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Part of the issue is that elites have already bought into the coup. You don't eviscerate the US government without making sure the rich are on side first.
That's why so many CEOs publicly made gestures of support for trump just before and after the election.
The only way to stop the fascists who already have control of the courts, the government and the rich would be mass mobilization of a significant % of the population, or a military counter-coup.
People voted for the coup. People were warned, they were told it would happen, it was all documented in writing, they had a fucking website with the "we are going to do a coup" plan. People had a beta version 4 years ago. People still voted for the coup. And if you look at the world outside of lemmy, people don't care about the coup.
Less than 35% of the country voted for republicans in an election where PACs alone spent 5.6 billion dollars to lie and buy votes, and that doesn't include the amount spent on election interference by us and foreign oligarchs.
The 30% who didn't vote made a conscious decision, so I don't buy the 35% argument. You could also say that less than 33% of the country expressed their disagreement when asked.
“Democracy…If you can keep it”
it has been a fairly dry winter around all those golf course communities.
This is an emergency, and it demands emergency response from every American with power or influence. The window for effective resistance narrows with each passing day. History will judge harshly those who had the capacity to resist but chose instead to wait and see how things develop. The time to act is now, before the mechanisms that would allow effective resistance are completely dismantled.
The alarms are being sounded, and not just from this publication. If nobody that has even a shred of power does anything... well fuck.
What can I do? Shit posting hasn't helped.
What can I do?
Depends on how much you you value you freedom/life, cuz the things that need to be done could put both in jeopardy. Leave your cell phone at home.
Post harder?
Post through the pain
Look for protests to join. Call email call your reps. There's got to be a way to sue, but i don't know anything about that route.
My reps voicemails are completely full and they don’t reply to email. It’s a farce.
Send a letter, while the USPS is still around.
Send a postcard. A lot more letters just get tossed instead of opened because of security risks.
If all fails there's a funny amendment in the constitution literally for a situation exactly like this.
A lot of what is being done right now violates the Constituent. That doesn't matter unless someone enforces it, which is not happening. Congress should be responding, but the Republican majority are either in favor of the takeover or too afraid to oppose it. The courts have been helping some, but the Supreme Court (and many of the lower courts) have been taken over by people who support this.
Unless some congressional Republicans grow a conscience or a spine, there isn't anyone at the federal level who will defend the Constitution.
I think you missed which constitutional amendment they were referring to
If nobody that has a shred of power does anything
why would they start now?
Top comment from Mike Brock’s blog (where this diatribe came from):
Right now it feels we have a growing chorus of people raising alarm, but very few people proposing any specific actions that are commensurate with the scale of the crisis? I appreciate your work and I don’t mean this flippantly, but do you have any proposals more specific than “resist” or “do something”?
This comment is my thought exactly. Brock isn’t wrong, but he’s just blowing real hard and hoping the house falls down.
All this blog did was piss me of, but it didn’t point me in a direction.
(But thanks for posting, OP.)
Because there is still time for people in power to stop being cowed. That is what this is calling for: do something before it is too late to avoid it becoming an illegitimate government, with all that brings.
Is your interpretation that this post is intended for politicians to read and take action? If so what do you think they should do?
Like the commenter above us I'm at a loss. Short of resorting to force, there doesn't seem like an action the average person can take that would accomplish anything. Our politicians don't seem to be acting in proportion to the threat. And even if they were, Republicans have a (slim) majority. Even if you were to say we've reached the point where force is called for, against who?
Write to your elected representatives, organize protests, mutinies, unions and shut down the country. Read the constitution and look for parts that are meant as a safeguard against tyranny. Little bit of discomfort now beats a lifetime of oppression. Unless you wanna fuck around and find out what it was like living in a totalitarian regime. You're probs already on the death camp list for being on lemmy.
The 14th amendment prohibits people who did insurrection, but none of it counts if people don't enforce it.
Even if we did have an uprising, and won, there'd be maga hats for decades whining about how they did nothing wrong. The roots of this problem are deep.
Supposedly we have mechanisms to counter what's going on. The people in DC need to be pulling those lenders yesterday. Every person in politics should be fighting back.
If you're looking for advice on what citizens should do, that's not who the people sounding the are talking to.
Yeah. The instant this bullshit started happening, last week or ideally earlier, go to a federal judge. Ask for an injunction to allow you to physically put a stop to it, using some specifically named authorized law enforcement or military assets. Have something prepared for why it justifies that level of response, lord knows it wouldn't be hard to come up with.
