Honest Question

[jimlup]

I didn't post this in the postmortem form because it is about the state of our country NOW.

Are we teetering on the brink of a Revolution? I hate to even ask the question but things are really weird. I don't know what the next shoe to drop will be.

Trump takes power and thinks he is actually King 'cause he's too ignorant and self absorbed to know any better and the majority of the population is very opposed to him.

How would such a situation unfold in the modern United States of America? I'm not advocating for a solution. I'm just honesty frightened.

Am I exaggerating or am I spot on?

[geomon666]

1. No

The vast majority of people in this country are apathetic.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. Yep, and a lot of them...

like authoritarians. Thinking for one's self is hard.

[Lint Head]

2. Courage is defintely needed now. Our country contains many couragous people who

have fought and died for our Country. Looks more and more like that could be a possibility around the corner.
I surely hope not.

[KamaAina]

6. "The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots."

Franklin?

[lunasun]

36. T Jefferson I believe

[rug]

3. It's only a revolution if the exploited rise up and fight back.

What's going on now is the process of capitalists laying their dead hands directly on the machinery of state power, accelerating the exploitation of the people. That is not revolution, it's fascism.

[jimlup]

7. But when the people pushed to far

things happen. That's what I'm worried about. I don't know. Likely it would initially take the form of right-wingers in dead rebellion when the realize that Trump is a total yahoo.

But maybe something else... I just don't know but I do agree that we are also teetering on fascism.

[rug]

10. If history is a gauge, it will go right or go left.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/how-the-nazis-succeeded-in-taking-power-in-red-berlin-a-866793.html



Anti-Nazi demonstration. Berlin, 1932.

[pangaia]

12. Right wingers are NOT by going to rise up against him.

[Nevernose]

19. Most of them don't even realize

That they're being exploited, or by whom.

A nation mostly full of the Afraid, the Avaricious, and the Apathetic.

[sofa king]

4. It's worse than that.

Donald Trump is an ignorant self-absorbed fool and as predictable as Ex-lax. That makes him childishly easy to manipulate.

As I keep saying, and will keep saying, it's the Republican plan to steal the White House from everyone, and install Paul Ryan instead.

And yeah, Trump will try to start a revolution, so I presume that the darkest, most diabolical sector of American politics has a plan for that, too.

How bad do you have to scare forty million racist rednecks who are already cleaning their guns? The Republican Party has to scare them--and the rest of us--that bad in order to turn them against us and fall back into line.

[jalan48]

21. Trump is predictable as Ex-lax. That's a great slogan.

[Jack-o-Lantern]

5. There is defiantly a lot going on just now and I sense more danger every day.

I share your concerns as I have no idea in what direction this will take us or what the final outcome will be.

[doc03]

8. I am 68 years old and have never seen anything more frightening

than this. Watergate compared to this was nothing, we had a few bad people involved with that
and the Republicans would have won the election anyway. This we have a foreign government I think colluding with
Trump to take control of our government and I fear the crazy son of a bitch is going to get away free.

[Hoyt]

9. I suspect after any Revolution vast majority of us will be much worse off. It might be good for

future generations down the road, but for decades things will be very bad here, and likely world wide

[HassleCat]

11. Depends

This thing with Russia could get pretty serious. Most Americans would not tolerate a foreign government interfering with our elections, and would demand a do-over. Of course, this would lead to intense conflict, perhaps even large scale violence.

[longship]

14. There are no fucking do overs under our law.

So stop ringing that cockamaimie "do over" bell.

Drumpf is president-elect by all legal measures. There are no do overs. None whatsoever.

Heaven help us all.

[HassleCat]

15. Interesting point

At local and county level, a faulty election is done over with a special election. Of course, this varies by state. Nobody has any idea what would happen if it turns out the Russians hacked our national election. There is no specified process, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do it.

[longship]

17. Well, cite the federal law that allows for a revote.

That's correct. It does not exist.

[HassleCat]

18. Exactly as I said

And there is nothing to prohibit it. To have it or not, that would be the first conflict. And it would balloon from there.

[longship]

25. There are no fucking presidential election redos!!!!!!

None! Nada!!!! Never!!

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

27. Congress could pass a law saying that they can

[sarisataka]

28. They could?

[longship]

29. Do you mean the CURRENT GOP CONGRESS??? Right!

This election redo talk is totally cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

First, how does one decide that the first election is invalid? What are the criteria? Cite the current law.

Second, which governmental body decides that? The president? SCOTUS? Political forum members? Again, cite the current law.

Third -- and read this very carefully -- there is no law to enable any such a process.

In other words, THERE ARE NO FUCKING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REDOS!!!

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

37. I'm not saying they will

Just that they could.

We'd need video of Putin and Trump having sex with children while stuffing ballots to achieve the kind of bipartisan support necessary though.

[HassleCat]

30. Right.

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

[longship]

31. Fine. Cite the law for nullifying a presidential election.

Go ahead. Post the citation right here and I will eat my crow in response.

But you cannot do that because no such laws exist.

I await a response that demonstrates that I am wrong and will gladly recant if I am wrong.

But I am not wrong.

That's because THERE ARE NO PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REDOS.

[treestar]

34. It is done by state

Maybe some states have a law for that. Or if it were tried it would not necessarily happen in all states. It is unlikely any state would stick its neck out and do it.

[longship]

35. So how does one coordinate such a thing across 50 fucking states...

...and simultaneously be coherent with the constitution?

That's right. You don't.

1. And who decides that the election is invalid?

2. And who decides that a new election is required?

Understand that one has to do this within our constitution.

Such a thing just does not exist.

Please respond to my two questions first.

