wondering if he’s going to last through next year. They’re trying to cement what power they can because Trump is an effective bully at home, and Vance has all the charisma of dryer lint to back himself up once he’s in the chair.
Don’t forget Mountain Meadows, or the time they (probably) had the governor of Missouri assassinated, or the time they were ABSOLUTELY PLANNING to throw down with the Grand Army of the Republic before someone realized the Army had more men and materiel to prosecute a war with.
This could also just be RFK wanting to put the idea in the world. Doesn’t matter if it’s real, doesn’t matter if it gets disproven in court, as we’ve seen with Andrew Wakefield - as soon as the idea enters public discourse, it’s alive forever, especially in the age of the internet. There will ALWAYS be a core of people talking about it, willing to accept it as gospel, and they might even be loud enough to launder more public opinion on it through wellness grifters, the entire ideasphere of which is highly incestuous.
He’s always acted like this. Always. His entire persona has always been that of a schoolyard bully, both in personal and professional interactions no matter how much he tries to hide it behind The Apprentice and other media like Art of the Deal.
They all know. I guarantee the rich motherfuckers already have go bags in their cars for the moment Trump or Vance decide that they’re not useful anymore.
Ahhh, but you forget two things.
One, cults usually outlive their founders, even cults of personality.
Two, Unitary Executive Theory. The Trump admin has been working overtime to try and figure out ways to rule by decree, and I think they’re absolutely willing to Hail Mary with Vance. If Trump dies, I can see them trying to quite literally just decree laws and dare the various, rapidly dwindling levers of power to stop them.
Literally never. There was an interview after Sandy Hook that still rings true: a man was asked "how many kids have to die before we take action on general firearm ownership’ and his answer was “all of them,” as matter of fact as you like.
Sadly, plenty of dictators that lived perfectly fine (mostly because they were smart and didn’t fuck with the world beyond their borders too much). Antonio Salazar comes to mind, Franco, Lukashenko is STILL in power.
Of course, many of these regimes were watered by oceans of blood and fear.
I’m still amazed that Marcos’ kid won.
But you’ve got to know the territory
I wonder if those guys still have Gaddafi’s Stinger missiles packed away somewhere.
Not just cruelty. Someone else in another thread pointed out this is exactly what you would do if you’re afraid of a civil war. Now, you’ve got an easily defended government center, and a large amount of people out in the streets that any opposing force will have to fight through in order to get to any of the governmental buildings (though really, we’re only caring about the WH). Additionally, you have an oceanfront escape route if shit goes poorly.
However, the choice between “do I stay and potentially risk my life and my family’s lives trying to help or do I leave to try my best to keep myself and my family safe” is intensely personal. I don’t blame any of these people for wanting to leave - sometimes the best thing you can do is simply leave the situation.
Nah, we funded both Iran and the Taliban. We even elected a guy who illegally funneled weapon sales to Iran in order to take that money and give it to Nicaraguan death squads. Arguably, without US support, neither gets the critical mass it needs to effect regime change or become anything more than an upstart.
No, but we’re doing a fantastic job exporting a lot of the doctrine and repackaging it.
There’s also the armed nonviolent wing that gets left out, like the Deacons and the various unaffiliated armed people who literally did have to be ready to kill in order to defend some of the nonviolent protestors - one SNCC person in an interview mentioned they and a few friends were staying at an old black woman’s home after a march in Alabama, and she had half of the local black community entrenched, quite literally, with their guns in her front yard all night, because the police had shown up with what amounted to a lynch mob for the protestors.
I also think a lot of people confuse moral nonviolence with strategic nonviolence or pacifism. You can be nonviolent and still be absolutely armed, trained, and ready to do violence if needed.
There’s a fantastic book, This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed, that really hits the lost portions of the civil rights movement, including the armed wing of the movement.
Yes, but they’re much more intensive to install and maintain, and they also don’t work well against things like trucks with wide wheel bases and high undercarriages.
Pretty much this. Even if your eyes are bad-bad, generally you can find a task you can do, even if it’s “go spread fertilizer on the crop beds over here” or “hold this metal down at this end while I hammer the other end into shape.” People with bad eyesight have historically survived in conditions nearly identical to what a commune of survivors would be facing if the T-virus decided to escape tomorrow or whatever, it’s not magic. Depending on the community you wind up with, you will have SOMETHING that you can do to meaningfully contribute even without eyeglasses.
Considering Russia broke a sovereignty agreement in order to start this war, regardless of their motive, AND violated Georgian sovereignty a couple years before THAT in a bid to annex part of THAT country, AND is attempting to annex parts of Moldova through threat of arms…who in their right mind would agree to ANY peace deal with Russia? It’s not even worth the paper it’s signed on. You’d literally have to have cheese for a brain.
Precisely this. Any inkling, any glimmer of potential resistance, is too much. Even unenthusiastic acceptance isn’t allowed. You have to stamp out the people who MIGHT POSSIBLY dissent, might possibly not WANT what’s happening, to the eventual point that anything other than full-throated praise of what the regime is doing is disallowed.