https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dictator-trump-troops-border-1234929369/
In his first term, Trump’s plans to send troops to “war” on the border were thwarted. This time, he’s talking about sending up to 300,000 there
People aren't fucking paying attention. I don't mean the 30% or so who are MAGA die-hards. I mean literally every other person who considers voting for Trump. So many of them don't even pay attention to the news that they aren't even aware that this is a horse race where, as bad as one contender can be, the other one is a fucking Nazi.
No, they're paying attention. They're voting for the fascists on purpose, because they will only hurt the people who they feel deserve it, and then America will be available to the right kind of people.
A vast number of Americans do not really pay much attention to elections until the last minute, if at all.
Many are religious who just feel that the party represents their values more and will vote blindly without thinking of the consequences.
Yup. Lots of pro-lifers, 2A nuts, etc only vote based on the one topic that they’re firmly entrenched in. They don’t care about the fascism, as long as their one issue is protected.
The thing no one talks about is that these voters who want to hurt others feel that way because of a perceived hardship or wrong done to them. They are also told that immigrants and "others" who aren't like the voter, that's the real cause of the hardships and problems.
If those voters would ever learn that the people who hurt them are also the same ones who are telling them who to hurt there would be a fantastic reckoning. Everyone can be happy except for the psychopaths turning folks against each other.
Also, people who lean left need to get off their asses and vote. About half of eligible voters actually vote, and slightly more eligible voters lean more left than right. If half of those left leaning non-voters voted, imagine how many races would be won handily by Democrats.
To me these are the people who need to be paying attention and doing their civic duty.
I don't mean the 30% or so who are MAGA die-hards. I mean literally every other person who considers voting for Trump.
I don't think anyone is on the fence at this point. If anyone is even considering voting for Trump they agree with at least some of his agenda, which is entirely batshit insane.
If they find any of his qualities or policies even the slightest bit appealing they are part of the maga crowd. There's absolutely nothing moderate about him, there's no room for middle ground.
As much as I hate to say it, I still think there are people so clueless as to be voting for him for what they think are "good" economic policies (for their own 401K or the price of groceries/gas). They are so low-info that they think people are just upset with him for "mean tweets" or the like.
But how do those people ignore that the economy was a mess with Trump, disease rampant, open violence, etc? And the economy has been much improved under Biden and life has relatively calmed down? Is it all FOXnews and its wannabes?
Im going to vote for Biden for obvious reasons, but I really wish he and his team would stop wholesale lying about the economy right now. The college I worked at went under about 4 months ago. Over half of the colleagues I was close with have not found another job yet.
We all have degrees, and are going to have to resort to working fast food.
The economy is still in the shitter. Avarage Americans are insanely poor. The housing market is still owned by corpos and the bubble is bigger than ever.
Biden didn't make it much worse but he sure didn't fix anything.
There is a contigent of people who are accelerationists, hate everything Trump stands for, but want to vote for him to burn it all down and start anew.
I am not one of those people... that seems like playing with strange alchemical fire.
Those people don't understand that it's really hard to start building something new from underneath all of the rubble.
It's like starting a fire in your house and then hiding in the basement.
They don’t care. They just don’t want to vote for a Dem. Since the Dems are commies, devil worshippers or whatever the latest meme that hit these voters’ Facebook timeline tells them to think.
every other person who considers voting for Trump
.....AND those who will vote for a third party candidate
Good thing you guys learned from 2015 and not giving him 10x more press coverage than other candidates. No way that could go wrong. It's not like there is no such thing as bad publicity...
An older relative is here for the holidays and was watching some YouTube yesterday. Somehow, there exists a 30 minute which talked all about what a genius Trump was and how he doesn't like electric vehicles. Just this endless stream of "Donald Trump visionary policies on..." and his brilliant predictions that were all true. No details, references, or a critical thought about how Trump probably doesn't know that there's anything inside the parts of the car he can't see.
Edit - what I am trying to point out is that this goes way beyond traditional news outlets. I don't think this guy watches a lot of news. I do think he considers himself well informed. We are Canadian, BTW. He's into cars (and an incredible mechanic as well as being a generally good person I enjoy spending time with) so this is on his feed.