It might not work. They might not grant the order. All kinds of things could happen if they did. But fucking try. That's the level that is required at this point. You can show up, with a physical piece of paper signed by an authorized judge and with deadly force at the ready, and if one of these tech-bro goons in a suit and a slick haircut bars the door with his 2 security people and tries to say "No that's not how the constitution works anymore, Trump said so," you'll have however-many trained military personnel whose ear will perk back up to some things they heard in their training.
I don't know, man. All kinds of things could go wrong. But if it doesn't work, at least you can say you fucking tried before moving on to something more drastic, or else getting out of the country while the getting is good. Going on TV, or threatening to use your debating even debating-er, is clearly a waste of everyone's time right now.
People who stand in the way of this type of thing are be risking jail and death.
They are. And by not standing in the way of it, they are also risking jail or death.
I won't pretend to know what the right answer is for any person. I can't answer it for them. I'm just saying what should happen. Haven't you seen "The Iron Giant"?
Yeah. The instant this bullshit started happening, last week or ideally earlier, go to a federal judge. Ask for an injunction to allow you to physically put a stop to it, using some specifically named authorized law enforcement or military assets. Have something prepared for why it justifies that level of response, lord knows it wouldn't be hard to come up with.
There were some lawsuits filed:
Doe v. OPM, Case No. 1:25-cv-234 (D.D.C.) was filed on January 27, seeking to disconnect the DOGE server from OPM systems. Today, February 4, there was a motion filed for a temporary restraining order.
Doe v. DOJ, Case No. 1:25-cv-325 (D.D.C.) was filed today, February 4. With the filing came a motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent the disclosure of the identities of the roughly 6000 FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases.
Maybe they're granted, maybe not. I hope they are. But even if these motions are denied, this will at least force the Trump administration to make public statements and representations about what they're doing. It's a semblance of transparency by making the Trump people stand up and justify this bullshit.
The founding fathers would have you join a mass of people outside the homes of the legislators demanding they take action or suffer consequences.
Its because its against TOS everywhere to say what must be done, and people are too afraid/divided/poor to do it.
The coup happened decades ago. They're now comfortable enough in their power that the mask can come off.
I hate that I'm typing this...
People need to start buying weapons right now. It's not that I think we're at the "take up arms" phase. It's that I think we should be ready before they keep us from being able to.
With all the shit they're pulling with federal databases, I expect people are going to start being added to NICS (background check database) for political reasons.
When you get a NICS denial, there's no explanation of why it's was denied, but you can't buy a gun.
And it will alert the FBI that you tried.
Yeah they will absolutely try to deny gun ownership based on political affiliation
If that happens. Theres going to be a huge influx of gun shows.
FYI, the "Gun Show Loophole" isn't a real thing. Dealers still have to fill out a 4473 and run a background check at gun shows. There's even a checkbox for it on the 4473.
What there is is a private sales loophole, where individuals can sell a gun on the secondary market.
That doesn't require a gun show.
Stop being pedantic. The only reason there is so many dealers at them is because of all the private sales in the first place.
How is it a coup when they said they were going to do this and the people still voted for them and their opposition handed over the keys and said "welcome home?" They didn't take over the system by force, they were given the red carpet treatment to a system they already had a significant control over via owning politicians and lobbyists.
Now that the mask is off, people want to act surprised that the same unelected billionaire class continues their dictatorship.
If this wasn't allowed, why haven't they been killed or put in prison like an average citizen who got caught stealing food or who happened to be walking down the street while being Black?
The Supreme Court said the president can do whatever they want, if Biden really believed he was a fascist and a threat to democracy why didn't he just have the CIA kill him like we do to democratically elected leaders all over the world?
Why didn't they take out all these billionaires like they do to children in Palestine?
It's incredibly striking that Americans have more or less been okay with business as usual as long as they can pretend it isn't happening. If you want to stop the billionaire class from using their unilateral control, you really missed your chance. A nation founded as a dictatorship of landowners, slavers, and capitalists, consistent through its entire history in upholding the interests of the bosses over the workers, and yet now it's a coup when they continue to exert their control over their state?
From Trump’s POV it’s actually a heist. He’s going to take everything that’s not bolted down.
Well who gave them the foot in the door? Some decisions are not so easy to walk off huh
Its going to take more than a protest march or office meeting with representatives to undo it. May as well face that fact and prepare