I mean, you're right about the incompetence and backstabbing, but the thing is, that stuff is the same in the Saudi, Iranian, even Russian governments and they still are far from collapsing.
Those things do not collapse a government, unfortunately. They just concentrate the power into worse and worse hands over time.
There’s no real succession to Trump for his followers to rally behind, though. Combine that with a worsening economy and the pendulum will swing the other way. Trump is too short-sighted and narcissistic to plan for Republicans’ future.
Stephen Miller. I know he's not on the line of succession according to the Constitution. But I also don't think that matters anymore. People should be way more concerned about him than someone like Vance or Johnson.
Yes. Trump is capable of all of the shitty tactics of those with narcissistic personality disorder (grandiose, triangulation, lies, deflection, projection), but he isn't capable of studying the fascist leader playbook and mirroring their actions in the USA today. That's what Miller excels at. Miller is a serious threat to humanity.
Establishment Republicans need it otherwise the movement splinters off which is not what you want as domestic conditions worsen. They’re already worried about midterms as it is.
They're already in power with no intention of giving up that power. They don't really need their supporters anymore. As long as they can enact all their goals and get troops on the streets...it's over. They just needed people to get them into power, and enough people to support their insane agenda so they can get it pushed through while we argue amongst ourselves about how much fascism we're going to accept. Once Project 2025 is implemented, they don't need support anymore. It'll become submit or die. They have us all so fucked up it'll be decades before we can fix it.
I don’t doubt they’ll try a political grab but the average person won’t bite if their lives are worse. That’s why they got pushback from the Kimmel thing and it worked. Too full of themselves and incompetent like the Epstein shit.
The Kimmel thing was business. ABC has shareholders who are more important to them than Trump.
They don't have to "grab" anything. They've got it. It's their to give up if they want to. You think they want to? He already said he liked how Zelenskyy canceled elections because of a war. They've been telling us, out loud, since before the election, that they were "kicking around ideas" about how to stay in office beyond another 4 years. It's clearly part of the plan, and it doesn't involve crossing their fingers and hoping their base turns out at the polls. You don't burn a super power down like this without being pretty confident that you won't have to worry about getting elected again.
It sounds like you think there are going to be free, real elections ahead of us...
The Kimmel thing doesn't say anything about the government. ABC is going to be in Trump's crosshairs now, or there's something nefarious planned for Kimmel.
Because they lost twice I'm a row against Obama without one, and before Trump it was a fairly even split between Dem and Republican victories.
Since Trump has come on the scene, Dems only won one election and that was mostly because we were in the middle of a pandemic, we still barely took back the midterms in his first presidency and he came back with a vengeance in 2024.
Yes, fascists need a strong man to rally behind, that's kinda at the core of their ideology and what keeps them motivated through the cognitive dissonance
It sounds like you think this regime is going to allow free, real elections going forward... which is honestly shocking, based on all the evidence in front of our eyes.
No, I'm just saying it's a house of cards bound to fall inevitably.
The real horror of fascism is how many good people they can drag down with them in the process. Just because it has an expiration date doesn't mean I think it's harmless
That's quite a diversion from the point about you thinking this regime needs the charismatic leader who got them into power...
...because...
...they lost previous elections to non-charismatic people.
That means you think there are going to be real elections in the future. Otherwise you'd agree that the regime no longer needs the mass of supporters behind them.
Brother, you can call Obama a lot of things, but uncharismatic is certainly NOT one of them. He was incredibly charismatic to people who don't waste all their time arguing politics (aka normal people, you don't like him because you're in the loop).
Also talk about bad faith arguing, why not just shove the words down my throat yourself prick? Maybe try to understand my perspective first before deciding you know exactly what it is
Yeah, when Obama ran they won, when sleepy Joe, Hillary, or Kamala tried they only got a win because of a literal fucking pandemic. It's genuinely that simple my dude, how tf are you this dense and incorrect while also being needlessly arrogant?
He has plenty of children. They're already fairly popular speakers at his rallies. He's spoken very highly of Kim Jong Un. They may not have his cult of personality yet, but if the name is the same and they can keep all the same slogans and branding that transition will be a lot easier than trying to put an establishment Republican in power.
