A man who tried to overturn an election is in power and is disappearing people on the streets without due process.
The other day there was news about some ICE members who blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried filming their cars on a public street. That's just one example but these cases are only becoming more common.
One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an election again, he is way better positioned to succeed this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was to centralize the government and fill only with loyalists.
> disappearing people on the streets without due process.
Undocumented immigrants can be detained and deported by the U.S. government but they are still legally entitled to due process.
What is happening is aggressive enforcement and detention that can feel like “disappearing,” but it is not the same thing as extrajudicial abduction in the legal sense.
When people use the word "disappeared" they usually mean families temporarily can't find someone after detention, detainees are transferred far aways, no lawyer automatically assigned, communication is difficult, deportation happens very quickly. While this is real harm, it is not the same phenomenon as disappearance under international law.
The U.S. is aggressively detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants under civil law, sometimes with minimal process and poor transparency — but not through secret, extrajudicial disappearances. Due process is thinner than for citizens, enforcement can be opaque and traumatic, but this is not the same as "vanished" outside the legal system.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a dictatorship, but it’s definitely trending toward authoritarianism.
Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180 countries published by Reporters Without Borders that measures the level of press freedom.
what is the US exactly currently if not dictatorship? is there a single
thing “President” cannot do right now and if so who would be stopping him? so perhaps on paper US is not dictatorship much like Russia and China are not… We spend decades trying to fight these regimes and lost so much that now we are worse than them :)
You said "right now". If you want to change to "will be able to do in the near future, before the end of his second term", that's a (slightly?) different list. But it's also a different comment.
You said "anything", in the context of dictatorship. I only used items in this list which IMO you can reasonably say Putin, an actual dictator, can do. Right now. Except the first one! Because that was a joke, a reference to something he himself said he could do.
If you want to change to "anything which has backroom deal importance, not just bread and games for the masses, but the real things, if you know you know", that's a (slightly) different list.
He has functionally neutered Congress. It is almost completely meaningless and it is operating without an independent Speaker.
I think he could succeed in principle re: Mount Rushmore, to be honest. I think eventually people will cave in and agree to do it, and then they will just pray to cholesterol that they can wait it out.
it is not a setback, they have to play a little game now and again to entertain the masses. scotus as it was before doesn’t exist anymore and won’t for decades, it now just rubberstamps
I quoted the media. The main point in this context is the "rare" part. I'm well aware of the nature of the GOP operatives on the SCOTUS. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all voted in Trump's favor. That Beerhead, Ms. IDreamOfGilead, and "Citizens United/I hate the VRA/worst chief justice since Taney" voted to temporarily uphold the stay actually surprised me (Bart O' said he would have given Trump more leeway) but yes, it's theater.
To be exact, CNN reports that for the period Sep - Dec there have been ~30 boats destroyed in ~26 attacks, with at least ~105 deaths in these operations.
The US govt is of course claiming narcotics smugglers ("narcoterrorism") while others say they are not. The truth is probably somewhere inbetween, though who knows one which end of the spectrum.
What I think is maybe more interesting is the general pressure being applied to Venezuela by the US and the EU.
I truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents, both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in terms of bare naked power grabs.
I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.
I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen. Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip the congressional approval part like he already does.
> Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval
There is literally no such obscure rule, and a new Congress will be seated two weeks before the 2029 Presidential Inauguration.
Elections, and the compulsory ends of terms, inauguration of new Congresses, etc, happen on schedule without regard to any exceptional cases, including Civil War.
If he can get a majority of the Electoral College for a third term, and a majority in both houses of Congress in 2028, then things get much more complicated.
But there is no other path. Elections matter, and don't let anyone discourage you from believing that they don't matter enough to vote.
I've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a few important differences in the political organization of the two countries.
Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.
Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.
The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
I have very little faith that scotus will have any consistency in their decisions going forward - they seem to be nakedly political, and backing trump. If the elections swing the other direction (despite their aid in gerrymandering), expect them to cry about the power of the presidency and start rolling it back as fast as they can push decisions through the shadow docket.
> The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
That sounds reinsuring, but it is completely false. The idea that the pendulum swings is just regression to the mean: sure, after a terrible president, the next one is likely to be less terrible. But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.
