The point of no return

[SHRED]

Link to tweet

[annabanana]

1. I wonder how long it will take to get things back after we throw ALL of these

Here comes Jesus, nevermind those Kochs crowd out of our house?

[Irish_Dem]

2. How can other countries trust us again? Some of this damage is permanent.

Even if we get a good, decent president, an evil idiot can undo everything the next election.
And we let Putin hack into our voting system.
We have a congress who cannot lead, and treats its citizens badly.

What is there left to admire about the US?

[BadgerMom]

4. Germany is trusted and admired. So is Japan.

The housecleaning will have to be energetic and complete. I hope we are planning our rebuilding efforts now. I know I have thoughts. Surely our leaders must, too.

I am in quite a funk today--Slough of Despond-level. I fear what the Alabama Senate election will do to me. But, by god, I'm going to go down fighting the bastards at every opportunity. And, I hope we have a chance to clean up this mess. And I hope we will have learned from it. And I hope we can regain our democracy because I don't think we own it now.

Resist.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Excellent points BadgerMom. If they can do it, so can we. But they had to suffer total humiliation

and defeat first. Maybe that is what it will take for America to wake up and do the right thing.

There is going to have to be some major changes that last for a long period of time.

Alabama is only one state, do not despair. And they will humiliate themselves for a long
time if they elect a known child molester.

We the people have not had much say in how our government functions for some time.
I hope that can change.

[BadgerMom]

7. Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.

I have thought for a while that our hubris--or that of Republicans--has helped get us where we are. "We're No.1!" "American exceptionalism!" So many are so certain we were meant to be at the top of the heap that they don't consider what their votes actually do, the harm they beget. I hate it, but I do think being forced down from that high horse could be useful. The problem is that people will be hurt in that process and it's likely to be the poor, the disabled, the at-risk rather than the Kochs, Mercers, Waltons, Anschutzs, et al.

[Irish_Dem]

16. Yes I think there is going to be a big dip in American's standing that may be good.

Other countries can rise to a higher level, Germany, France, Canada.
China.

A leveling of power around the globe.

If the margins have to go, I sincerely hope it is the elite margin that goes, not the vulnerable.

[world wide wally]

21. My question is whch side will the former USA stand on?

[Irish_Dem]

23. Good question. Right now we appear to be a Russian client state, and on the side of the wealthy.

Where we will land is a good question.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. And if you haven't done so already,

read In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson. It's about the first American ambassador to Hitler's Germany. William Dodd, a history professor at the University of Chicago got the job because no one else higher up in the food chain wanted it. He did turn out to be a good, competent ambassador.

And yes, this book shows how the entire country fell down the rabbit hole.

[BannonsLiver]

8. JUst ordered it. Sounds like a book I will devour.

Thanks for the rec.

[Paka]

20. I recently read the Larson book.

I highly recommend it. It's a real page turner, although you will have to lay it down now and then to deal with the reality of what you are reading.

[Calista241]

6. I have trouble taking stuff like this seriously.

People on the original Democratic Underground said that about W Bush. 90% of us couldn't even bring ourselves to say Bush and just used an * whenever they referred to him in a post. And yes, he was an idiot and incompetent; but we're still here, and we had 2 terms of Obama.

[annabanana]

10. Nonetheless.. Bush was an American political animal,

from a political family.
He understood, and largely adhered to our political norms. After 9/11 he clearly said that our argument was NOT with the Muslim religion.

I disagreed ENTIRELY with his policies, thought they were wrong-headed and possibly dangerous. But at least they were policies, misguided, but still policies. He was not attempting to "deconstruct the administrative state" (which is just a synonym for destroying our nonpartisan civil service.)

This guy is a completely different thing. He is truly using Hitler's playbook.

If our schools had spend nearly as much energy on History as they have on football we might not be in this fix.

[world wide wally]

22. Also, we had never been taken over by a foreign country before

Trump fixed that!

[Kimchijeon]

11. I remember that but at least they threw shitty scraps

To poor / working class, like the tax "rebate" or whatever. These days, its just full frontal rape & pillage, they don't give a shit. I'd say it's way fucking worse.

