Had some fun speculating this morning. My picks so far:

  • Instruct Surgeon General to reschedule marijuana. If he refuses, fire him and find someone who will.

  • 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.

  • Close Guantanamo bay, end the embargo on Cuba.

  • Withdraw from NATO, halt all NATO funding.

  • 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."

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      :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?

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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”