America 2025: What Guard Rails If Any Are You Most Counting On?

Other: Infighting among the assholes

Oh good one.

Academia? When higher education has more turnover than ever before and charter schools are more corrupt than the healthcare industry?

Never underestimate bureaucratic inertia.

^^^

The certainty of death for us all sooner or later

No rats in a sack option, pfft.

Voted states pushing back because I know my home state will.

Liberating invasion by a neighbouring country, to be commemorated in the future as "C-Day".

I would count on inertia and peoples’ distaste for change

I guess my vote is "are you fucking kidding me"
Otherwise, them fucking it up all by themselves is my preferred option, with the opposition / media acting as commentators and stoking the fire. The earliest the better for maximum pressure by midterms.

Incompetence/infighting. There is no political opposition to speak of, not as long as Chuck Schumer is still alive. And the media have no role to play, because Republicans no longer give a fuck what the "mainstream" press thinks or says. So basically they can only destroy themselves. Fortunately, they're pretty good at that.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/2024/march/local-governments-us-number-type

In the most recent Census of Governments, which was conducted in 2022, the Census Bureau counted 90,837 governments in the U.S. In addition to the federal government, the 50 state governments and the government of Washington, D.C., there were 3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other special-purpose local governments.

not much. i live in a pretty safe place unless an earthquake hits and we get punished for being a blue state, but i'm not counting on anything. I'm sure infighting will delay some big-ticket items while everyday evil shit happens like clockwork. The only thing I hold onto is the knowledge that nothing is certain and strange things can happen. Who would have predicted what June 2020 would look like on Jan 1 of that year?

Almost none of Trump's appointees understand politics or governance. Chaos, incompetence and infighting will leave a huge mess for his successor, but most of the structure intact. The voters will remain as confused as ever about how the power structure operates and will continue to facilitate dysfunction by demanding instant solutions. Inertia will guide us until entropy reigns supreme. Please clap.

Reading about the history of the French Revolution — it’s actually an interesting analogy even if the actual ideology is way different, I feel like “the horrible people” view themselves as liberators and revolutionaries. Incompetence and infighting were a major part of the French failure. But I also think (in this context) that state governments (and local to a lesser extent) will play a major role, much as they did in France, when many were used to following their own customs and had different economies.

I am not “in the weeds” enough to be able to point to what French province = California.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The result was predestined.

Other = you will all be fine.

Other = you will all be fine.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, January 2, 2025 4:14 PM

other = ilx poster xyzzzz__

Reading about the history of the French Revolution — it’s actually an interesting analogy even if the actual ideology is way different, I feel like “the horrible people” view themselves as liberators and revolutionaries. Incompetence and infighting were a major part of the French failure. But I also think (in this context) that state governments (and local to a lesser extent) will play a major role, much as they did in France, when many were used to following their own customs and had different economies.

― sarahell

one of my obnoxious pundit-isms is referring to america as "the ancien regime".

one can talk about infighting and incompetence, to me, though, i think it's worth pointing out just how difficult america is to rule at this point

all of those guard rails they've taken down... the funny thing is, those guard rails were always helping them, protecting them, a lot more than they were actually working to my benefit. i was persuaded, convinced, that they were acting in the best interest of "everyone", including me. i was on the inside of the guard rails, on this side of the boundaries, and once those guard rails were taken down, i crossed over to the other side.

i don't think of in-fighting and incompetence as guard-rails, personally. america is supposed to _do things_. increasingly, the people in charge of america aren't able to do those things. i've read the wikipedia page for _this war of mine_.

i'm not sure what scares me more - the remote likelihood that Project 2025 or whatever will be able to accomplish its goals, or the far more likely possibility that the trump administration won't be able to do _anything meaningful at all_.

What meaningful things are you hoping they'll do?

Other = you will all be fine.

The result was predestined.

lol yes I knew that would win. I voted for it myself tbh.

What meaningful things are you hoping they'll do?

― Muad'Doob (Moodles)

provide postal mail service
make cost-sharing payments to state healthcare programs

shit like that
the federal government does quite a lot actually, even beyond federal-level programs like medicare. most state governments can't exactly step in and take over if the federal government stops doing those things, particularly since i don't exactly expect that the federal government will stop collecting tax revenue

provide postal mail service

― Kate (rushomancy)

like i spent all day today trying to mail a letter

can't mail letters from my apartment complex

the nearest mailbox is too far to me to walk, and the weather outside is terrible

didn't manage to do it

got a friend says she'll come over tomorrow to pick up the letter and mail it

hopefully she does, i'm trying to get the gender marker updated on my passport while it's still legal

i don't expect to actually be able to get out of the country if i need to

i don't feel like there's anywhere else that, like, i could live a better life than here

america leads, other countries follow

when indian fascists go after muslims they use george bush's rhetoric to justify it

i see friends hoping canada will "invade", lol, they're going to put their own fascists in power this year, next year, soon enough

i got canadian friends. being trans in canada isn't really that much better than being trans in the city i'm in

the president-elect tried to "pacify" portland once, in 2020, sent people in unmarked black cars to kidnap people off the street

the president denied it until people started talking about it and documenting it on twitter

well

i guess the fascists solved that problem

there are stencils all over town here

"EVERYTHING WILL BE OK"

we say it because we need to believe it

not because it's true