I’m feeling so uneasy with everything I’ve been seeing. I keep thinking about what we will be this time next year, and if shit hits the fan, what is your plan? I’m queer and was politically active in 2020, so I would potentially be considered a political enemy.
The only blueprint I can think of is what you do in an active shooter situation; Flee, Hide, Fight.
I know there’s that romantic notion of “don’t be a coward, get out and protest”, but I remember the brutality of the 2020 protests firsthand, and even then I thought “thank god I’m going toe to toe with the CPD and not the CCP”. Next time is going to be different. The president now has authority to send drone strikes. Protests and riots don’t stand a chance agains missiles and live rounds.
Flee- I have an Uncle in Montreal who my family could potentially use as a way to at least temporarily escape the chaos. The hope I’d have is that Canada and other countries would accept American refugees, however that’s not a guarantee.
Hide- If borders are closed, lay low and move away from major cities if possible. If civil war breaks out, try to get away from the violence even if you think your side will win. Todays losers may be tomorrows victors.
Fight- If cellular data/ social media algorithms can keep track of you, and surveillance can make sure there’s no movement, this would be the last resort of desperation. I guess if possible try to either find a group for safety in numbers, or conversely go guerrilla as groups of resistance would make easy targets.
Sorry my mind is running and I’m getting scared.
He was no less a fascist in 2016, but there were enough checks on his power that he mostly managed to simply be incompetent and chaotic. He bungled Covid response and gave free handouts to billionaires, sold who knows how many state secrets to foreign entities, but there are a lot of positions in government held by actually qualified and competent people who waylaid his whims. Conservatives have been carefully putting the pieces into place to prevent this from happening again, for instance reclassifying higher ranking government employees so that the president would be able to fire/dismiss them without cause. If the leader of the FBI attempts to investigate him again, they could just hire a new one who won’t. The supreme court being full of right wing extremists is another purposeful and deliberate step to undermine the checks and balances system. Conservatives want kings, and they weren’t prepared the last time Trump was in power. They will be able to do much more damage this time.
There were no real checks. He had way too many Republicans in Congress for there to be. Most of what protects America is gentleman’s agreements that we all assume a normal president wouldn’t defy.
That is literally what happened last time. The house (where Republicans are a majority) wouldn’t pass a bill that makes firing the FBI director illegal so there’s no real difference.
There isn’t exactly a single candidate in the past ten years I would’ve called competent. In 2016, every last person running was out of touch, the only thing that enormously benefitted were the memes. Which is why I often mention my biggest qualm with Democrats, that in 2016 they wanted votes so badly they shunned third party voting as “throwing away your vote”. Uhm, no, throwing away your vote is what we’re doing right now. If the system wasn’t simply a monarchy with two choices and if people voted honestly, this is a situation we wouldn’t even be thinking about. I feel sorry for nobody.
Not everybody who works for the government is elected. The vast majority of people who work for the government are hired like at any other job, and many of them work their ways up the pay levels with competency and years of experience just like the private sector. Only a very limited number of employees are supposed to cycle in and out with a White House administration, and those are the people the president is supposed to have the ability to get rid of at will. Tens of thousands of government employees keep working regardless of who is in charge and answer to their supervisors, and so can offer some resistance to illegal, immoral or downright stupid decisions from the “top”. For instance, if the General Natural Resources Manager of the EPA says “no, there shouldn’t be fracking operations here, it’s too close to habitation” etc, they can push back enough to possibly cancel that initiative. Unless, of course, you make it so the executive branch can point to any government employee and say “you’re fired” for arbitrary reasons and replace them with a sycophantic toady who always says yes to daddy oil.
Hmm I wonder if we know anyone who likes saying “you’re fired”…?