Here’s the full question (since Lemmy has title character limits): “With all the stuff going on with this administration and the Supreme Court, is it gonna take a revolution to stop this damn administration and the SCOTUS from curtailing people’s freedoms and liberties at this point because we’re way past the point of reform?”
Oh and how do you fight doomerism these days?
Whoever the next Democratic president is, their primary priority is going to have to be crushing MAGA, and purging it from our government, and our society. We will hear many say that we can’t make that our priority, we have to move forward and chase health care, day care, college, etc., but we won’t be able to do any of that, or anything else, until the MAGA chaos is ended.
And it won’t be hard. They are already collapsing under the weight of their own virtuosic incompetence anyway, but when Trump dies (what a glorious day that will be), MAGA will effectively end. It’s a classic Cult of Personality, and not only is there no obvious successor, Trump has carefully orchestrated that fact. He is the ONLY leader of MAGA, and when he dies, so does MAGA.
But he’s not alone, and he’s not the only one that deserves punishment for their CRIMES. MAGAs will whine that they are being politically persecuted, but they are liars, because we don’t have to go after their politics, their breath-taking corruption is more than enough to put every one of them in prison.
MAGA has made itself an easy target by becoming a genuine National Security Threat. They are responsible for a violent Insurrection, that threatened to kill legislators and the VP, and they stole hundreds of classified documents to sell to our enemies. They’ve operated policy based on bribery and corruption. Now we’re in a endless war, that threatens to turn into WW3 every day, and they don’t care at all about how it is harshly affecting the citizens. They pose a genuine existential threat to America and Democracy, and on that basis, they can be declared a National Security Threat, and ended, and prohibited.
But as you said, we lack the political will to do that, but that’s easy to change - just hire the candidate that is loud and proud about inflicting JUSTICE on MAGA. We all have our own juicy issues, mine are HealthCare, Campaign Finance Reform, and College loan forgiveness, but we will never be able to touch ANY of those things until the MAGA National Security Threat is decisively dealt with. The person who is the most forceful about going after MAGA is my person.
We can’t afford another cowardly Democrat for president the next time. No forgiveness, appeasement, “looking forward,” etc. None of that nonsense will be acceptable this time. We’ve already heard Jeffries say that we can’t focus on impeaching Trump, so he’s STILL got the WRONG attitude, which means he has to go, along with that insipid little removed Schmuck Schumer. They should be heavily investigated along with every MAGA. I’m not convinced they haven’t been Manchurian MAGAs all along.
Jeffries is being primaried by Chi Ossé, a 27 year old socialist Democrat associated with Mamdani, so we need to elevate him, and encourage everyone to vote for him on June 23. Winning the presidency is the goal in 2028, but until then we have a chance to control the House, but if we do, we need a leader who will fight for us, and Jeffries has already proven time and time again, that he is too cowardly, or too corrupt, to do that.
MAGA needs to end. It’s not enough to let them die when Trump dies, they need to be actively, decisively crushed, then prohibited from existing. Nothing less will serve this country, and redeem it in the eyes of its citizens, the world, and history.
Jeffries is being primaried by Chi Ossé, a 27 year old socialist Democrat associated with Mamdani, so we need to elevate him, and encourage everyone to vote for him on June 23. Winning the presidency is the goal in 2028, but until then we have a chance to control the House, but if we do, we need a leader who will fight for us, and Jeffries has already proven time and time again, that he is too cowardly, or too corrupt, to do that.
“Ossé filed to run in New York’s 8th congressional district against Hakeem Jeffries in November 2025, but did not win the endorsement of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. Following the result, Ossé stated he would not run.”
Fuck, I hadn’t seen that. That just ruined my day.
Who do you think is now primarying Jeffries?
Without that guy, I don’t think there’s anyone. I read that both AOC and Mamdani wanted the guy to back off. Apparently Jeffries is helpful in running interference between progressives and the establishment Dems, which was news to me. Also, he was mentored by Pelosi, which is fine, but I don’t have the same reverence for her that others had.