[treestar]

38. 1. The state court

would decide under whatever the law said

2. The state court, under the state's law.

It would seem like a good idea for states to consider such a law. In case there turns out to be a truly fraudulent election. Of course given the pace of courts, the term of the office could be up before they would decide.

We should have a procedure regarding elections proven to be faked. What if one was actually proven and there was nothing that could be done about it?

[longship]

39. 50 different state courts? 50 different state legislatures?

How does one do that?

I wish you luck in that near impossible task which has zero chance of effecting this last election.

Dream on.

Then you have the US Constitution which is quite specific about presidential elections. So one still needs an amendment there.

There are no fucking presidential election do overs!

[treestar]

40. I am just talking of possibilities

and each state would come up with its own laws.

For future elections, we may need to think about some sort of fail safe for fraud.

[longship]

41. Well, more power to us.

However, the nullification of a presidential election is a very serious thing which cuts deep into the core of the USA's history and form of government. One does not diddle with the laws establishing the peaceful transition of power between presidential administrations casually.

That is what I fear is being recommended here. It is something to which I must stand against at this point because it very much seems like a knee jerk reaction to Secy Clinton's surprising loss to madman Drumpf.

There is no legal framework to nullify a presidential election. Screaming and stamping ones feet will not change that undeniable fact.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. And I should remind everybody that there is certainly no way to change the outcome of the 2016 election. Drumpf is the president-elect. Heaven help us all.

The faithless elector attempts will certainly fail, or will throw the election into a strong GOP congress which would likely just select Drumpf anyway.

What remains constitutionally is impeachment by the House followed by trial in the senate, or the 25th amendment solution. The first requires a substantial portion of congress, and 2/3 of the senate, to be against him. The second requires his cabinet officers to be willing to throw him over.

Does anybody reasonably expect either of these things to happen with the current legislative partisan alignment or cabinet positions?

I say no.

I suggest that we hunker down for four very bad years of an unprecedented weak governance and very bad policy. Add to that the fact that we will very likely lose SCOTUS for a generation or more.

It's clusterfuck time for the Democratic Party. Sadly.

[pipi_k]

16. I honestly

don't know about a revolution, and I don't like to get caught up in hyperbole, but I do believe that at some point we're going to be dealing with many fruitcakes like the one who went to "self investigate" the pizza place over fake news saying it was a front for child sex slavery or whatever.

There are plenty of people out there crazy enough as it is without giving them even more ammunition for believing totally outrageous lies.

So, revolution? I dunno...maybe.

I think we're teetering on the brink of something scary.

[kudzu22]

20. Every election is a revolution

in that we remove one group from power and put another in its place, but the structure of the US Government outlined by the Constitution endures. Will there be big policy changes? Absolutely. But a revolution that overthrows the constitution? No, I don't see anything like that coming.

[jalan48]

22. I'm worried our government has morphed into one where we now have Caesar's rule us.

It came about in Rome because of citizen apathy, material decadence and a love of the circus (sports). Most American's are more concerned about their favorite sports teams than who is governing them.

[canetoad]

23. Just before opening your post

I was thinking, Is this worth having a civil war over?

Knowing what is at stake, I'd say yes; not just for the US but for the future of humankind. I think it's that important.

[sarisataka]

24. Revolution?

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right, all right, all right

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

26. nah

We've been reduced to cattle brainwashed by constant stimuli. If a revolution disrupted Facebook servers everyone would pack it up and go home.

[BainsBane]

32. We just had as much revolution as you can expect to see in this country

and it was a right-wing, white nationalist backlash. Bernie talked about a political revolution, but Trump is the one who successfully marshaled discontent to put himself in power.

There have been points in American history when there were activist leftist movements that had the potential to become revolutionary, but they were systematically purged, deported, and co-opted. The great genius of FDR was to co-opt the people's movements through the New Deal and diffuse the revolutionary potential of the working class, farmers, and poor in order to shore up capitalism. The McCarthy era did away with what remained of them, as the Palmer Raids and deportations had done in the early 1920s. Unions, once led by anarchists and communists, became conservative, abandoned issues of worker control for wage hikes and power for leaders. Then of course even those unions friendly to capital weakened over in the next few decades, especially the 1980s.

That's why people who imagine a historical past in which the Democratic Party represented the left are so off base. Democrats were never the left. In fact they, along with the Republicans, actively suppressed the left.

I have always thought the greatest potential for resistance to the state in the US came from the right--militia groups and white nationalists. Only they no longer need to take up arms since they have a seat in the Oval Office.

The one possibility on the left is the movement surrounding Black Lives Matter. Yet for something to be revolutionary, it has to succeed in transforming society. The repressive power of the state is tremendous, and the Trump administration would not hesitate to use armed forces to annihilate any threat. And given that the target would be black activists and their allies, the administration would have the full support of the GOP electorate.

[spin]

33. The time for a revolution is when there is absolutely no other choice. ...

When all political and peaceful measures have failed and we find ourselves to be enslaved by a dictatorial government.

We are not anywhere near that point right now.

Trump may prove to be a terrible president who desires to become a dictator but in my opinion it is wise to see how he works out. Our nation has had some really bad presidents in the past and yet it survived.

I expect the next four years will prove a bumpy ride but if Trump iturns out to be as bad as some suspect perhaps we can regain control of the House and Senate in the midterms and limit his powers.

Also don't forget there are three branches to our government. The Judicial branch could easily limit the damage that Trump can do when he steps out of line. Never forget that Trump could also be impeached and removed from office. There's a lot of Republicans who are not fond of Trump.

For a revolution to have much chance of success it is necessary for it to be backed by a fairly high percentage of the citizenry. While perhaps 52% of our population is worried about how Trump will work out, the number that are willing to take up arms and revolt is much lower. It's probably much less then 10%.