Sorry, the most useful ones have been banned. Governor Inslee of Washington State banned literally every single semi-automatic center fire rifle this year, including sporting and target rifles.
I just don't really get why people even get behind stuff like this. There's just nothing for anyone to really gain and a whole lot for everyone to lose...
Even the mega rich and the corporations have to recognize that an unstable world isn't really a great place to live or do business right? Or is it just that they're so far removed from everything that they don't have to care?
By the time you're benefiting from this in a non-symbolic way, your net worth is more than you can conceivably spend in a lifetime... Go home, you're done!
They are only thinking of "Me" now, or "Me and my kids", they will be dead when society collapses and they don't care. But yes, the obscene amassed wealth is insanity, it means nothing to your lifestyle at some point. And will be useless at death.
I think it's short term thinking. Probably something similar to the way investors think when they're on a mission to earn money, but end up causing enshittification
As I intentionally filter out as much US politics as I can, this has come out of nowhere for me.
Australia has a couple of really simple things baked into its electoral system to resist something wildly unpopular like this from getting in power:
Compulsory voting. These MAGA crazies are not and will never be the majority. If everyone had to vote, they'd never get in.
Proportional voting. We vote for multiple candidates. If our first choice doesn't get in, our vote goes to our second choice. Then third etc. we aren't forced to vote for a lizard just to prevent the worse lizard getting in (it still almost always comes down to two parties, though).
I know these are total non-starters for our American friends. "You can't make me vote, that's against the constitution or something".
As an American, I think I'd support compulsory voting... But the right would fight that with everything they had, because if everyone had to vote, they'd never win with their current stances.
Yeah, these have saved us on a lot of issues I feel. It’s simply a much more representative system than what the Americans do and it helps keep a lot of fringe ideologies at the fringes, where they usually belong.
Minor correction, we have preferential voting not proportional.
Compulsory voting is definitely intriguing…even if you had the option to vote “null” meaning not vote for anyone but at least you had to make the effort to say something. The crazies I think are a relatively small portion of the US, they’re just SO much louder than everyone else
A null vote here is a option. Colloquially called a Donkey Vote, or statistically reported as an Informal Vote, you can write nothing on your voting slip and put it straight in the box. Also since voting is compulsory it is held on a Saturday, there are usually sausage sizzles, there must be enough polling places open so you're not in line for more than 30 minutes, and early voting is a viable option.
Another way to look at this plan is: how to create an unstable and globally uncompetitive workforce.
America will become a shithole country where no one will want to live or work. The rich will send their children to study and work elsewhere.
When America is inhospitable to everyone except to multi-millionaires or billionaires (who live elsewhere rn anyways, btw as they have multiple nationalities and passports), the rest of the upper class will jump ship to other countries, where they will always get to enjoy the progressive policies and culture they deprive others of.
Remember: if the daughter of a rich person will get pregnant, she will have access to abortion
If the children of the rich want to have sex, they will have contraception
The rich will choose to live in countries with Medicare and other social programs
The rich will always have access to rights, and would straight up be able to “buy justice”, like in countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil etc
The rich will always be able to afford clean water and air
Project 2025 isn’t about race or lgbt or “fambily vablues” as the mealy mouthed hypocrites would have you believe. It’s straight class warfare.
All Americans are a target of the class warfare, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Even the rich are worse off because they get to enjoy the judicial process here in America, as opposed to getting robbed by the state as in Russia or China.
In short, project 2025 is a dumb cunt plan of no foresight or insight, and definitely not written by anyone who has goodwill towards Americans or any patriotism
I honestly don't even think the people who came up with this are thinking about that. Like nifty said, these policies will create a brain drain that will be bad for the U.S. economy, including the assets of the rich.
This is just some christofacist shit. I don't think they gave a thought to anything else.
As we see in the news the move toward the far right is a global phenomenon not just a US thing. Jumping ship is difficult already and there will be fewer desirable countries to go to, as various countries are infected with varying levels of far right. Most Americans don’t understand that you cant just pack up and move to another country. Socially progressive countries have difficult and lengthy immigration processes, and caps. Only the very rich and the lucky few will have that agency annually. Other countries wont be entertaining 10s of thousands of potential American immigrants.
If project 2025 is what the younger generations see fit to vote into power then they can reap what they sow.
