Peterkin

3 hours ago, Wigberto said:

n nature, the fittest don't always survive long enough; they often die. Yes, the weakest or most vulnerable die more often,

And that's the ball-game.

On 6/17/2025 at 7:20 PM, Moon99 said:

The goal is to force these groups to support his policies. He already attempted a coup a few years ago and it failed.

Then. Much has happened in the meanwhile; he's in a far stronger position now. He's collected powerful technological and financial allies, stirred up all the dormant hatreds and fears, legitimized racism, sexism and militant Christianity, consolidated and expanded his political base, enabled violent crime, cultivated a fictitious personal image, undermined the electoral process, flouted conflict of interest rules and felony convictions, intimidated journalists, taken control of social media platforms and ignored constitutional constraints with impunity. He's been carrying out a systematic purge of government departments and federal courts.

He's also been quite openly using the threat of martial law from the day he took office, and intends to make that a permanent situation. Not precisely martial law, which would adhere military protocols, but the insurrection act, conducted by the president, which is what he's always wanted: absolute personal power.

This isn't just paving stones anymore: the USA is well and truly in it, whether this is fascism or not.

Magnificent! Wish I had one.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Can we stop victimizing and jumping the gun?

Who is victimized now? I tried to follow the sudden changes from politics to suicidal men but it's just too much work.

You can feel safe again, I'm out.

I imagine there must have been some direct links between law enforcement roughing up a senator > the Trump regime's rush toward martial law > Europe's slide into fascism > teenagers on social media > men's access to mental health care > suicide rates > domestic violence > some women in science > women's domination of society through childbirth, but I'm damned if i can follow them. Can we just conclude that fascism is a result of women building dysfunctional societies?

7 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Dawg what are we talking about now

Oh, you forgot already?

2 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Women have overall had a profound effect on societies, believe it or not to some extent they birth the people who run the empires etc. Shocker I know.

Average lenght of labour is actually longer than that, but I was generous. Throw in an extra seven months for breast-feeding. Still a a little way from the ermine.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Lord, my friend when did I say it’s a one off

The Weimar was a unique situation, etc, etc, and the far right extremists are just a bunch of inexperienced teenagers. Nothing sound familiar?

2 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Women have overall had a profound effect on societies, believe it or not to some extent they birth the people who run the empires etc. Shocker I know.

There's an influential ten hours, to be sure!

So.... it's all the wimmin's fault.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

It is just being ignorant of history or society

I don't think so. It looking more and more like deliberate obfuscation to me.

Then they came for the elected officials, but I am not an elected official....

members of Congress, mayors....

Mostly not killed --- yet, but Governor Newsom had better watch his back; all the Trump thugs are at large again.

21 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Its a fairly small list as its about .1% due to a variety of factors and not it singularly being male dominated

😂Of course it isn't!

22 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

So were colored male scientists, discrimination isnt only a female issue. :)

No, However, the subject at hand wasn't female issues but the lack of support men get in society. Quite true that Black, Native and South American men get even less help with mental and substance problems problems than those of European background, which is strongly related to economic status, rather than gender.

How many times do you think you can change the subject before fascism is acknowledged as a systemic social malaise, not a one-off?

9 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in understanding the structure of DNA. Although she did not receive as much recognition in her lifetime,

And Marie Curie had to use the public restroom down the street, because she was barred from university facilities. That, plus the fact that you had to fish around in the centuries for half a dozen obscure female names among hundreds of famous male ones should tell you something about the influence of women on society. Only in the past half century, out of 7000 years, have they had a significant role in science.

9 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Even in ancient times, women like Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer in Egypt, taught and advanced knowledge in geometry and philosophy.

And look how that ended! Almost as if she were not in control.

So, from 5000BC - 2000 AD, what percent of heads of state, judges, prelates, generals, financial officials and lawmakers were women? (Please don't dredge up Boudica or Joan of Ark; neither fared much better than poor old Hypatia.)

Never mind. Nobody - not even you - really believes that women historically control societies and cause men mental anguish through unreasonable expectations.

9 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

I am here if you wish to “vent”

It's not about me. I did some counseling many years ago, and the pattern was pretty clear then. It hasn't changed: in times of economic stress and political instability, domestic violence increases.

"Further, rapid increases in the unemployment rate increased men's controlling behavior toward romantic partners even after we adjust for unemployment and economic distress at the household level. "

And it's not about to improve in the near future.