I respect the opinions of AOC and Mamdani, but I still think Jeffries is a major coward and loser. He and Schmuck just aren’t nearly as aggressive as I expect from the Minority party. Certainly MAGA wasn’t this complacent when they were out of power.
I wish someone was primarying him, campaigning for your life tends to motivate politicians to do better work.
I wish someone was primarying him, campaigning for your life tends to motivate politicians to do better work.
There is one, actually - Vance. Bostic. https://www.vancebforny8.com/
Nice to see! I’d vote for him, but I’m in AOC’s district.
If you were to run for Representative, what would you do?
My primary promise would be to push Democratic leadership to harshly punish MAGA for their crimes. Once that was done, then I would push for Wealth Reform, Health Care, Free College, Student Loan Forgiveness, Day Care, Social Security, etc.
How do you identify MAGA, and what exactly do you do to “crush” them? Without being very specific, it’s the type of thing that would very quickly turn into a witch hunt and blatant persecution of political opposition. As far as I can tell, it’s not much different from antifa in that it’s not really a group, but a movement.
MAGA and ANTIFA are not equivalent. ANTIFA is an idea, a philosophy, it doesn’t exist. It’s as real as saying I’m a Leftist, or I’m a Conservative. But the Republican Party was just the larval stage, before they morphed into their final form: MAGA, which exists as an actually entity. The Republican Party and MAGA are the same thing. MAGA actually exists.
How do you crush MAGA? You declare it a National Security Threat, and deal with that threat decisively. Then you regulate them legally, and make them socially unacceptable, and punish them harshly every single time they step one inch out of line.
First of all, you prosecute each one of them personally, for the crimes they have committed. There is the Stolen Documents case, the False Electors Plot, and countless cases of open corruption. Even though the corruption that we already know about is MIND-BOGGLING, it is almost certainly only a small percentage of the total crime they have committed. We only know about stuff like plane bribes, shakedowns for ballrooms, lawsuits against the government, etc., but what have they done that was so bad, even they know they’d better hide it? Investigate them, uncover their crimes, and punish them harshly for every single one. No mercy, no forgiveness.
MAGA launched a violent Insurrection to kill lawmakers and the VP, and overthrow the government and install a dictator. All those traitors went to prison, but NONE of the leaders caught any consequences at all, when they should have been executed for it. All those people were partying in the pre-rally tent, all giddy because they knew they were about to kill many legally elected politicians, and their own VP, and overthrow the government. It was going to be an afternoon of unspeakable violence and blood - and they were EXCITED about it. Hang.Them.ALL.
Anyone else who supported the Insurrection should be prohibited from holding office under 14A/ Sec 3. That also means anyone who repeated the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They all knew it wasn’t, and by amplifying that lie, they helped recruit, embolden, and strengthen Insurrectionists, enticing those people to violate the law and put their lives, futures, and freedom at risk. Those MAGA elected officials are Insurrectionist Traitors, and are no longer eligible to hold office.
In the future, any candidate is going to have to explain any statement that resembles " the 2020 election was stolen," and any variation will disqualify you. Part of the required paperwork to run for office will include a box asking if they have ever promoted the idea the the 2020 election was stolen, or participated in the Insurrection, and if they did, their campaign ends there. If they deny it, and are found later to have lied, there will be a MANDATORY prison sentence of at least a year. There will be no fines, or lower charges, just prison. Aspiring politicians will quickly learn to not lie, not about that, anyway.
So MAGA becomes illegal as a National Security Threat, and anyone who ever said “The 2020 election was stolen” is also now ineligible to hold office, which means all but a small handful of Republicans are out of office, and that small handful is going to have to identify as something else.
Conservatives will eventually get back into office, but they will be heavily regulated, because of their past record of treason, racism, corruption, and pedophilia. And until they can rebuild, the Dems will control everything, and can reconfigure the country to serve the people, as well as force corporations and the wealthy to serve the people.
