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I want to be more optimistic, but I'm looking for the ingredients we'd need to push back effectively on the creeping fascism any time in the near future, and they don't seem to be here.

Democrats need a massively leftward and populist shift to differentiate themselves from Republicans in the eyes of uninformed voters, and I think there's just too much pushing against it. All the biggest channels of information are controlled by billionaires. They are not going to present any progressive efforts in a positive light, and they've become really effective at setting people who have common interests against each other. That, or inundating us so much that people understandably become numb to it and tune out. Trump was about as blatantly awful as a candidate could ever be, and he still won.

I'm fearing all we have to look forward to is 10 steps back under Republicans then 1 step forward under Democrats before Republicans take control again. Democrat leadership seems to prefer losing to winning with a progressive agenda.

A foul-mouthed, shit-talking, no-bullshit pro union pro lgbtq pro healthcare ballbuster who's sick of pussyfooting, eggshell walking, and capitulating could do wonders.

Trump's irreverance, but paired with competence, a heart, and basic, decent, sensible views.
- The DNC would never allow such a person to pass through their filters. In many ways, the Democrats themselves are as much an enemy of the people as the most extreme Republicans.
It's been what? Two weeks? We sure give up quickly.

Fighting against fascism is about constant small victories. Saying no. Suing at every step. Making it to the next election with things as intact as we can make them. Maybe it won't work, though it is sure as hell better than expecting the Democrats to step up. If we want reform, let's cause reform.

Trump won by 1.6% of the popular vote. Not a single one of us are as alone as we think. Yeah, sure, a break would be great. We don't get that. Moreover, we are a young country and in that time there have been governments who to many people were fascist in nature, repressive on a good day. We came out of those times better than we were because we stood up together. It's time to hold accountable those who deserve it once again. Freedom has a price and we are mostly here because of our apathy, make no mistake, and our unwillingness to engage in greater numbers locally and in midterms. However, from there it's on the people near and at the top.

We are the ingredients. Every action we take, even something as small as standing up for a couple in a restaurant, is a small push back.
- .Fighting against fascism is about constant small victories.
  
  That's not generally the way fascism is defeated. Sometimes yes, but it usually takes a somewhat more aggressive approach. We should take that possible future seriously as well, even as we work to avoid it.
- People are dealing with a serious fucking blow. Emotionally.
  
  Probably a liiiitle soon to declare a give-up.
Demolish Citizens United. That would make a world of difference.
Democrats need a massively leftward and populist shift to differentiate themselves from Republicans in the eyes of uninformed voters

In the eyes of informed voters too.

Democrat leadership

It's the Democratic Party.
- The US just elected a child rapist, and convicted felon, who praised Hitler's generals and said he wants to be a dictator. Oh, and he also wants to ahave everyone who ever stood against him murdered. Only 30% of eligible voters actively tried to stop it.
  If you thought the Dems were conservative before, just wait and see how far right they can jump in order to chase the only group that will show up to the polls every damn time, no matter how stupid, or how fake and repeatedly disproven the reason is.
You want ingredients? I have a cocktail recipe

The Democrats gave up so easily and went "I guess we hate transpeople now? Is that why we lost? We didn't hate transpeople enough?" so quickly, that I"m wondering if Trump's election was part of the fucking plan to begin with.

I think at least part of the problem is that Democrats believe in The System. So when someone cheats and whines about fake votes and stuff, they can resist that with faith that the system is working, but when the system willingly chooses the other side they have no choice but to concede that this must just be the Will of the People. And who are they to stand against the system they uphold...
- Don't forget about big money. The Democrats, Republicans, Harris, and Trump all avoided pointing the finger at what's to blame, it's big money in politics. Trump and the Republicans have openly accepted all the money from the big donors and the power that gets them. Elon Musk was a huge part of his campaign while they blame immigrants. The Republicans know how to work a broken system, just get more money.
  
  Meanwhile the Democrats and Harris have to thread the needle of accepting big money too but not showing it. They can't outright say it's the billionaires that are screwing you, so they say Trump is, and that he's a fascist. All true but Trump's second presidency isn't the cause of America's facist decline, he's a co-morbidity of it. Then they are shocked when the system they refuse to fix is broken.
Biden isn't even using a tiny bit of his fucking brand new immunity to save the country. It's like he said, "Oh no, but they meant that just for Trump." I don't know what there even is to save if no one is gonna do a goddamn thing that still has the power to.
- I mean, that special immunity is just for Trump. It's a gift from his supreme court picks to himself.
  
