Don’t obey in advance. With the exception of the Supreme Court, most other systems and protections remain in place and may continue to exist regardless of Trump’s intentions, especially if they are fought for and protected.

But direct action of the type the author is discussing has been very successful across many contexts, including brutal dictatorships with no human rights guarantees. So the whole thrust of your comment fails to grapple with the real history of popular struggle.

Haha yeah he’s not too memorable otherwise but it’s a funny mistake since Romney and Trump hate each other.

Romney? Did you mean Perry?

Why do you think he was selected for AG?

Biden has backed Israel since Hamas-led gunmen attacked the country in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. Since then, more than 43,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza, with 2 million displaced people and much of the strip reduced to rubble.

How mysterious. I wonder who killed them?

Only those 75ish million. No more, no less.

Although it’s also worth noting that not everyone who voted for Trump supports everything he does. In fact I suspect most don’t, but they’ve been fooled into thinking his “business acumen” will make their lives materially better.

I don’t know why you think this is naive. We might not be able to know or actualize the path the peace but that does not mean it isn’t there.

The present danger doesn’t say anything about what is the most effective way to resist or diffuse this danger. Do you think you have the strength of arms to defeat the US military? Now that I would call naive.

Then you are extremely naive about the horrors and harms a civil war would entail. We should all care.

I don’t agree that justice requires going through war, nor that war is even likely to lead to justice.

There is always a path towards peace. I admit it may be unclear to me in the present moment but I’ll be searching for it in the coming years.

We certainly don’t need to do anything to accelerate civil conflict, inevitable or not.

The answer will depend on what orgs are in your local area. If you’re willing to share a general location and any specific interests I could do some digging.

I don’t know anything about this site but I just found it by searching: https://www.mutualaidhub.org/

Or if you’d rather search on your own, I’d look for things like [your city/region] mutual aid, resist, antifa (the last one going to be about more confrontational action so consider whether that’s your specific niche).

Another approach is to just ask friends who seem politically connected if they’ve heard of any local orgs.

Personally I would be wary of any highly top-down orgs that enforce a particular narrow ideology. Some of these can be a bit cult-like. Also get a feel for how people interact and leadership operates. Are people supportive and kind to one another or is there a lot of tension and fear? Personally I haven’t had any bad experiences yet but it’s something to be aware of if you don’t have the lay of the land in your local area.

In most cities there will be a variety of groups with different approaches and focuses, so shop around a bit and find the one that is a good fit for you.

Previously yes, though it’s less clear with Trump.

This is outright dishonest. Why post this?

Don’t worry, appeasement always works out against these guys.

Early voting is not an accurate prediction of the results of the whole electorate. Very different demographics.

Well, I generally agree that party leaders have way too much power, but that seems to be an issue across many different systems. Your example is from a FPTP system. Is there some reason to think it would be worse if we had proportional voting? I mean I can see how party leaders might have more power in some ways. But on the other hand it’s much easier to abandon them for another ideologically similar party if they abuse it. Yes it means abandoning AOC or whoever your favorite is but they can also jump ship if need be. I think we need a different solution to overly powerful party leaders.

But the thing is, there are so many things I would want to change about the Democratic Party, but I can’t abandon them because my only alternative is far worse. If we had a diversity of somewhat similar parties then it would be much much easier to pressure them into doing what voters want.

Ranked choice would do this to some extent as well, so I broadly support both. However, I have concerns about election security with ranked choice. Unless the election authorities share their ballot data, it’s very very difficult to determine who the true winner should be from exit polling or similar. There was a major fiasco in Alameda co California where the wrong candidate was seated by accident and no one even noticed until a later audit was done by a non-profit group.

Well, as AOC famously said, she’d be in a different party from Joe Manchin if we had a multiparty democracy.

If you feel the party doesn’t represent your views then either vote for or found another one, or advocate for a split. To me this seems much smaller than the problems with the current US system. But maybe someone with direct experience in multiparty democracy can share their experience.

Also, I think it’s possible to create a direct candidate election system that is also proportional. One idea would be to grant each candidate voting power relative to their vote share. So if there’s three parties, you send three members to represent your district, but maybe one gets 50% of the voting power, one gets 40%, and another gets 10%. But I haven’t heard many people discuss such systems.

This is the purpose of federalism—to manage governance by and for smaller, like-minded groups of people. However, people seem to have a hard time staying out of each other’s business. Furthermore, it’s hard to justify a hands-off approach when a state or lower level of government is using 55% majority to oppress the other 45% (see the American South). And maybe most importantly, it’s always in the interest of national leaders to increase their power, so we tend to see a steady creep of stronger national governments at the expense of states or smaller units.

I suspect there are ways to counteract these forces but we’ve yet to trial most of them. Ideally you want your basic level of government to be as small and like-minded as possible. But I think to avoid tyranny of the majority, you need to let people opt out. Most people don’t seem to be too aware of these issues in the constant struggle for ultimate power but I think it would solve a lot of our issues if we just let more people live how they want to live.

So I agree that smaller democracies work better, but I hope you’re not saying the solution for larger democracies is to make them not democracies. The solution to me is clearly that we need to make them smaller again.

The New York Times Company is majority-owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through elevated shares in the company’s dual-class stock structure held largely in a trust, in effect since the 1950s;[118] as of 2022, the family holds ninety-five percent of The New York Times Company’s Class B shares, allowing it to elect seventy percent of the company’s board of directors.[119] Class A shareholders have restrictive voting rights.[120]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Organization

What you’ve written here is very misleading, bordering on incorrect, but does this distinction even matter? Both a singular billionaire and a collective of rich owners will manage the business to enhance their personal wealth, not for the common good of ordinary people. If Trump creates an incentive structure where businesses are penalized for going against his will, I think both types of management are rationally going to choose to obey him.

There needs to be a completely different type of management structure if we want leaders in the press to weigh things like the health of our democracy in their decisions.

Most likely they are, actually. But of course, their inheritance was a lot different than these senators…

🤘🧟‍♂️