[Atticus]

12. I was here then and to compare the disgust we felt about W to the gut-wrenching fear

we now feel for the very survival of this nation as we know it due to Trump is, to say the least, "not accurate".

Trump is not just incompetent, he's seriously mentally ill. He's not just an idiot, he's a Nazi wannabe.

"Stuff like this" is serious as a heart attack. If you can't see that, more's the pity. Why are you here?

[Saviolo]

13. And there is a scar right in New York City that happened on his watch.

Because of his administration's bungling of evidence presented to them, they failed to protect lives of American citizens from a terrorist attack, and then used that terrorist attack to justify killing countless brown people not even remotely attached to it.

I've heard it all before. "We survived Reagan, we'll survive this." You know who didn't survive Reagan? Gay people with AIDS. The administration refused to acknowledge or act on the HIV outbreak that killed countless (mostly) homosexual men in the United States because they didn't care about homosexual men.

People taking the streets with nazi flags and screaming nazi slogans have killed someone in the streets of the United States of American *THIS YEAR* so, yes. There is a point of no return. Let's not even get into the fact that lax environmental policies since Bush have led to several points of no return on atmospheric CO2. Let's also not forget about the dozens and dozens of extreme right wing judges given lifetime appointments under Trump and McConnell that will affect laws in the USA for a generation at least.

Will we still be here? Sure, most of us. Heather Heyer won't. Tamil Rice won't. Sandra Bland won't.

[maxsolomon]

14. Whistling past the Graveyard.

Bush was still part of the "old order". He didn't seek to dismantle the Government. They still thought it was necessary to put forth a plausible explanation for their actions.

This Administration just lies to your face and dares you to do anything about it. Trump's "Genius" is to realize that the propaganda/media industry and brainwashed voter base that the GOP built was ripe for a takeover by someone with absolutely no scruples, ethics, or shame. The Truth has been murdered.

American Fascism won't be like Mussolini's Italy, or Nazi Germany, and it won't be like Putin's Russia. But it will be Fascism.

[Calista241]

18. Fully 1/2 of this board was absolutely convinced there was no possible way

W Bush would transition the Presidency to Obama, a black man, in a clean and orderly manner.

My issue with this hysteria, is that most of the electorate isn’t in the same place. And with us being at freak out level 10, that doesn’t fascilitate rational communication, and really convincing people to consider our party in the next election.

Most people I know think Trump is a entitled, they wish he’d get off Twitter, and they wish his voice wasn’t on every TV set every night. But they don’t see the end of the world coming. And the economy is humming along.

We’d better have an extensive economic growth platform when we run in 2020, and not rely on the “I’m not Donald Trump” methodology.

[maxsolomon]

25. Fair enough - I was not one of those hysterics, however.

if the economy is still humming along, an "economic growth platform" won't overcome Authoritarianism. Americans vote their fears, and the GOP is all about fear and resentment.

I'm not being hysterical. I'm jaundiced.

[Honeycombe8]

9. I still have hope, but I tend to agree with your Grandma, that the signs are there.

First big sign: No one in power is stopping it.

[Grammy23]

17. At least once every day I think WHY is no one doing a damn thing to stop this.

I have tried to keep up. I have invested far too much time trying to understand it. The parts are constantly moving. The players come and go. It is confusing by design. The more I learn, the more frightened and angry I become. Instead of just thinking tRump is our problem , it is dawning on me that there are many bad guys in this coup. Yes, I think it was a coup that happened last year and they are slowly putting the pieces in place to accomplish their goals.

I have a hard time figuring out who all of the players are....the good guys vs. the bad guys. As I said, they are making it complicated by design. That keeps us off balance. This has got to be terrorizing to people in the know in DC and journalists who understand way more than I do. Is it dawning on the media elites that we’ve been had? And that is why we’re seeing and hearing stories about tRump’s dementia? Is that his out? The way he will escape punishment?

Many, many questions. Few firm answers.

[jalan48]

15. There's another post on DU now about Trump wanting to start a privatized version of the CIA.

This is a big step toward Fascism. A parallel organization separate from our government with the power to spy and perform other secret activities.

[Mountain Mule]

19. It is VERY spooky

Our democracy is being shredded in front of our eyes.

[RandomAccess]

24. Another important reference

They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer

Compelling excerpt here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html