He’s into cars (and an incredible mechanic as well as being a generally good person I enjoy spending time with) so this is on his feed.
Which aspect of cars is he into and which Youtube channels does he watch? I'm curious if there are any particular channels that have led him down the "pewdiepipeline" and what differences there might be between my feed and his that have spared me from any overt exposure to the same garbage.
Sorry, working and not going to dig in that deep :) but seems like he is into restoration of classic cars from the muscle car era back to the 1930s. I am not into cars at all.
That part can't completely change simply because the mechanics of it are too fundamental and too blunt. A Presidential candidate who is the front runner for one of the two parties saying they want to deploy troops is news. It's newsworthy. They can't just ignore it and if they did they would be doing the news anymore.
It's the same as all the way back in 2016 - after Trump won the election, the NYT published a lengthy, complicated story detailing his many conflicts of interest which probably took a team or reporters months to do. And on the same day it was published Trump tweeted that there had been "3 million fraudulent votes" (still waiting on the evidence of that btw).
That move drowned out the conflict of interest story by a lot, and more than that - the president elect saying shit like that is actually genuinely news. The news media can't just ignore it.
They've gotten a bit better over the years at dealing with him . Now they'll say stuff like "Trump asserted yet again, without evidence, that he won the 2020 election" instead of just regurgitating his nonsense without context. But them ignoring Trump isn't the answer.
The problem here is that many Americans want this guy as president the first place.
It’s the same as all the way back in 2016 - after Trump won the election, the NYT published a lengthy, complicated story detailing his many conflicts of interest which probably took a team or reporters months to do.
There's still plenty of room for criticism of the media, though -- like the fact that the piece you mention was published after the election instead of before it, for instance.
It's absolutely maddening. I'm not especially sharp about politics and the media, but in 2015 I was on Twitter and FB saying, "Stop fucking saying his name. This is how he's going to get elected." People can't not talk about him. Even if the story is about what a stupid, evil loser he is, you're giving him power by talking about him all the time.
He didnt get elected because of coverage. He was elected because the conservatives in America hated Democrats because of misinformation surrounding Obama's policies which they then transmuted into racism.
That's fair. I should have said - without the media giving him the spotlight every day, he would never have been taken seriously as a candidate. That's what I believe.
Bad take. Refusing to cover evil doesnt make evil go away. Removing the option for the public to see his sociopathy doesnt mitigate it.
Half of us are being dragged, the other half is pulling us. It's illegal for the ones being dragged to protect themselves from the ones pulling us as we live in a state.
Then there's the leftist non-voters who seem to think that if you don't choose Republican or Democrat we default to peaceful communism.
I'd say it's more like 40% of us are being dragged by 25% of us while 35% watch on, refusing to participate either way despite the fact that they'll be dragged in next.
The Gen Z voters fucking terrify me. They are turning against even Bernie Sanders, because of the fact that our government supports Israel. Like, they are willing to blow up everything for Palestine. Don't get me wrong, I for damn sure support the Palestinian people and detest the genocide being perpetrated by Israel, but am I willing to allow my own country to fall to fascism because of their support for Israel? No! I won't because allowing this country to fall to fascism is only going to let Israel continue their genocide, but under Trump our troops will join the fray and bomb the shit out of Gaza.
Yeah, as much as I make fun of the alt-right and their dumb culture war bullshit, some of the Gen Z on the left end of the spectrum are so willing to cast out all allies just because they detect one iota of dissent from a rapidly moving set of expectations, esp. when it comes to things like trans.
And it's fracking dangerous. I look at what happened to the discussion forums on Boing Boing as an example of this. The assumption is that anyone not in the upper echelon of the oppression olympics intersectional game has to shut up and just listen to any opinion of someone in a certain set of groups, just because. Meaning, if you are white or male or both and cishet or xtian, then your opinion is worthless, unless you just repeat verbatim what one of the blessed members says. And even then, you might be accused of appropriating their arguments or being a white savior or whatever.
