Democrats Need to Make Republicans Fear the Consequences of Attempting a Dictatorship
(washingtonmonthly.com)
gAlienLifeform
politics Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250424013900/https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/23/democrats-need-to-make-republicans-fear-the-consequences-of-attempting-a-dictatorship/
Bit what they "want" is a dictatorship with their colors.
You take the current sitting dictator drag them out by their toes from his Ivory tower string them up in Town square and let everybody look at them.
That's how it's always been done historically and that's how it's still done to this day it's very effective.
The combination of billionaires and mass media control is literally a threat to the survival of the human species. Chomsky warned us a long time ago. We need to create mechanisms to protect ourselves. Networks like fox news shouldn't be possible.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries still signal caution, urging patience and restraint.
These two weak, spineless, simpering cowardly weenies, and the rest of the Corporate Democrat Party, are a huge part of the problem. They represent what the Democratic Party has become, and the reason we are in this mess.
In 2020 we sent a very clear message to both parties that we wanted HitlerPig out, and MAGA crushed and punished - that was the primary motivation of the voters.
Biden should have had HitlerPig and all his henchmen rounded up literally on his first day, for supporting the Insurrection, if nothing else (and there was a lot more), and sent to Gitmo for extensive interrogation. Biden would have been cheered as a conquering hero had he shown such decisive leadership.
All the rest of the DC MAGAs should have been declared ineligible to hold office under 14A/S3, and removed, and many prosecuted. Any new Republicans brought in to replace them would have to be investigated for previous MAGA support, and determined if they were eligible to hold office. Then MAGA itself should have been declared a seditious terrorist hate group, and prohibited from existence.
It would take a while, and in the meantime, Dems would have enjoyed a huge majority in Congress to pass laws that would have codified issues such as Abortion. We saw during MAGA 1.0 how much of our government is on the honor syatem, and ripe for exploitation by those with no honor, and we could have fixed much of that.
Any subsequent MAGA uprisings should have been treated like the treason it is, and harshly suppressed.
Then Biden should have expanded the Supreme Court to 13-15 seats, and impeached Clarence Thomas.
And when all of that was done, we needed to go to Ukraine's aid full-force, crush the Russian goverment, and kill Putin, distributing his billions in ill-gotten gains to his victims. He is the ultimate force behind the rise in far-right extremism around the world, and his leadership needs to end.
And when that is done, it will be time to turn our efforts toward reigning in the Sociopathic Oligarchs, and returning them to their rightful place in the hierarchy. They are ruled by the government, not the other way around, and the best way to prove that to them is to heavily tax their wealth, and imprison them for any attempts to avoid it.
The current laws and the Constitution would have supported such bold action, but it would have taken courageous leadership to do it, and the Democratic leadership has been far too cowardly for far too long. So many opportunities were within our grasp, but were lost through cowardly Democratic leadership by Biden and Congress, following decades of weak leadership by Obama and Clinton.
We elected Biden, and gave him a Congressional majority, gave them a clear mandate, and demanded action, and they still refused to stem the MAGA tide, out of pure cowardice. It was a disgusting, embarrassing, humiliating performance, with the entire world watching. We have fully lost the respect and trust of the world, and our long-standing hegemony, and it will take decades to regain it, all because of cowardly Democratic leadership.
IF we ever have a presidential election again, the candidate that supports decisive action against MAGA is the one that will earn my vote. I keep hearing talk that we can't just run against HitlerPig, and I disagree. He and MAGA are literally the ONLY issue that matters. I have my favorite issues, like Medicare 4 All, and Campaign Finance Reform, but trying to re-establish a proper goverment with MAGA still gumming up the works, will be useless, and will only lead to them regaining power again, and resuming the destruction of Democracy on behalf of the Sociopathic Oligarchs. My personal priorities have to take a backseat to re-establishing a stable Democratic government, so we can then address our real issues.
IF we manage to regain power, we not only have to ferociously purge MAGA from the world, but we have to purge the cowardly elements from the Democratic party, and make them understand that they alone are responsible for defending American, and ALL Global Democracy.
Dictators deserve death.
