I’m not even American, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but I am scared to death of a Trump presidency.
I am one of those people here who think that Biden is a far more competent executor of imperialist policies compared to Trump, but what I am even more afraid of is the early death of nascent left wing movements in America.
I am reminded of how the KPD getting its leaders murdered by Freikorps thugs during the Spartacist uprising (mind you, a much stronger party than any leftist movement in America today), and how its continued suppression paved the way to Nazi Germany.
Project 2025 will effectively embolden fascist thugs in America to do the same to the left wing movements, many of which are still in their cradle, and the death of leftist movements in their infancies will inevitably pave the way to a fascist America and undo many of the progress that had been made over decades.
The world cannot afford a fascist America. Imagine Hitler with nukes. The world will have to pay a much, much larger price as a result.
On this reasoning alone, I believe that Trump needs to be stopped at all cost. But many here have disagreed with me, and I need you to persuade me why I shouldn’t be afraid of Project 2025 at all. Even if the chance of that happening is 10%, I’m still not ready to gamble with it.
(I’m not saying we have to support Biden, I believe it is somewhat inevitable, I’m saying that we have to buy ourselves as much time as possible, even if it means strategic voting, to build a resilient leftist movement while delaying the inevitable for as long as we can.)
Project 2025 scares me for two reasons. One, because the GOP is being so open about what they'd like to do. Two, because the dem's entire plan to fight it is my least favorite four letter word: "Vote!" The house is in danger of catching on fire but the dems don't want to put it out. They want you to vote and then - somehow - everything will be fixed.
Project 2025 is a thought terminating cliché for liberals to scare them into voting. coeliacmccarthy commented on the judiciary. I'll add that if the Biden and the dems were serious about fighting fascism here's some stuff about the judiciary that needs to happen.
They should pack the supreme court. They should have done that during Biden's first two years when they could have.
They need to overhaul or junk judicial review.
They need to actually investigate Justice Thomas (and other GOP justices?) on corruption and the like.
They need to end judge shopping. Wikipedia calls it "forum shopping". The GOP wants as many cases to be redirected to batshit GOP bastions like Texas's wackadoodle Fifth Circuit. The GOP wants GOP judges (or GOP justices) so the GOP gets a really nice GOP outcome. This practice is obscene.
[I'm probably forgetting one or two things.]
The chance of #1, #2, or #3 ever happening is zero. The dems might talk about doing something on #4 and they might create a working group to "study" the problem but in the end that's just empty performative bullshit. The actual chance of #4 happening is also zero.
The dems keep screaming about Trumpian fascism. A dem lanyard (or suburban equivalent) would say they never think in meme terms and they'd get offended if you said they did. But they do! They just call that stuff Steven Colbert or editorial cartoons...
The problem is systemic on the right. The problem is the GOP itself. It's Trump's party. But the dems keep doing acting like if only Trump went away - everything could be fixed.
I only mentioned the judiciary but the dems have no desire to do anything. For example - they need to pass federal laws protecting and shoring up voting and electoral systems. But they'll never do that either. And if Biden gets a second term - his next Attorney General will be as bad as Garland.
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Judicial review in the United States
Forum shopping
A starting point for the GOP justices horrible behavior - clarence thomas luxury vacations.
The problem is systemic of a capitalist state/bourgeois democracy.
It is the actual plan engineered and published by capitalist class, and it’s not new: it’s a continuation of their decades-long projects.
It’s the Koch brothers’ party, the capitalists’ party. Both parties are.
Thanks for the response. I should point out that my position is not that the Democrats will stop fascism, rather that whether it is worthwhile for the left to placate the more “moderate” side of capital to delay fascism, even if it’s just by a few years. Whether it is worth buying some more time to organize. There is no illusion that the Dems will ever be on our side. Even Stalin desperately made an attempt to delay Nazi invasion on the USSR with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a move that likely saved the USSR from destruction.
(I don’t have the time to respond to everyone in this thread and I’m not looking for a debate, just so you know that all the comments and points made by everyone here are considered.)
I used to think that but not anymore. The dems aren't going to do anything other than rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Their "Restore Roe" stuff is performative bullshit. The only way they can actually do that is if they first make some kind of huge judicial change (pack the court or whatever) and then pass a law. If they leave things as they are - the GOP justices will simply say a Roe law is unconstitutional and kill. One final thing - the dem's border bill was a gift to the GOP and an illustration that the dems are worse than useless. When they get freaked out about polling - they'll always lurch to the right in a hopeless effort at getting right-wingers to vote for them.