Had some fun speculating this morning. My picks so far:
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Instruct Surgeon General to reschedule marijuana. If he refuses, fire him and find someone who will.
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Withdraw all US military presence on foreign soil. Military equipment is to be handed over to the host country, with the exception of relatively bad actors (e.g. Israel), in such case it is handed to their opposition. The influx of soldiers will be converted into a military engineer force to repair and develop infrastructure nationwide, including affordable housing and public transit.
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Close Guantanamo bay, end the embargo on Cuba.
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Withdraw from NATO, halt all NATO funding.
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Halt all arms sales to foreign powers.
I'm keeping it to whatever I can do unilaterally, but go wild if you like. To (selectively) quote Flannery O'Connor, "You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much."
As soon as you even utter the words "withdraw" you'll get 360 noscoped.
Climate Stalin.
Declare a state of emergency over climate change, and create a board of climate scientists to give near unilateral powers over all policy making.
Immediately arrest all energy company executives and try and execute them for crimes against humanity. This includes ones from countries that are not the US.
Nationalize all energy production, vehicle manufacturers, solar panel and wind turbine production, etc.
Ban the production of new civilian cars with internal combustion engines. Redivide factories to produce busses, trains, and a small number of electric cars.
Massively ramp up public transit, and ban charging for public transit nationwide. Cities now have a legal responsibility to provide a high level of free public transit to all residents, and if they fail to do so the mayor can be put in prison over it.
End homelessness. Just house them. Any city that fails to do so the mayor gets murdered by homeless people on live TV.
Begin construction of as many nuclear power plants as is feasible and necessary. Also give assistance to other countries in funding, expertise, and labor to build their own nuclear plants.
Crank out as many wind turbines and solar panels as possible, both for the US and to be freely shipped abroad.
Close down the northbound and southbound sides of every interstate highway in the US, and convert them into high speed rail that will be free at point of service.
Finally, begin a long term permanent evacuation of the suburbs and densifiying of urban environments. There will be no more construction or road maintenance in rural areas. Instead, when conditions near you have degraded far enough you will be provided with a new home in an actual city with requirements on density, transit, and walkability. The goal is that no one in areas zoned as cities should need a car (or even be allowed to have them) while rural areas need a particular justification to continue existing (resource extraction mostly). In the abandoned suburbs, salvage what can be salvaged from the infrastructure and replant forests or use for agriculture.
It’s the only thing that meets the moment. Like how the Soviet Union mobilized their entire society to fight the existential threat of Naziism, we need to mobilize our entire society to fight the existential threat of climate change
:stalin-feels-good: this is my favorite response so far
any plans for re-educating the :grillman: and :frothingfash: and :liberalism: ? taking control of the media?
Only in that they need to happen, I genuinely have no idea how the best ways to deal with that are. If I suddenly became president I would consult with experts on that issue, especially asking China for assistance.
I’m not a climate scientist but I am a biologist so climate science is far closer to my realm of expertise than education, political theory, and related issues are. I know generally what needs to happen to stop climate change, I have no idea how to stop reactionary ideology aside from the obvious of making sure everyone has a baseline standard of living.
And even then, my first step is “create a board of climate scientists with broad powers” which includes the power to tell me “That’s dumb don’t do that”
I would immediately order the military to purge everyone in the federal government / executive branch who isn't loyal to me.
Following that:
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Arrest every billionaire and multi-millionaire before they can flea the country. Use the purged FBI / CIA to do this.
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Free everyone in Guantanamo bay and ICE prison camps.
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Abolish ICE, execute everyone who was a member of it
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Put all the billionaires / multi-millionaires into Gitmo or what were previously ICE prison camps. Begin interrogating them for information on where they've hidden their assets.
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Declare universal healthcare as a constitutional right, this includes abortion and trans healthcare.
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Begin distributing free insulin immediately
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Announce that Covid quarantines were back in affect
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Vaccinations are now mandatory
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Withdraw all American troops from foreign soil, purge anyone disloyal as soon as they arrived back
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End the war on drugs
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End all embargos on AES countries
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Dissolve the American Supreme court, execute all the conservative justices. They couldn't protect abortion rights so they are useless.
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Fold the senate into the house of representatives, each state gets an extra two "at large" reps.
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Publicly execute every republican in the house of representatives for crimes against humanity + fascism. Announce plans for new elections for the available seats.
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Send the military into Florida and Texas. Arrest and then publicly execute Gregg Abbott and Ron DeSantis for breaking federal law
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Order the house to put together immediate plans for reparations
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Order the house to immediately begin planning a land back process
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Declare all businesses are now worker-owned co-opts and must form unions. Have all CEOs of large companies arrested. The workers of each company will vote on whether the CEO should be folded back into the company as a normal worker or put on trail for wage theft.
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Appoint Richard Wolff as head of labor + the Fed, give sweeping permissions on economic reform.
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Declare Hawaii and other nations occupied as "territories" (eg Puerto Rico, Guam, etc) free of American rule.
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Public broadcast on all stations announcing these changes have already occurred and that the United States is now a transitional socialist state. Tell everyone to read the communist manifesto until we can put together something directly related to these current material conditions.
I would do all this assuming I am still going to be murdered by end of day, end of week max.
This is also why I would want to dismantle as much shit as possible while still leaving at least some structure intact so that a full on fash couldn't just take over as easily.
Some of the worst moderates like Pelosi would get purged. Any that tried to get in the way would also be dismissed from office.
progressive liberals deserve a chance to review and amend their ideology. Most of them held the line this election cycle on abortion and trans rights, so there is at least something there. They would not be allowed to maintain institutional power.
Conservative reactionaries in power have no redemptive value and are already ideologically committed to fascism. Fascists aren't people, they're tumors.
Would also need at least some structure in place even temporally while a coherent vanguard was formed.
Abolish ICE, execute everyone who was a member of it
:party-sicko:
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Make it your quirky thing to always wear a bulletproof helmet and vest
Shoot myself so I can get street cred with radical leftists for attempting to assassinate the president
Appoint a vice president that is even more radical than me, thereby making an assassination less appealing to capital.
I would probably be murdered by the CIA for being a communist and replaced by Kamala
I think OP's list is pretty solid, I would add enact universal health care, and abolish the CIA.
Was thinking about destroying CIA/FBI but apparently that can't be done unilaterally. I guess next best thing is firing the deputy director of the CIA, appointing one who agrees to destroy the org as much as possible, then fire the actual director and let the deputy take over. Presumably the same process would work for the FBI.
I was going to say universal health care could never happen unilaterally, but according to this article you could literally do medicare for all using COVID as a justification. Thanks for continuing to not do this every single day, Joey :^)
The first thing I would do is sing the praises of our brave heroes in the intelligence community and announce that I'm throwing a party for them on a ship at an undisclosed location in the middle of the ocean.
The third thing I would do is...
hey wait is this going to be the plot setup for Disco Elysium 2?
Immediately chart a plane to crash land in the Siberian wilderness before the CIA learns that I'm a dirty commie and gives me the Excellence in Journalism award
Bide my time until Kissinger dies, use the emergency notification system to blast "ANOTHER KKKRAKKKA DOWN UNLIMITED GENOCIDE ON THE FIRST WORLD" to everyone's phones, and then launch every nuke at once at ourselves
