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Nov 5th? Is he planning to blow up parliament?
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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No, and screw you for being so reductionist.
Yes, Trump absolutely sucks, but so does Biden and Harris, and I voted for Biden last time around. I think the FUD around Trump is a quite overblown (he's dangerous, but not in a fascist sense, but in a stupid policy sense), and I refuse to join in. There's no way I'm voting for him, but I also disagree that he's a terrorist or that this election is any different from 2016 or 2020. He's not going to pass pretty much anything in Project 2025, and while the Supreme Court does lean strongly conservative, they're not going to let him get away with the worst of his plans, if he actually follows through (which I highly doubt he will).
If you live in a battleground state (this year, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin), then do whatever strategic voting you need to do. But if you live anywhere else in the country, voting your conscience will have a much bigger impact even if your candidate only gets a few percent of the vote (or less). Just like in 2016 and 2020, both candidates royally suck, and we need to signal to both parties that neither option is acceptable. But one of those two will win, so that's why battleground state votes are so important, but the rest of the country is so incredibly unlikely to switch from how they've voted in the past that there's almost zero risk that your vote for an independent or third party candidate will change the outcome of the election in your area.
I'm not voting for either major party candidate because it's all but guaranteed that my state will vote the same way they have in the last 20+ years, with a >10% vote difference (probably closer to 20%). I find a lot more value in voting my conscience than throwing my vote away for a major party candidate when the outcome is all but decided for my state.
I'm Australian, and it's not overblown
He's already acknowledging he plans to go full dictatorship. He's already starting with the "crooked, leftist" stuff.
What he's saying and doing are literally parts of the dictator handbook and if he wins, there are severe consequences worldwide (a return to bigotry and empowerment of bullies)
The difference this time over last time is that losing the election ruins the rest of his life, so he has everything to gain by sowing chaos. If he can delay the count even, it's hugely beneficial for him.
You have politicians internationally, his ex staff, ex Australian pm and even a right wing ex attorney general from Australia warning of how dangerous he is.
Russia gains through his win too because if he wins, then Trump will stop helping Ukraine most likely, which is possibly why we're seeing so much manipulation online basically discouraging left wing people voting
But he's not. He's a populist and a narcissist, but not an authoritarian. He said he'd "drain the swamp" in 2016, but he didn't do much of anything regarding that during his presidency, he was much more concerned with cutting taxes and raising tariffs (i.e. things to make him seem like a good negotiator).
Can you provide examples? Because what he says and what he does are two completely different things. He says whatever will get him attention, but what he actually does is usually quite tame.
That's a bit hyperbolic. If he loses, most of the lawsuits will just go away because he's rich and no longer a threat. He may get blocked from SM for a few years by court order and perhaps banned from running again, but he'll be too old anyway to care. He has enough assets and influence that he's not going to get significantly hurt financially, he can always file another bankruptcy if he gets into trouble.
If he wins, he'll probably be soft on Russia and reduce aid to Ukraine, rattle some sabers at NATO to get people to contribute more, and continue Biden's tariffs against China. He'll probably also make some inflammatory "culture war" statements and whatnot, but not pass any bill of significance. That's basically what he did in 2016, and that's what he'll do this time around.
So, here's my prediction of the net results of a Trump win:
That's bad, but it's hardly "fascist."
And here's my prediction if Harris wins:
Both will probably suck as presidents, but Harris may piss off fewer countries because she seems to know how to communicate respect.
I don't know if Russia is doing it, I think it's just Trump trolls.
Please, go out and vote. All I'm saying is that if you're not in a swing state, vote for the candidate you like best, which may or may not be one of the two major party candidates. If you live in a red state or blue state, voting for the minority party won't change the outcome of the election, so you might as well vote for a third party or independent to signal to the DNC and RNC that the two options aren't what you want. If you live in a swing state, vote for one of the two major party candidates because your vote could actually determine the outcome of the election.
Trump completely sucks, but voting for Harris won't do anything if you live in a blue or red state, all it does is add to the popular vote, which means absolutely nothing. If you actually want your vote to mean something and your state is definitely going to vote for one or the other, vote for someone else to show displeasure with the options this year.
But whatever you do, go out and vote.
You forgot a bunch of things..
I live here in Australia, and knew very little of president trump.
I LITERALLY saw 10mins of Trump on TV months before the election, and my first reaction by the way he was speaking was "he's going to overthrow the election". It took a foreigner like me 10mins to realise that shit..
