What is our moral responsibility as citizens of the United States when the President of the United States moves to deploy thousands of American soldiers against us?Trump signed a memo late yesterday ordering 2,000 members of the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles County after federal immig...
As if Americans won’t roll over and accept this as normal just as they have for every other batshit betrayal of their principles that’s taken place this century.
There is a point where people can’t roll over and accept it. It’s going to be when food and water scarcity becomes wider spread.
The goal for the last century was to reduce the ability for people to be self-sufficient and make them entirely reliant on an employer. When people can no longer rely on their employer for basic needs, things get fucky.
You gotta remember Americans are irrational, and largely unpredictable. In the long run, the goal of the regime will fail, but not before doing significant damage.
They’ll still misdirect their anger and turn on each other.
This is, sadly, the truth. For all people like to bluster about political action, most people are kept just comfortable enough to feel like they have something to lose if they attend protests or speak out. The stuff that Trump is doing right now is bad, but it’s enough degrees of separation away from affecting the average person that someone who isn’t tuned in to the political messaging will probably not notice. Even if they did notice, would they be motivated to risk losing their livelihood and shelter over it? It won’t get bad enough for civil war until food or water becomes impossible to acquire. Bread lines are the last step before the ruling class loses control over everyone beneath them.
In 1933, many Germans also thought that things would not get that horrible. The established centrist parties believed they could keep Hitler under control - as did business leaders, unless they had already made arrangements with the Nazis to secure even greater profits. We all know how that turned out.
But since no one seems to learn from history, the danger of fascism is once again being underestimated today.
What I’m trying to say is: fight back while you still can! If this doesn’t happen soon and in an organized way, it will be too late and history will repeat itself.
I think that’s pretty likely, when I read comments like that. I just don’t think the majority of US citizens are aware of what it means to live in a dictatorship: For the rest of the world, not much will probably change, but it certainly will for those Americans who are not on the side of the fascists.
Except it won’t, because this time there’s no external superpower to save us from ourselves.
What about China?
It’s not as if the US won World War II on its own. That may be what they teach in your schools, but in fact, the losses suffered by your former ally, the USSR, were many times higher.
Of course, it’s possible that Trump will come to an arrangement with Russia, especially because he obviously has the same interests as Putin - but the fact is that China is the new world’s super power.
Feel free to dismiss that as my opinion, but it’s actually true. The US may still be the strongest military power, but economically it has been overtaken by China. That’s why Trump’s import tariffs have little effect on the Chinese - it’s a power game in which the US is coming up short.
Edit: Sorry, I just reread my comment and realized how arrogant and patronizing it is. I’ll leave it up anyway. Please overlook the arrogance and just consider the statement - sorry!
I didn’t read it that way, and frankly I agree with you about China’s economic ascendance. That said, China is still a long way from being a “superpower” in the military sense and that’s the kind of intervention that would be the parallel to nazi Germany.
China has three aircraft carriers, all diesel-fueled, the largest of which is similar in size to the ones the US was building in the '60s. In comparison, the US has 11 nuclear supercarriers with roughly double the aircraft capacity each, plus another 32 “amphibious warfare ships” that would be considered aircraft carriers in their own right if they were being operated by any other country.
Say what you will about carriers’ vulnerability to hypersonic missiles and such, but China would be severely limited in its ability to project power against the US mainland due to its lack of them. The chance of China liberating the US from Trump’s tyranny is absolutely 0%, and that’s before even considering whether it would actually be “liberation” or not.
America also wasn’t a military superpower at the start of WW2 other than its Navy.
That was actually a pretty significant reason that it didn’t join the war at the beginning, it simply couldn’t, the military was not ready/modernized and would not be for years.
There were all the elements it needed, eg the industry and resources, available manpower, and more importantly a military that was heading down the “correct” paths of doctrine, carrier warfare and combined arms on land.
I would say China is actually in a more ready state than America was in 1939, just not for invading America. Which is impossible, no nation can risk invading through the American Navy much less the threat of nuclear destruction.
All true, but in a world where nuclear weapons exist, I think all of that is only of secondary importance. I believe that in a world where even 100 million fighter jets can be destroyed by a drone, the absurdly high military spending of the US is absolutely counterproductive. I mean, what the US spends on this every year exceeds the GDP of medium-sized countries many times over - that’s plenty money that is lacking in many important areas and could be invested much more sensibly.
In my opinion, the Chinese have recognized this and therefore do not want to be an unnecessarily expensive, apparent military power, even if they could afford it.
In short, I think it’s a mistake to invest in conventional weapons instead of in your own people and infrastructure, because possessing nuclear weapons is already enough of a deterrent. I mean, if you wanted to, you could destroy the entire world with them - and that is true for decades now – no one wants that, even if you have state-of-the-art aircraft carriers.
Edit: When the Nazis were defeated, nuclear weapons did not yet exist, which is why this discussion seems rather hypothetical to me - I think today the effect would be the end of humanity because fascists would be willing to accept that. Instead, it seems all the more important to me that democratic countries try to prevent fascist movements from within.
Nuclear weapons can exterminate a populace, but they cannot occupy, pacify, and rehabilitate one. For that, you need actual boots on the ground, which requires logistics. China could have the biggest military in the world, but that doesn’t mean jack-shit unless they’ve got a blue-water navy to ship them over here, and they don’t.
Remember, this discussion is not about China defeating the US. This discussion is about China liberating the US from the MAGAs the way the US liberated Germany from the Nazis. Nukes and drones are categorically useless for that purpose.
I completely agree with you, although things like cyber warfare also play a significant role here, in which the Chinese are on a par with the US.
Nevertheless, I think all this is pointless, because in my opinion, wars of invasion are only possible against countries that do not possess nuclear weapons – if this were not the case, a country like North Korea would no longer exist. So you are right in a way – but not because there is no military superpower comparable to the US, but because nuclear weapons exist, which makes conventional military superiority superfluous. That was simply not the case in the Second World War.
As I said, I think the Chinese have recognized this, which is why they are investing their money much more wisely. Also, as I said, we are talking about inconceivable amounts of money - such amounts that you could easily pay for decent social security for every US citizen, as is the case in virtually every Western country besides the US. That seems much more sensible to me.