Couldn't possibly be related to the policies of the last 25 years in these countries. It's a mystery why people will turn to any change that seems viable.
I hear he's saying he doesn't know who came up with it. Here's what Wikipedia says:
Project 2025 partners employ over 200 former officials from the Trump administration.[55] Notable authors of the project's Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.[56] Former president Trump has not publicly endorsed Project 2025, and his campaign said such recommendations from "external allies" are just "recommendations."[57]
Vought was named policy director of the Republican National Committee platform committee in May 2024.[58]
At the 2023 Iowa State Fair, the leaders of Project 2025 began recruiting people for future government posts in the event of a Republican victory.[59]
On July 5, 2024 Former President Trump expressed his disagreement with Project 2025 in a statement: "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."[60][61]
This is exactly why Trump is the best case scenario for all this ugly shit coming to its battle. Think about if they went to all this trouble of laying the groundwork and rigging the media coverage so everyone spends the whole time talking about how Biden’s old and jerrymandering and overriding vote totals with the state legislature and killing the post office and intimidating voters and running multi billion dollar explicitly seditionist media networks and whatever else and what the hell, it works, and he gets a second term.
And then he says, fuck that, we hate Project 2025 now, if I do that then people won’t like me
It’s the same reason some spy agencies put a kibosh on the idea of killing Hitler… like actually, we looked at it, and this guy’s a seriously mentally ill stimulant-addicted megalomaniac in addition to a stone cold moron who refuses to listen to anyone smarter than him, I think we actually want him to be the one in charge of the whole operation.
No, he's saying he doesn't agree with all of it so that any Trump supporter who looks at the list and finds something they don't like will think "Oh yeah, this is the thing Trump won't like either, same as me".
It's a mental trick to stop the supporters from getting hooked into details.
Did you seriously write all that and not once think of all the collateral damage? I mean, Hitler didn't personally execute millions of Jews. A conservative administration will pack the courts, weaken voter rights, and put sycophants in key positions they will hold for years. Just for starters.
If even half this agenda gets acted on we'll be fucked for decades.
I think you're under the impression that the figure head or president is the only one who can do damage. 11 million people were killed in torturous holocaust camps, far more in the actual war, and that's not getting into injuries and social damage.
Claiming this is the best alternative because he is foolish and vain, is unwise. It might be better to treat this as a training session, and assume that the next time they come and attempt this, they're going to know what they're doing and send competent and deceptive people who will be more successful at it...
...and then you look at who "we" sent, and have... And it becomes obvious the only option is cultural/social. We have to make the people so informed, empathetic, politically active and aware that no one will be able to think of trying anything like this again.
...but we also have to do this for both sides, which means getting both sides talking to each other respectfully. Mom and dad are fighting, it's getting violent and only the children can intervene.
I'm the OP, and I also post in [email protected]. I'm a human who's been called a bot, and an advocate for Ukrainians and Russians against colonization and tyranny who has been called a Russian puppet.
Whether you vote or not isn't important to me as long as whoever gets elected, you continue to fight for a better world via direct action. We're in exactly this situation because people's political resistance begins and ends with voting, and that means the people who get the 'progressive' vote merely have to be the least worst fascist on the ballot. Totalitarian tyranny isn't built on the virtues of the tyrants, but the failures of the liberals. The Democrats created this situation, and they deserve to face consequences for it.
Blaming bogey-men like Russian bots and scapegoating politically 'unsophisticated' leftists only puts off the self-reflection that needs to happen so that if the United States survives this election, they won't be back in exactly this situation with a new fascist threat in another 4 years.
We're in this situation because people don't vote.
All other forms of political activism, aside from murder, exist to convince people to vote.
Activism without voting is worthless.
You want more progressive candidates? Vote for Democrats until Republicans are forced to move to the left, and then Democrats will be able to move to the left as well.
This reads a lot like bothsidesism. And frankly it’s utter horse shit. And the clowns in Notvoting need to open a history book and try and find a single moment in history where NOT voting in an election created positive change.
I’ll save you some time:
Not once has it happened. If you don’t vote- you don’t get to influence any part of any change you’d like to see, but others do. And if you don’t vote, you have no control over what changes. It probably fits without saying, but maybe let everyone over there know that the election is going to happen with or without their influence.
