I'm beginning to wonder if we will ever get out of this spiral downward.

[Kablooie]

Trump is taking the country so low that I wonder if we'll ever be able to rise back up again.
He is running the country essentially as a dictator, with no one in power objecting, so the checks and balances are nullified and showing the Constitution to be nothing but a piece of paper.

We all hope that the Mueller investigation will take Trump down but I'm not so sure it will.
If Democrats won every seat in Congress in November, Trump could be impeached but a conviction, which would remove him from office, is unlikely because a substantial number of Republicans would have to join the Democrats in voting against him.

Could we be experiencing the death of the United States as we know it?
That's what the extreme right wants, to eliminate the US democratic government and install a conservative dictatorship.
I'm not so confident anymore that they won't succeed.

I'm just so bummed at how easily he can do just about anything he wants with no constraints.
No matter how illegal or un-Constitutional, he's free to do it without any opposition.

[Hortensis]

1. It's easy to get lost in the present. Repubs

got control of WH and congress something like 16 months ago and have had some successes but a lot of failures since. Turns out it isn't all that easy to dismantle the administrative state. Or, as we should appreciate quite well, to remove a president who has the support of half the nation.

Fwiw, though, the new ultrawealthy classes worry me a whole lot more than Trump. They corrupted the Republican Party into something that could elect a Trump, they convinced the idiot right that we want to install a dictatorship in order to turn the electorate on ourselves, and they are the huge enemy we are battling for power. Scary, but November 6 we take control of congress away from them.

[Hortensis]

5. Yes. Very insightful sorts, aren't they? :)

Authoritarianism comes way too naturally to most of those. But it always has, and enough other conservatives have far more often than not joined with us to check them.

The majority right has been rejecting extremism in Republican candidates this spring, though. November 6 will tell if enough are afraid of their own party. Splitting power used to be normal, after all.

[duforsure]

6. Putin corrupted trump and the republican party

Is why we are where we are now, and McConnell and Ryan are a major part of this now from becoming compromised and taking russian funneled money from putin to help corrupt our system for him. As long as some republicans don't stand up with the Democrats we'll be in big trouble, and very soon. It is getting closer to a dictatorship from Americans allowing this to happen now, unless they take a stand against this from happening, and they'll be known for what they've done to this country forever. Never thought I'd see the day a russian agent would be elected as our president, but they did it. They had lots of help too from Americans . Vote them all out of office.

[Sherman A1]

3. I'm actually rather surprised that they are moving so slowly

I expected to be much farther along in the RW agenda by now. I find that this indicates a couple of things. 1). They really are not as sharp as they like to believe that they are. 2). The system while certainly taking many dents and dings isn’t all that easy to figure out or to change. Both provide hope.

At this point one can really only push back by staying aware and engaged, but not to the point of burnout. Pick your topics, call and email your Representatives and in November, vote.

[mythology]

10. I agree with this

But also I think that the op is hyperbole for other reasons. Donald Trump isn't the first president to act in ways that are outside the law. Thomas Jefferson violated his own understanding of the constitution to complete the Louisiana purchase, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus including ignoring the Supreme Court ruling against him and violated freedom of the press. FDR used an executive order to intern over 100,000 Japanese Americans.

Even good presidents have made major power grabs and the country has survived and moved forward.

[Sherman A1]

12. Agreed

And Well Said. Yes, even good Presidents have done some very questionable things and we are still going on. There’s certainly reasons to be down about what we are witnessing, but all is not lost.

I remember the wise and encouraging words “ it’s always darkest, just before it goes pitch black.” Oh, maybe that’s not so encouraging......

[byronius]

4. I think this is one of the last gasps of fascism, and it's a poor showing.

As dark as it seems sometimes, as far as history goes this this is just a lucky burp in which a truly stupid or suicidal portion of our population was exploited by a secret enemy in an attempt to knock the US into chaos and clear the board for SPECTRE. It's important that they're not at all good at this. A pale shadow of Himmler's crew. I could do have done a better job of being a villain than these doofuses.

Truly a Black Swan event, though. A perfect storm.

But this slap in the face, this galling debridement of all that is human and good about this nation -- the Blue Wave isn't just coming in November, it's going to be growing in intensity with every coming election. The Russians have shown us our weak spots so clearly -- Citizens United, racism, misogyny, corporate shenanigans -- that they should have just launched their remaining nukes at us, because the oncoming tide's going to think about these things very seriously and fix these holes with vengeance, I believe.

For the rest of my life this story is going to be on my lips, your lips, our children's lips. The truth will out, probably only 90% of it but enough to learn the hard lessons.

Vengeance should be committed by writing good law. Dark money bad, gerrymandering bad, Obamacare good, Medicare For All better, and let's tax the Kochs into coal dust for their contribution to our fiasco. Oh, and P.S.: Russian Oligarchs need to start getting the plastic surgery and fake passports right now. Seriously. Plenty of former ICE agents should probably join them.

Yes We Can. The Price Of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance. Education Education Education. E Pluribus Unum and damn the Haters, full speed ahead to the stars.

[beachbum bob]

7. We take our country starting in nov...we let this happen and can correct it

Handwringing and complaining won't do it. Get involved locally and do the hard work to make it so

[dalton99a]

13. +1. GOTV

[marble falls]

8. Defeatism and to what ends?

[karynnj]

9. Domestic and international answers may be different

On the domestic side, the biggest problem will be their only real succeeds - the supreme court justice and lower judges who will make that branch more conservative for as long as 40 years, and the huge tax cut mostly for the wealthiest people. The tac cuts will create a huge amount of extra debt and will limit spending that should be done. Raising the taxes back is a tough vote.

Most other things were done administratively or through executive order. That can be changed back as soon as we win the presidency back. Even then, environmental damage done will remain. The horror of how we are treating immigrants may end, but they still will have endured these 4 years.

Internationally, I had thought that just as electing Obama instantly improved the international view of who we are, Trump's elected replacement will do the same. However, when I heard Samantha Power speak, she was less optimistic. Her view was that the trust of the world will take more time to be regained because -- we elected Trump, even though it was clear what kind of person he was. More was expected of the US.

[Guilded Lilly]

11. It is a gnawing fear. While we can advocate and march and

GOTV to help the healing Blue Wave wash away a lot of sludge, the damage to our societal conscience and human decency has taken a crushing wallop.

We didn’t get to this hideous state overnight and the current nightmare has been building for years, but the outlying ripples of damage are debilitating to the collective soul of America.

Once we’ve ousted the traitors and all the garbage they created, we’ll have a massive task as a society to regain an intelligent level of humanity that in some quarters has been enabled and supported to such a vomitus low, there doesn’t seem like a cure is possible for decades. Getting back to the point where we can incorporate progressive ideals seems so very far away sometimes.

Yeah. I hear you.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. At best it is going to take a very long time.

The damage that's been done to the economy, to the environment, to the safety net, to our relations with our allies, is not all going to magically go away, even if every single Democrat running for office gets elected this November. And that of course won't happen.

I think a lot of people are unreasonably optimistic about this November.