Is that he is not being stopped.

This tells me that the "checks and balances" we grew up learning about don't have any teeth if the stars align just right and lunatics manage to take over the 3 branches of Government.

How is this shit going to be explained in high school classes?

There's no plausible explanation, except to teach that a large portion of this country has actually lost their minds.

long ago. As for eduction. . .see Oklahoma. I am too stubborn and angry to completely give up, but. . DAMN IT ALL.

I have noticed most people I encounter are being more interactive and polite, happy to engage in pleasant chatter while in line at the store or mingle time at meetings. Thinking there are a lot of people who remember, and crave, civility. But then, there are the perpetually furious who are driving angry. Accidents are WAY up around here and more serious than before, usually caused by excessive speeding, and not always with alcohol involved. Signs of aggression being taken out on public roads abound. Seems to be an uptick in weird violence, and so far, it ALWAYS from US citizens, mostly of the very white variety.

This is NOT my country, and yet, I remember a lot of civil unrest and backlash against those with legitimate complaints about rights and opportunities back in the 60s. So I reckon this is my country, just on the steroids of decades of hate radio propaganda, expanded to TV, then exponentially expanded with the internet.

It's rare for me to leave the house. Damned near takes dynamite to blast me out, but when I venture, there seem to be more strangers eager to just talk, smile, wish me well and accept my good wishes for them.

Won't give up. Doses of reasons to laugh a little every day helps when my disposition flags. Smiling at strangers in the store, maybe sharing funny stories in the check out line, well, it helps this old empath from disappearing down a dark tunnel. Interacting with fellow DUers here helps, well, most of the time anyway.

Love and reasons to find laughter to all of you. Rest when you must, laugh when you can, and stay in the fight to take our beloved nation back from the brink. I don't know most of you at all and only know a few just a little, but I love you all and know others here do also.

They knew they had to have control of all three branches, or they wouldn't get what they wanted. So, they appoint crap judges, or run them for office, from the ground up. The most idiotic job you think no one would bother with? They run their people for it. Dog catcher? Gonna be a MAGA idiot. And they move up from there, biding their time.

We're lucky we have some judges standing strong, refusing to let Trump get absolutely everything he wants. We sure can't depend on our Democratic representatives to do it. They've gone belly up, begging to keep their place, and leaving the rest of us to suffer. A few exceptions, sure, but how long before they disappear off the street, never to return?

Every open government seat, they run their crazies for it. We respond by putting up people claiming to be true Democrats, only to have them turn on us. Oh, but we can't win unless we run center or center right! LOL Chuck Shumer needs to go home, he's worthless. Others need to be primaried until they start doing what's right for the country.

Truth be told, I'm about ready to just give up. More than forty years and things only get worse. It's like trying to stand against "AI" in everything. Even the big names in writing are saying it "has its uses", meaning they're using it to do their work and people seem to be okay with everything you find on the internet being done by a stupid machine, even when its WRONG. The courts have said "AI" can be trained on our work, it's fair use! FFS

right there with you.........The have progressed ever since HW's CABAL committed Treason to install Reagan as a pawn in the white house.........
I have been on a constant rant ever since then, watching what they were doing in the shadows, and covertly manipulating the Laws and constitution of this country and our democracy.

If we are not at a check mate, we are within a hair of it.......

All I can say, is: the perfect title for a book about this last 45+ years would be:

WHILE THE NATION SLEPT

And

There were a "group of people" walking down the jungle path, swatting at mosquitoes, and were oblivious to the herd of charging elephants......Pun Intended.....

My first vote for President was for Jimmie Carter. I was full of youth and LSD. We had a President who , for the most part, led with altruism. The historical vector that was “Reaganism” made Trump inevitable. The good news is that my wife and kids no longer view me as a bit crazy for always devolving my political rants to Reagan. I stopped drinking and doping a long time ago despite witnessing the erosion of the ideals of America.

Shame on us true-blue Democrats for letting it get this far. I still believe we can fight our way out of this, but my point it that it NEVER would have gotten this far into total fascism, if we'd been paying attention.

Like Rachel Maddow always says, "Watch what they do, not what they say."
To that I will add, "Then DO SOMETHING about it!"

