rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

what are the things you're going to do personally to prepare for this eventuality and if there's nothing but spread alarmist online why is it useful to speculate about unlikely things? just to upset people? if it served a purpose i could understand it but steeling yrself for the impossible isn't a purpose.

yes, this is an alarm, i am raising the alarm. ding fucking ding, this is it, federal forces are out in our streets, tear-gassing our citizens, kidnapping people off the street into unmarked vehicles. go ahead and contribute to a "bail fund" if you want but the official word i hear is that the people they are kidnapping off the streets are not being arrested. go ahead and file all the lawsuits you want, every night the president's troops are still here, tear-gassing people, shooting people in the face, and they are not leaving. last night was a slow night. tonight is the weekend and it will not be as calm as it used to be.

maybe i am crying wolf or maybe there is a fucking wolf at the fucking door.

btw mordy that's a really cold way to look at things, the way you described that, "people who dream up doomsday scenarios to justify their anxieties + depression". i mean, i could also look at someone who always says the world is fine and attach a couple of my own favorite mental health issues to it, but i wouldn't, for what i previously thought were obvious reasons. not FP-worthy or anything like that, but just realize every time you say something like that there are dozens of people with the conditions you're talking about reading it, wondering why that got thrown in there

btw mordy that's a really cold way to look at things

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone)

thanks karl. i am not going to say the word that i thought of upon reading mordy's post.

Mordy I think you've landed on something that is ultimately at the core of a lot of these ilx arguments, e.g. the whole "don't be pessimistic" thing that some are very sensitive to

broadly speaking, no, I'm not concerned about "upsetting" people. Aren't we already upset? I think the speculation is valuable in raising awareness, for the same reason talking to family and friends about any issues we think are important is valuable. To remind each other to be vigilant.

I don't think it's inflammatory, if that's what you mean.

I also don't think Trump is going to refuse to step down. But I'm not going allow myself tp be one of the people who can claim to be "shocked" if he doesn't.

not FP-worthy

disagree

i suffer from depression + anxiety and the reason i threw them in there is bc i know that they can distort the way things appear, and bc i think ilx political discourse is particularly bad and probably they share some responsibility for its state of affairs.

personally i think the institutions of ilx are strong, never been stronger

kind getting really annoyed at everyone always talking about how they're growing weaker, like it's inevitable or something

i'm glad we have this chamber for scared ppl to reinforce their neuroses it's v healthy i'm glad this is my community i don't regret making it my home at all i don't wonder every day why i still post here at all or respond to its psychotic delusions always be vigilant the enemy is at the gates your fear is justified if anyone tells you otherwise they are probably the enemy trying to lull you into complacency rage rage fight fight

that's the stuff

now trump's not going to win

yeah it's not even the right thread for these speculations about him suspending the election since it's the gonna win thread not the not even gonna have elections thread

How much of that anxiety and depression stems from 'within' and how much from 'without'? Psychopathology is shot through with politics fwiw (to what extent, is the question).

calling people worried abt a peaceful transition of power under Donald fucking Trump "neurotic" is...something else

anyway the enemy is not "at the gates" it's in our fucking city streets right now

god I wish the IT guy would hurry up and fix my computer so I could get back to work

most of you should probably stop reading the news it's not good for you. you think being attuned to the daily outrages and doomscrolling is making you more vigilant but it's maladaptive behavior.

there's already a thread for that kind of discussion, mordy. you made it: The Eschatology of ILX

the way you're reviving that conversation on other threads, like this one - what are the words? it seems vigilant but maladaptive

stop assuming it's "not good for" people to read the news, this just reads like pure projection. Maybe it's not good for you, which is fine.

I actually have bigger problems closer to home than Trump right now, this is not what's jeopardizing my mental health.

Anyway it's our country going up in flames that's damaging, not "reading about it" or talking about it ffs

it's our country going up in flames

lmao we are NOT this lucky

This country survived 1968-1972. But that was pre-Twitter, so I understand everyone's despair.

"lmao we are NOT this lucky

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.)"

give it time, simon, i've seen what's going on in your country - you will be as "lucky" as we are soon enough

"most of you should probably stop reading the news it's not good for you. you think being attuned to the daily outrages and doomscrolling is making you more vigilant but it's maladaptive behavior.

