‘Of course there’s going to be retaliation,’ says one expert. ‘It may be that this is what Trump’s interested in’
For decades, the US and its allies have painted Iran as the world’s biggest sponsor of state terrorism – invoking its Islamic rulers’ supposed revolutionary fanaticism and determined support for militant proxies.
Now a long-standing but mainly latent threat is coalescing, with the war waged on the country by the US and Israel, to raise the risk of an attack on American soil to levels unseen since the murderous al-Qaida assaults of 11 September 2001, experts say.
In an election year, opponents of Donald Trump are warning that such an event could rebound to his advantage – providing him with a pretext to crack down on critics by declaring a state of emergency or even cancelling November’s congressional midterm elections.
Two attacks on Thursday alone illustrated the heightened dangers.
You realize that “states doing what they want” actually requires those in power to fight back, right?
The state needs a governor that will actually be the first to resist the voter suppression measures and fight back.
I think this is the issue and crisis that Americans can’t seem to understand. Laws and “rights” are words on a piece of paper. That paper is less helpful than a roll of toilet paper if there are not people with guns (state police or citizens etc) that are willing to defend the rules on those pieces of paper against the other guys with guns (ICE and military) and their new “federal” piece of paper that says the states are in violation of new pieces of paper.
The pieces of paper aren’t what matter. The guys with guns are. When there is a disagreement over the pieces of paper that is when society collapses. No amount of “well the new paper is in violation of the old paper” will stop the guys with guns from coming to enforce it. The “new paper” is now how violence is enforced as long as the guys with guns decide to follow it. And they will.
Governors and states are already passing laws to fight back. That is the correct approach at this point even if it doesn’t feel aggressive enough.
We have to see what the regime actually does before we find out what the next level of response should be. Some governors won’t fight back, but some definitely will. It’s not black and white that everyone would just roll over. There’s a lot of angry people right now and losing the ability to vote would really piss people off. I think that would be the straw that breaks the camels back.
I have trouble believing that because I’ve been seeing comments for over a year saying this next thing will surely be the last straw
Watched this video just before Trump took power. Has helped me keep my perspective.
https://youtu.be/0YFdwfNh5vs
There’s no time too late for someone to mark their Rubicon. Because fascism keeps moving forward step by step.