Mastodawn

This is a coup in the making.

Senator Mark Warner of The Senate Intelligence Committee explains how the Trump regime is systematically dismantling the guardrails that protect US elections, and how Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has been hiding wistleblower information, hiding the affidavit related to the illegal search in Georgia, and inserted herself into an FBI operation where she does not belong — all in an effort to destroy American democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/live/BxYFcxJE8TQ?si=QBjhIqtFSoNujNi7

LIVE: Senator Warner press conference on Intelligence Oversight

YouTube

FurballsNHairballs 4d ago

@randahl
People have their head up their asses until the knock hits their door
Too little
Too late

@randahl Yes, my take: don't wait until November. It would be ironic if Andrew as member of the royal family would testify and blow the whole thing up, setting the U.S. free.

@randahl It's a coup that's already happening.

@randahl An ongoing coup in progress, but yes.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦

@randahl this is not a coup in the making. It's an already successful coup. Laws are not magically self-enforcing. It became successful the moment they simply ignored the courts and openly dared them to try enforcement.

Anybody who thinks there will be elections much less legitimate ones in November, is dangerously delusional.

Kid Mania 4d ago

@rootwyrm @randahl
I'll go a step further...American democracy died on July 1st 2024. This was the date the Supreme Court of the United States granted immunity to the president. I argue everything that has happened since then is a result of this decision. After all, the US Constitution is utterly incompatible with this concept...you cannot have one man standing above the law...

Like a King.
☠️ 🇺🇸 ☠️

さよなら皆さん 4d ago

@clintruin THIS is it. @rootwyrm @randahl

obscurestar 3d ago

@clintruin @rootwyrm @randahl Not when McConnell stole 2 SCotUS appointments from the left? What about Citizens United? The right has been working on their destruction of the rule of law for a long while.

Kid Mania 3d ago

@obscurestar @rootwyrm @randahl
Oh, absolutely. Don't misunderstand...this is merely a definitive landmark to point a finger at...a moment in time that governs our now. But yeah...it took a concerted effort to get to that moment.

Tim Finnerty 3d ago

@rootwyrm @randahl "Laws are not magically self-enforcing."

Kristoff Bonne 🇪🇺 🇧🇪4d ago

@randahl
Just wondering, is not the big risk of all this that there will be calls in certain states ' that the mid-term elections have not been done fair and correctly so we do not accept the legal status of the US federation' .. or that there will be (foreign) agents pushing this narrative?

After all, for a foreign power, one of the best ways to attack the US is to attack its internal structure or even trigger an internal civil war.

decapitae 4d ago

@randahl tRumpSsReich Insurrection much? Trials start when the key players are isolated and detained for trial. They're already identified.

GhostOnTheHalfShell 4d ago

Cranky old me would state the coup already happened. They are solidifying their grip of whatever part of the federal government they decide to keep, but in a way that’s unrecognizable. They are obliterating and have obliterated everything they don’t want.

It may be years before what is going on now is actually explained in ways we are more familiar with about fascism in Europe.

This horror can only end by breaking up corporations and limiting wealth to $10 million net worth

GhostOnTheHalfShell 4d ago

I consider myself to have a rough survey knowledge of European history and of antiquity, including the classic Rome some idea about civilizations like Sumaria. We are dealing with an eternal reality, and our well-being depends on understanding this

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. -Plutarch

tuban_muzuru 3d ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

[from atop my soapbox] Since Citizens United in 2010, the government has already been in the grip of corporations.

@tuban_muzuru @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl
Such a demoralizing thread... We're essentially done for. What can we do to help the next generation?

tuban_muzuru 3d ago

@AnnieG @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

We need to find good candidates and support them.

For all this idealism and 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, mostly its about power. Politics is about power, but until money is kept out of the elections, it's a farce.

And we are no good at it, because now it's about spending money and not doing the nation's business.

GhostOnTheHalfShell 3d ago

@tuban_muzuru @AnnieG @randahl

The most concise definition of politics I’ve seen is it’s decision-making in groups.

Who makes the decisions in groups is the substance of everything we go crazy about.

tuban_muzuru 3d ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @AnnieG @randahl

The father of crowd psychology as we understand it today was Gustave Le Bon.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/445

The crowd : A study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.

Project Gutenberg

@tuban_muzuru @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

It strikes me that most of the fediverse is still the non-crowd "crowd"...

tuban_muzuru 2d ago

@AnnieG @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

"...The men of ardent
convictions who have stirred the soul of crowds, the Peter the Hermits, the Luthers, the Savonarolas, the men of the French Revolution, have only exercised their fascination after having been themselves fascinated first of all by a creed. They are then able to call up in the souls of their fellows that formidable force known as faith, which renders a man the absolute slave of his dream"

https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125518/1414_LeBon.pdf

tuban_muzuru 2d ago

@AnnieG @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

... we're kinda refugees from it, to be frank.

@tuban_muzuru @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

Strongest faith I have, unfortunately, is that (too many) humans will continue to find a lower level to sink to than I previously imagined. Not much help.

tuban_muzuru 2d ago

@AnnieG @GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

I have no faith in humanity. Nor family. Faith, says St. Paul, is the evidence of things not seen.

And I ain't seen it. Thought I did, and more than once. Mankind's technology long since ran away from his conscience.

GhostOnTheHalfShell 3d ago

@tuban_muzuru @randahl

Yup

tuban_muzuru 3d ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @randahl

That last terrible damning paragraph at the end of Animal Farm

さよなら皆さん 4d ago

@randahl you mean successful coup. The coup is already done and over with. We live under an authoritarian dictatorship of pedophiles racists.

Randahl Fink 3d ago

@sayonaraminasan respectfully, I disagree: https://youtu.be/jLwHQIiL6gU?si=Z2kkOpUBtMUa8o_X

Why Trump's regime will fall

YouTube

さよなら皆さん 3d ago

@randahl tl:dw. Trump is violating court orders blatantly. ICE thugs will be at polling booths. Concentration camps are being built in the open and we are all aware of it. People are being kidnapped and disappeared. Citizens executed in the streets. Congress is being overstepped. Judiciary branch has no power to stop him. So, how’s this “in progress” and not “done and over”. I don’t need a history of fascism to know fascism when it’s on my streets. And no, it’s not gonna just go away on its own, in my humble opinion.

Aaron Mahler 4d ago

@randahl @briankrebs An aside: noticing this in my timeline made me do a double take seeing the ABC13 bug in the top left of this YouTube video. That’s the local ABC affiliate in nearby Lynchburg, Va - a Sinclair-owned station in a city and region all too in the grasp of Liberty University and right wing politics. I feel quite sure they never broadcast this locally… too informative and counter to their usual programming, so baffles me a bit.

Sassinake! - ⊃∪∩⪽3d ago

it was a coup last year.

Trump told everyone what he was doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9OP_a6MNg

Maddow points out frightening truth about Trump's lack of concern about votes

YouTube