News: How to Topple an Authoritarian Regime

Just one example why pulling up stakes is not so easy. My Trump-hating sis still hasn't gotten Irish citizenship. So even if she got it, with 2 new grandbabies now here in NJ, the odds are slim she'd go anyway.

 

No, pulling up stakes is not easy. But staying isn't either, given it could be deadly (as recent events in Minnesota show).

Furthermore, based on Nazi Germany, at some point basically everyone had to face the difficult question of collaboration or active resistance. For example, some had to choose between reporting their neighbors or protecting their neighbors, potentially putting their own life in jeopardy. My grandfather in occupied France chose to put the entire family, including my mum, in life threatening situations when he hid a New Zealand airman from the Nazis and helped him eventually escape (I spoke with the airman when I lived in NZ, for the record).

Sometimes the choices are crystal clear, while other times they just edge you along the slippery slope to damnation. Either way, there really was no neutral position to take.

It is easy to imagine that at some point every American, like every German, French, Dutch, Belgian, Pole, etc., will be in a position of collaboration or potentially deadly resistance. Your sis the grandma may end up facing a much more difficult and dangerous decision than whether or not to pull up stakes.

 

November elections and a landslide win by Democrats (a deafening repudiation by a Democratic tsunami), followed by a massive win in November of 2028, by President Newsom.

That’s about it. That’s the only way we topple this regime. Democrats have to be more united than at any time in our lives or we’re well and truly doomed.

 

Even if both of those things happen, it doesn't matter.

Firstly, because our government is systematically set up for a country that doesn't exist. Pastoral, white and male, diffused, deferential.

Secondly, let's assume the Democrats want to fully support, let's say, the Department of Education. They can go through the extraordinarily hard work of funding it legislatively , and navigating a judicial system that opposes the very existence of liberal ideas or people. Then they can hire thousands of employees and buy millions of staplers, and they can set up an infrastructure for success. They can have endless meetings about what they want to accomplish, how to accomplish it, and begin the process of actually accomplishing it. They can spend energy and time and sweat building it up, a process which would take years or decades. And then...it will all be destroyed on January 20th of whenever the next time a Republican gets elected with the swipe of a pen, along with every other department in the government.

What's the point?

Thirdly, democracy is incompatible with social media because it's tough to conduct free elections when half of the population would rather see their political opponents in a mound of corpses than on a debate stage.

 

We know that under the best circumstances (like the Obama years) the system is imperfect but it’s obviously a hell of a lot better than this shit. I still think this Trumpian nightmare is a one off anomaly. I don’t see any real appetite for revolt so that leaves the ballot box. It’s still our best hope, for now.

 

Someone compiled a list of non-violent secessions

My impression is that most Americans when hearing the term “secession” think of the War Between the States, or as it’s usually referred to, The Civil War, and so conjure up a bloody multiyear event when any consideration of secession arises. But secessions are in fact, often peaceful with both sides accepting the parting of ways (just as couples, business partners, friends, and club members, etc. generally do).

I’ve prepared this (admittedly non-exhaustive) list—including twenty-three secessions from or to the United States—to make the point that in fact peaceful secessions are rather common and beneficial.

There were as little as 40-70 sovereign countries in the 1940s (it’s a rather inexact science!) and today there are 206. Clearly the world can carry on with secessions being the norm for the last 80 years. And do realize that the violent secessions that have occurred were each a case of a group wanting to leave a jurisdiction only to have that jurisdiction resort to violence against its own for the sake of maintaining their power—a vile motive to say the least.

https://mises.org/power-market/there-have-been-57-peaceful-secessions-1776

 

I disagree. I'd dare to say that most of them were either the result of revolution and/or the collapse of a bigger colonialist empire, combined with forced divisions by those same empires.

Each of the 13 colonies eventually went to war against the Brittish empire.
There was a war over Cuba.
The Philipines was taken by force and occupied by the USA and Japan.
Most of the former Soviet countries were taken by force.
Yugoslavia broke apart and lead to a bloddy war.

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/so...le-arrested-during-anti-ice-protest-in-austin

 

It is so inaccurate and so lazy. They included Finland which had to fight Russia for its independence but didn't include any French or British African colonies. It's mainly British dominions and the Soviet Union breakup.

 

That's modern conservatism for you. They take pride in being dumb.

 

I had never heard of it.

But I'm really leaning toward secession anyway. So many broken brains that agreeing on the most basic stuff is now impossible

 

It's America so it'd definitely take a sales job.

"Do you want to free yourself once and for all from Commie Libtards and get away from hellholes like Chicago, Minneapolis & San Francisco? Then lemme tell you about conscious uncoupling. No more gun-free zones. Abortion would be completely banned. Teach your children however you want without government interference from the Dept. of Education. You want to say that slaves enjoyed working for free and it was better than Africa anyway? Well now you can. Heck, you won't even have to recycle any more."

 

Damn, so instead of Canada becoming the 51st state, some states would become territories 11 to 30 something.

Oh, and Jesusland will actually be named The MAGA states of Trumplandia or something like that.

 

Think of the India split where the sides are still fighting almost 80 years later.

 

We would have a liberal transfer policy because the Trumper in South Jersey or upstate NY would surely not wanna be a part of the Land of Finally Having Good Things.

 

I'm on board, just include the (fake) Northern Virginia.

 

I'm kind of good with it, but I don't know how Canadians would feel about suddenly being a minority in their own country. Population of Canada, 41 million; population of California, 39 million, NY, Illinois, etc and there's a lot more Americans than Canadians in Canada now.

Oh shit, do we need to start using the British spelling for words like color and labor? Does Canada say "zee" or "zed" for the last letter in the alphabet? Do we need to start having Thanksgiving in October? This might be tougher than I thought.

 

And every blue state has large swaths of red areas….who will not agree to leave the union peacefully.

 

I am not gonna ********ing learn French.