Well so far they've been holding signs in congress... that's a very effective way in fact I remember the first pustch attempted by Hitler was entirely halted by mild mannered people holding signs.
Please don't pawn this off to "democrats", some vague entity not connected to yourselves. It's each and every resident's duty to resist and fight back. Some politicians can't do anything when operating within the laws the fascists explicitly skirt.
We should have been able to count on the Democratic party for leadership, but most have run from their responsibilty, so we are on our own. We need to show them how determined we are to save our Democracy, and perhaps it will inspire them to grow a spine.
There is no logic in threatening prosecution for attempting a dictatorship.
Those who attempt try to succeed. There is no prosecution in a successful dictatorship.
If this is the mentality you're gonna approach this situation with, you're cooked. The demented orange asshole is already building a dictatorship and democrats barely give a shit. "Fearing the consequences" isn't something they do because there are no consequences as we've seen multiple times. You gotta make them fear for their lives. And you gotta give people a real alternative to the oligarchy that is the US.
Fund wfh, Dems are pathetic and compromised.
Make sure to buy guns
We all do, not just those in the office
Especially since those in office don't seem particularly interested.
A man rubs a lamp and a genie comes out and says, "I will grant you one wish, anything you ask for, whatever you can imagine, your wish is my command."
The man shouts, "I want a dragon!"
The genies responds, "I'm sorry, but a dragon is just too much, it's just not possible for that to exist. Can you think of something else?"
The man thinks for a minute and says, "Well, in that case, I guess I wish for the rich and powerful to face significant legal consequences within the existing system for the harm they do to regular people."
The genie sighs and says, "What color did you want that dragon?"
Dracarys.
Purple. Just offer it some Dragon Treasure gems and ask it nicely to take care of an orange pig.
Purple is a fine color to use while employing alternative methods of holding people accountable when they control the courts and the senate
The opposition didn’t beat ths Nazis. The allies did.
Stalin did
If I recall Stalin was an ally
Stalin couldn't have done it without the vast amounts of money the US sent his way (Russian nationalists don't like to talk about Lend-Lease), and without the US and Western European countries fighting the Nazis on a second front.
Even then, Stalin's psycopathy and ruthless incompetence caused far a far higher casualty rate than on the western front. He was fine throwing infantry into the meat grinder in a war of attrition, because Russia had more bodies than Germany did.
Shut up yank the only reason your ancestor came to Europe is to counter communism and hire Nazi scientists.
Death to america
Seeing the negative and know-it-all comments on this thread is depressing. Maybe some of you need to just go back to pondering which Linux distribution to use and leave the hopium posts for the optimists.
Sadly Democrats couldn't make Republicans fear a Lovecraftian Horror.
So, we should summon a Lovecraftian Horror?
Shoulda done that, I dunno…a decade ago?
Wasn't the patriot act only opposed by like 1 senator? Our govt has long either supported or sympathized with authoritarians
Any vote with that kind of bipartisan support is a sure sign the ruling class are fucking us over.
Incidentally, that near-unanimous vote came soon after Senators and Congresspeople had been receiving letters with anthrax in them. And that crime has never been solved. (Hint: it was probably instigated by Cheney).
I'm sure a pink shirt and a flag will do the trick!
It's going to be fun watching all of these traitors stand trials for their crimes.
I can see progressives and muslims eventually hauled before a "court", but dems or republicans? hard to imagine.
Very cute fantasy of yours. Will never happen.
I'm always amused to see "never" in political discussions.
If the tide turns, it'll happen fast.
I hope it gets to that point
We can dream, friend. We can dream.
Unfortunately the democrats are made up of assholes like Pelosi and Schumer who are just there to get rich.
Schumer is there to, and I quote "make sure the left stays pro-Israel"
Schumer
And eradicate the Palestinian people.
Me and some like minded people are starting a new party in alabama. Calling ourselves the yellowhammers.
What I would have done once I see what a bunch of clowns I am trying to represent
Attempting?
By shifting to the right apparently
Well, unless the Dem voters quit expecting their reps to do something about the situation, it's not gonna change.
We as citizens need to use our second amendment. It was created for this.
