No Stupid Questions

The difference between recession and collapse is a bounce back on the other side.

Banking system is already vulnerable to real estate prices. Commercial real estate has been in zombie mode with banks hiding their losses on the sector. The US government has already unsustainable debt levels that can't afford major adventures or catastrophes. Adventures include mass deportations or wars. The problem with austerity measures for the non-oligarchs is strong degrowth and crime from multiplier effects.

While Trump is likely to be extremely divisive and angering socially, it is economics and geopolitics that will collapse the US. Deregulating banks is letting the fractional reserve system use a riskier lower fraction. Biden was very good at strengthening the subjugation of US colonies, but he pushed away majority of the world. There is major risk that Trump pushes away colonies without making the world more trusting of US. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/requiem-for-an-empire.html

What destroys America is the hubris of thinking it is winning, and that it can win over the world. Fighting China instead of getting cheap stuff is a mistake. Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake. Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won't do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what's left.

Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn't avert the path to collapse in any way.

The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.

It's the point of no return for something, but I suspect there's still a future to fight for. Anyone pushing a full doomer view is trying to suppress you. In case the worst happens, you should try to build a community around yourself and support other people. Join a mutual aid group if you can (or start one). If you grow produce or something, talk to your neighbors and exchange resources.

If we build a strong foundation, nothing that happens can break us. In the worst case, they'll try to break us and break themselves upon us. We need to be strong so we can come back stronger in the future.

Yeah, I think this could be the end of free and fair elections in the U.S., and there's no coming back from that without a revolution. Don't get me wrong, I don't think most of us will directly be killed by this change; our lives will just be shittier. It'll be like living in Russia. Given how utterly incompetent the administration is looking, and the things they say they're going to do (mass deportation of a significant part of our workforce, blanket tariffs, gutting social safety-nets), we may speed-run an economic and societal collapse. That could sow the seeds for a horrible and bloody revolution.

Or, maybe I'm wrong and the important institutions will somehow hold against a christo-fascist party controlling all branches of the federal government and a president with immunity. If there are still are free and fair elections, then congress could block a lot of things in 2026, and start repairing some of the damage in 2028.

Still, it does not bode well that the U.S. elected these people in the first place, and at best, the U.S. will slowly crumble for decades.

So i agree that the second Trump administration is going to suck in most every way possible, like the first one but worse because they're prepared this time.

BUT

I think people overrate a government's ability to influence the conditions in a given country. I think a country is made what it is by history, geography, technology, sociology, ideology, economics, and the accumulation of small decisions over centuries.

If the Trump administration wants to end democracy in the US, or if a hypothetical based administration were to attempt a switch to ranked choice voting, both ideals would be impossible to implement because our ideals are limited by practical reality. Both would fail regardless of being good or bad changes, because radical change is really hard when the conditions aren't met for it, especially when it's opposed by the rest of the country. If the country just isn't ready to transition to fascism right now, there's not much that Trump can do to make it.

We talk a lot about how powerful people changed the world, but i think far more often they're just the embodiment of a societal trend, and they couldn't change the world if they weren't. Change isn't done by powerful people but deeper movements in humanity, with powerful people riding them like a wave.

As to where the deeper movements in humanity are leading us right now, i refuse to guess, trying to predict the future is the best way to look like an idiot

No. There were two ways the trump admin was going to go. He was either going to run an effective fascist regime, or become the ringmaster of the largest dipshit fucknugget circus. Seeing how things are going so far (and he isn't even the president yet) it's going to be the latter.

Sure, there will be long term damage that is going to take years, if not lifetimes of hard work and good policy to undo, but it can be undone. Assuming 2024 was a wake up call and people vote more effectively instead of throwing their voice away at propped up Russian disinfo candidates.

Absolutely not. It’s the moment where everyone digs in harder.

Ask anyone with skin darker than yours, or whose sexuality or gender was once or still is illegal. You don’t fuckin give up

No. Of course not!

Failing to Reject the Reagan Revolution, and mass embrace of the Jack Welsh style "trickle down" economics lie, by BOTH parties was the point of no return, almost half a century ago at this point. This car was already totaled.

Citizens United years later was just a victory lap by the owners pissing on the long dead corpse of the dream of societal equity.

Trump is just another symptom of that intransigent reality we all live in.

I'd say hope for collapse, as painful as it is, to have any hope for a better life for our children, maybe, but oligarch greed made climate change and at this point inevitable ecological collapse in the coming decades means there really isn't hope for a better society/civilization for generations(if they eventually develop technologies to better cope with the new hellish climate reality) if at all.

We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.

Nah.

That was Reagan. You're about 40 years late.

its going to be a shit 32 years.

Remember that time we as a country condoned owning people as property? No matter how bad shit gets in the next four years, there's no point of no return

It's going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it's clearly dead no hope.

It might be. Only time, and the actions of Americans themselves, will tell.

It's the biggest crisis in my lifetime. But we have survived other crisises, some-fucking-how, so maybe we'll luck our way out of this one too.

God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

• Otto Von Bismarck