And Hegseth was a middling low-level officer at best, and presumably while sober, so when it comes to military strategy, there are WH40K players who could out-think them.

I've previously said that I resent the quality of fascist I have to deal with. And to be fair, Amin understood how to wield military and security forces effectively because of his background. Trump's a draft-dodger who thinks 80's action movies are the height of tactical genius.

As someone whose autistic special interests include the history of authoritarian regimes, I'm periodically annoyed by the fact that the leader of fascism in America manages to regularly make me think, "Mussolini was smarter than this."

For one thing, there's nowhere near enough of them.

And the creation of the SS/Ustase analogue is very slow and imperfect. ICE and its goons are a partial step to that but they are a long, long way from Oskar Dirlewanger and his monsters.

one last thing I'd add here is that the fawning "trump's age doesn't matter, the rank corruption doesn't matter, etc. because he's been signed off on by the will of the People" is gonna slam into a massive reality check in Nov 2026 (and frankly I think the regime is a lot more brittle than appears)

Which I feel implies they are rather contemptuous of America in general.

I mean, my 9th grade English teacher might have also called my writing trite, but that would have been because I was doing the bare minimum.

It's people like you who help me not have panic attacks every three days. You're doin' the Lord's work. Thank you.🎉

They forgot that, per Andor (yes, I'm aware it's a cliche), "Tyranny requires constant effort."

They are lazy (This includes Thiel and Musk with their dreams of AI killbots), and this is gonna bite them in the ass, soon.

The order Trump needs to be able to give the military is “prevent a Democratic House from being seated in 2027.” This does not help him do that.

Hegseth has tried to purge opponents in the military. But you need a high concentration of loyalists to enable this and they don’t have enough.

Like, Trump has done basically nothing to secure the stakeholders that you would need to consolidate authoritarian rule

Increasingly convinced that Trump mostly likes the aesthetics of fascism without really understanding or caring about the traditional goals of authoritarians

Who, as it happened, felt that NAMBLA was treated unfairly.

Carabello's take here is supported by such luminaries as infamous butthole plagiarist James Somerton, and Yasmin Nair.

Dems would be more likely to take decisive action if it was clear the electorate was behind them. We have an electorate that keeps letting GOP win and then complains to pollsters about how they disapprove of Dems for various contradictory reasons.

Yeah. I'm kinda mad that Vance is Catholic, because it decreased the amount of virulent anti-Catholic sentiment from the religious right.

And I say this as a proud Protestant.

I usually don't even bother mentioning it unless it's some kind of weird old-timey racism, like anti-Irish racism.

They're also staffed by principled people, because we don't pay them a lot.

I'm almost certain understanding how to predict the America voting system drove Nate Silver to madness, and that it's almost impossible to rig by virtue of being so decentralized it becomes a logistical nightmare.

I'm more bullish on midterms, mostly because my dad volunteers as a poll worker. Based on his experience, our voting system is difficult to rig or suborn because it's less of a single system and more of 1000 small systems that interact minimally with the federal government.

For the doomers who like to fantasize about secession on here, I hope you're enjoying the show in DC. This is the fate you'd like to consign the people of the district to.

Ironically, the fitting punishment for people who believe this is to execute them without trial.

Sorry.

Never mind, someone said his dad had a heart attack when he was seven, and his mom committed suicide when he was an adult. Which doesn't necessarily disprove my point.

Trump assembled one majority, but that does not preclude his opponents from assembling another. We often talk about elections as if we are baking a cake — with the outcome fixed and irreducible — but it is more akin to building a Lego model. The pieces can be arranged a different way.

So to answer OP's question, I don't think antifa needed to take his cat hostage.

Agreed. I was just pretty sure he lost his parents in some horrific accident at a young age, which might prompt the same desire to help others as Bruce Wayne.

It's honestly a question of which will happen first: he dies and we get to watch the dumbest and evilest version of Death of Stalin play out, or his stupid decisions result in him being turned into a lame duck president before being thrown in jail.

As an autistic nerd whose special interests include authoritarian regimes, Trump's coalition shouldn't work, and he's flying in the face of every principle of effective tyranny.

👍