The posts are ominous.
“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.
The replies were even more so.
“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”
That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.
Calls for revenge, retribution and violence littered the rightwing internet as soon as Trump’s guilty verdict came down, all predicated on the idea that the trial had been a sham designed to interfere with the 2024 election. Some posted online explicitly saying it was time for hangings, executions and civil wars.
don’t underestimate armed fascists, or you might end up in a deeper fascism type situation.
fascists have to be dealt with asap.
Weird thing about this group of fascists is they’re particularly old. Most previous fascist revolutions have been from younger(ish) people, like 25-50, as opposed to the literally geriatric Trump supporters. Unless the fascists figure out how to capture the youth, this is just reactionaries getting loud before they finally die off.
it’s going to get a lot worse before we start to actually do anything about it…
I’ll just say what George W. Bush liked to say during his presidency. “Bring it on.” If you try to kill me, you best not miss.
I’ll give him this much: Dude really knew how to dodge a shoe.
And the look on his face is priceless
“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”
Go right ahead, pal. No one will miss you.
The human race is so dumb. We could be building spaceships and exploring the stars and the depths of the oceans. Instead we are being manipulated by propaganda to fight with each other while nefarious forces wrestle for power. This timeline sucks….
I’ve been thinking the same thing every day for the last 10 years or so…
It sent me into a deep depression when everything revealed all at once how dire things really are. We had a lethal pandemic that killed MILLIONS of people become disputed, a meme and political slogan. We had a third of our people elect a literal stereotype of a con-man and try to overthrow the US Government to keep him in power, we’ve seen the return of nazis and sleazy pickup artists, we have people eating dangerous chemicals for social media attention, people deciding rules are no longer applicable to them, and it seems like anyone who babbles nonsense in a confident tone will gain a rabid cult following, while outside the world is literally starting to burn around us while people deny the very shape of our Earth.
And on top of all this, while people are struggling to find a path to truth and get through this, with any shred of belief in our potential and capability to rise above our worst natures, we now have a machine that can fool anyone into believing anything and it’s only getting more powerful, and it’s in the hands out-of-touch billionaires and mega-corporations and being distributed out to anyone who wants to use it for a small price.
As a child of the 80s… yeah.
David Bowie and Prince were holding this all together. When they went, the world lost its mind.
Let’s start with housing? I’m all for exploration, but we don’t need 3 or 4 billionaires wasting resources, and innovation with non-compete contracts, when one central agency would be more efficient, freeing up resources to fix the logistics of feeding everyone, and housing everyone.
Sadly defunding of the space program has rarely meant funding proper welfare. It’s not really an either or situation, or at least it hasn’t been yet.
I don’t have an issue with space programs. NASA is great and the public gets a ton of useful tech from there. I doubt such discoveries will be provided by SpaceX and the like
We are but animals with fancy toys, and also not so fancy toys like cyber trucks, but you get my point.
I’m not really sure it should be up to 70 year olds whether we have a civil war. It’s the young people that will have to live in it’s wake, should it happen.
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You can apply that logic to most decisions this country makes.
Why the hell are we letting 70 year olds dictate energy policy? They’re not gonna see the full brunt of climate change.
Why are they involved in foreign policy? They’re not going off to war.
Economics? Most of the people they talk to are retired or rich. tf do they know about making rent in 2024?
Some care. Some don’t want their grandchildren to suffer. But right wingers never care regardless of their age. They’re selfish assholes.
Honestly, this may sound controversial… buy if we deny teens the vote, I’m not certain why the hell we allow retirees to vote.
Can’t vote for the first 18 years of your life? Can’t vote for the last 18 either (based on average life expectancy), just watch how things improve dramatically if such a measure is put in place.
Same logic with holding elected positions, if people younger than X can’t be elected then people older than (life expectancy - X) can’t either. And yes, I realize that it leaves very few years for men to become president in the US’ case and that’s not a bad thing at all.
You don’t want Bernie to vote?
He can vote a little as a treat.
I don’t want anyone that won’t live with the consequences of their political decisions to be in a position where they get to decide for those who will.
It would mean losing a few progressive voices, but also losing a ton of far right and center right voices and opening the door to people who actually have a reason to care for what’s going to happen in the next 50 years because it concerns then directly.
I don’t want anyone that won’t live with the consequences of their political decisions to be in a position where they get to decide for those who will.
On the flip side, young folks vote influences things like social security and medicare. Given that everyone of all ages is subject to various government policies, often uniquely, you cannot have a system where you can identify a subpopulation that ‘shouldn’t count’ by that logic.
And young folks influence it in their favor for the long term which also benefits people that are currently old instead of old folks pulling the ladder after them.