Democrats doing literally anything
🤣
Schumer will shake his finger at you vigorously with the glasses on his nose if you don't stop misbehaving
They will not.
The DNC? Will never happen. They need to be afraid of the people and for all their bluster I've never seen them do anything but capitulate.
David Hogg (Parkland Massacre survivor, and a loud anti-MAGA voice) is now a vice chair of the DNC, and he is calling for investing $20 million in primarying weak Democratic incumbents. I hope one of those is my Dem congressional rep, who is a useless weenie.
He's starting to show up on political talk shows, and he is a very smart, impressive, charismatic, COURAGEOUS young man, who is determined to change the Democratic party from within. He is scaring the shit out of the old established cowards.
We need to support him, and the rest of the new rising segment of young progressives like AOC, Frost, Crockett, etc., and those they inspire.
I support David Hoggs intentions. I just don't know if he picked the right way to go about it.
People should not be afraid of the government, government should be afraid of the people.
As the Founding Fathers intended. That's why they gave us the 2nd Amendment. Dems need to embrace it as much as the Reps do.
And the Democrats won't do that unless the people make politicians fear the consequences of attempting a dictatorship.
And the Dems need to understand that if we end up in a full-blown dictatorship, we will hold the weak Dem leadership who allowed it to happen as we screamed at them to resist, as responsible as the Republicans.
And people won't do that because a large well-funded security state stands between them and the political class.
Even if people do that the Dems are still minority in both chambers so they can't do shit.
republicans always seem to be able to stop democrats when they have a minority in the senate.
Then again, republicans are actually interested in stopping democrats.
That diminishes the things some of them have done, like meet with those who were disappeared. Or attempt to shutdown the government.
Symbolic gestures are ultimately useless against sociopaths like any MAGA. The only thing they respect and respond to is bold action, and bold is not a word that can ever be ascribed to the currrnt Democratic party.
The first example you gave was a cool gesture but hardly effective.
The second example you gave I don't necessarily agree with. I think the federal government is important and serves a vital purpose which is why I oppose Trump dismantling it and privatizing everything.
I'm not so sure they even want that at all. Simply because of their shameful behavior, while the US president acts like a goddamn Nazi (because he obviously is one, of course).
But for all that, the Democrats have refused to allow even a little progressiveness in their ranks for years, against the wishes of their own voters.
But hey, I don't know very much about all this because I'm from Germany.
All I can say is that in our country - and this applies to larger parts Europe - Sanders, for example, would be a moderate center-left politician. What he is calling for is not at all radical in many parts of the world, but rather quite normal. Basic decency, so to speak...
Yup. The Democratic party is the Republican party of 40 years ago. The Republicans are obviously now literal nazis, fascists, kkk, the worst of the worst. That's all we have and they have no interest in changing that.
Many of us like Sanders because he is a vocal option that is at least left of the status quo. But there are also so many of us that want European left policies. We just can't get it to happen in a winner takes all style of representation. And capitalism.
The Overton Window really fucked us.
Yes, unfortunately, I think the US has been a plutocracy for way too long already.
I think it's time for US citizens to admit that and change it for good. Of course, I'm fully aware that many Lemmy users have long realized this.
I really don't want to offend anyone with this obvious statement, but it's simply a fact that many people in the USA have been living like in a third world country for a very long time - even though the US is one of the richest countries in the world.
The reason for this is very obvious: shameless enrichment of the rich and powerful - hardly any difference to Russia imo - more humane means so far, yes, but the effect is basically the same.
This is not meant as an insult at all. I just can't believe how obvious the corruption in the USA is: Even in the highest offices. People like the President himself or Clarence Thomas (so on and so on) obviously no longer feel the need to be ashamed of anything - they don't even try to keep any of their criminal activities even remotely secret.
Our system is certainly not perfect and we also have major problems with corruption and also with the resurgence of fascist parties. But the level of open corruption in the USA is still mind blowing to me: The shameless insider deals of the president, the unscrupulousness of constitutional judges who so obviously rule against the constitution! I can't even begin to name even half of it.