Back in the 80s they focused on filling Boards of Education across the country, creating think tanks to craft their message, & buying radio stations to broadcast it, while our side was running as fast as it could from the word liberal cuz a two-bit actor poked fun at it. We should have fought harder to counter their message. We should have fought harder to keep big money out of politics. Our electoral process has deliberately been turned into a huge profit making industry & now thanks to the reality-TV show presidency, it's also part of the entertainment industry. I'm sickened by all of it.

if you watch last night's Lawrence:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/132148045

It would be better if this was a systemic oustering but if I have to, I'll take his mental deterioration and loss of political ability to pull off the right's agenda.

---

on edit: on my WNYC public radio talk show a crypto person just told how even the crypto people are turning against him because of the usual reasons (screwed them over in the past, current rigging of the system, etc.)

History will repeat. He's a psychopath. It's in the cards for every single one of them.

their way of life.

An ugly-demon-nightmare-from-hell kind of dream.

A nation Foxed in the head. Garbage In Garbage Out

I thought the threat of being drafted & thrown in combat boots & sent to Viet Nam was a horror show. Not to mention the racial unrest & Vietnam protests.
This dwarfs the 60's & 70's.
Lots of times I believe the upper echelon Dems are in on it. Or they just shrugged their shoulders & say screw 'em!
They're secure!

What amazes me is that there are very few leaks about the coercion, tactics. Every now and then a repug will blurt out that they are afraid.

endgame for unresolved national failures regarding undeterred corporatism and political corruption since at least the Civil War. We were never going to waltz through the upcoming severe crises with second rate anything(appeasement, incrementalism, bipartisanship, "faux conservatism", weak liberalism, centrism, resentment politics). It would have devolved eventually into people dying and killing and fragmenting globally over climate change. This is our last preview of the need to change history and the human race dramatically- as least as dramatic as the fear rage of the doomed bottom feeders of humanity killing us from the top down.

and not just in the USA
Rec

Sometimes I just sit back and watch, kind of like an anthropologist studying the strange ways of a newly-discovered tribe whose behavior is deeply puzzling and disturbing. I have some theories about how we got here, although it's hard to evaluate any situation when you're in the middle of it and it's messing up your head. But my theories are drawing uncomfortable parallels to Nazi Germany. Germany got its ass kicked badly in WWI and its economy was in bad shape. Then along comes this guy who has a talent for long-winded speeches and who promises to Make Germany Great Again, and he blames a convenient scapegoat, the Jews, for all Germany's troubles (anti-Semitism already being a thing, just not yet official government policy). You'd think a country like Germany, which had been a prosperous First World center of European culture and arts and education and science for ages, wouldn't fall for blatant demagoguery, but you'd be wrong; it did. And eventually so did we, the biggest and richest and best at everything, but we can't even blame an ass-kicking in a war for it. So I still can't answer my own question.

Tells me the country I was born in is gone and replaced by immoral people of little to no self respect. Trump is so transparently criminal and stupid, but so many people don't care.

NEVER thought it would happen!

They're trying to replay it damn near verbatim, adjusting for social media etc.

The situation is not stable. They have weakened cyber and military defense. On purpose? You tell me.

We can call it out, defang it by exposing it daily, demonstrating, thereby encouraging people who can stop it to stop it in its tracks.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220295160

:doinkey:

Trump is serving two masters: Hitler and Putin..................

His admiration of Hitler is well founded and documented by relatives......

AND if you look at every single thing Trump is doing, not only is it following Putin's wishes on destroying America,
but Trump is doing it, using the same exact tactics that Hitler used.....

.......and also, as a side note, he is also satisfying the 2025 crowd, and the extreme hard right wing.....

This didn't happen accidentally. These NEW Republicans have been organizing, orchestrating, and executing this assault since 1980.......

WHILE THE NATION SLEPT.....

.. Falwell, Graham and KGB/GRU (and dozens more) control corporate media and internnet platforms/access. They operate with unlimited money. We are living in their end game. tsf is their weak link. You can't hide his insanity. He'll slow down their progress, but just temporarily. The election of an American Pope with unlimited empathy was monumental. Gives me hope. The protest turnout is also very encouraging.