Anything that motivates increasing the national average life expectancy is a good thing
FWIW, I know 70some and 80some year olds that can still think critically and know what doom is on the horizon if Orange Satan’s Rectum wins. Intelligence, as well as stupidity, transcend how many years one has rode around the yellow fusion ball.
Their ability to think isn’t what I’m really talking about. No matter what, an 80 year old is writing checks someone else has to cash. Maybe we do need to have a big fuck off war to end these fascist fucks once and for all, but that’s not an 80 year old’s decision, you know?
So do you support taking away their ability to vote then?
Not the other commenter, but I could only support that if they are legally proven mentally unfit to care for themselves. I know that is a high bar, but there’s really no good argument for restricting anyone’s right to vote.
It used to be the old guided the young into the future. Somehow with the last generation, rather than transition, they’ve vice-gripped the entire system to hold onto the 1950s until their hands are bleeding. I see what you are saying with regards to the decision, and we have seen many of the olds make “fuck you, I got mine” decisions every day. I suppose I was just pointing out that they’re not all bad. There’s just that greedy psychotic vocal minority holding all the keys to shit all over everyone. To solve that? Maybe we do need a big fuck off war. Really wish it wouldn’t have to come to that though. Waiting it out doesn’t even work because modern medicine keeps extending their lives.
I didn’t mean to imply they are bad. I’m fifty. I’m not really including myself in the group of people who should be calling those particular shots, but I also want to be part of the solution and I hope it doesn’t come to that. My grandpa fought in WW2. I don’t want my kids or grandkids to face that. But sometimes the world doesn’t care what we want.
I mean - its the press amplifying the opinion of some irrelevant old geezer who’s just calling others to violence. I wouldn’t really concern yourself too much with these idiots.
To be fair, he did give another option.
Don’t forget the generation of radicalized vets from desert wars.
Is there any valid evidence of this radicalization? Anecdotally, I’ve been in the Global War of Terrorism social circles, and they seem to be pretty even with their political distribution, maybe a little more right leaning, but I think that’s due more to lack of higher education than military experience. What I think happens is that the right likes to make logical fallacy appeals, so they exploit radical veterans by giving them a louder voice.
It reminds me of a scene from The Big Lebowski.
Walter Sobchak: Those rich fucks! This whole fucking thing… I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that this fucking strumpet…
The Dude: I don’t see any connection to Vietnam, Walter.
Walter Sobchak: Well, there isn’t a literal connection, Dude.
The Dude: Walter, face it, there isn’t any connection.
Rather than be a rational level-headed support like The Dude, the right exacerbates their struggles to exploit them.
I lived and worked among many over the last two decades. So, just anecdotal experience. https://www.rand.org/news/press/2024/04/09.html
Yeah, it seems like misplaced anger that is masking underlying pain and sadness to me. The right-wing leaders take advantage of their mental health issues for their own selfish goals. It’s disgusting.
That is the story of the right. My father-in-law is sitting on his couch with his drug addicted son, who has never had a job, railing against Hunter Biden. My grandmother is 80 years old and is worried that we are days away from going door to door and pulling Christians out in the street. My mother is full up on social programs and benefits but it’s the “others” that are making her life worse. Mental health issues, sadness, inability of reflecting…lots of excuses.
Sadly that’s pretty much always the case with war, the youth pay the bill for the elderly
And the poor pay the bill for the rich and powerful.
I remember watching movies as a kid where the children were these clever little heroes and the adults were morons or bad guys they had to deal with. It’s fun for kids to see the tables turned and watch the children in the movie save the day or outsmart the dumb adult.
I got a very strong vibe like that (but worse) while reading this story. These people are caught up in a fantasy they’ve been sold where they have to save everything they love from evil. They seem to live in a fantasy movie world where if you feel like the righteous underdog, and other “good” people tell you the same thing, then surely you are the hero! You can’t listen to evidence and reason from outsiders, they’re just trying to trick you!
I’ve never wanted someone to die from aggressive pancreatic cancer until Trump
Trump seems to bring out the worst in everyone.
Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn. Cohn was Joe McCarthy’s right hand man, and boasted of sending Ethel rosenberg to the gas chamber. He was known as one of the most vicious lawyers in New York.
Cohn’s motto was “I bring out the worst in people, and that’s how I destroy them.”
“It’s not you I hate, Trump. I hate what I became because of you.”
“Oh, wait, no, I do also hate you.”
My vote is for bone cancer. Just do an image search and you’ll see what I mean.