> If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre. The American culture hasn’t changed that much and American leftists did not suddenly become competent at getting popular support.
> But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.
Looking at the history of left wing movements in countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would? The Cold War may have been a factor.
> Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre.
The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left. There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.
> Looking at the history of left wing movements in countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would?
In western democracies, I can think of a couple. For example, the wave of left-wing intellectualism that was prevalent up until the 1980s got somewhat lost and lost contact with the lower classes, which left an opening for far-right populists.
> The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left.
You’re right. In that frame of reference, it might indeed regress to the far left, but that would still be slightly to the left of Bill Clinton. The US don’t strike me as having a particularly strong left-wing culture and I don’t see it appearing any time soon.
> There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.
I don’t think the word exist, but the concept proved very useful to a lot of dictators.
> And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.
They will find excuses to reverse. There will be some technicality, made up historical precense or some actually untrue fact about the world that wil totally make the situation different.
Conservative heretage foundation group has outcome in mind ... and "opposition" is not their preffered outcome.
Well, I'd do a guess and say at least since the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment got deep-sixed back in the 95. Either that or they never had them.
I'd love to limit the semi-auto rifles like the infamous AR-15. Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. In exchange for country-wide reciprocity for concealed carry and firearm transportation.
I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for instance people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed (that is what I would cite as "common sense"), but this statement really damages your credibility. Of course semiautomatic rifles are useful for both hunting and for self defense. They are effective weapons. That's the problem.
> I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for inference people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed
Whut? How the fuck did you make that jump?
AR-15 rifles are useless for hunting. They are too small to reliably kill large game (deer) and too large for small game (rabbits). Sure, they're fine for coyotes, but if you're buying an AR-15 to hunt coyotes, then you should just stop.
AR-15s are also useless for self-defense. They are too bulky for indoor use, and the bullets can penetrate multiple walls. A regular semi-auto handgun is far superior if you're looking to protect yourself against domestic violence.
The domestic violence thing was about a potential gun regulation, not a scenario. People with domestic violence convictions are overrepresented among murderers and mass shooters. So it would make sense to prevent them from obtaining guns.
It's useless for hunting, but you identify circumstances it's useful in. You say it's useless for self defense because it's bulky, I've heard a hundred people say it's ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a rifle than with a pistol.
Say whatever you want, but when you make absolute statements like that, it damages your credibility. That's my feedback for you.
I don't really care to have an in depth discussion of self defense scenarios because I don't think that helps us understand common sense gun regulation any better. I'm sure you can find people making that argument if you are curious. My point is not that the AR-15 is an appropriate self defense weapon but that there are better arguments you could have made, and that the one you did make lost someone who is already sympathetic to your position.
I did find someone making that argument, you. I don't think asking for one example out of a hundred is asking for an in depth discussion, but if you claim this is too much for you then I won't push the issue.
Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some other authority despite not being answerable to the law, and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that higher authority.
From what I gather, it's so tight that when a clandestine company has served its purpose and winds down, anybody who managed to become a shareholder gets to cash out.
Yes, and if the hypothetical were that the CIA was effectively outside of control of the law for actions committed in private by CIA personnel in their homes, then the conclusion would be different (even though an agency the scale of the CIA would still have different implications than an individual even then), but that wasn't the hypothetical under discussion, which had much fewer—as in zero—qualifications on the CIA’s lack of accountability.
> if the hypothetical were that the CIA was effectively outside of control of the law for actions committed in private by CIA personnel in their homes
My point is their actions are committed outside the law. They've just been able to avoid punishment by covering it up. What they are not is above the law, at least not in the long run. (There are absolutely short bouts where the CIA acts above the law overseas, and rare cases where it has done so domestically. But the fact that they're covering it up betrays that they're crafty bastards, not invincible ones.)
The CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture.
Then they got caught hacking congressional computers to delete evidence.
> CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture
One, source?
Two, this above reproach. Not above the law. They deleted the evidence, they didn't just blow the scandal off. (Historically, our IC was popular. Right now, it's the deep state. You're seeing political appointees at the FBI and CIA exert control.)
