Civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis said that Trump's latest executive order creates "an online portal to permit random fascist vigilantes to join soldiers" to help crack down on protests across the country.
they do not have nearly enough people to demand obedience
Depends on who’s in charge of the bombs and drone swarms. I honestly think the only reason society still exists as we know it is that none of the conservatives are yet fully confident that they have complete, unquestioning control of the arsenal. We’re living in an era where it really only takes a few hundred people, maybe a few thousand, to kill millions. Hundreds of millions. Billions if they start using nukes. What do they care if they take out the people who kept the weapons working? These psychos would only have to use them once and then they’d have power feudal lords and kings could only dream of.
As horrible and inhumane as the US was during wars like Iraq and especially Vietnam, we were still constrained on some level. No matter how indiscriminately our troops were allowed to murder civilians, ultimately, indiscriminate killing wasn’t the main order coming down from very top. When Vietnam finally got so unpopular that even manufactured consent wasn’t cutting it for public support, we pulled out, instead of glassing the country and leaving as few survivors as possible. Again, not that Vietnam was in any way a moral war; I don’t want to minimize how many firebombs we dropped on innocent people, but there was some limit. Hell, even Russia has so far limited itself in how far it’ll go in trying to conquer Ukraine.
But… I’m not sure that’ll be the case for much longer if these fascists are allowed to continue to control the levers of power.
Honestly, I have hope that things won’t get that bad. Realistically, Trump could have easily already had his own Sturmabteilung outright murdering opposition members and doing far worse. Things are bad, but given the effectively unlimited power he’s got right now, they’ve been weirdly reserved with how they’ve used it. They certainly posture and bluster like they’re ready to do so, but have generally only done so in a largely performative way.
Depends on who’s in charge of the bombs and drone swarms. I honestly think the only reason society still exists as we know it is that none of the conservatives are yet fully confident that they have complete, unquestioning control of the arsenal. We’re living in an era where it really only takes a few hundred people, maybe a few thousand, to kill millions. Hundreds of millions. Billions if they start using nukes. What do they care if they take out the people who kept the weapons working? These psychos would only have to use them once and then they’d have power feudal lords and kings could only dream of.
As horrible and inhumane as the US was during wars like Iraq and especially Vietnam, we were still constrained on some level. No matter how indiscriminately our troops were allowed to murder civilians, ultimately, indiscriminate killing wasn’t the main order coming down from very top. When Vietnam finally got so unpopular that even manufactured consent wasn’t cutting it for public support, we pulled out, instead of glassing the country and leaving as few survivors as possible. Again, not that Vietnam was in any way a moral war; I don’t want to minimize how many firebombs we dropped on innocent people, but there was some limit. Hell, even Russia has so far limited itself in how far it’ll go in trying to conquer Ukraine.
But… I’m not sure that’ll be the case for much longer if these fascists are allowed to continue to control the levers of power.
Honestly, I have hope that things won’t get that bad. Realistically, Trump could have easily already had his own Sturmabteilung outright murdering opposition members and doing far worse. Things are bad, but given the effectively unlimited power he’s got right now, they’ve been weirdly reserved with how they’ve used it. They certainly posture and bluster like they’re ready to do so, but have generally only done so in a largely performative way.