― Mordy"

mordy i feel for you about your depression and anxiety, and i am really sorry if this is making you feel bad. if you need to step the fuck away from this thread step the fuck away, i'm sorry we don't yet have a dedicated thread for a literal military fascist takeover and that i've repurposed this one to complain about how we don't have one, i'm not sure that seeing a thread about that on the front page would help anybody else feel better personally so i'm not starting one.

you do what you need to do to take care of yourself, you do what you need to do to stay alive, but what i need to do right now as someone who is in a state of extreme anxiety is _not_ be quiet about it _not_ take a fucking benzo about it, i need to fucking talk about this, i need to tell people this is real, this is really fucking happening, and i'm sorry if i seem to be presenting with symptoms of mental illness for doing so, i'm the fucking canary you have here.

hey I always say Canadian politics is just American politics on a variable time delay

hyperventilation or complicity: your two options, people!

I choose the third option. I choose to SING!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ROqhIv17Q

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eLqyRS8z0-Y/maxresdefault.jpg

This country survived 1968-1972. But that was pre-Twitter, so I understand everyone's despair.

I hear this kind of thing a lot a lot and am genuinely puzzled by it. Is the idea that every period of tumult poses the same existential threat?

That things get worse and then better again, in cycles, is not an argument against entropy or deepening trends with greater consequences.

Anyway it's super condescending.

hey I always say Canadian politics is just American politics on a variable time delay

Simon is our resident Canadian catastrophist tbf.

this will be a one-post derail I promise, but: Francophones are more than capable of being (and electing) reactionaries

Really, though, our politics are quite different from yours, although I think a non negligible segment of the (primarily anglophone) population is jealous of the excitement generated by the US's interminable series of culture wars.

xp et comment !

we're not gonna be as lucky as we were in '08 when that next financial crisis hits lemme tell ya

anyway I don't think the American *or* Canadian projects will see a full institutional collapse anytime soon much as they richly deserve to!

Not sure ours deserves it as richly but ymmv.

sorry for revive, i didnt mean to cause tsuris

oh, sorry, "simon" is such a british name to me that i always read you as british, predictions of inevitable doom rescinded for the time being

i have no idea what's going on in your country other than, i don't know, graft or some shit

Mineral wealth etc

i have no idea what's going on in your country

Subliminal non-beefs the rest of the world can safely ignore. You know, the usual.

i have no idea what's going on in your country other than, i don't know, graft or some shit

we probably have more Nazis per capita!

I hear this kind of thing a lot a lot and am genuinely puzzled by it. Is the idea that every period of tumult poses the same existential threat?

― singular wolf erotica producer (Hadrian VIII)

like i wanna be fair to everybody pushing back against the stuff i'm saying, this is fucking horrifying stuff, this violates pretty much everything i've been taught about right and wrong and i gotta imagine other people are not immune to these concerns. and one of the ways i deal with stuff i'm not willing to accept is, you know, by pushing back, in any way i can, and if that means pushing back against the credibility of the person saying it because i can't meaningfully engage with what they're saying, i'll do it. i don't think it's right or fair for me to do that, i try not to, but you know, we are not any of us in exactly a great position right now.

it takes time to come to terms with, and, you know, it's a rapidly evolving situation, we don't have a lot of time right now to process all this shit, and so i'm pushing pretty hard. but i am, unreliable or no, i'm just a goddamn messenger, and pushing me away or rationalizing it or trying to contextualize it, you know, it's trying to turn the intolerable into the tolerable, because if you can't change the situation, you change yourself to adapt, right? you change yourself because you need to survive.

i don't know how to make this tolerable. this is bad and it is worse every day. my only hope is that the situation will change, and saying "wait till november" is not something i can, at this point, take any comfort in.

we probably have more Nazis per capita!

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.)

maybe more who will _admit_ to it.

sorry for revive, i didnt mean to cause tsuris
― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Friday, July 24, 2020 12:09 PM (eight minutes ago)

2020, man. The hits just keep coming!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQZqJ_-WAO8

to frighten people even more

That Politico piece basically summed up a number of other articles from the past few months and synthesized them, so that's fine.