So folding your arms and pouting is going to do nothing at all- and it’s going to say nothing at all- to no one that cares or is even willing you pay attention.
All you’re doing is removing the power you have to ever see the changes you want.
Not really relevant to their actual goal of destroying democracy, just a little culture war to throw a minority under the bus so the masses squabble over it instead of the broader, more universally opposed changes.
Don't you dare minimize this. It's not a "little culture war," it's deliberate cruelty to a people that neo-nazis and Cristian-nationalists see as subhuman. It's evil and intentional.
Some of the "claims without a citation" are things that were done under the first Trump administration.
taxes did go up for most Americans under the last tax bill. It's safe to say that if Republicans need to raise taxes it'll be through the lower and middle class.
kids go hungry or into debt for school lunches today because of how little some families make. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a feature for the Republican party and not a bug.
books are being banned in the US at an alarming rate, look at Florida as a prime example. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a party priority.
trump suggested multiple times as president that people should just be shot, killed, or executed for things as benign as protesting outside the Whitehouse. He didn't do it, but it's a pretty short distance between "the president wants to kill you" and "the president is having you killed".
the president did send in national guard and other militarily equipped groups to beat and pepper spray journalists and protestors while president.
trump appointmented judges clearly lack the experience, qualifications, and apolitical-ness expected of a normal judge. You can see that in the supreme Court and you can see that at the federal judge level.
I think the pure length of it introduces enough delay before encountering the really terrifying parts and might interfere with the punch of the message. I might try to do a modified version with some bold text and larger sections so some of the strong full impact comes across right away, without trying to reduce the detail or the scope
Also, I think it is relevant to repeat the founders’ feeling on it. The “government” doesn’t “let” you do anything. Everyone’s just born into the earth into this wild and semiorganized place, as weird social beings that are half monkeys and half made up of something a lot more inspirational. And from time to time, they want to set up a system they all agree on so they can have clean water and roadways and courts and someone centrally in charge of the economy, things like that. But, sometimes like a few thousand people put temporarily in charge of all that start to look around at all the guns and money in their command and get confused and think they have the right to tell 400 million other people “hey check it out you have to do what I say, I DGAF what you think or of it’s right, that’s just what’s up.” And then when that happens it is the job of the 400 million to re educate them on what’s up.
And you could say that if they don’t, they deserve what happens. But honestly it’s not even a statement of deserves or not, or right and wrong. It is simply a statement of the reality of what happens. Most of things like the bill of rights is understood today as like, what the government is “allowed” to restrict and not, but the founders’ view of it was a lot more akin to, these are some examples of what people will do as inherent parts of their nature and God help you if you try to tell them they can’t, and they become alert and organized.
I might get downvoted to oblivion. Why can’t America have a decent president for once again?
Trump is a fascist or at least going on its way to it and supports Israel with what’s it is doing in Gaza. Biden is in the old age and probably has just old age issues and supports Israel with what it is doing in Gaza.
It isn’t just America either, The Netherlands with PVV, France with Le Pen (if I said the name correct?), Germany with the whole AFD thing.
Russia and its war on Ukraine.
My high school history teacher told me in times of difficulty politics shifts right. It's always stuck with me. Everything is shit right now, there's a general malaise and the right provide a target to blame and a simple solution. FWIW the UK just elected a centre left government in a landslide after 15 years of shite, so there's that.
The fact that the manifesto is hundreds of pages long, they hate everything good and decent is country enough to write hundreds of pages about how and why we should burn it all to the ground.
They're trying to get this stuff done now, iirc the whole thing about project 2025 is they want everything queued up for the first days that Trump is in office so that he can hit the ground running
Oh HE SAID THAT? Well dang, I can't even name 445 times he has lied, so it must be true! Oh wait...there are already videos disproving everything he said with receipts (Midas touch, BTC, etc.)....darn, and I was SO CLOSE!
I mean, it's more proof than any that's been claimed of him being on board for it. "He lies sometimes" isn't proof, and it's much less proof than him willingly saying something, in public, in writing, to be set in stone eternally.
He blindly picked all the judges that the Federalist Society chose. What makes you think he's gonna do anything different for another powerful conservative organization of the same caliber?
I think he had a rough go of it trusting a lot of people he shouldn't have the first time around. I think he's not going to be so gullible in that regard if he gets voted in again.