Here's a vent for you:

"Under Trump’s America, violence against women isn’t just ignored—it’s become a deliberate political strategy. Powerful men accused of abuse are actively protected and celebrated by the Trump administration, while survivors and those who stand up for them are punished and silenced. (Just look at the attacks and public shaming Christine Blasey Ford had to endure after courageously coming forward with her sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.) From legal interventions and judicial appointments to funding cuts, Trump has systematically dismantled protections for women and emboldened those who harm them."

28 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Holy generalization are you saying that men with mental health issues resort to beating their wives the majority of the time

I don't know about a majority. I know domestic violence is prevalent in dysfunctional societies and I've seen up close how it happens.

6 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

How so? In education, science, literature?

with historical facts and statistics. You can use examples from any discipline, but the only decisive one is government. Who's been in charge most of that time?

11 minutes ago, CharonY said:

As to relevance it is a direct response to.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant the relevance of suicide rates and the relative availability of social support by gender to fascism.

Not meaning to be rude, but i have to go somewhere in the morning and need a few hours' sleep.

13 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

You are aware that there is more to America globally yes? Saying society as a whole has historically always been run by men is blatantly incorrect.

I dare you to support that with historical facts and statistics. It would also interest me to know who you think prevents support for men's mental health issues.

7 minutes ago, CharonY said:

But part of that is active outreach as folks tend to cut off their social circle and men are generally more comfortable with not being in touch

ie cutting themselves off, like you said. Plus lack of resources - which besets all branches of medicine in the US. well-off professionals can afford a shrink, but they're not fuelling the Tea Party, are they? The endemic isolation of men with emotional problems is worse in Asia, I understand, where the cult of masculinity is even more deeply embedded in the culture, while Europe is making some progress.

But, again, what's it got to do with the radicalization of boys, detaining senators who have questions or the rise of fascism?

6 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Mental health issues yes, generally speaking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) consistently report that men die by suicide at over 3.5 times the rate of women in the U.S.

Does that study illustrate a direct link between the availability of help and the suicide rate? Or is it that more men choose to escape their problems, while more women stick around out of consideration for their families, or that men are brave enough to go through with it, and woman chicken out, or men just have greater access to guns?

Do you really think this is a good excuse for driving a van into a crowd or shooting 17 random people in a shopping mall? Actually, I don't know why you brought this up at all. Is it relevant?

6 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

It reflects deeper systemic problems in how society handles men's mental health.

And who has been in charge of running society for the lat 7000 years?

6 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Their pain goes unrecognized because they’re taught that expressing vulnerability is weakness. That silence is killing them.

And that manliness and silence is imposed on them.... by whom, exactly? Are they taking their cues from women or other men? They'd rather beat their wives, children and dogs than admit a weakness or failure. Can anyone support a person who rejects support?

And what's this got to do with fascism?

7 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Speaking emotionally and generally, men are not as well supported as women.

Supported in what? Not reproductive choice, that's for sure! With mental health issues? By whom? Social media? The medical establishment? The law? Government organizations? Show me.

9 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

some of the shit they spew out is largely socially unacceptable for someone that young with no life experience.

...while the majority of spewed shit is socially acceptable because it's coming from a 79-year old fractious toddler with lots pf criminal experience.

13 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

In many societies men are expected to be tough and bread - winners, it’s rather an issue of societal pressures and expectations rather than self induced isolation.

Those are the societies in which men thrive and women don't. Men get all discombobulated when women insist on pulling their own weight and demand autonomy.

2 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Keep in mind most of these imbeciles are pissy teenagers with no lives.

AKA the leaders of tomorrow. Von Schirach trained up a youth movement for Hitler; a significant portion of soldiers in the Cruasdes were in their late teens; Stalin had his Young Pioneers (and Putin has a fresh batch cooking) the Incels, NRA and Christian Identity are doing the same to American boys - only without the discipline. This, the boys believe, is the route to empowerment and significance. Never underestimate the viciousness potential of youth!

2 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Comparative to Europe I say America has improved significantly when it comes to racially related issues, there are always going to be a few bad apples.

Say, 47%? America had a few brief interruptions to ethnic strife - including a period when the bone of contention was a conscription for a foreign war and freedom of speech - youth again - but even still, many of the prejudicial laws, and all the residue from discriminatory laws still pervade the culture. Most European countries have also made substantial progress on racial issues.

46 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

These teenagers are a bunch of spoiled brats who think Europe should be one, uniform ethnicity

The youngest leader of these teenage brats is 34.

