I think this is pure hopium. TSF is never going to relinquish power, and the Subprime court will not impose limits on his ability to declare rebellion, so he’ll continue to performatively use the military until he gets the bloodshed he desires.
The only chink of light is that some big business leaders are starting to tell him to knock off the ICE raids at home depot and ag processing as it’s bad for business
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Actually, the 3.5% rule is that no regime can survive that level of public protest. The turnout for No Kings was roughly 10,000,000, while only about 10,000 showed for the tiny tank parade. Trump lost that referendum by 1000 : 1 !
That also gives a protest rate of about 3% of the population. Close enough to give us a very good shot.
Anecdotes are not data, @tindalos. That guy Patrick is a sad sack. Those people were outnumbered yesterday 1000:1. Why do you care what he thinks? Your take on that is exactly backwards. What you need help with is not apologizing for expressing hope. If I give your gloomy take on what was a vibrant display of peaceful resistance the benefit of the doubt and agree with you that yesterday doesn’t mark a sea change, then what it does mark is more confirmation that the election did not represent the will of the people, and in fact was stolen by a criminal with a long record of fraud which included many fraudulent attempts to steal the 2020 election. It’s not that the will of the people is unchanged. It is that it’s always been against trump. Now, after 6 months of abuse at the F F’s hands, the people are speaking out loudly.
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I think the difference is largely down to where the protests are. When the mass protests have forced a change, it’s usually in a country where the biggest city and political capital are the same location, which just isn’t the case in the US. Most countries have one mega-city which is the focus of protest and power, so the huge protests are right outside the dictators door, so can’t be ignored.
TSF will just ignore massive protests in LA, NY, SF, Chicago, etc, as will Faux Noise, so people won’t know they are happening.
Unless you can get millions showing up in DC, nothing will change - and you can’t do that because logistically, people can’t get there, and if they do, they have to go home. It’s not Cairo, Mexico or Buenos Aires or even Paris or London, US is far more spread out - in the mega-cities, people just go home and then come back, so protests can be sustained for days/weeks
DC percentage of US population 0.2%. Tiblisi, Georgia, 32% of the population, lots of other countries 10% or more. So big demonstrations show you’ve lost the capital and it’s time to spend quality time with your swiss bank accounts elsewhere.
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I thank our courageous generals and great military, which is the greatest military of all time, for honoring our Lord, Savior, and Second Coming who also happens to be our great President, with such a beautiful and solemn worship ceremony on his Birthday. May He continue to grace America, and let us all send our thoughts and prayers to the brave men and women deployed in the California War.
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I agree, the size of the country means analysis of protests in countries with one big capital city don’t apply.
The other reason I think historical analysis doesn’t apply, is that 30-40 years ago we had a more-or-less consensus reality with TV and print news reports. The shift now is to “news influencers” on social media, where one CNN poll reported something like 40% of younger people get their news. It’s not just Fox News TV ignoring the No Kings protests. When even the politicians are getting their self-selected news in social media bubbles, the protests might as well not exist.
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Your geographic point is correct, and I agree that 3.5% rule is somewhat misconstrued here. It’s also thin gruel for the pessimists clinging desperately to hopelessness. I expect that where expectation management is so critical to the preservation of mental health. Nazi concentration camp prisoners refused to believe they were liberated even when they saw the allied soldiers. I’m not saying we are exactly liberated, but what you saw was a nation which is not cowed, either. If we can summon ca. 10 million people nationwide, we can certainly send 200,000 to Washington next time, something which Trump’s magat cult couldn’t do yesterday. People downplaying the strength of our rebellion today need to do some real soul searching. That means the right wing, but also many of us who are struggling to downplay what they saw yesterday. @zenicetus
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Shirley you know by now that this administration thinks competence and expertise are vastly overrated.
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Oddly enough, they now hold that same view of tiny tank parades as well!
And stop calling @bcgister “Shirley”!
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Military personnel voted for this, so honestly it’s not really performative and the desired bloodlust is shared.
All this 3.5 percent bullshit doesn’t mean anything when the military is under your control, despite the fantastical notion that “the military will not obey an illegal order which is identical to something I personally do not like.”
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Agree. The rules in the US are different than anywhere else.
One thing you can take away from yesterday is that a significant percent of the population is done with Trump. Just like they were with Trump in 2018. He got virtually nothing done after those 2018 demonstrations.
I suspect the No Kings demonstrations will put a big hole in the BIG UGLY BILL because I can guarantee all the perspective 2026 candidates for Congress were paying attention. By any measure the No King protest demonstrations were historically large, united and clearly against Trump and the GOP. So much so that I think Trump truly became a Lame Duck by the end of the day.