All of that is perfectly legal under the Constitution and our current laws. It doesn’t take courage to follow the law, it takes cowardice to allow others to violate it with impunity. We need to elect candidates with the political will to insist that the Constitution be honored. If Democratic politicians had shown any spine at all during the Biden administration, they could have gone nuclear with 14A/S3, and crushed MAGA, but they chickened out, as usual. Those who actively made the decision to ignore 14A (oh, yeah, the political malpractice of the Biden administration will be investigated,too, MAGA wasn’t the only ones who let us down) should also be prohibited from holding office as well. By refusing to punish the Insurrection, they supported it, after the fact. They should lose their jobs too. Politicians who won’t defend their constituents are just as bad as politicians who attack their constituents.
We have to start equating the Republican Party to MAGA, then officially declare MAGA to be a National Security Threat, and their followers to be Domestic Terrorists. We can deal with all of it without running afoul of the Constitution or our laws. We just have to have leaders who are willing to lead the fight, and see it through to the end.
This is going to sound counter Intuitive to the Emotional need for revolution. But the best way to fight back is community networks and finding what is needed by marginalized groups and create programs that help those groups and organize around that action. Also making those networks distributed so it makes it harder for Authoritarians to squash but you can still navigate between the networks to get the resources you need.
A good example of this was the breakfast programs the black panthers started. If you read how the government tried to dismantle those programs and failed. You will see how effective they can be.
Mutual Aid is revolution.
The more we help each other, the more the state becomes obsolete.
Which goes hand in hand with similar safety that comes with having an extensive global economy. Isolationism very directly makes the entire world less safe.
This is the best solution. If we can no longer count on our “representatives” to represent our needs in governance, we must build our own separate governance from the ground up to help one another. The Black Panthers knew they couldn’t trust the racist US government to help the black community, so they organized to help the community themselves. They mostly did community support projects, but they did have a set of armed members who essentially acted as a local police force since they also definitely couldn’t trust the police to protect them.
That’s just surviving. OP asked how do you stop the oppression. That could be done over time via the electoral process if it was left intact, but it has been damaged already and very likely will be ignored if and when it goes against the will of the oppressors. Then what?
Correct it is just surviving but its also organizing around those projects to create a community that protects the community. In turn that creates a resistance to the oppression.
Organizing like that is a good idea for sure, but it will come down to revolution (probably violent) to eradicate the problem. Humans are just animals though, and whatever we build to replace what we destroy may likely be just as bad.
With the new surveyance methods available to the regime, this is going to get harder and harder.
That’s why face to face organizing is critical. Small groups distributed with common goal. None of that let’s change our profile pictures bullshit. Building real connections, is key. Internet activism is a lie. It is doing nothing but it makes you fill like you did something and social media companies use that to control the masses into apathy.
I’m not saying communication is not important but it will be on private point to point communication with in your local network. Also using stuff like Meshtactic or ham radios are great for emergency response. Be it natural disasters or human caused crises.
True, but there are ways to still communicate secretly, especially if you only need to organize locally.
Yes. We literally need to arrest all of these Israeli backed politicians and oligarchs for treason and crimes against humanity. We need to seize all of their assets to repair our data security and restore our economy. We will need a constitutional convention and we will need to fully reform our system to make sure this level of corruption is never possible again.
I wouldn’t say we’re past the point of reform, we lack the political will in our elected representatives and the numbers to force the issue. It is possible, but very unlikely, that we could flip the house and senate with enough progressive politicians that reform would be possible. However the establishment democratic party is unwilling to take the necessary steps or support the needed candidates. Their aim seems to be to become more centrist than they already were and maintain the status quo.