If you watch his speeches now, his language again, is the same as what facscists use. He uses words like calling everyone crooked, etc, WITHOUT EVIDENCE. He calls the election a sham. Why do you think he's saying this?
What's disturbing is the number of people that is willing to say "oh, he's a populist" or "he's joking" when he makes statements. Yeah.. He was joking about the last election being a sham...
I'll tell you EXACTLY what I saw. I saw without context a guy trying to overthrow an election.
What I see now is a guy who has every intention to extend his term beyond the maximum and interfere with the next election to delay jail.
You're going to need to cite some sources here, because those look heavily slanted and sensationalized accounts of what actually happened.
On Jan 6, he wasn't out there leading the charge or anything remotely close to that. He gave one fiery speech, then returned to the White House and watched everything unfold on the TV, and it seemed that he was excited because they were doing this for him. From the accounts I saw, he didn't seem to be trying to orchestrate something, he was just excited to see so much support.
And yeah, he'll probably pardon and free them. But not so they can overthrow the government or something, but because he likes their support. You need to remember, he's a narcissist, not a dictator.
Of course. He can't fathom that he didn't win, because he's a narcissist and all he sees are his rallies and yes men. He's accustomed to being on top, and he likes surrounding himself with people who will suck up to him and do what he wants.
This is certainly dangerous, but he's not driven by hatred or desire for power like Hitler or Stalin were, he's starved for attention and he wants that again. I don't believe he actually has a plan for the country, he just does whatever he thinks will get him attention. People like tax cuts, so he pushed for them. People like jobs, so he wants to increase demand for those. And so on.
That's certainly dangerous, but it's not fascist. He's dangerous because he's largely incompetent and makes rash decisions. That may work in real estate and other businesses he's been in charge of, but it doesn't work as President.
I highly doubt that.
And yes, he tried to overturn the election, and he tried to accomplish that through the courts because he truly believed he won and was desperate to prove that. I don't think he expected Jan 6 to happen as it did, nor do I think he wanted to stay in power that way, because that means he cheated and didn't win.
And yeah, he wants to extend his term beyond the maximum. But he wants to extend it by winning the election, not by taking it. That's the difference between a narcissist and a dictator, and it what makes him both dangerous and less of a threat.
Regardless, I don't have much power here, and who I vote for and who most people vote for will have absolutely zero impact on the election because only votes in 7-ish states actually determine the election. So whether I vote for Harris or one of the third party and independent candidates literally makes no difference in the election. The closest thing to actually mattering is the popular vote, and if Trump soundly loses both, I guess that's more funny than if he wins the popular vote but loses the electoral college.
https://www.sir.advancedleadership.harvard.edu/articles/who-was-responsible-for-january-6th
Yep, how about from Harvard law school. It was incitement, and lots of people were injured. YES, he's dangerous.
He doesn't need to hold a knife to be dangerous. Many dictators and mob bosses work using threats and lackies to do their work.
And I've been threatened at least 3x in my life.
I also intervened when a junkie held up a pipe threatening to hit someone in a road rage incident.
In all 4 of these cases, people like yourself will claim that they weren't dangerous simply because they don't directly say they're going to harm the other person. But they were obviously intended to have life-threatening undertones which any reasonable person would back down from. No, it's threats and intimidation.
Trump regularly highlights judges families and such, and it has the same intention
Again, he has absolutely been upfront that next election he's trying to change things to extend his term and become a dictator, and he will only extend power to people who follow him.
Mob bosses will always be careful what they say. Even if you watch him speak, it feels like he's an actor in the untouchables
If you haven't, you should read some history books from the POV of people who lived through the early to late 1930's in Germany. Erik Larson does one from the POV of the US ambassador to Germany during that time, called "In the Garden of Beasts".
Almost word for word, (with the non-relevant bits swapped around), exactly what Germans were saying about Hitler during that time. Nobody thought Hitler would do or go as far as the media and "alarmists" were signalling, and anyone who called it what it was, a plan to force Germany into a war rather than pay down their debt from WWI, along with the attempted extinction of anyone they classified as "undesirables" (started with Jews, and moved on to many other groups. Replace "jew" with "trans" and the similarities are nearly impossible to ignore); was flagged as being hyperbolic and out of touch and exaggerating what the Nazi party and Hitler were "Really" trying to achieve, or what Chancellor Hindenburg could prevent him from doing to keep his power in check.