Unconditional immunity for presidents? Imprisonment of innocent people without due process? Prisons for profit? I think that's wild and only possible in a failed state!
I mean, you really don't have to be an expert in constitutional law to realize that any even halfway decent democratic constitution would of course rigorously rule all this out.
I myself can only observe this from afar and helplessly feel sorry for all the good and still rationally thinking US citizen.
Of course, I have no solutions. Only the obvious thought that the US institutions have long been corrupted.
I wish you all the best and try to contribute at least something from afar - but unfortunately I have little hope, because I honestly believe that the US system is broken beyond repair.
No offense taken. We know we're "a third sold country in a Gucci belt". It's not that it started 40 years ago, but that's when it really took off, this speedrun to transferring wealth and power to the already wealthy. They purposely cut funding to education to make an easily manipulated populace, and have been using fear propaganda relentlessly for longer.
We also learned last time Trump was elected that most of our country was held together by gentlemen's agreements and the idea that our constitution never considered irrational people would be elected.
Our system is broken, and the ones with the power to do anything about it have no interest in doing so.
I honestly don't know how we recover from this. Stopping Trump is a bandaid. Rooting out the cancer… 🤷🏼♂️
It drives me insane how people idolize these criminals. They will dismiss anything criticizing billionaires as "commie liberal bullshit" and go back to their charlie kirk. The US is and has been completely brainwashed. I can't tell ypu the weird looks I get when I come right out and say "the billionaires are the problem. Stop using Twitter and amazon". They act like that is total insanity.
Sorry, they're too busy trying to stop David Hogg.
And working out how much farther right they can be and still be dems
Are you sure you're conservative?
Why are you making that assumption?
I just thought you had made that comment, once.
I mean, they have a point. DNC chairs shouldn't be picking winners. Hogg is free to make his own path. If there is internal corruption he should start by exposing it.
DNC chairs shouldn’t be picking winners.
That's what the DNC does. Just look at recent history.
Is that really what you want them doing?
DNC chairs shouldn't be picking winners
The second the shoe is on the other foot.
So now we're calling creating competition "picking winners"?
Funding opponents of incumbents you don't like is tantamount to picking winners.
It's fine to do it but not from the position he is in.
Is that not just how the DNC/political parties in general normally works anyways?
Remember Debbie Wasserman Shultz and how everyone was pissed at her for pulling strings for Hilary?
We don't need to recreate that.
I think there could be arguments that the DNC could set their agenda and eject anyone who opposes it but just trying to root people out through back door deals is not great.
Centrists: Don't vote for third parties, because they can't win. Work within the Democratic Party.
Also centrists: Not like that!
Sure is convenient that the party suddenly wants impartiality when centrists might get primaried.
They didn't have primaries last cycle and just told us who we were expected to vote for and that wasn't a problem. That was just 6 months ago.
Democrats care about neutrality like republicans care about fiscal responsibility.
So I remember a political party behaving like one? Yeah, I do.
The party spends money on candidates that's how politics works (which sucks but whatever).
Real Democrats need to ditch the establishment Dems and form their own version of MAGA from within and get shit done.
I saw yesterday where they were going to sideline David Hogg because he was becoming a little too dangerous to some of the members of the ‘Do Nothing’ party.
What a waste.
If your goal is to organize opposition to fascism, don't waste effort attempting to coalesce it around the Democrats. They'll only come around once they're overtaken by events. Someone else has to do the heavy lifting and take the risk.
If you watch the Bernie/AOC rally vids, that is what he’s trying to inspire. One vid has a nurse from the crowd talking about working 7 days a week, to live, and she frankly says the old people need to retire, calling out both Pelosi and Schumer. She’s right. Conservatives also attending.
Younger people need to compete with and oust the established Dems, like AOC did in her district, or we will never see a fresh approach.
If we still have elections in the upcoming years, it would be fantastic for people like AOC to run for public office all around the nation.
In fact if you are in a position to, I would encourage everyone reading this to take a moment to look up your state’s candidate filing procedures and see how you can try taking an official’s job that they’re not doing. Just because you may not have the millions in funding doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t have a shot at winning.