Unfortunately though the reality of the situation is very complex, ambiguous, and inundated with misinformation. Most reforms in the federal government won’t change the policies in red states, which are by far more egregious than what’s happening in Washington. While it’s likely true that there are no true red states, just gerrymandered purple states, there are still a sizable portion of the US population that want some or all of what’s going on in red states and the federal government.
There doesn’t seem to be enough political will among the left to carry out a revolution. Even if there was, there are almost as many right wingers (who are better armed, equipped, and trained) who would stand in opposition and turn the revolution into the second civil war.
Realistically while there are things that could be done to mitigate or stop the far right, not enough people seem to have the bravery, resources, and will to do what needs to be done.
At the end of the day, it’s what happens in the midterms that determine the next course of action. You can see every day that they’re trying to rig them, and if they succeed in removing the only constitutional method to eject them from power, we’re left with few other options.
I mean the second amendment is part of the constitution and it clearly talks about this so…
So?
republicans have to lose incredibly bad. Like so bad they can’t block a 3/4ths vote and even dick dem in name onlies can’t join them to block a 2/3rds. If its a simple majority it will at best slow things down.
It really depends on the degree to which the Republican party destroys elections. If they don’t, Democrats have a large majority in the Millennial/early Gen-Z age group, so we could be looking at a good 30 years of majority control. That’s almost certainly the reason they’re working so hard to corrupt elections, and we’ll see to what degree we’ll be able to fight it.
That is totally dependent on if they rig the upcoming midterms or not. If there is a legitimate election and the Republicans indeed loose big, then a long process of rebuilding can begin. They will have to immediately remove Trump from office IMO. …Having said that, there is no way that these fascist swine are going down that easy. They will either fix the elections, cancel them, or claim fraud and execute a total coup. This time, they will use the military.
No but you have bigger problems than the two you mentioned. There is so much injustice baked into the system that you will never get rid of it without some kind of revolution.
Maybe a velvet revolution is possible but I firmly believe it is impossible to fix the U.S. through gradual change.
Yes, sadly, we won’t.
This clusterfuck is ultimately the product of broken society. You won’t fix the society by starting a revolution - you’ll just replace one set of bad guys with worse ones.
What does fix it?
The correct question is: “How can I protect myself from the broken society impacting my life”
Well no, because in aggregate people will fail at protecting themselves, or else it wouldn’t be a broken society. You can’t solve a coordination problem with advice to defect.
I typically don’t like US politics because it’s all shitting on somebody’s head but this is an acceptable question because it can be interpreted in a structural way. Like the river carries water, in an orderly fashion, even though each drop moves chaotically and by common assumption doesn’t even have consciousness, so society moves forward, even though no single person has a plan.
I think that in some sense of the word, things are gonna be ok because life has always found a way, one way or another, and this won’t be different. The question is just what local bubble is gonna make it and what not. About the US politics: I think that governments ultimately derive their power from being useful to society. Just like every major invasion of other countries has failed in decades, so has no tyrannical regime existed forever. There’s always some tradeoff between the ruler being necessary and annoying. Even the “very bad people” (according to newspapers) such as dictators in the third world have a surprising amount of support from the local population because they perform some role, such as holding society together and defending against a (real or imagined) external threat. I think that it’s easy to give in to doomerism, because people are attracted to bad thoughts like the mosquito is attracted to fire, but ultimately the world is on a path of development, and bad rulers can only rule as long as their existence is considered practical. Which won’t be forever.
Embrace the doom.
Doomerism will not get you anywhere - embrace revolutionary optimism instead
Optimism didn’t get me anywhere either.
Well, it got me disappointed, misanthropic, and cynical. I guess that’s somewhere.
Is there any way you can channel that disappointment into stuff like organizing and studying socialism?
Turning disappointment into deeper and more intractable disappointment?
Doesn’t seem productive.
Especially because it involves dealing with people, further sharpening my misanthropy.
Are you a nihilist? Not assuming anything, just asking.
I’m an absurdist, which is a nihilist who’s pretending they understand the joke