56 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Nothing about them is adult like and that’s coming from me

You mean they're teenagers, regardless of age, because they act in ways you don't consider adult? In that case, all the world's atrocities originate with immature kids. Dismissal-though-rebranding of the problem is not a solution.

29 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Pointing fingers gets us nowhere.

Tell that to a key witness in a murder trial. If you can't identify the actors and their motives, what do you have to go on. I didn't say solely, though I'm not current on the immigrant situation in Asia. Yes, it was Europeans who colonized much of the non-white world during the 16th to 19th centuries. Yes, they did feel entitled due to their presumed superiority. Yes, they continue to exhibit that sense of innate superiority. They've been doing a laudable (difficult) job of connecting with one another, but the old feelings haven't gone away without a trace.

9 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

What I think matters, and maybe this is where our perspectives differ slightly

Well, for one thing, I'm looking at America from the outside - have been since the 1959, mostly on television, with only short sojourns inside the US border. Prime time programming reveals everything you need to know about the mood and direction of a culture. I've witnessed the changes, the undulations up and down. One constant has been the steady increase in violence and sentimentality (That's a huge red flag), alongside a decline in linguistic skill and nuanced thought.) This current down is far deeper, steeper and faster than any I've seen before. The forces of evil have formed a wider, far better co-ordinated alliance than I've seen before, and they've been chopping away at the very foundations of democracy. If you win the next round, you still won't be able to carry out the extensive reforms and purges required to prevent another down-slide two years after that, especially as the most important reform would be incomprehensible to most Americans: detaching the electoral process from financial interest.

Have I gone far enough off topic yet?

10 hours ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

But the US has a whole lot of other genetic defects to cope with that monolithic cultures don't have.

Elaborate please

The big, indigestible kernel of it is in the second paragraph of the declaration of independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--", whereupon, the Constitution snatches those 'unalienable' rights back from the majority of men: Natives, Africans and those who don't own land (with no inquiry into the legitimacy land acquisition). A self-inflicted wound that's never stopped bleeding. Then the immigrants came, from various places, by various routes, but generally poor and exploitable, bringing their cultures and languages, forming discreet lumps of otherness in the body politic. Bringing their religions - and Christian sects tend not to play well with other religions. Being different skin colours - recognizable; easy to target when a distraction was needed.

This is causing huge problems now in countries that have always been one colour, one culture, one history, one faith. Europeans are having a very hard time coping with the others in their midst. Tolerance was all very well in theory, in trade, defense and travel. But the loss of their colonies continued to rankle deep in the national psyche, and the habitual European arrogance will assert itself, when asked to regard brown heathen as equals on their own territory.

The upwelling of resentment is a shock to them; for America, it's part of the fabric.

42 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Sohan's optimism can also be contagious in a good way and encourage people to get off the bench.

Optimism is nice. The Harris campaign was brimming over with optimism. But I think what prompts people off the bench is a direct threat to themselves and their life-long assumptions. That's what we're seeing now. Hopefully, this will give pause to demagogues; they'll back off and at least pretend to observe the old rules until a resistance can consolidate. Hopefully, people will take meaningful counteraction before they're up against the wall and bereft of options, and they desperately need a Che Guevara or Giuseppe Garibaldi - one of the few remaining patriotic generals might do, if putsch comes to shove. Meanwhile, if there is a pause, they need a suitable philosophy or guide book; a progressive Project 2026, that could unite people under one flag. The scariest bit: that flag might be carried by a woman and plfft goes solidarity.

Here's to that thing with feathers!

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Peterkin, I hear your frustration. Believe me, I’m not under any illusions that there’s a “cheap” or “easy” fix here. There isn’t. But to say flatly that the tools do not work — full stop — is not analysis, it’s surrender.

What makes you think I'm frustrated? Concerned, certainly, not wishing to live in the 51st state of Trumpland. You have your opinion. Mine is that the tools don't work. The union has never worked particularly well, even when the surface seemed unruffled. I believe the country - preferably four to six separate countries - need to be reinvented.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

That’s not how democratic crisis works. You do not get to hand someone a collapsed system and say, “if you think it is not over, then solve it now.”

I'm not handing you anything; it's always been yours. If vigilance and law and journalism worked, it wouldn't be in the present mess. People did protest in 1965 and 1974 and lots of other times, yet, here we are. You say it's fixable. Show me how you go about it, democratically. If you don't solve it now, you'll never get another chance.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

In fact, that’s exactly why the Weimar comparison is flawed if treated as a 1-to-1 parallel.