If they think that is any semblance of normal, or the way to fight fascism, build coalitions, or win elections, they are completely deluding themselves. If it was only places like Boing Boing it might be one thing. Unfortunately, that is just a very public example of it...
Oh, and same sentiments on the Gaza thing. What Israel is doing there is beyond belief in horribleness, but checking out or voting against Biden would make it far worse. What people that say "voting for the lesser of two evils is still evil" fail to see is that the alternative is getting even MORE evil than otherwise...
Oh, the fascists are waking wide-eyed awake straight into it. And they’re dragging the rest of us with them.
I'm wide awake, my heart is pounding, and my vocal chords are shredded from the screaming. Not all of us are asleep. 1/3rd of the country actually wants this.
It's not sleepwalking if we all know that it's happening and are screaming about it, but nobody in power is doing anything to stop it.
Fact is, like any normal distribution, 2/3 if American voters are uneducated centrists that dont understand how their system of government works or what the meaning of scary political words mean. To them, the world is just fine, but that Biden feller made me sleepy so fuck him.
Most Americans have no idea what is waiting for them on January 21st 2025.
Yep law and justice is either complicit or nutless and that’s why we’re all sweating this.
What worries me is that we keep getting reassured that someday, at least one of these 91 charges will stick and it will take care of everything. But I see absolutely zero reason to believe that there will be any consequences whatsoever. The delay tactics have thus far been working and his popularity just grows and grows.
We are wide awake and still letting it happen; and we see it happen in other countries the world over. My only conclusion is that this is what people want.
I disappointingly keep finding out people at work support him and now I just assume no matter how decent someone might appear… they probably deep down are shit. I have to awkwardly avoid conversations about their dumb world views whenever politics come up. It’s concerning the number of every day people that want this shit.
I guess this means the 2nd amendment crowd finally gets their opportunity to use their stockpiled guns against the government in a case like this? /s
that doesn't work though when at least half of the 2nd amendment supporters voted for fascism. What are they going to do, take up arms against the party they voted into power themselves?
This exactly. These fascists will point their guns squarely at liberals and Democrats in the name of their country.
Remember when Trump said he could shoot a person in Times Square and get away with it?
His supporters loved him for that because they want to do this too. They want to get away with murdering people.
Make no mistake: we will have another coup if Trump is "elected". The question is will there be enough people to stand up and rise against it.
I hate to say it but I'm not optimistic on that.
I am still curious how it works in their mind. They see troops deployed and they what exactly, random acts of terrorism? Like you look at the places that led successful guerilla campaigns against real militaries and they are all in places where real poverty is rampant. Not talking about you live in a trailer and work at Target. More like you grow opium in some valley in Afghanistan or rice in Vietnam. Remember the Bundy Ranch guys ordering takeout?
I can't see any gun owner I know just deciding to go live in the woods, willing to survive on what food they can salvage while getting their own kids to plant landmines.
Not /s, you're exactly right, you should move to the left and be prepared as well.
There's a lot of people sounding the alarm, but it seems liberals still don't believe what conservatives have been straight up telling them for years.
It's weird that they won't come out and say, "My plan is to lie down and take it. But they better ask nicely if they want me on that train!"
I plan to stick it out. My wife has dual citizenship and we are in the process of getting our kids the same. If it really comes down to it they can flee abroad. If we are at the point where the US is not letting people leave there is no point in prepping for anything.
Yep! And no, we won't be fighting tanks and drones. As with all politics, the fight will be local. We'll be fighting the local Committee for Public Safety, Brown Shirts, etc.
Those in charge in the government are not dumb, they've learned over 100+ years how to propagandize those that want guns to not see them as the enemy. It's not a coincidence that the gun nuts are courted by the right.
Ah yes, the nazi wants to build concentration camps to murder the brown people. This is in line with his platform.
The irony with this is that the vulnerable people crossing the border would otherwise pick up low wage manufacturing and menial labor jobs that create wealth for the nation and farmers, but it seems that republicans are banking on poor white babies to grow up and accept those jobs in 14 years and be good republican voters. I don't see the pendulum swinging so hard to the right that the strategy would ever work.
