Almost all of the heavily-GOP states have virtually no functioning infrastructure or state economies left; they’d have to go to the Dem states to steal whatever they could simply to subsist. Imagine suddenly having no Federal funds flowing into the Deep South.
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We used to joke that Carter went in blonde, and went out grey. Based on how Reagan looked, we figured that hair color change reflected how much of a conscience the president had.
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Apropos the grey hairs, presumably, whatever it is that’s being held in by the Pentagon, the Deep State is more sensible than to feed it a bit of Trump’s soul in case it really pisses it off. A dyspeptic Nyarlathotep would be… Bad.
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Agreed
Agreed
I wish I had your confidence on this point.
I agree with you on the factuality of the above point, but what matters is if he believes he has the power base to defy the election results. It gets super messy if he does, and he’s been demonstrating a capacity to ignore reality since literally his first day in office.
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Or that time he used them as props at the border, I’m fairly sure they got pissed over that.
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I’ve been watching my two canaries in the military coup coal mine: a pair of relatives who made it to major in the USAF in some sensitive programs before retiring and who are pretty much batshit millienalist Christian Zionist Evangelinazis. The male bird made some squawks about persecution until the actual summary-ish document dropped. Since then it’s been radio (Facebook) silence from the Turgidsons.
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Most of my family was seriously gray by 35. I seem to have lucked out a bit, found my first grays by 16 and it just sort of stalled out. Though my beard is finally starting to go in a serious way. But for the most part these seem to go fast. Friend of mine went from Just for Men commercial to Anderson cooper between 26 and 28.
For all the noise it generates there’s not much odd about graying fast nor graying early.
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Well, that too. But I meant, on the most basic level, how would this illegitimate GOP junta function? Unless they’ve already set up a formal network of sleeper agents inside every federal agency, people are just going to ignore their orders and obey the real president, even if she’s working out of the Holiday Inn. I mean, it’d be more chaotic than that. But it’s not like just sitting in the White House gives you magical power over the government somehow.
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Depends on how villainous he goes, and whether one of his secret service agents looks like this:
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Right. This particular bit of hand wringing doesn’t exactly seem to have thought it through. So lets say Trump has ICE/CBP and a chunk of soldiers and even generals and what have actually peel off to support him. That doesn’t equate to Trump just stays in power. There’s still the rest of the military, and the National Guard system. That means insurgency/civil war not Trump just stays in power.
Even if the scary deep state just shrugs and runs with Trump. What about all those states that don’t like the guy as it is? Are they just gonna give it up? Its not an unfounded fear, but the problem isn’t Trump is likely to just stick around for ever. Its the messy destabilization that comes from him trying.
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see, you do understand how it works
some people just like telling each other scary stories
you guys could be asking “Will the military and the federal bureaucracy recognize the results of the Electoral College vote?” but that’s not such a good ghost story
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To be fair, did your friend write the book ‘how democracies die?’ I’m also not sold on this, but there are a good number of people who know the material well and dislike fear mongering that are worried. Trust experts and when they’re worried don’t jump onboard, but give it some time and thought. Perhaps keep your optimism in place while mentally preparing yourself.
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Oh, the beard. The beard is the worse. Clean-shaven, I’m not too bad. But if I ever try to grow a beard again, I’m going to look like a particularly disreputable Captain Birdseye.
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Looks better than it is. Orcs all over the place.
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Lucky break there: With the 25th, it would be Acting President Pence. The history books could pave him over as 45.5.
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They absolutely have the stomach to do it. Remember how McConnell fucking went derelict in his duties to prevent obama from seating a scotus judge.
The GOP will absolutely break the law to get their way. They’ve done it. And if it receives too much critisism, they “make it legal” because the american piblic and especially the conservatives have confused legality with morality these days.
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Yes. I have a friend who went totally gray—actually white—in four months time in her late 20s. Has a baby-face, so she went for being mistaken for ‘too-young to date’, to being mistaken for ‘too-old to date’ by her age peers. Genetics plays a big role in things like graying. Stress can too, of course.
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False equivalency ahoy! Bad enough to call them both conspiracy theories, but “exact same”? I mean, seriously, that’s an embarrassingly false equivalency.
The Jade Helm conspiracy theory was a fabrication made up whole-cloth that had nothing to do with reality. A routine training exercise was latched onto by right-wingers who were projecting authoritarian tendencies onto Obama because they were just so upset a black guy got elected. Neither Obama nor anyone who supported him ever indicated that this training exercise was going to be anything other than what it had always been. The hysteria around Obama was clearly not rooted in reality - he would do something that literally the previous five or six presidents had done (e.g. wear a tan suit), and the right would respond to it in a way that was utterly insane.
Here we have a nakedly authoritarian president whose behavior has, at every turn, been wildly abnormal and is gleefully norm-(and law-)breaking. His supporters frequently talk about him having the role for life and are currently misinterpreting the constitution to push the idea that he’s allowed to be in the office longer than two terms. Trump himself frequently both repeats those messages and states that perhaps he’ll be in office longer than two terms and, in fact, is “owed” extra time. Those closest to him have stated, outright, that he’ll not leave office willingly and peacefully. He’s made it clear he doesn’t care about the legitimacy of elections nor the rule of law. At the same time, he’s facing criminal charges that can’t touch him while he’s in office, and openly breaking the law - and has roped in other parts of the state to corruptly aid him - to try to undermine threats to his staying in office. Maybe he’s not that serious about the idea of staying in power beyond his legal term, but others are, and he - and a lot of other people - are certainly thinking about it. Which makes it a very real potential threat, even if not a very likely one, not a “conspiracy theory.”
If anything, you’ve confused “conspiracy theory” with actual conspiracy.
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BOTH OF THESE PERSPECTIVES ARE VALID
/hyperventilates
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