  But that said, yeah, I don't think the fact that the court would crucify Biden is a reason for him to just sit there twiddling his thumbs.
  
  I remember after Roe v Wade, there was the question of what they could really do about it, and on one hand, maybe not much, some blue states can do their best, but on the other, I dunno, something? anything? We could run ads, build the narrative that Republicans are who did this, they're the ones hurting you right now, and maybe we won't lose in 2024? But instead they really, truly did nothing.
dude they banned a trans congresswoman from the women's bathroom and being a democrat she just went "ok, I'll pee in the men's room I guess"
- For fuck's suck.... Anywhere else in the country and that's a discrimination lawsuit.
  
  What the fuck?
- If you ignore the urinals, there really isn't much point in separate bathrooms anyways. Especially in posh bathrooms like I'm sure they have in Congress where they pay the extra bucks to have actual doors on the stalls. This is one of those cases where arguing with idiots just makes you look like the idiot. Going along shows how ridiculous the moral panic was in the first place.
- That I get from a certain angle. There's immense pressure on "firsts" to show that they're not there to implement radical change. That they can just be a functional member of an organization. First woman in a fighter jet, first trans person in Congress, it's the same pressure mechanism. They want to show they can do the job first and foremost.
No, some of them were already transphobic but thought they'd lose an election for admitting it. Now they think they will win because of it. They need to learn a lesson.
Second time I've seen this commented, but I must have missed a headline - can someone point me to what this is referencing?
- Exactly 2 out of 213 House Democrats spoke out against Trans Athletes.
  
  Of course that means all DNC are transphobes. /sarcasm
I"m wondering if Trump’s election was part of the fucking plan to begin with.

Would it surprise or upset you if someone said that the establishment had always been indifferent to a Trump win?

A big part of the fight is asking yourself one simple question. How much of this defeatism is real? The bot/troll/fraud problem is massive and leading to the dead internet theory becoming reality. Anywhere there's comments, there's fake bullshit. Figuring out how to stop that is a huge priority.

People need to learn critical thinking. Feeling defeated right now is natural, and some of that energy here is organic. But I have noticed that you can find the bad actors by looking at how they explain themselves.

Good faith actors admit that they feel completely crushed by the current state of politics, fear for the future, and want to give up. They will tell you about their own anxieties, because that's where that energy is coming from.

Bad faith actors will tell you that you are powerless to do anything to stop fascism, and that you should give up. They aren't expressing their anxieties, they are telling you to give up. To fall in line with fascism, because you can't stop it.

People need to start asking these defeatists why the feel defeated, and pay attention the the answers. They need to ask themselves if they are talking to a defeated leftist venting their frustrations, or a propagandist trying to demoralize the left.

don't know what else I can do really. I've stopped spending money and cancelled all subscriptions. I'm voting with my wallet. Most big tech and big box stores support the repubs. All I can do is not give them any more money than I have to. I'll continue to vote as long as have that option.

join a community organization, join a union, support local progressive community organizations.

If you get organized and start taking direct political action you can have an impact between elections.

If US labor was organized a general strike would bring the government to its knees. Build that momentum.
Yeah I have lost a lot of faith in the country (US) and don't see or know a path forward. You have multiple generations not willing, unable or just plain don't know how to fight back and now the males of zoomers and generation alpha are swerving into the new young nazi party territory. The population is less educated than ever before thanks to the constant attacks on educational institutions and social media and the environment is collapsing rapidly while govs ignore the causes.