Obviously everyone who thought the threat wasn't real or being overblown was wrong. But it took years and years for them to be proven wrong. At every single step along the way, were groups of people saying "This time, this is the check to the Nazi/Hitler power struggle that will work and keep them in check".
There is absolutely no reason that couldn't happen again somewhere else. Assuming that there was something deeply wrong/broken with Germany that led to the rise of Nazism is the height of folly. It can, and is happening here, just as it's been attempted in other countries since WW2 ended.
Do I like the fact that my choices are:
I'm not super happy with option A, because I would like to see more change here, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let option B happen.
Whether or not you believe that option B is a real threat, like everyone else in the world and most Americans currently believe, doesn't matter to me. You being wrong about this doesn't make me more right. And you are wrong about your views of trump and what he's trying to have happen. But it's unlikely any amount of evidence or historical context will convince you, so I'm not entirely sure why I'm typing this up, except in the hopes that someone else comes along and reads it and maybe it sways them towards acknowledging how great of a threat trump and the current republican party poses to the idea of a free and fair world.
I think you've been reading/watching a bit too much leftist media.
First of all, if you live in one of the 43 states that aren't battleground states, who you vote for will not impact the election at all. That's my point. If you live in one of those states (and statistically speaking, you probably do), you can safely vote for your preferred candidate without any worry about changing the outcome of the election. That is my main point here. Whether Trump or Harris wins the popular vote does not matter, only the Electoral College matters, and unless you think your state has a reasonable chance of flipping (i.e. if it's one of those 7 battleground states), you might as well signal to the major parties your preference. Maybe they'll look at that data for the next election, idk, but voting for one of the two major parties just signals that the choices are acceptable.
If you do live in one of those 7 battleground states, then you probably should vote for one of the two major parties, because every vote there counts.
That's the core of my argument here.
I could go through and show how a lot of Trump's statements have been taken out of context, or give examples of similar statements he made in 2016 and his complete lack of action during his presidency, but at the end of the day, I still think he's an absolutely terrible candidate and is unfit for office. I don't think he's a fascist though, I think he's just a self-centered man-child who craves public attention. He does court fascists though, because he wants them to support him so he wins, but I don't think he actually wants what they want. He's also really old, so he's far more interested in leaving a legacy than taking power for himself. But none of that's relevant because I agree with the underlying message, "DON'T VOTE FOR TRUMP," I just disagree with the reasoning (i.e. name-calling like "fascist" or "Nazi" or whatever). He's certainly dangerous, but not because he wants to subjugate minorities, but because he's largely incompetent.
But don't get distracted by any of that, I agree with the sentiment, I just disagree with the rhetoric. That kind of rhetoric just puts people on the defensive and strengthens their support of Trump, it does absolutely nothing to change anyone's mind.
Who do you consider minorities?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_travel_ban
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/four-years-change-immigration-trump
Muslims certainly count, but the goal here wasn't to persecute existing US residents and citizens, but to limit Muslims coming here, and I chalk it up more to FUD surrounding terrorism than a genuine intolerance toward a specific minority. We absolutely have had intolerance in the US, but it doesn't usually look like travel bans, but internment camps (FDR during WW2) and the war on drugs (mostly Reagan, which largely targeted hippies and black people).
And it's important to note that the Muslim travel ban was blocked by the Supreme Court (links to those cases are in the first link you provided), so there absolutely is precedence there for preventing anything like this happening. The executive can still block based on origin country, but not based on religious affiliation.
As for the second link, I'll just leave this quote:
As in, Obama's executive branch deported more people than Trump did. I'm not saying this to imply Obama was somehow worse on immigration than Trump, but to show that Trump's impact on immigration was... limited.
Different supreme court, it's now Trump's and extremely corrupt.
You're going to have to explain that a little better. The kids and cages thing especially.
Sure, but I would honestly be surprised if even this conservative supreme court overturned that precedent, because it was grounded in first amendment protections, which applies to everyone on American soil and to border control agencies evaluating visas.
I'm pretty sure that existed before Obama, but given the state of search engines these days, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find something about it. All Trump did here was revoke some of Obama's EOs, he didn't really change any of the laws, so that nonsense was likely legal and commonplace.
The proper solution here is to pass laws, not EOs, yet nobody seems interested in doing that. And that's a big reason I'm very disappointed in both parties right now, immigration is a major concern of mine (I want more, and the process should be easier), but neither party seems interested in actually solving any problems with it, they just pass some EOs to make it a little better or a little worse.
Agreed. Not sure how that's relevant though...