Yeah Hogg was dropping some good shit last week. That got him in trouble. Now they want him to shut up.
Just like when waltz was popular he got sidelined/muzzled and anything that polled well for the Kamala campaign got dropped.
Almost like there's a pattern
Dude is so inspiring. I wish more young people gave a shit like him.
The democrats' response to a young person giving a shit is why more don't.
Meanwhile everybody is complaining about how dumb Meidas Touch is. Excuse me, are we not even going to bother copying Fox News feeding talking points to people with a pulse?
There's nothing to be gained by copying fascism.
It's not copying fascism if you keep the rhetoric honest.
The distinguishing factor is truth
The Democratic leadership seems to have decided that the way to do this is “get out of their way and let them complete an irreversible takeover and descent into fascism”.
They work for the same overlords.
Tom Cotton, (R) cowardly shitbird from Arkansas, supporter of military-led crackdowns of domestic turmoil, approves this meme without reservation.
People voted the dems out of the way of fascism.
Right. Got to teach those voters a lesson: never question party leadership.
Yes, the clown voters be clowning but yeah the dems have to do something
Imagine being expected to do your job.
They held up little signs, begged for bipartisanship, and voted for Republican only written bills. I mean what more do you want from them!
Drag the FBI director in front of Congress
Interesting, I'd never seen that spelling of "a fucking firing squad".
As long as it's public, whatever floats your boat.
The fascists need to be scared. It's okay to show them why in the middle of times square.
It's Congress though, so "Circular Firing Squad". :)
What for just to drill him then give him a pass.
If that's what happens then so be it, but it's still worth doing for the sake of doing.
Also it would highlight the complicity of others so i think the value is still there....even if/when they give him a pass
They won't. They'll make sure nothing fundamentally changes.
This mindset is how Trump got a 2nd term
Voters: "Please stop funding a genocidal regime"
Dems: "Nah, we're going to stay the course. And how dare you speak out against it!"
Yes, Trump has been harder on anti-genocide protestors, but it definitely started under Biden's term.
Harris throwing the election by promising to continue Bidens war crimes is how trump got a second term.
This mindset is how Trump will get a 3rd term.
sure is, because god knows the centrist dems havent learned a single thing from their loss and will play the same losing strategy they always do next election.
Spreading FUD against Democrats helps Trump get reelected.
During the last election it was all "now is not the time to change course."
Well now we have over three years to re-tool the Democratic party into something that can win. But we still have people saying "Nooo we actually need Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and all these useless benchwarmers to win."
No we fucking don't. There is plenty of time to make change. Unless you don't actually want change from these conservatives in all but name.
"Nooo we actually need Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and all these useless benchwarmers to win."
No one is saying this. It’s more like “Voters have not been voting for progressives. If democrats primary more progressives, democrats will lose elections as much as progressives do. We can’t afford to do that against Trump.”
When potential voters are polled on their view of progressive policies, they support them. It's only when they're labeled as Democratic Party policies that they lose.
Draw your own conclusions about whta the Democratic Party is contributing.
Democrats being feckless losers with no spine or vision is how Trump got elected and re-elected.
It was a combination of foreign election influence, billionaire class and GOP propaganda. And in the end Trump won by 1.5%.
Democrats can only do what the voters allow them to do. All the groups I mention above are actively trying to stop them.
Democrats can only do what the voters allow them to do.
We gave them the means in 2020. They didn't use it.
Don't talk trash about the party willing to compromise with fascists on the open-source federated social network. You might make someone think communism is a good idea.
TBH the way these posts keep popping up with everyone shitting on dems makes me think it's a huge bot farm.
"Everyone to my left and only my left must be a bot."
It definitely looks like that.
I see the same accounts posting and interacting with each other and reposting the same content with the same comments.
Pretty sus
you can't use rule of law to stop rule of man
that just doesn't work; and when it fails one ends up with some version of the plot from Seven Against Thebes
They won't because republicans even if they form a dictatorship are less a threat to their interests and goals than the alternative.
More like they can't because everybody shits on them online so they don't get enough votes to do anything.