I'm with kate here. What's happening right now is what people like me have been warning about since 9/11, and even now, we're called loony-tunes by people who just want to ignore the fascist violence that's being deployed on our city streets.

sorry for revive, i didnt mean to cause tsuris

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius)

you ain't causing tsuris here morbz, you're good

Well, I learned a new word today (tsuris).

same!

here's the problem that I have with the "Trump isn't going to step aside" narrative. Not talking about those in this thread necessarily, but when I hear this from people I know, it's never a "this COULD happen", it's a "you watch, this is GOING TO HAPPEN". But you would think if someone firmly believed that we were about to have our democracy dissolved, even if they didn't have outright solutions, they'd be brainstorming and loudly barking about things we needed to start doing. but they never do - it's an exercise in faux-nihilism, either for someone who gets their rocks off on these doomsday scenarios, or someone that wants an excuse not to fight the Trump machine.

Those that do want us to react to the 'impending threat', well...what can you do in advance to prevent this from happening? Ask Trump if he'll step down if he loses? Even if he says he will, he's not held to that. Ask other politicians if they'll embolden him to do it? Nobody will admit it - and other Republican politicians have already said it's absurd to think he'll try to stay in office. Even if they're lying, you can't get them on the record admitting that.

It's important to note people used to say the same thing about Obama - hell, I even had a conservative call JOHN KERRY "dictator material" to me once. The only difference between Obama and Trump is that while Obama obviously continued the expansion of the Executive branch's powers and did many things that were unpopular with Congress and our constituents (Affordable Care Act, drones, etc), he did not attack the rule of law or politicize independent departments. he was very concerned with "fairness" for better or worse.

There is no doubt that Trump has indeed done many things that come from the autocrat playbook, and he's attempted to erode the rule of law, slowly. But - as bad as he's been, and as stressed out as he makes us, how many times has he fallen flat on his face and caved because of leftist-driven blowback? Very often. He backed out of holding the convention at his own property which was largely Democrat-led noise, and the whole familial separation thing was largely Democratic-lead noise to where he was forced to change his own policy - even if they continued to separate families after at times, he publicly walked it back.

Hell, he even got beaten back on invoking the Insurrection Act just a month ago by his own cabinet. And then there's all of the times he's proclaimed he would do something, only to forget and not do it, or to put it in people's minds so they forget and think he did it even though he didn't.

He's definitely stretched the rule of law, but while he has definitely broken laws and legitimized it by claiming "different legal interpretation", that's hardly a new thing for a President (look at the average Presidential signing statement). Most of the time, Trump and his crew are doing things legally, but doing them in ways they weren't intended. Which doesn't make them any less fascist/autocratic because of his intent, but still "technically" legal.

Refusing to step down would be an illegal action that isn't on par with anything he's done to date thus far, AND, would require a Machiavellian level of scheming that we're going to entrust this dementia fuck to pull off?

Plus, much like in 2016, Trump voters came home only when his numbers improved mid-October and they saw maybe the election wasn't a lost cause, because Clinton had to face her own October surprise. GOP Senators are seeing the Cook Political Report from yesterday that suggests the Dems are now poised to take back the Senate. People who were previously safe now have their jobs in jeopardy. As the GOP operates on purely "what will keep me employed?", do we really think GOP Congress is going to aid him in a coup, or that the military will join him in some Gilead-ian uprising?

nah. I think what's more likely is that he claims he was "robbed" and that the election was "rigged". maybe even files a legal challenge to a few states' results, which don't go anywhere. and then quietly steps down, with teh narrative that he "didn't lose", but that the election is stolen from him. he can finally quit doing the job he hates and not be seen as a quitter.

Because ffs, if he really believed millions of ineligible people voted, even though he won in 2016, why would he have allowed his Election Commission fold so easily? Because he only cares about the narrative.

I don't think getting a hernia worrying about this shit helps much because we're reacting to something that isn't happening and just adding to our own already over-the-top stress levels and that weakens us come November. I'm not going to waste time worrying about it.

What he's doing now in Portland is sick, but...from what I've read from most legal experts, it's testing the limits of the law, but is generally within the law to have federal officers protect federal buildings. Some of the extralegal stuff they're doing with the illegal detainments, etc, they will immediately pass off to individual irresponsibility and throw those agents under teh bus after they get fired/arrested.

that's about the level of illegality/fascism Trump does. If he was going to send tanks into the streets to run over Democratic vehicles and houses, he'd have long done it by now. He's a coward.

so I'm not going to worry about whether he will step down or not. I am, however, going to worry about what's happening in Portland spreading to other cities and throwing gasoline on an already raging inferno. I hope Philly DA makes good on his promise to arrest federal agents.

For the record I didn’t call anybody loony-tunes

The only difference between Obama and Trump

obv "only" shouldn't be in there, yikes