The only voter strategy they care about is rigging districts until they're guaranteed power. Hungary is their model, if you want to look into how Orban has essentially made himself dictator.
Never forget that George Bush closed the southern border for 48 hours. That's as long as it lasted. Then big business farms and other companies who desperately rely on immigrant labor got in some people's ear.
If Trump does this it would destroy the economy.
Wouldn't be his first time absolutely destroying a valuable money making system with his stupid tiny hands. Everything he touches turns to garbage.
If Trump does this it would destroy the economy.
He's literally already done it once. The Ag sector, especially family farms, still haven't recovered from his blatant mismanagement & immigration screwups.
DeSantis apparently didn’t understand that wealthy republicans prefer to have illegal immigrants working for them and the anti-immigrant thing is just pandering and marginalization. When he tried to enforce labor laws in Florida by the book it was similarly unpopular.
He is not concerned with the economy. He is concerned with consolidating power.
Read his plan. Project 2025.
The thing I am most concerned about is a nationwide abortion ban. We have already seen how badly the legislation is crafted on the state level and no country has attempted to do it on national level the same way.
Miscarriages are common, ectopic pregnancies are common, medication used for abortion has other medical uses. We could legit face a situation where getting pregnant gives you fairly high chance of dying or being incarcerated. What happens next? I know if I was a woman I would definitely get myself sterilized.
I'm still finding it extremely unlikely he's electable. Not saying we shouldn't take it seriously, though.
Over the years many conservative anti-vaxxers have died from covid, boomers are dying off, and anyone who wasn't already a trumper isn't exactly lining up.
Most economic indicators are trending very well; meanwhile the abortion topic continues to backfire tremendously.
2022 proved polls don't sufficiently capture millennial and zoomers.
I'm GenX, and I wouldn't answer a poll if you paid me. I will vote, and I will never vote for a Republican for the rest of my life. If there's no Dem candidate on the ballot for a specific office, I leave it blank so they can see how many votes they're not getting when they don't run a candidate.
My plan for the next year is to answer every opinion poll.
I’m going to tell every pollster who will listen I’m not voting because I won’t vote for republicans, and Democrats haven’t done anything to deserve my vote - because they had 60 years to make abortion access federal law, they have had numerous opportunities to unwind Medicare Part D, and in 2021 they should have made the ACA better, overturned Citizens United, fixed the Voter Rights Act, and worked to improve turnout by mandating federal voting holidays (amongst other things), but they didn’t, and instead their whole modern platform is that they will slow walk the U.S. into corporate and theocratic ownership slower than the Republicans.
And then I’m going to vote anyway, because I’m not a child. But I won’t be telling pollsters that. The Democratic Party needs to fear what their milquetoast policies have wrought.
It's not, but evidently polling isn't capturing these groups effectively. Again, as 2020 and 2022 proved.
I don't answer polls as a GenX, but I sure as hell vote in every election. I will never vote for a Republican. Polls won't capture voters like me, and voters like me are not just millennials and zoomers.
Polling isn't as simple as adding up responses and reporting the percentages.
They use complex methodologies to account for inaccuracies exactly like your good self.
That's not to say that polls are necessarily accurate - clearly they aren't, but to say "polls won't capture voters like me" is incorrect.
Over the years many conservative anti-vaxxers have died from covid,
I disagree with this assessment affecting voting in any way. Mortality rates are very low outside of very vulnerable and elderly population that totals much less than 2%. Even if you're left only half way there mentally after a severe infection your vote is still a vote, and the majority republican areas are not affected by this in any way.
Even if 20% of republicans died from a disease in most of the red states voting wouldn't change much. Between gerrymandering, propaganda news and winner takes all electoral college configuration even if republicans lose the popular vote they will still keep basically all of their electoral college votes.
Most economic indicators are trending very well; meanwhile the abortion topic continues to backfire tremendously. I don't know a single person who doesn't feel like we're in a recession and that the economy is in the toilet. The smart ones understand some of the nuance but the republican party will just blame it all on Biden.
