Good point. But at the same time the states control a lot of bureaucracy around day-to-day civilian operations and vital records.

If the state doesn’t send birth and death certificates to the IRS, taxing gets a lot harder. They control the registration of corporate entities, and while I’m not an expert on corporate law, I assume they could cause problems restricting access to those.

There’s probably some creative, outside the box economic resistance as well that I don’t know enough to guess at. For example, taxes/tolls/fines targeting government vehicles? Cutting or up-charging state power/utilities to customs offices?

We have no neighbors. Only an unruly 51st tundra state and a hoard of alien barbarians being held at bay by the Night’s Watch ICE

OH THANK GOD they finally stopped exploiting me. Let me just catch my breath here and oh GOD OH FU–

Total collapse might not be required for real, tangible change. Collective action is a unifying force, and it would remind everyone top to bottom that the house of cards is in fact collapsible and not an inevitable behemoth under its own inertia.

You could argue that even with reforms the underpinning economic system remains as problematic as ever. But building that collective support, reminding poor voters that they’re not temporarily embarrassed billionaires, adds more opposition to it than support.

After a long enough period of striking it begins to have repercussions beyond the individual budget.

If the flow of money slowed to a crawl for an extended period, companies don’t have the funds to pay workers. Enough job loss leads to further reduced spending, thus impacting stock value, thus impacting employment, etc…

A month would have a noticeable impact, but a full fiscal quarter would be the first cliff where the big corporations would really sweat. But generally I agree, an economic strike with an end date is like an overnight hunger strike

Much respect.

Sometimes I imagine a counterfactual history where good people just abandoned those red states for purple ones in unison just before a census. A progressive gerrymandering of the Electoral College + House + Senate all at once.

Even just one cycle of that would have jerked the Overton window significantly left…

Maybe?..

DEI = Deny Every Injection?

You wrote up a bunch about technicalities of pardons and push back on over reach but it’s actually really simple. If he wants something illegal done, he signs a paper that says to do it and another absolving them for carrying out the order.

Nobody will care about over reach because every functional position in the government is now a political position. If your loyalty wavers for even a second, you’re fired (or worse). Federal oversight is replaced by state surveillance, you can be sure that rogue chef or secret service agent would have eyes watching their every move.

Even if the SC sets themselves up as the final arbiters on legality, that doesn’t protect them from illegal orders targeting them. For example: tough to oppose a president from a jail cell or if all of your assets are seized for the Sovereign Wealth fund.

Your point on state opposition is one that I’ll grant, that’s probably the storybook (legal) ending to this if there was one. The best case scenario would turn into a cold civil war, with states finding ways to oppose the federal government while coordinating some measure of support for each other.

The most likely ending isn’t that or a rogue assassin, but a palace coup. Popular unrest allows the military to step in and overthrow the head of state. The power remains centralized and unconstitutional; you’re now at the whim of the heads of military.

But at least the military industrial complex isn’t beholden to the whims of every foreign government with a blank check. They already have way more power and influence than any random elected politician, and maintaining the US hegemony is their main goal.

On the other hand, Trump is already flaunting his ability to choke state resistance by withholding federal funding.

Outrageously unconstitutional but he already isn’t following the courts anyway. I wonder if there’s any way for states to work around that, since most blue states are net negative on federal funds.

Just stop paying up because he won’t comply with the freeze? Then use those funds to paper over the deficit?

Don’t disagree that civilization is a parasite, but a lot of parasites evolve to not kill their host 🙂

Well, the alternative is very foreseeable consequences for aquatic life. I’m sure they’d be on board

I won’t lie, I don’t think we’ll ever totally agree. I’m getting the gist that we fundamentally have a different understanding of the human race.

You’re holding people to your own standards, which is admirable because you clearly have your head on straight. I just view people as generally more base and malleable. Animals that react to the stimulus they’re given and environment they’re put in.