I'm so over the folks sharing these hopeful platitude snapbacks - It's pointless and really comes off as "I did my part" when people post and then proceed to do nothing more. The last protest I saw before Roe was overturned was a fucking depressing party of people instagramming their stupid, cheeky signs and saying "we will vote harder next time". Making a sign for your instagram "protest" appearance where everyone shouts platitudes and posting to social media about it is clearly not an effective strategy for change or progress, but it seems like the only thing the left knows how to do... other than sit out elections and further ostracize young males so Rogan and Tate can scoop them up.
Continue to vote with your wallet and with your well… vote. But also do your best for community out reach for whatever matters to you. If you can do so safely anyway. Speaking with people is the only way to combat mis information and to build community.
That's a good start. I would recommend also trying to form groups to pressure companies to no longer donate to republicans. Also work to get people away from misinformation platforms such as X and Fox News. I'm not in the EU but if you know anyone in there they could help with this petition: https://ban-x-in.eu/

This guy experienced what we can only read about. It shames me to say I was born less than a hour from where he was held in a camp. Few around there have learned anything from history. To most of them history began when they did and will end when they do.

I very much think we will be seeing something similar happen to immigrants soon. I hope I'm wrong.
And then he advocated for a candidate who vowed to continue the current genocide.

These neoliberals stand for nothing.
- You’re not wrong. And I understand the sentiment. But we have to encourage others who have less understanding, so they might see the difference you do.
- You so special

The people giving up are the ranking officials of the Democratic National Party. What can you realistically expect people to do when the people they thought would lead them through this are rolling over and collapsing at the first sign of pressure? For fucks sake, they're not even defending their own trans colleague!

Hey, Biden did come out to call the ICC putting out an arrest warrant for Netanhayu "outrageous", and stepped in to stop Bernie's bill from blocking arms shipments to Israel, so it's not like they're doing nothing.
You can really find a lot of same minded people and form a party.

Organizing now through the internet should be a piece of cake

George Takei lived during the Japanese Internment during WWII, so I believe him when he says that he's been through worse and that the fight isn't over, but I'm not convinced we haven't fought a single skirmish yet. We've been on the back foot fighting the rise of fascism for 8 years. This is trench warfare and the enemy is perfectly happy to advance inch by inch. The election win for them was a massive defeat for us. Regaining the ground we've lost to xenophobes and racists will probably take the rest of my lifetime advocating for and voting for progressive candidates just to reach a point where things are kinda okay-ish again. It sucks and it feels bad to be in this situation.

Im sure compared to the interment camps, this is nothing.

We don't have internment camps again yet.
- George Takei has been in one before, though.
- I mean there's the "migrant overflow facilities" that have about 40,000 people in them right now.
And if you care at all, you’ll do your part to make sure
We haven't even opened the new camps yet.

But yeah buy a gun now before gun sales are restricted based on political affiliation.
- We haven’t opened the new ones but Mr Takei did grow up in one being a Japanese American of a certain age

So sick of inspirational posts from rich celebrities. As if any of this is going to affect them in any meaningful way aside from shifting more of the tax burden onto us.

This particular celebrity spent time in a concentration camp, though. Let him speak truth to power.
If I recall correctly, he was put in a Japanese-American detention camp when a child. So I’d tend to believe him on this.
- I know what he experienced, but he's insulated from whatever happens in the next few years, by virtue of being wealthy.
It's easier to start a fire with a lighter than with two sticks.

Yeah the ‘great America’ they want to return to, many others have lived through it a few times already

The very same people whose Election Campaign Strategy was "Not voting for us is the same as voting for a guy who will round up Transexuals and put them in concentration camps whilst turning America into the Fourth Reich" rather than, you know, actually having a list of measures to make life better for most people, have continued with the hyperbolic alarmism so as to keep their supporters enraged against the "other" lest they stop, think, and figure out that the Democrat Leaders could have done way more than they did to appeal to voters and hence have a large slice, maybe even most, of the blame for Trump getting elected again.

The reality is that people mostly have to wait and see, since there are a lot of ways to stop or at least undermine the most autocratic Republican tendencies, plus the most intelligent Republicans (i.e. the sociopaths at the top of the party doing it for their own personal upside maximization rather than the "true believer" useful idiots) are well aware that the system only works as well as it does (i.e. from their point of view, only produces maximum wealth for their wealthy patrons and hence they themselves) if people in general think they live in a Democracy and their vote counts.

Also keep in mind that the factions of the real power in American - the Wealthy - will carry on fighting for themselves as they've always been doing, no matter what the façade which is the Theatre of Politics looks like (they're apolitical and buy, bully or swindle people on both sides of the aisle).

