I’m all for shitting on Western hypocrisy, but I don’t think there’s much slavery in Italy.

Edit: Apparently I’m wrong.

Trump accidentally doing a good thing? More likely than you think, but not by much.

Unrelated to anything but I love your comments.

Nothing will happen. The law doesn’t punish people that rich and/or powerful, even when they’re not the literal president. He got away with literal treason; no way diddling kids does him in.

50 years… which is peanuts in historical terms. There’s a reason post-colonial states almost uniformly suffer from weak economies and poor and corrupt governance. Overthrowing an already entrenched ruling class is a generations-long affair.

is just blind to what has happened to the US government.

At the risk of being that guy, it’s not what has happened to the US government, but what the US government has always been. Like, rich men getting off scot-free for diddling kids (and other crimes against ordinary people) didn’t start with Trump; the Epstein files didn’t become a thing under Trump. America has always been a country by and for rich men.

I mean, it’s imperialism. They want other people’s shit, which sometimes requires the military to force other people to give them their shit.

I mean, sure, but until at least the midterms frankly nobody cares what Ken Martin has to say, and even after I doubt establishment crooks are ever going to be lacking for funds. It’s gonna be a while until this guy’s opinions about policy actually matter.

Authoritarianism ≠ “destroying their country.” That’s exactly what an authoritarian state does when its people are unhappy.

Yeah that’s a fair point. Seems climate change has a lot to do with it though, so this is more of a joint venture.

Even assuming that’s true*, that’s not the same as “destroying their country.”

*I’m not sure how much Iranian gender laws affect women’s daily life there.

According to the article technically women can’t get motorcycle licenses in Iran, but according to the woman in the article she hasn’t been harassed due to that, so I’m not sure how it works in practice.

For a country battered by sanctions Iran is actually doing pretty well for itself, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

This is a social expectations thing rather than a legality thing, so not really.

(Un)fortunately, that’s not gonna happen. Even if American democracy survives the midterms, it’s not gonna survive an establishment Dem in the general.

I mean, GDR is one tiny country but that goes for both sides of the equation. China would be able to surveil mail with the full resources of the Chinese government.

Russia is a colonial abomination that shoud not exist, so that’s pretty decent news.

People aren’t nearly as “axiomatically opposed” to anything as you think they are.

As history shows, quite a few people will hold onto their flawed worldviews even as everything around them falls apart. It’s entirely plausible for an organization to fail to adapt to changing circumstances and fail miserably at its purpose; it happens all the time.

If your organization is already taking direct action (protests, strikes, sit ins, peaceful civil disobedience) then your tactics will naturally escalate as the government becomes more authoritarian.

Sure, that’s fair, but that only holds if we’re talking about direct action. Direct action and electoral politics are fundamentally different courses, and there’s no guarantee that the latter will escalate into the former. My point is: If you’ll organize, you have to organize around direct action, not elections. Also just in case, protests only count as direct action when they meaningfully obstruct power; otherwise they’re just parades.

Those are powerful tools, don’t get me wrong, but not so powerful that they’re invincible.

True, but what I’m getting at is: What will happen if/when they lose their majority in either house in the midterms? Will they just turn over power? And risk being held accountable for their crimes? Will Trump allow himself to lose his only shot at becoming a fascist dictator? No, they’ll launch a coup and worry about the details later. I think we’ve seen too many Sieg Heils for “it can’t happen here” to still hold water. They’ll launch their coup and there’s frankly very little in America that can stop them right now. Hence, it’ll be up to popular grassroots resistance to do something about it, and the work to make sure such resistance exists starts now, not after the coup is already a done deal. Also, you know, ICE is still kidnapping people off the street and someone also needs to do something about that.

If you have enough people in your corner to win an election, you have enough people to blow up a bridge.

Not if your organization’s membership (and, perhaps more importantly, leadership) is stacked with people who are axiomatically opposed to blowing up bridges. If you intend to blow up bridges in the future, the work on that starts now, not when elections inevitably fail.

If they won’t hold a fair election, make them.

Sure, but you can only make them while they’re vulnerable (aka right now). It’s notoriously hard to make autocrats hold elections after they’ve successfully abolished them. MAGAts know they’ll lose control of Congress in the midterms, so their only hope is to overthrow democracy by January 2027. Do you understand what this means? By the time you’re voting for your “candidates who will fight for us” it will already be too late, and by that point “making them” will be easier said than done.

“Lynch your leaders” makes more and more sense every day.