• DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Fret not, says the president, he is apparently playing chess while the world is playing checkers

    He’s trying to treat the entire country like one of the casinos he bankrupted to screw over his creditors.

    I’m sure he thinks he’s playing chess. But what he’s really doing is sitting in the corner eating the pieces.

    • SunshineJogger@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      A vivid and possibly accurate description.

      I still think he is planted there to do as much damage as possible before he expires. Which would mean he is doing it all on purpose… Which then again would have to make him smarter than I give him credit for

      • Trihilis@ani.social
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        2 days ago

        Yeah I agree. There has to be a bigger plan than this. In 40 years our children will see documentaties about the republicans pulling the biggest power grab ever and using idiots like Trump to actieve it. It’s not Trump playing chess here, he’s just a pawn. There are people behind the scènes pulling the strings.

        If what currently is happening is really just throwing tantrums without having a plan then I feel sorry for how dumb most of america had become.

          • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I think this is more from Silicon Valley, destroy the country to make way for the Butterfly Revolution and corporate city states with CEO kings at the top. If we don’t stop it we’ll be in a techno feudalist dystopia

            • Deathray5@lemmynsfw.com
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              1 day ago

              “Adam something” did a great video on it. The Trump presidency is marked by fascism, incompetence and technocrats. It’s multipronged

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 day ago

          In 40 years our children will see documentaties about the republicans pulling the biggest power grab ever and using idiots like Trump to actieve it.

          It’s optimistic that they’ll even have documentaries to watch (and that they’d be historically accurate and truthful).

      • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Could be both planted and so inept that he believes he got there on his own accord and is doing a great job.

        • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Or he’s betting that if people get desperate enough they will allow an absolute dictatorship.

          • He is setting tariffs on his own, a power designated solely to Congress by the Constitution.

          • He is having masked police kidnap people off the streets without warrants and shipping them to an overseas gulag without trial or even charges.

          • He is illegally refusing to distribute money allocated by Congress to certain states in order to punish them for not doing his bidding.

          • And when the courts have ordered him to stop doing the above, he has willfully ignored those court orders with no repercussions.

          Exactly what more needs to happen for this to be a dictatorship?

          • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Firing judges who resist him

            Dissolution of Congress

            Deployment of military on US soil to control citizens.

            Alteration or abandonment of the Constitution.

            You’re right we are definitely on the spectrum of dictatorship, but it can get much much worse.

            • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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              6 hours ago

              If we compare the United States to the Empire in Star Wars, we’re somewhere past the end of Revenge of the Sith. Palpatine has declared himself the Emperor under the guise of needing to protect the Republic from an existential threat. He has already announced his intentions, taken personal control of key institutions, and started to strip power away from any institution or individual that he thinks can seriously oppose him.

              He hasn’t yet given up the facade of democratic legitimacy. He doesn’t do that for 19 years in Star Wars. Hitler never abolished the Reichstag in 12 years of dictatorial rule. Russia still has a parliament and a nominally independent legal system 25 years after Putin first rose to power. The Roman Senate continued to exist for hundreds of years after Rome became a dictatorship, and even outlived the existence of the empire as a unified entity, and the Byzantine Senate (the legislative body of the Eastern Roman Empire) lasted until the 14th century.

          • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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            1 day ago

            Suspending elections.

            We have never missed an election in nearly 250 years of existence, even during the Civil War. If he does that, then America no longer exists, and we have no obligation to pay taxes, respect the laws, pay our debts, etc., and most especially acknowledge the government.

            It is every man for himself.

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              16 hours ago

              You might as well be waiting for someone to go on TV and look directly at the camera and say, “I am a dictator” (which Trump even kinda did). We’re always going to have elections because they’re a valuable tool of controlling the population. Nearly every country in the world has them, including ones that are generally considered dictatorships.

              Without elections, the only vehicle of change or expressions of popular will would be actions, and those actions are generally more disruptive and effective than voting is. We didn’t always have elections in the first place, and we didn’t vote our way out of monarchy.

              With elections, people put their anger on hold for years, waiting for the appropriate time to express it, and the way it’s expressed is by choosing a different corporate lackey to support. Gerrymandering, corporate finance, a compromised press, etc ensure that will be the case. Even better, they get people forming their whole political identity around their preferred corporate lackey and half the population hating the other half for it, making organizing on a large scale extremely difficult.

              It’s a very silly place to draw a red line. Even if it happened, you’d still “have to” pay taxes for the same reason you do now, because of force. What, are you paying taxes and following laws and shit right now because you think the US government represents some kind of moral authority?