The abortion topic still gets religious votes, and votes for those who want a poverty stricken lower class full of cheap labor workers. They won't bend on cheap POC immigrant labor, they only want more white labor. I don't think voting for abortion will beat out voting for what the church says and what all the peer pressure for voting red says. If pro-abortion won votes in red states we would have seen many more democrat and independent wins than we've seen in the house and senate. Local legislature seems to not be greatly affected by this either.
The fact that polls put him close to a majority means it's a major threat. The problem is that the democrat majority unfortunately is clustered in small areas where even if they win a popular vote in a district of a red state are unlikely to win the overall vote for all districts.
Finally, Biden as a candidate is practically worthless. Trump would lose hard to Obama, but he can never be president again. Why anyone worth electing didn't run for 2020 is beyond me but here we are.
So I think you raise some good points but bear in mind my overarching premise in my comment: Nothing improves conditions that Republicans didn't already have in prior elections. Now, there is if anything diminishing returns across all vectors which tend to benefit the GOP. That being said:
Regarding COVID, I'm not referring too much these days but of the early post-vaccine era where last I tried to best calculate we saw a ratio of about 4 or 5 conservatives dying for every Democrat. Yes, it doesn't particularly impact an amount on a state-by-state basis, but the key point is: Did this help Republicans? Absolutely not; it has only hindered them. Does this matter in red states? Of course not. But in purple states and certain districts it could mean the difference of turning red or blue. We of course saw outcomes decided by literally a handful of votes. Considering this elderly Republican population most at risk is also a group that is most likely to turn out to vote for Republicans, then that hinders their most loyal base.
Yeah, right-wing rhetoric is heavily pushing an alternate reality that the economy is going to shit and everything is bad. Yeah it may stick to some people, but the reality is these words are largely hollow. Whether the economy is good or bad, it's true that there will be people who just find a reason to blame Biden because he's a Democrat. You can't stop that but you don't have to; for they were always going to vote Trump anyway. The key point is that these arguments -- permitted people like us raise our voice at dinner-tables and social media -- can be quickly dismissed because the data that Republicans normally tout negatively are pretty positive.
Look at what overturning Roe said. Even in an interview with a GOP Strategist I saw on PBS -- they said the Republicans had no idea that overturning Roe be this unpopular even amongst part of their own base. FWIW my mother-in-law is a lifelong Republican who even voted for Trump and because of this reversal of Roe and how protective she is of her kids, she is now vehemently anti-Republican. Basically, it took away the choice of her daughters and now she's pissed. Meanwhile it has been a major rallying cry for Democrats -- and 2022 again proved that. Religious voters will likely continue voting Republican, but that's largely a constant. If anything, they will feel less compelled to vote as they may feel their duty is done and they may get careless.
Don't get me wrong: I think polls should be some marker for concern and we should always assume the worst and hope for the best. However, and I say this again because literally nobody has remotely countered this point: The polls were deeply wrong for 2020 and especially 2022. One key facet of this was younger generations not sufficiently represented in polling.
I also agree that Biden isn't that great of a candidate. He's just -- dare I say -- the "lesser of two evils." Both candidates are old and largely useless; the only difference is that Biden isn't corrupt and his cabinet is full of competent experts. I'll vote for him, but you're right that he does not remotely inspire. If Republicans nominated anyone younger, Democrats would guaranteed be fucked.
The problem is that's only half the battle. What do you do when his legions of supporters decide they don't like losing and take it out on the rest of the country?
He (probably will be) the executive branch of the government. Unless his orders illegally suspend constitutional rights, the military must follow their CICs orders.
Edit: for all of the downvoters, what about Trump's plan to deploy troops on American soil is illegal?
Not necessarily, the American military operates on chain of command. The worry is the current blocking of military appointments over bullshit. If they can steal long enough trump can install people who will follow his orders. Otherwise you can deny an unlawful order. Trump can only give orders to those ranked immediately below him.
I refused an unlawful order once.
It helped that everyone enlisted immediately agreed, but it escalated up the chain of command very quickly after we asked for a written order until it was agreed that it was a miscommunication and never happened.