No democrats don't not fight against rising authoritarianism because people criticize them for supporting genocide and imperialism that's a deluded take.
If people supported dems wholeheartedly, if people had gone out and voted dem, then the fascism wouldn't be happening. That's reality.
If people supported dems wholeheartedly
Your expectations are unreasonable. Not everyone will follow democrats as they play arms broker for a genocide, no matter how entitled you feel to their unconditional support.
Democrats will do nothing like they always do
We could try voting in more than 50 DNC senators for the first time in over a decade.
It was a sufficient majority to do everything democrats said they wanted to do. Instead of using it, they got in their own way and broke their promises, secure in the knowledge that they have people like you to make excuses for them.
Yeah! Let's put Democrats in charge so they can do that!
So they'll do something then unlike last time????
There haven't been 60 dems in the senate since 1979
There haven't been 50 dems since 2013
Starting living in this decade maybe
The President has historically had wide latitude to act in times of emergency. The instigator of the insurrection should've been in Gitmo on January 21, 2021.
Sure, call me extremist, but look at where we are now. I'm fucking right. But, barring the correct action, Biden could've followed the moderate, decorous course of launching the prosecution that day. But no, it took TWO. GOD. DAMN. YEARS.
I'm so done with Democrat excuses.
Biden had to preserve our beloved institutions so Trump would have something to tear down.
I think, in principle, the president persecuting his predecessor and current political rival is bad. Much simpler a solution is to not disrupt his criminal investigation by electing him president, but instead we're a country of assholes who can't even show up to the polls to keep him out.
I think, in principle, the president persecuting his predecessor and current political rival is bad.
Holding a criminal accountable for the crimes they've committed is not persecution.
Would it be worse than a fascist dictatorship?
You're asking if voting for Harris would have been worse than a fascist dictatorship?
Really? This is an example why I'm done with Democrats.
There haven’t been 60 dems in the senate since 1979
There haven’t been 50 dems since 2013
You're ignoring independents who caucus and vote with the dems. Your numbers are misleading on purpose. You're just making excuses for a party that opposes progressives and not republicans.
Biden and doj did so much to stop trump while Biden was in office...
Starting living in this decade maybe
My man they're currently trying to be like Reagan republicans
To do this successfully, Democrats would have to abandon the corrupting influence of corporate PAC donations and actually work towards improving the material living conditions of the working class. Not just say some of the right things on the campaign trial, but actually fight for and pass real legislation.
I’m sorry, but the current elected officials simply aren’t going to do that. We have to replace them first to have any hope, and it’s going to take time to do so unfortunately.
best they can do is a mild chastizing
The DNC needs to go, it isn't reformable
This is true of both parties, and our two party system.
well we can start with our own party.
SOMEHOW
I have said it before but republicans need to become irrelevant to the point they change the party name again.
How absurd. It's not about creating fear. It never was.
Pretty sure they only need to cash their AIPAC/lobbying checks.
To employ the crude vernacular, no Democrat has the requisite reproductive organs necessary to solve MAGA, either testicles or ovaries.
what are boobs if not balls for the chest? chesticles if you will, and what are balls, if not the small wrickly dangly boobs between your legs.
it does not matter, as dems have neither :) (i wanted to be a part of ur silliness I apologize in advance)
Boobs are the milk of human kindness. Testicles are the seeds of evil.
I don't really like this way of thinking. Women are just people, as are men. A matriarchy isn't preferable to a patchriarchy.
I wasn't really making a statement about the sexes. Milk of human kindness is a Macbeth reference, but also in Fallout 4 from the supermutant Strong. He misunderstands the Macbeth quote and wants to find the milk of human kindness because he thinks it is what makes humans powerful.
The seeds of evil, I was speaking of humanity. It is literally the seed, and it produces both men and women.
i mean I'd still drink both
Fear the Consequences? Have they run that Idea by DNC Leadership? Because the LAST Thing they would WANT to do is HURT Republican Voters FEEWINGS NO MATTER THE COST!
And if Demoocrats won't, then the general population will need to do it.
They all work for the same money. It's only the illusion of choice we're allowed to see.
Poor you
Use the fearrrrr
It's us.