Too slow, IMO, but yeah
I disagree. During the middle of one of his rambling, windbag rants at his largest nazi rally, he needs to have a Grand Mal seizure where he visibly pisses and shits himself, immediately followed by a near-fatal stroke that leaves him as a drooling vegetable on life support. May he be fully conscious while completely incapacitated and unable to speak as a team of brown-skinned, LGBTQ±and-proud-of-it nurses take turns being forgetful about emptying his colostomy bag while an AI bot scours the internet reading aloud every legit criticism of his entire pathetic life until, after enduring many, many years of this treatment, an obsessed fan finally works his way onto the night janitorial staff so he can get in the room alone with The Donald and live out his fantasy of making a human-centipede-like union by engaging in a “perfect” 69, causing DJT to die while asphyxiating on crazy janitor cock which, in turn, causes the janitor to choke himself to death on Don’s pathetic dick resulting in the final act of indignity as the janitor releases his bowels directly onto Trump’s face just before he finally loses consciousness.
May the last thing Trump ever sees, as he chokes to death on smelly cock, be an extreme closeup of the hairy, unwashed ass of a MAGA lunatic as it pisses down Don’s throat and reenacts “2 Girls, One Cup” directly into his eyes.
Y…you ok, bruh?
Everybody does. Many painfully, deserved or not (though pancreatic is really bad). Trump needs to see the inside of a jail cell. Thats the only way back from what he has done. His death won’t solve anything.
His luck; the government has the working tanks.
pick a side, or YOU are next
So if I don’t a pick a side I’m first in line?
Stupid. Obviously he means pick his side or they’re going to do bad things to you.
One thing to note is that Republicans have been talking like this for years. Minion Death Cult (tagline “The World Is Ending. Your Uncle’s Facebook Feed Is Responsible. We’re Documenting it.”) have coined “Minion’s Law”, which is that right-wing comments on a news story will have at least one person calling for civil war.
Does this mean we are at zero risk for a second civil war? Of course not. But finding people online calling for civil war isn’t sufficient cause to be worried; there needs to be at least some evidence of mobilization, as there was leading up to January 6th (for instance).
Are you under the impression that claiming election fraud and presidential felony convictions are routine?
Well obviously presidential felony convictions aren’t. But election fraud? Sure, republicans have been claiming that to some degree or other for a long time. See for example the false claims that Trump would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for undocumented immigrants voting en masse.
In any case, the specific claim I was making was that calls for civil war on social media are routine. Maybe they’re more serious this time! But maybe look for concrete plans rather than vague threats.
Yep it was similar during the Obama administration with conspiracies of many types that featured people talking about revolution and civil war.
How many insurrections happened during Obama’s term?
I didn’t notice any, but that’s not what we were talking about. The specific item of discussion was “calls for civil war” which we observed many of during the Obama term.
I think it’s reasonable to be a bit worried considering the context: several seriously fucked up factors which are unprecedented. A coup attempt already happened, and now he’s been convicted of felonies after being “cheated out of the election”.
I hope the country does reconstruction properly after Civil War II instead of coddling traitors and letting them put roughshod Confederate statues in town squares.
They didn’t put up the statues. Most of them specifically said to never make statues of them, such as both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Woodrow Wilson wrote a good portion of “Southern Revisionist History,” using his Yale History Credentials, and ordered the erection of almost all those statues during his presidency.
I agree with the rest of your sentiment.
Honestly, I’m inclined to agree. I also don’t see a way out without bloodshed. Not because I want Republicans to die or think that Democrats are so great that I am ready to die for them, but rather because we have split so far ideologically that I cannot see us ever being united again and we seemingly don’t have any method available for a peaceful divorce.
My personal plan is to leave the country permanently as soon as I retire, but that is 15 years away. I can only hope that things stay somewhat together until then and I will use my vote to try to help it do so.
Where ya planning to move to?
Well, I don’t like hot and humid, so most Asian countries are probably out. Most likely some where in Europe. Depends on the current state of affairs at the time.
What would “bloodshed” achieve though?
Well, historically, civil wars seem to end in one of two ways, either the victor subjugating the loser or the country splitting apart. So I would wager the outcome to be one of those.
We forgot to subjegate the south and let them infiltrate our society over 150 years.
Yeah, that was Johnson’s failure.
Both of those sound so much worse than the current situation though.
As in, to have a decisive civil war everyone has to be certain there’s no alternative, knowing that they may well die in such a war.
Things would have to get a lot worse before that seems like a good idea.
It is NOT a good idea, it is NEVER a good idea. However, in order to avoid it, both sides would have to be willing to talk to each other, in good faith, and work out an agreeable way forward. That is what we used to do. We have always been a divided country, but when it mattered both side could usually work out a mutually agreeable resolution. That has stopped. So, we are divided and continuing to split further and no one will work together. What is the resolution? I don’t see a good one any time in the near future.
