StringJunky

An important step to imposing authoritarianism is to strangle the dissenting media. The other step is to mess up the system enough, and then appear to be the only one to be able to fix it. Then, the public will accept anything better than what they are in at the time, which will be the new dictatorship's agenda. At that point it will be a fait accompli.

My grandad, who was a chief technician on Avro Vulcans loaded with Blue Steel nuclear standoff bombs then, said he was on 24 hour standby at that time. He said it was very close to happening.

Spiny Flower Mantis.

Is it better to have a dictatorship without physical resistance, and all the other tools of applying political instability? Does one passively accept being coercively entered into a state like Russia, China or NK? I'm ignoring whether it's left wing or right wing because the end result is the same on the citizens.

Looking at the incoming US administration as an example. Does one have to passively accept that a democratically elected government that turns out to be subversive, seeks to undo the checks and balances of its country's Constitution, remodelling it to create a long term dictatorship and leader beyond the normal time limit, have the ethical right and mandate to do so?

It's like website companies that state in their privacy statement "We and our 6457 business partners take your privacy and data very seriously...."

Ok. Ta.

I just looked and 5mm or 10mm mild steel is used for BBQ hotplates. OP Can you mod the top to take a 5 or 10mm steel plate and have the necessary seal? I'd be inclined to use 10mm.

Right. Cheers. How many of those 20 left will go their way do you think-ish?

Any idea how the remaining 20 House seats will fall, from what you can see?

Looking at the distribution of seats, so far, in both sides of Congress there appears to be plenty of room for potential gridlock in getting policies through. The differences in numbers are, as usual, quite fine. The drubbing in the electoral college for president doesn't translate to a free rein in Congress, does it? Looks like more of the same historical need to get stuff passed nationally by cross-aisle negotiation. I'm sure there'll be plenty of rebels on the GOP side...as usual.

An interesting correlation. Perhaps the experience of persecution-isolation concentrated their minds and created a sense of mortal urgency, to the extent that they worked super-hard and fast at their ideas to get them out there before they potentially passed.

Quite a few commentators that I've read predict buyers remorse not too far down the line. Buying American is great for their nationalistic soul, but will hit them hard in the wallets when they realize, after draconian import taxes are implemented, they are buying products made paying American-level wages with the associated sticker price. A low-skilled Chinese factory worker's monthly wage is $370 for a 'good' wage... most are worse. Bangladeshi factory workers in the clothing industry are at about $125/month. Prices of goods can only be cheap when your country is exploiting poorer economies that pay lower wages.

It looks like Project 2025 can start to be implemented.

Yeah. He gives morons a voice. I make no apologies for my description. I can feel in my bones major civil strife or war on the horizon. All the ingredients for major global instability seem to be coalescing.

I suppose the result is what constant gerrymandering does in the end. One thing's clear, Trumpites don't actually listen to what Trump says. The man, seriously, cannot string two coherent sentences together. It cripples my brain to listen to him. He talks absolute garbage. I'd rather talk to a dementia patient, at least they are what they are. Words fail me.

I can't believe there is so many retarded Americans.

AP says Trump only needs 3 more. What a shitfest we have coming.

Welcome Wallace. If you find you can't post any more today in a topic, there is a post limit on the first day to limit spammers. I think it's 5 posts. You will have no limits after today.

At least he's out in the open to be watched, now that he is openly wearing a MAGA armband.

Would a good analogy of what she's saying is like learning the etymology and structures in a language in order to understand the intentions of Shakespeare? What I'm saying is that you can have all the mental and physical tools at your disposal, but you still need insight and intuition. What is missing is someone having a paradigm-changing insight these last 50 years. It might not be a fault of science per se, just that we need the next Newton, Einstein, Galileo et al to move things forward.

Thanks. That makes sense.

Is the reason known?

Apparently, he might be being cautious if Trump is elected, given his pronouncements of retribution. Edit: Just noticed MigL already said it.

With Trump's words it's not sanewashing, it's total reconstruction and fairy tales. Even listening to Trump at the most basic level, his speeches are content-free, discombobulated word salad, consistent with a person whose cognition is falling apart. It is incredible that half the US population actually give this bloke a pass to be President of the United States and have access to it's nuclear codes.