It’s why propaganda can work with simple repetition; it’s why ancient cultures and atrocities feel so alien; it’s why there’s a natural evolutionary drift toward tribalism.

From that: this is a generation being left behind educationally, economically, and socially. They know their quality of life is regressing but don’t know why. They’re an audience searching for clear answers.

They’re also the only humans in history to spend more of their formative adolescence on screen time than on other traditional activities.

So they’re starting on the back foot and getting unprecedented exposure to privately operated, centralized media sources. It follows that whoever owns those platforms (or pays enough) can selectively amplify any narrative they want to great effect.

It would have been just as feasible to push their politics to the left as right. If you look at who operates these platforms you’ll find, unsurprisingly, its right wing media moguls. The capitalists with the capital and mechanisms to spread their gospel have done so.

So at the end of the day I think it is reasonable to scold a person who you know should have better media literacy. I just don’t think it makes any sense to extend that to an entire voting block. Its more productive to direct that effort toward the root of the problem, the people pushing the content.

No, they’re making a conscious choice to use the platform. The content itself is whatever pops up and looks entertaining.

If the algorthim shows you 2 center-right videos, 3 hard-right videos, and one nazi rant then are you choosing to be a nazi by watching the center right ones?

Its never actually 3 hours of nazi things. Its an otherwise entertaining video making some off color jokes. It’s a streamer going on one politically dubious rant in a 6 hour stream. It’s a weekly podcast talking to “interesting” people; some benign, some funny, some actual problems… It’s about normalizing the conversation and the ideas. Nobody is getting handed a knife.

Yeah, there are some people take the red pill and actively go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and watch nazi shit. But I’m not gonna go out of my way to crucify people who have shitty ideas in their head at some point, there are lots of people that have stories of escaping the funnel.

Because at the end of the day a vote is just voicing an opinion to most people.

“I was told tariffs aren’t a bad idea”… “Musk has points that there might be wasteful spending”… “Well Rogan endorsed him haha”…

If they were told they’re getting drafted to invade Greenland before they voted, they look at you the same way as the knife guy.

If anything the current political context makes what needs to be done pretty clear. There’s a difference between downplaying the problem and realizing that if laying down and dieing isn’t an option.

God forbid someone tries to think past the next quarter.

If the future can’t be livable and people just wants a quiet suicide for the human race I’ve got good news. There’s a very easy solution for avoiding that discomfort that also happens to be the #1 way to reduce your carbon footprint.

But if you want to keep living and not just surviving, suck it up…

Nothing positive is happening until it happens, we have yet to see Trump comply with a judicial ruling (let alone an emergency injunction). And it’ll get argued up to the SCOTUS before he’d even theoretically stop.

Don’t fall for Lucy pulling the football for the 9th year in a row. Plan and act as if he’s not facing any consequences within the limits of our government, because his record shows he won’t.

These people have the memory of a goldfish. Resignations were the main way he got the vacancies to fill with collaborators in his first term

Good news, we’re about to have a lot less allies!

Those judges aren’t on the Supreme Court (where this will eventually end up). Its the same as a Republican doing a performative protest vote against GOP legislation that goes through anyway. They get to save some face, but at the end of the day no harm no foul.

Doing only that would just give them more fodder to complain about a deficit. Mass violent resistance is just an excuse for crackdowns and martial law.

One interesting and simple idea I’ve seen is just opting out of the consumer economy. Americans in any socioeconomic strata can just stop buying anything but the bare minimum.

General strikes are effective but hard to coordinate and maintain, most people can’t risk skipping a paycheck. But anyone can switch to beans and rice, cancel subscriptions, learn to repair their own clothes, buy a phone second hand, etc… Since a massive portion of our economy is driven by that spending (68% of our GDP) it would definitely hurt, but they couldn’t ignore it.

It’s easy to do and doesn’t have an outsized impact on poor or at risk groups, and it’s not all or nothing so any way you can cut helps. I wonder how they’d react to 200 million people on an economic hunger strike…