Everyone doesn’t have to decide a war is preferable, just a critical mass. And it probably won’t be a war like you’re imagining, with battles and such, but rather a whole lot of terrorism and assassinations. Only a fool would attack a well-armed group directly when there are so many soft targets all over the place. Most Trumpanzees are dumb as bricks, but there are enough of them with a basic knowledge of military tactics that they won’t just throw themselves into a meat grinder.
“When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”
- Ivan, Moscow
I guarantee there are some genuine conservative asshats who fervently hold that belief.
Probably, but I wouldn’t expect them to be able to spell half those words.
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Nobody accepts that they’re going to win, because Biden’s institutional-inertia & assumed-entitlement aren’t sufficient to win.
Also, the economic house-of-cards that both China & the US are trying to keep from collapsing must go down, sooner or later, & if it goes down before the US election, then the incumbent’s hosed.
( that is true no matter who the incumbent is, and I believe it always has been true: that it’s a general rule of elections: economic-collapse automatically rips the rug out from the incumbent )
Nobody understands that they need to do the ideological psyching-up, in order to “justify” all the butchery, all the “getting even” their side’s committed to enforcing, so that they will later be able to maintain they weren’t responsible…
( it makes me wonder if there was similar unconscious-understanding, & similar setting-up-non-responsibility, among other violent political, or religious, movements’ people )
shruggeth
A dozen years from now, I’m going to be very surprised if more than 150 million are left alive in the US of A, after Civil War Part2 is finished.
There are currently around 400 million, iirc.
I’m expecting 2/3rds extinguished in the coming maelstrom, & its consequences.
And that is just within the US.
Trump’s commitment to gut NATO & back Putin…
the butchery of the US of A will be only the beginning, obviously.
But for ideology-addiction, rampaging’s “The Answer”, isn’t it?
No one is mobilizing shit, people are still fed and clothed, housed and have jobs and still have their entertainment…these loudmouths aren’t going to do shit. They just talk a lot but at the end of the day, they’re not going to start shit.
The irony.
The Republican crowd has done more in recent memory to mobilize than anyone leaning center-left has. We’re the ones that talk a lot and do little. The Right is dangerous, stop giving them a pass by presuming they won’t do anything.
They…will…not…start…a…civil…war.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be. They’re loud, but the amount of people who even turn out for these rallies is a joke.
Doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. Especially since they know most of us typically turn our heads to avoid confrontation. While there are reasons, some of them good, I have no doubt that group has felt emboldened by the lack of stalwart opposition these past few years.
They kinda are, though. Some mobilized on Jan 6. Some have been going out and showing open displays of nazi hate, complete with sieg heil salutes. Some have been threatening drag queen story hour at the libraries by standing outside with guns strapped to their backs and hips (because we all know that libraries are the most dangerous place for these guys – too many facts in books i guess). Some are open-carrying at polling places during voting.
Some are shooting up Planned Parenthoods. Some are setting pride centers on fire. Some are going after non-christian places of worship.
It’s all happened.
But when they do this stuff – when they show us who they are and try to intimidate us and terrorize us, believe them. They are dangerous.
Small tiny groups doing shit like that is not going to start a civil war though. Yeah it’s fucked up they’re doing that shit but they’re not going to be creating a rebellion.
I don’t think most people are seriously worried about civil war. However some horrifying examples of domestic terrorism is possible and unfortunately likely.
O the terrorism part I am not denying at all, that’s a very plausible reality, but this entire theead has been people worried about a civil war and dipshits on the maga side acting like they’re going to do something right after they finish off the 3 baconators.
They wouldn’t wear a paper mask to save their own family. They’re not going to drop 100 pounds and die for their asshole king.
Yep, they’re going to talk a bunch of shit online, they’re not going to get off the keyboard and move to a central location in mass to create a rebellion and start a civil war.
The jackass down the street “mobilized” in 2020 to harass poll sites. He was rolling coal all over town, among other things. I’ll let y’all know if he’s fool enough to start up again, right after the fbi.
It’s exactly the same as all of us going “hurdur guillotine time.”
We vent about it, but no one is actually going to get violent.
Imagine though? “Global history classes 2040: America had 2 civil wars. One was over literally owning human beings and the other was over an orange man who could never have enough attention. America is a silly place that you should never go to, just laugh at from afar.”
Well, it’d be more like “the 2nd was a proxy conflict over a figurehead after news networks were coopted by conservative billionaires and used for 30+ years to sow seeds of stochastic terrorism after laws regarding lying on TV were eliminated.”
No one ever stormed the capitol… /s
1k people do not make a civil war, and those people went back with full bellies and talking shit online.
And after talking shit online, some found a comfy new home for a short stint