I didn't mention the Weimar - you keep doing that. Italy and Spain were different, too, just as Hungary is different now, but the same thing happened there too. Not being 1932 Germany is no protection against fascism. I cited an article about Hitler's acts after he came to power and asked whether you recognize any similarities to Trump's acts since he came to power.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

As for your remark about “genetic defects” in U.S. democracy, I agree there are deep structural flaws — racism, hypercapitalism, imperial inertia, the Senate, the Electoral College — you name it. But none of that means resistance is futile. It means resistance is hard.

It means the system needs a major overhaul, and that never happens without a major breakdown.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

But if you write off every institution as dead, every mechanism as corrupted, and every action as useless, then you are not being radical.

I never said every action was useless. I said you waited too long and now only radical, costly action can have any effect - and you can't predict the outcome. In situations like this, the good guys always suffer more casualties.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

It may not be fixed in a decade.

Optimistic to think you have a decade to piss away on lawsuits and op-ed pieces in the Times.

33 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Again, the midterms will be a watershed moment, one way or the other.

Here's hoping they take place. Remember Trump's promise to his beautiful Christians that they'll never have to vote again. My feeling is, he's gearing up to martial law, and he's not letting the grass grow under the armoured cars. He's old - no time for pussyfooting. But at least he won't get to be pope.

The interesting question is which side the armed services will take. I'm guessing a split - which will make it really interesting. And pretty awful, like last time. Unbridgeable schisms occur; dictatorships are real; revolutions and civil wars have happened, and they can happen here. (Well, here is not there, yet, but we only narrowly escaped a Trumpling government this spring; we have a hostile neighbour with a giant arsenal and no intelligent life in its wheelhouse; our economy and autonomy are under attack.... You may understand why I don't feel secure in the institutions.)

5 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

There is a difference between recognizing serious damage and declaring democracy already gone.

Okay. Fix it.

6 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

The moment we cross that line and decide the fight is already lost, we stop using the few remaining tools that still work.

The tools don't work. Weapons might, but that's costly. There is no cheap or easy way to reverse this trend.

4 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I am thinking maybe 1932?

That works, too. I chose an arbitrary date, since I was citing an article that outlined parallels between the activities of the Hitler and Trump regimes. Harping on the Weimar Republic wasn't my idea; the two nations' situations were quite different. Germany was never the superpower the US was; at that time, didn't have much of a standing army, or 18 spy agencies; it had much of its infrastructure destroyed in the war and reparations to pay, was hit much harder by the depression. The US had not been invaded, was much richer and lucked out, big time, in FDR. But the US has a whole lot of other genetic defects to cope with that monolithic cultures don't have.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

The comparison to the Weimar Republic is powerful, but also very different in context. Weimar’s collapse involved widespread economic devastation, extremist paramilitaries controlling streets, and the complete breakdown of democratic norms. We are nowhere near that level of systemic failure.

Right! Six months is practically a light-year.

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

It’s important to stay vigilant and hold leaders accountable,

How's that done? By whom?

1 hour ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Threats to democracy deserve serious attention — and they also deserve clear-eyed, evidence-based responses.

Which you keep getting and dismissing.

49 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Saying “it’ll be too late once the knife hits a vital organ” makes for a great metaphor, but democracy is not a body that dies with one blow.

It's already had twenty.

50 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

It can take damage and still be repaired. But not if everyone walks away convinced it’s already collapsed.

You want to be under it when it collapses? Most people have no no choice.

52 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

The question isn’t “what stops him?” It’s who.

I'm betting on Vance. The problem is, he's just as evil, but sane and smart.

53 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

You want specifics? Here are some. Trump’s travel bans were eventually curbed by courts.

So he's adding more. If the Olympics take place, there will be nobody in the stands.

56 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

His attempts to overturn the 2020 election were blocked by judges across the country, some of them appointed by him. His appointees failed to deliver on many of his legal overreaches. Local officials certified elections despite death threats.

So? He's not in jail for any of his crimes, and his thugs are all out again. That branch is well and truly broken. Where are the enforcement agencies? Headed by incompetent Trump loyalists.

50 minutes ago, swansont said:

But the media coverage of them is pathetic (and the parade coverage by the NYT and WaPo too fawning), and that’s one more hurdle that needs to be overcome. Awareness is still too low, and most media are being stenographers relaying a narrative vs reporters giving us facts.

There's been mass desertion of mainstream media ever since the 'fake news' label was stuck on them. And in light of lost revenues, the networks are scared shitless of any more law suits. They're pretty much cowed; the public ones will soon be defunded out of existence or lose their licenses; the major newspapers have been struggling for years, and the internet news providers are divided into two factions, the adherents of one side never hearing the other.