As stupid as he is, the expression on his face in that pathetic reviewing stand showed me that he knows it too. I suspect the rest of his term will be less about the dominance thing (he knows he’s lost), and more about the grift.
Given his health and the levels of hatred he has generated in the citizenry, his chances of finishing his term breathing aren’t assured. The most interesting question then becomes - what happens when he is gone ?
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The protests shouldn’t be about getting the attention of politicians. They know about the protests and they don’t care. The protests should be about bursting the information bubbles of voters. We need to show them what Fox News won’t.
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Hunter Walker:
Crowds, many of them decked out in Trump merch, wandered for over a mile along the black security fencing downtown looking for a way in. Demonstrators were mixed among them, including some who offered help even as they waved anti-Trump signs.
“They’ve shut down the entrance,” a woman told a man who found himself at the locked gates to the parade. “You have to walk down to 14th.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, shaking his head.
“Enjoy your dictator’s parade!” another protester shouted.
Cue Nelson Muntz laugh.
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Irony is dead, part XXVI
USA Today reported that one of the d-list entertainers, a “country” singer named Warren Zeider sang his hit “Guilty as Charged” at the program at the end of the parade.
I’d like to think that the singer has a great, subversive sense of humor, but I’d guess he’s just another clueless buffoon. As far as I can tell nobody, least of all the convicted felon/Buffoon in Chief, even noticed the delicious irony.
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You are citing some old data which no longer reflects the moment. Let’s see a poll on that after this last weekend. Worse, you are making the same fundamental error that many try to make here. I’ll call it a mistake, but for many it is an attempt to elide overall voting propensity with views on a single issue. Chronic depressives and assorted doom merchants attempt to do this all the time, falsely counting any show of support for Trump, such as a vote in 2024, as someone either signing on for the most extreme outcomes, or as an expression of preexisting hardcore magat views. To pad the numbers and bolster the case that we are all “doomed”, people count any vote for Trump as a maga vote, while conveniently ignoring the documented existence of swing voters. Anyhow, a traditionally Republican group expressing support for Trump last August is not tantamount to support for a bloody military dictatorship today. There are plenty of Republican soldiers and vets who still uphold the Constitution, just as there are Republican judges throughout our federal system, many of them Trump appointed, who refuse to corruptly choose Trump over the Constitution. We spit in the faces of soldiers and vets when we accuse them of such corruption just because of their party affiliation. That’s not just bullshit. That approaches the Platonic ideal of BS.
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Dictators don’t have a popular mandate. They rely on personal relationships and corruption to endure, and the military procurement process is one of the biggest areas for rewarding loyal minions. Soldiers end up wearing rags, eating scraps, living in drafty shacks, and simulating weapons. But what can you do with soldiers for free? Drill and ceremony. People who’ve served know that goose stepping and wild arm swinging doesn’t matter in combat, but to clowns who’ve never served (99% of the people on that dais yesterday) it looks impressive.
So my main takeaway from the stupid parade yesterday is that the US military hasn’t fundamentally changed in the half decade since I got out. NCOs care for the lower enlisted, officers want their units doing actual training, and anyone who suggests D&C practice is getting shoved in a locker. (Also, tankers are delightful oddballs who improve any situation with their presence alone.)
Fuck cryptocurrency, P*lantir, shitty energy drinks, and all the other sleazy businesses that wiped their ass on the history of the US Army.
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I switched Fox on for the first time in months to see the reaction, and they did mention a No Kings protest. The host was disgusted that a protester had the US flag upside down, “in distress”.
Really?
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If they didn’t have bad faith, they’d have no faith at all
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He can’t ignore any slight against him (perceived or legitimate). He’s proven time and again that he has to slap back, if he thinks he’s been wronged. So long as the No Kings protests get some media attention, he’s got to be seething.
He rabidly wanted to sic the military on the BLM protests in 2020, but the last vestiges of “normalcy” in the GOP/military held the line then. He’s since excised them from the reins of power, so now it’s just Stephen Millers all the way down. He will want to retaliate for (literally and figuratively) raining on his parade, making them a bigger issue than they otherwise would be.
I disagree. When the politicians stick their heads in the sand, it doesn’t make the protests go away. Josh Marshall has pointed out that a lot of the time dictatorships seem unshakeable until, suddenly, they’re just gone in one fell swoop. Ignoring the protestors is something that they do at their own peril.
But, in truth, they aren’t “ignoring” the protestors, so much as avoiding them. The GOP pols have, by and large, abandoned town halls because they are always filled with upset constituents. Rather than face the music, they try to stick their fingers in their ears and hope it all goes away. Their constituents tend to remember that sort of thing, even when the pols try to pretend otherwise.
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OT: in case anyone was wondering why @castor_troy was only posting sporadically this weekend.
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All these words when four simple ones suffice:
It’s. A. Grotesque. Farce.
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