I’m not reading the thread just yet. Just came here to say I’m sorry for all of you living through this.
Stay strong. Resist.
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Thanks.
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Maybe more of us should acknowledge that the State was never intended to serve the people nor provide redress to any but the powerful? That all progress in favour of the people has been made despite the State, not because of it? That the hope of seeking reform within a political system that was never intended to provide it might be a trap intended to keep the people from attempting to exert their collective strength?
(None of this necessarily precludes voting for the “lesser evil” as an exercise in strategic short term harm reduction, so long as we acknowledge that the lesser evil is still, in fact “evil” and that exercising the vote is not an effective substitute for collective action, although I’m sure some will vehemently disagree on this point.)
“Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security.” … “Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution.” ⸺ Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1937)
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People FOUGHT AND DIED to make this fucking country MORE democratic. Theory is nice and all, but we go to LIVE in this country in this specific set of historical circumstances. We can certainly use theory to promote better ideas, but we have to address this fascist takeover being carried out by theocratic conservatives right now and make choices that do not lead us into a civil conflict.
My point…
In this country, in this specific circumstance, “the people” do not necessarily share values. The Trump side certainly sees themselves as “the people” and they ARE exercising their “collective strength” to subjugate the rest of us.
Again, theory is nice and all, but some of us have to deal with reality, and that’s making the best choice out of shitty choices. SOME leftists are all about burning shit down, so they can get their imagined utopia, but that path is a god damn bloodbath, with the least powerful and most marginalized giving up their safety and lives. And has history tells us, the result is rarely the utopia that’s expected. It’s usually more state-based violence intended to preserve a specific class structure.
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Watching from across the Atlantic in horror, all I can say is vote D all the way down the ballot, get your friends and family to do the same, make your friends do it, offer to take people to the voting stations - and pray for the future of America.
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It’s disheartening in the extreme. We are taught the trial court just needs to figure out what is the right result for that case. In contrast, the appellate courts are tasked with figuring out what is right in every case going forward. At heart, Gideon was not about Clarence Earl Gideon. Miranda was not about Ernesto Miranda.
This decision was about one person and one person only: the majority’s chosen emperor. BBC, NYT, Wapo, etc. ALL say “The Court finds Trump has immunity,” or “Trump wins,” not “the Court finds a former president has immunity.” It is the apotheosis of results-oriented judicial activism, designed to protect one person in a particular situation. Nobody believes for a second this court would apply this same immunity to a Democrat any more than McConnell honored his own “Scalia Rule.” The court would not have come to this same decision if it were Obama under indictment. It may not have come to this decision if the prosecution were happening in 2021, when a few months of delay wouldn’t make a difference.
Of all the absurdities and obscenities this court has wrought, nothing is more absurd or obscene than to say an attempted coup can be an “official” act of a government official who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It is weak solace to see this case as our Dred Scott, and that this country survived the ensuing civil war it helped spawn.
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Maybe they should just declare him king?
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They just did.
ETA: I don’t mean that as “they appointed him” or “they ensured his election and non-prosecution.” They just bestowed the title. They are Royalists in a technocratic state, i.e. fascists.
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I mean… yeah. I like happy fantasies more than sad ones when I hopeless and unable to control my life. 
I guess it’s like the story about the guy enjoying the flavor of a strawberry as he plummets from a landslide.
But I mean if some one is going to bring it I might as well squeeze every drop of joy out of life in between.
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You got to go about a minute or so in for the start…
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I wish the whole “flying your national flag upside down” meme could be stuffed back into Horatio bloody Hornblower novels, where it belongs. It only really works as a plot device in fiction with the Union Flag of 1801, because the French and Spaniards won’t pick up on it, since their flags have no wrong way to fly them.
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Some of them did, just as long as it was their guy.
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Indeed. Part of why we have the very undemocratic system that we have (which has become more democratic via the blood of millions of activists over the years) was to bring in the enslavers in the south to get them to sign on to the Constitution (that they preferred the Articles). It’s been centuries of blood, sweat, tears, and deaths to get us to an actual democracy, which did not really happen until the passage of the 1960s civil rights bills. The GOP has been working to roll this back since the Reagan years at least.
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Bravo.
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… and that will only take another 3½ years 
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The Court can only rule on what is brought to them. They are not the “kings,” but they can be the “kingmaker” (see Bush II).
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