38 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

I am addressing THE Trump presidency in its entirety

You can't. He had one term wherein he did a lot of harm, but the damage was partially repaired in the next four years by the Biden administration. This time he's come back with nothing to lose, a playbook to follow and a much more aggressive team.

42 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Comparing today’s situation to Weimar requires more than just surface similarities.

We're not comparing those things; you are. We're comparing Trump's decisive second victory to Hitler's agenda from 1933 and 1939.

47 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

The whole point is that if institutions are under strain, we do not abandon them. We force them to work. That means lawsuits, oversight, elections, protests, and pressure.

They've done all that, for years.

48 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

Mocking people for not being “informed enough” or claiming they are disconnected from reality is not a substitute for argument.

But that's exactly how this situation came to be. Arguments are not heard - guns are.

50 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

. If the media were truly under full state control, none of that would be happening.

It's not yet. Will take a few more murders, arrests, deportations, IRS audits, lawsuits, by when the press will be in such panic and disarray, the 'government' will announce its duty to step in and get things under control. We've seen this before, too.

16 minutes ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

The United States has a deeper institutional memory, even if that alone is not a safeguard. So yes, the stakes are even higher. But that is not an argument that the collapse is inevitable — it is an argument for vigilance.

That deeper institutional memory is exactly what encourages an illusion of permanence. People tend to trust institution, long after the institutions have been corrupted and crippled. For example, the revered Supreme Court is a Trump franchise now, though he hasn't put a neon sign over the courthouse yet. But then, it wasn't that great a champion of civil rights in 1875 or 2013. Those institutions were always more fragile than Americans want to believe - read some of the history books that are banned from school libraries now.

Vigilance might have been effective in 1982; might even have done some good in 2000. There isn't enough left to watch over, and the watchman has his hands tied anyway. Like climate change, it's already happened.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

A certain poem from someone who realized that things ended badly too late comes to mind here

Yep. What does it take? We'll see. I'm guessing Civil War pt II. A better alternative would be partition into four or more territories. But there are worse alternatives, too. This crisis isn't confined to the Trump regime, or the DUSA; it's global - Trump isn't a phenomenon; he's one of the symptoms. The tools available to reverse it have a severe case of mental fatigue, and most possible endings are very, very bad. Even if there is a sequel, it's on the far side of very, very bad.

(Go ahead, you wouldn't be first to call me a Debbie Downer.)

19 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Project 2025 has specifically found ways to undermine these checks and balances, not unlike the use of Article 48 by the NSDAP.

There was a lot of preparation beforehand: the appointment of judges, marginalizing of honest conservatives, kneecapping trade unions, eroding social safety nets, suppression (evident since 1991) of investigative journalism, election rule changes, voter suppression and intimidation, massive propaganda and smear campaigns. This was a big, long-term operation involving party members, jurists, state officials, clerics, media moguls and other moneybags. The Democrats made a couple of decent efforts, but were consistently outgunned by an enemy with no scruples to hamper them.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

In fact, neutrality becomes compliance and implicit support when faced with circumstances like these. One may as well say they’re neutral on child molestation or the torture of entire communities. Failure to pushback and defend the better path becomes equivalent to support and acceptance of the worse one.

What so many people did - as humans usually do - was to deny the danger until it was too late. The signs were there all along, large and lit like a T*R*U*M*P casino, and they clung to the maverick businessman image he so carefully faked up. They wanted to believe that, though some of his policies might be questionable, any excesses would be curbed by the law, and in the meantime he would save them from the job-thieving aliens, the terrorist Muslims, the lunatic extreme socialists who want to abolish Christmas and take away their guns... and from the women, whom he would forcibly protect.

They're upset now, seeing the excesses no court could prevent, but they still believe that the system is robust enough to be repaired. I sincerely hope that belief is not as ill-founded as their previous faith.

Chris Hedges published several essays on this topic. The Rule of Idiots is very much reading.

"Donald Trump, and the sycophantic buffoons in his administration, are updated versions of the reigns of the Roman emperor Nero, who allocated vast state expenditures to attain magical powers; the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, who funded repeated expeditions to a mythical island of immortals to bring back a potion that would give him eternal life; and a feckless Tsarist court that sat around reading tarot cards and attending séances as Russia was decimated by a war that consumed over two million lives and revolution brewed in the streets.

"In “Hitler and the Germans,” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism, but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist, its collective departure from a rational world of verifiable fact."