To be fair they could order you to do a lot and just hope you do the implied, even verbally said, but unwritten thing. But when I was in we had clear training about what was and wasn't unlawful to prevent abuse. If we had done it and had no proof we were really 100% officially ordered then it could have been pinned on us. Which is why my first response was, is that an order? Followed with citing the written order that said we could not do that thing and asking for a written order to do the thing. Just following orders works both ways.
For the uninitiated, asking for your verbal orders to be written out or asking for another soldier to be present in the military is a giant red flag. You can't just say no in most cases. But the sub text is the experienced enlisted soldier knows it's going to go horribly wrong. It's generally the last warning an officer gets if they're doing truly stupid things.
Okay, so hypothetical situation, Trump makes an illegal order to General so-and-so. General refuses to comply. Trump has that General removed and replaced with a sycophant. In this actual case, he's saying he'll deploy troops on the ground on American soil, which I don't believe is an illegal order.
Believe Hayes made it illegal. There a few exclusions though, if I remember correct, an insurrection was one of the exclusions. I imagine Desantis knew this when he stated he would put troops on the other side of the border in Mexico, not realizing that would clearly look/be an invasion of Mexico. Or realizing and being dumb enough to think that was a smart move.
There are precedent for not following illegal orders. The Nuremberg trials made that point very clear.
The Nuremberg trials were only allowed to happen because of how badly the Nazis were beaten at the end of WW2. They also didn't possess nuclear weapons. If the Americans were about to critically lose a war like the Nazis did, to the point where they would be standing trial for warcrimes a la the Nuremberg Trials, they would probably detonate their arsenal.
Also, is it illegal to deploy troops on your own soil? I wasn't aware of that rule.
You’re assuming it’s illegal. I’m pretty sure the commander-in-chief can declare various types of emergencies and deploy a response, at will. The potentially illegal part is theres usually limits, including very short time periods, unless congress ratifies the choice. Then who’s in half of congress is so far up Trump’s ass, they’d ratify covfefe
Fun fact, deploying troops inside the US is very restricted without an act of Congress to create an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act. Unless he tries to invoke the insurrection act. But at that point he would be asking the military to suspend civil law and order in an area. And that's absolutely something that requires the military to consent to doing.
If that demented orange rapist thinks so much as misfires a neuron in that direction, his retirement will arrive immediately. They think we’re fucking around?! MARK IT ZERO.
it is SUCH bullshit that our useless, pathetic, so-called “journalists” just watch this shit go by and pretend it’s just something that happens. They literally can not call him an anti-American coup-plotting traitor and a fascist.
Fortunately, we don’ need no steenking corporate news.
If you don't think a Trump presidency would result in an invasion of Poland Mexico, you might want to pick up a history book.
Execute that fucking traitor - legally or otherwise - then use his fat, rotting corpse as a public pissoir.
If your sensibilities toward that traitor are triggered, replace 'fat' with 'bloated'. Or perhaps 'overflowing with his own ego'.
Everything else aside for a moment, trump sure it's an incapable little bitch that is really just a mouth piece for stephan miller. trump is so weak, stupid and powerless even his hate and fascist tendencies have to be directed by another idiot. Little-handed clown boy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump’s plans to give himself sweeping powers on “day one” of a new administration include sending vast numbers of U.S. troops — potentially “hundreds of thousands” — to close the southern border and to help build a new network of immigrant detention camps, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone.
Sources tell Rolling Stone that the former president and some of his political allies and counselors have discussed how thousands of federal troops could be used to rapidly build and manage camps to house undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation.
Those two sources say they expect that Trump’s authoritarian plans for an immigration crackdown in a second administration would likely prompt high-profile resignations among senior military officers fearful of executing unlawful orders.
The border policy discussions taking place at the upper echelons of Trumpland remain fluid, and other sources close to Trump stress that any plans for a warzone-type deployment of troops could easily be scaled back.
At times, Taylor says, he learned that Trump had told his White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that he wanted to send “hundreds of thousands of troops to the southern border to handle enforcement and stop the ‘invasion.’”
“Whenever he’d bring this up, he would be repeatedly told that that would be illegal and violate the Posse Comitatus Act, to which he’d demand that the administration lawyers needed to ‘find a way’ to make it legal,” Taylor recalls.
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