Was never on my to do list when I retired. Not even a potential possibility.

a beating. DU is the one place I check on a daily basis, and I'm trying to limit that intake. The crazy takes a toll, and I do crazy just fine without any help. The 'what is real' aspect to life has got to be one for the ages.

By most measures, America was at it's peak at least in my view. But while I was feeling good about the country's future (especially after Scalia died), Conservatives somehow clawed their way back into power and poisoned a younger generation to hate "libs." We are in a mess and I'm worried that we will lose the next generation forever.

Borderline personality disorder. And one characteristic of BPD involves perceptions of abandonment or betrayal. MAGAtry is starting vocalize displeasure. Another one is switching between idolization of dear leader followed by denigration. I think Italy was afflicted with this social malady. Ask Mussolini and his mistress how that ended.

I started going through the DSM in a general sort of way, assigning various characteristics to society instead of an individual, just trying to figure out WTF is wrong. BPD checked a lot of boxes in my audit.

"Create the Billionaire Class" tax cut. This eliminated just about everything that I was interested in, including the science, space, education, housing etc.
I had hopes when Clinton came in, but he seemed to me to be continuing everything like he had cosying up the the big money folks back in Arkansas when he was my governor.

I don't know if the Democrats can ever realize that they can win on just progressive policies, and telling the people why instead of seemingly talking down to everyone. At least it seems that way to me.

They're cashing in.

Either way, all congressional republicans are either corrupt or cowards.

in a golden shower of power ...

Either way it sucks.

I'm 85 and the stress has really gotten to me. I have to take something for it now!

Yet I can't be drugged up either.

Plus, I've called Congress persons.

I've also made the effort to talk sense into the Magats I know.

In the spirit of not being like those in 1930s Germany that facilitated Hitler's rise, I have speak out every chance I get.

I'm almost 70, and this is the best I can do right now.

Ten years ago if someone wrote a novel or made a film describing a future describing what we now observe I would have characterized it as an improbable piece of scary fiction. Yet here we are, a government of stupid, incompetent, lazy, uneducated nutcase.

I can't believe it.

For them it's like "I've got mine: screw yours."

They've chosen the "Divided we fall" option, not the "United we stand" one.

Everything that is going on now keeps me awake at night. I'm an old timer and I hope I live long enough to cast my vote against any repub who is running for any office.

It amazes me how stupid some of the backers of trump are. It is disgusting. He is putting the world in jeopardy while he lines his pockets.

Poisoned food, no vaccines for measles and other infectious diseases for a start.

And I constantly asking myself how this shit is actually real... how people can be this venal, cruel, gullible, and just plain stupid.

I wake up and keep thinking I'm in the middle of a bad nightmare. Has this country gone this stark raving mad?

I hate so much how often the feelings that overtake me remind me of nothing more closely than Bekah's death.

this is a nightmare, but it is no dream. something I wrote after my daughter was killed.

After nearly 24 years (! how is that possible), it will still hit from time to time. Nowadays, I can be rolling along and all of a sudden it's like I just woke up on 06Nov2024 and realized I lost my country.

I think the disease brought on by the krasnov cult of magats is Mass Sociopathy. It infects millions, but not the majority, of Americans.

I believe a General Strike is in order, like a couple months ago. This particular body CAN be brought back from the dead, if enough of We the People demand it.

https://generalstrikeus.com/

I had a lumpectomy a few years ago and she said that any future surgeries are required by law to be covered by insurance because even Stage 0 is cancer so I'm covered.

Welp, the three of us in that room, paused and all said at once, "hopefully, that won't change."
We don't know what's going to happen now.

That is my reality. I'm 65 and just started Medicare 6 months ago.

Republicans love him and they are to blame!

They will do whatever it takes to get their way.

I'm about the same age as you. After Bush v. Gore and the failure of Congress to object and fight for our most fundamental right -- the right to vote, -- my fears for where we were headed were pretty dire. And then came the failure to impeach for war crimes. A very dark path. But somehow this is all so, so, so much worse than even the worst of my fears in the 2000's.

It often hits when I'm in my car, which is sort of fortunate because I'm free to scream or cry -- which has happened on occasion. Like when I first heard the Zelensky oval office horror show or first heard the news of 47 disappearing people to a concentration camp in Venezuelan.