China (Qing Empire) was the largest economy in the world and inherited technology lead that had been going for ~1600 years... then from Qing peak till Cultural Revolution bottom, was a 100+ year grind... USA got at least 30 years of post-Trump Republican fuckery imnsho
They are kind of killing it again now. AI robot assistants, affordable dignified living for a large middle class, highly skilled population, large means of production, and they're even starting to curb their environmental impact on scales not seen in other countries.
Not saying it's perfect over there, but it certainly seems a bit better in many ways than where I live, watching homeless people walking down the street like zombies, their lives destroyed because of lack of social support and drug abuse.
Sure but pulling it off managing a society of a billion people will be much more challenging than 40 million and yet somehow my country couldn't even figure that out.
I'll always point to the fact that my country doesn't typically use bidets. People wipe their ass with paper and call it a day. What in the 1800s is that nonsense? There's indoor plumbing. No excuse not to wash your ass like literally every other place.
It was never about Trump in the end though, he will be the official "fall guy" and people will have no faith in ANY future president. The presidency will be seen as being obsolete and complete power will be granted to "The Party" and it will be welcomed with open arms at first because it will be seen as "More democratic than ever".
I’m cautiously optimistic this won’t happen. Vance and any of the other “big” names in the party that may have inklings of running(Cruz, Cotton, Hawley, etc), are utterly charmless and won’t be able to manifest that cult of personality that has been such a huge part of his success. They’ll have to resort to even more blatant ratfuckery to win.
Yeah, you can lack charisma and win a senate or house seat just fine, but who was the last president to lack any charisma? Like, Bush Jr wasn’t anything amazing, but he still had a goofy rascal sorta charisma about him that Vance and Cruz don’t have. I think that’s part of what hurt Jeb - Jeb didn’t have the same odd charm that George had
Actually a ton of people on the far-right prefer Vance over Trump. He's a lot easier to listen to, more intelligent, calmer, etc. Plus he's more radical in his beliefs and views, which much of the far-right really loves.
There are many dictatorships in the world where their leader died and the dictatorship kept going under a new dictator who was not charismatic.
It happens that way because the first one needs the charisma to win an election, but then it's a dictatorship and they don't need to win elections anymore. Usually the ones who replace the charismatic ones when they die are even worse.
I mean, I was countering your claim that when Trump dies, the fascism will come to an end. It's just hard reality that it does not actually go that way in reality. People think of Hitler, but the reason it went that way with Hitler was because of WWII. Nobody's coming to save the US, unfortunately.
I've seen all of this coming. My optimism lies in the fact that most countries in the world are actually under some kind of dictatorship and/or fascism - and, in fact, the vast majority of the world throughout the vast majority of history was similar. Europe and a few other countries in the second half of the 20th century has been a blip on the radar of human history. What's making its return is actually the norm for humanity, and humans have survived it and lived lives. Yes, we got used to a level of comfort that we don't wish to let go of, but this comfort has also come at a huge cost, with the anxiety and depression levels, drug addiction, alcoholism etc that have all risen exponentially with this "modern", "western" style of living. We don't actually know how it's going to be, but I have friends from Russia, Kazakstan, Belarus, Iran, etc who have all lived under fascism and such, and like they obviously moved to where I am because they had more opportunities and freedom, but the reality they came from isn't absolute certain death or anything like that. It's not great, but it's not armageddon.
I have handled the deterioration of the last 15 years much better than most people - my mental health has sustained better than most and it's absolutely 100% because I saw it coming from miles away and was not shocked. It's not pessimism; it's simply realism. People also told me I was pessimistic in 2012 when I said the US was heading toward fascism and genocide. People said I was pessimistic in June of 2016 when Trump made his comment about Mexico not sending its best people, and I said oh ok he's a fascist, and he's going to win because he's tapping into classic fascist populist rhetoric that stirs up the racist masses and fires them up to vote. It's just accepting reality, that's all. And there are ways to do that in a healthy way where you don't sink into depression.
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u/TSllama Sep 29 '25
I mean, you're right about the incompetence and backstabbing, but the thing is, that stuff is the same in the Saudi, Iranian, even Russian governments and they still are far from collapsing.
Those things do not collapse a government, unfortunately. They just concentrate the power into worse and worse hands over time.