America is an experiment in seeing how far the squeezing machine can be made to squeeze the masses without breaking, but none of the real power of the land is interested in it actually breaking and stopping delivering them maximum wealth increases, and as a country which doesn't have enough natural resources for the wealthy to extract maximum wealth without most of the population going along with it, they too are not interested in letting it get to the same kind of situation as for example Russia. Absolutelly, their process doesn't deal well with systemic problems of the Tragedy Of The Commons kind - hence things like Housing Inflation starting to asphixiate the rest of the Economy - but it does work for stopping direct singular actions that would mess with the interests of Wealth, such as the kind of legislation required to establish an Autocratic Regime in the US.

I'm not saying that the Wealthy will save the rest because they care, but as it so happens it's in the best interest of the real power of the land - Money - that the machinery that keeps the rest producing wealth to enrich them does not break, so their interests are aligned which those of common people who don't want Autocracy.

Normally I would dismiss this as liberal/nationalist nonsense...

But George Takei is kinda cool. I'm with dude.

I wish all of you the best, but I can't care enough about this country to want to fight for it. One reason being it's a shitty place that put George Takei in a camp, among many myriad other crimes. I don't want to save it. I want to leave and not be bothered by the bunch of racists, idiots, and racist idiots who run this country and who elect them.

I don’t want to save it. I want to leave and not be bothered by the bunch of racists, idiots, and racist idiots who run this country and who elect them.

And the people of color you leave behind. You don't want to save them from what's coming when you resign control of your country to the racist idiots that want them dead?

History never speaks kindly of the people who turned a blind eye to atrocities for a reason. Those people could have helped, and they chose not to. They let others suffer and die because it was more convenient than doing the right thing.
- There is no chance to save this. Help everybody who wants to leave as much as it's possible for you and let every idiot who wants to stay to die. Nobody can force you to dedicate your life to an unfair fight against people and their idiotic supporters with so much more power and money than you could ever have. If everybody would act like this they would run out of people very quickly and there would be no civilians in war zones. If they don't let you leave then it's time to go to war.

I love George's energy here. But the problem isn't a lack of energy. It's pointing it toward a solution.

Both liberals and conservatives are willing to die for their causes.

But one side has definitely shown they are willing to kill for their side.

Until that changes, we're going to continue to slide into fascism.

Dont post pictures of text

Yeah, go into the post, copy the text, put it in a text post, and then awkwardly source it back to George Takei on BlueSky. Isn't that a much smoother/robust post experience? Definitely don't just screenshot the place with all that info that's already in a clear and common format /s

The funniest part of this is Takei won't be doing shit. Instead he's inciting people to go die to the American military or its proto-militaristic police... Armchair activist.

Takei was put in American internment camps as a kid during WWII just because his parents were Japanese. And he's still a *proud American. He can do and say whatever the fuck he wants
- Did I say he couldn't? I said he wouldn't be doing jack shit. Learn how to read perhaps?

I love George Takei as much as the next person, and I know what he went through as a child, but what is his part? Tweeting about it?

We need concrete solutions, not rah rah platitudes.

I almost listed a few of his activism and fundraising initiatives, but then I thought: If this person doesn't think a nearly 90 year old gay man, who survived an internment camp, has seen some shit and has some wisdom to share, I probably won't be the one to open their eyes.
- That's very cute of you, but I did say I also love George Takei. I know he has wisdom to share. I just don't think this is useful right now.
Okay. Here's a concrete solution on a small scale:

Begin getting together signatures and run for local office, or become involved by going to council meetings and challenging stupid perspectives with courage and audacity.
Well it sure beats the hell out of people doomposting themselves into an echo chamber of hopelessness. Rah rah platitudes in a much darker light
Speaking of not being helpful…
A huge chunk of the country is demoralized by all this. As trite as it sounds we absolutely need a pep rally, and some basic direction to go on. Right now there is a monstrous information and leadership vacuum, so anything would be preferable to that.

What/who do you think he is referring to as worse?

George Takei was five years old when he and his family were sent to a Japanese American internment camp during World War II - so probably that among the other political events and upheavals since
- Thanks. He's definitely a fighter.
Wasn't he actually interred in a camp during WWII? And he lived through the AIDS crisis as a gay man
Probably his three years in three different internment camps.
He has a graphic novel biography about his childhood growing up in internment camps. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand a bit of American history that they don't really teach in schools.
Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Bush

Just my guess though.