"willingness to use lethal force on non-coethnics" is also something which colonialists could find among minorities mistreated by the majority in the local population -- the Kikuyu in Kenya; Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Punjabi Muslims in India; Alawites in Syria. the white American majority lacks this!
this is actually why I'm more concerned about cops than the military! they're pretty accustomed to violence directed at racial minorities and left wing protestors, and they are already embedded in every community in the country, and seem to love trump. not dooming, just think that's the threat
cops are accustomed to low level or sporadic violence against these groups, I would be surprised if they were willing to massacre protestors on the Iranian model
every country has a class of law enforcement who are eager to use the truncheon and put down protests with tear gas- in many countries they have a history of abusing minorities and murderous abuse of force- in no country however, can they be trusted to massacre their co-nationals
in iran, this was the basij, which was not trustworthy to commit massacres during the Green Revolution. they had to use special IRGC units in 2023-2024 to get it done.
yeah and the argument that the american police are more abusive, cruel or ideological than the literal morality police is really not going to hold water
Depends on who you ask. Black folks in right wing states might disagree.
yeah a lot of this predicated on people not merely accepting their presence. like we are positing a populace that requires massacres to put down unrest and i’m just not sure. maybe!
if trump tries to outright steal an election/refuses to seat a dem congress or tries an autocoup, i’ll be there in DC. i guess im just not sure how many will be with me and what lengths they’ll be willing to go
but like back in february i went on a NZ pod and imo a little boldly claimed that donald trump would not leave office through traditional political channels and i thought the most likely end to his term was people in the streets, fleeing the country in the middle of the night. still think that!
Inshallah
🤞
or put another way: if people actually rise up, I do not think trump now nor ever will have the power to put them down. I just don't know what it's gonna take for people to rise up, and just how broken things will be by then
Tbh if I were a betting point, I would bet that the most likely possible outcome is a blue wave in 2026 and Republicans just refuse to seat the new dems
i think that's pretty tough because they will have to hold down literally the entire caucus to try to make that happen
With enough pressure, the white house can get congressional Republicans to do what trump wants. They will say the election is fraudulent and that will be enough to get congress in line
The thing is they can't lose more than a few votes on the question of "end the country and plunge each side into civil war" to do this, maybe they get there but also the new congress could meet e.g. in philadelphia and, constituting a quorum of the house, make a legitimate claim to power
You arent wrong but to modern Republicans the actual logistics of holding a position are irrelevant
*betting man
Kind of beside the point but I actually do appreciate the not doomer, but perhaps pessimist view here. It's very important to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities here, we don't have a good answer for police being violent gangs and we're gonna need one.
Morale remains our most critical resource atm and I can understand why people end up protective of it, but failing to examine vulnerabilities is sure destruction
Cops also kill a ton of poor white people!
Like it's an incredibly racially injust system, rotten to the core, but American police absolutely have plenty of practice killing coethnics
they don’t have near as much practice doing it in the form of the massacre, tho. they’ll kill in a large number of isolated incidents, but to stop a protest with force you need to be willing to machine-gun crowds, many of which will not be poor!