And when an acquaintance or person on the elevator in my building or wherever asks how I am, my new standard answer is "Fine, except for x" (where x = the whole nation gone mad thing, or the 47 horror show, or feeling sick about the whole American fascism thing...). It usually leads to a moment of venting and sometimes sharing actions taken, however small. And that helps a little.

I've come to believe it's the silence on this in everyday interactions that is depressing and even killing us with the stress of it all. So, I "break the ice" and say something.

We are being governed by a fucking lunatic and apparently, he can't be stopped.

No, the issue is that he won't be stopped.

(ALERT: PERSONAL OPINION INCOMING!)

People could easily end this. Unfortunately, the 'hierarchy' of our 'leftist, progressive' society have decided to play along instead of saving the country. They have chosen a corrupted, out of date legal system to try and stop the same people who corrupted it and are ignoring it on the off chance it does not work out in their favor. They are trying to play political games that have already been tweaked and corrupted to favor the residing party. They're hanging on to a societal lifestyle that needs to wither and die and because they refuse to accept this, it won't do either. (Mainly because of what it would mean to change things to that level. The rest of us with nothing couldn't care less, but those with their tiny 'fortunes' that make them think they have handle on things don't want that to change. They are the ones trying desperately to fix something that needs to be thrown out with the bathwater.They are the ones allowing all this to continue in the name of their own materialism. But hey, we were programmed for over 100 years to believe the wealthy and their offerings. Why stop now, right?)



Since this attack on our society has not been ended, since I have yet to see five million people arrive in Washington and demand that orange gibbon and his hooting primates leave or be dragged out by their implants, I have to assume that most people are okay with what is going on.

First, they came for the....

...I saw his face or heard his annoying-as-hell voice, I would be totally incredulous and find myself thinking, "How can this be?"

I'm still in stunned disbelief that this country was stupid enough to do this a second time.

Fucking nightmare.

build a shithouse.

As your contemporary, yes, it hits me, too.

If Trumpsky isn't the crescendo that's been building since Nixon, I can't imagine what's next.

They are following proj. 2025.
https://www.statementonchristiannationalism.com/
Here is the link to the plan.

I have friends that are looking for exit strategies, I have friends that are just plugging away living their lives...
I'm getting to that point where bugging out to the country and going off grid might be the only answer. My poor gen Z kids can't fucking even afford a place to live! I had to spend part of my dwindling savings to get one into a apartment, and the other one is living with her boyfriend's abusive father because they can't afford anything else and they're back in North Carolina.

The only good thing about an economy that's going to crash might be that some of my loan holders will fail... But probably not because they're predatory and completely protected under this regime
.

I tell you what -if we survive this, it's going to be like coming back from fucking world war II in Europe where everything was decimated and nothing but rubble
....😩🤬

I have a small bent of studying history, too. Our January 6th, 2021 and November 8-9, 1923 Germany have way too many common elements. The march towards Fascism is well underway. Trump is only the face of the movement. Miller may be the driving force. I don't think Trump has the mental faculties to engineer what is now transpiring.

getting high helps.

And we’re the rubes.

It feels like being on a train that's going to crash and there is no way to get off.

a walk with my parents dog. A cute little dog that everyone smiles at. It was a beautiful day and this was in a very blue area. I ran into an older guy pushing a stroller with an infant, maybe a year old. I assumed he was the Grandpa. We passed on the sidewalk and he had a big smile and asked "How you doing?" I replied "Pretty good, how you doing?" He said, smiling "I'm doing great."

This didn't strike me for a minute as some kind of Maga guy, it was just some grampa, pushing their grandchild in a stroller on a beautiful day in May. I looked down at the little person in the stroller, smiled and waved and got a smile back. That alone made my day.

Then on the next street some guy with a bicycle contraption that had some little carriage for a toddler glided by on the street, gave a friendly nod, I nodded back.

I just mention this because in this toxic political environment I felt something the exact opposite today on this walk, and it made me feel hopeful.

Most of us knew this would happen if he was reelected. The 1st term was a darkly comedic, shit show. This is a never ending house of horrors. What a dreaded, reeking, pack of soulless, vengeful, fringe humans. My only hope is that they'll have a chain reaction falling out amongst them, and they'll maim and devour each other till there is nothing left of them and their savage fever dream.

The tmurp administration is hell.