I’ve said numerous times I hate this WAAF stuff that permeates this board. It’s overused and a rush to judgement. I can’t stand it. It’s easy to say WAAF when clowns like Pompeo or Barr ignore subpoenas without repercussions. But voters see that and it raises suspicions. In a just society, that matters. People say “Fuck you” and vote accordingly.
So in a just society, these guys lose. But what if it’s not a just society? They win right? So we become a dictatorship w/ the Orange Turd. But this dude is already 73. It’s not like Moscow Mitch and Co. are unaware of the fact that Trump is declining from a cognitive prospective. Yet they continue to double down on the dotard. Why? If the American public are easily manipulated, there’s no need to ride the Trump train. You can jump off and still manipulate the public. For example, what is Pence signing off on that Trump won’t?
The worst case scenario isn’t nuclear war or a broke economy or healthcare or free education. It’s the loss of our Republic. Assuming Trump wins in 2020 (and we need to assume this), what do we do? I don’t know the answer and I don’t pretend to know. But I know we need to prepare for this.
I am developing a theory that the #1 reason this mindset “permeates the board,” as you say, is due to the existence of the trumpbot. I am still working on it so no drafts yet.
Voting never meant that much. WAAF is an exaggeration. A lot of people are fucked and at least as many will be in the future. In the US there are 500k homeless, 2 million in prison, the threat of bankruptcy if you actually need health care is there for the vast majority, millions will be hand to mouth for decades because of student debt, hundreds of thousands in prison just for seeking a better life. In the world there are millions of refugees and a million killed in the ME. Global temperatures are going to increase more than they should have. The threat of real nuclear war never went away.
All of this is because of bad US policy. Trump has made it all a bit worse, but he didn’t invent it and most Dems wouldn’t do much to help. If Trump goes away and Biden is POTUS, yeah, that will make a big difference to the people who don’t get their foodstamps cut, yes, but it doesn’t do much to change any of the other problems from paragraph 1. Pre-Trump I would have expected that the Dems would have continued on nuclear arms reductions with Russia, but I don’t think Biden would go that way at this point.
The worst-case scenario is probably President Biden, since it means Sanders won’t have influenced the primary as much as he needs to. Lame duck out the gate, unlikely to govern meaningfully. (D) beside his name means a lot of the people who’d have been at brunch if Clinton had won will be at brunch again. And that’s not even thinking about his cognitive faculties.
I’m basically resigned to a second Trump term, though. AOC is just old enough to run for '24. That may be the best hope, assuming she doesn’t go full Obama and assuming her star power persists that long.
It seems to me that this forum lives in a bubble that does not reflect reality. Kids are fucking dying in cages right now (another one died this weekend). Abortion is basically illegal in many states. Elections are being rigged right before our eyes in an unprecedented manner. Very little chance RBG survives long enough to not get another trump croney packed into the SC.
The supreme court is going to take 6+ months to rule on whether or not we are basically a dictatorship. Things are hopelessly broken and we are drawing absolutely live for trump/trump croney for the next two terms. God forbid what happens when a smarter version of trump materializes.
I could go on and on and on and on but seriously. I know it is hard in this day and age to keep track of everything, especially what we have lost, but things are pretty damn hopeless. I’m not even bringing the environmental angle into it - we missed our window entirely to save the planet. And trump was the final nail in the coffin of humanity.
It’s a sign of how deeply the idea of American supremacy is embedded in American culture and education, even in those on the “left”, that they consider millions of deaths of foreigners to be nothing compared to the loss of their own democracy, and is a neat illustration of why they’ve started wars against regimes overseas.
I think we’re fucked because we are turning into a parliamentary Euro nation, with a center-left that can’t get along with the far left leading to decades of rule by 35-40% of the population (conservatives).
I am very WAAF re: climate change, to the point where it’s influencing my decision on when/whether to have kids. I’m not sure if I’m being crazy / overreacting or if other’s feel the same way.
Also, I am sort of expecting there to be a huge boom of births if Trump is ever removed from office.
I keep seeing comments like this, but I’m afraid I’m too provincial to figure out how much of it is hyperbole. Can someone tell me what positions someone who is actually left takes that are different from Bernie? What differing positions does “far left” take?
We the left don’t agree on nuclear weapons and believe that most all social services should be government run, like all housing because they are the Government of the people and the people should be housed in clean acceptable housing, with Government run utilitys, and schooling+University.
The worst case scenario happened in 2016 and “we’ve” honestly responded pretty well. We won all elections since then, activism and young people’s interest and turn out are all up. Sites like reddit are overwhelmingly left and the “rise of the alt right” has fizzled. This should give everyone some confidence and yeah I hate the WAAF stuff as well.
But as far as the thread question: if we lose in 2020 I would expect tripling down of Trump’s worst impulses, which are only held in check by the desire for reelection. What does that mean? Most likely full withdrawal from NATO and probably the UN, which would probably trigger the removal of USD as the world’s reserve currency and that pretty much is it - our economy/wages/spending power all plummet and the US would collapse into 2nd world status. When that happens I would expect major brain drain and the “best” tech companies to move headquarters elsewhere and that’s the end of America as a major world power - when people no longer want to come here for high wages and great jobs, we essentially turn into Russia, an irrelevant stagnant nation. That’s not even mentioning the “lesser” effects of losing RBG’s seat at a minimum meaning there is no longer a swing seat in SCOTUS and that’s the end of any progressive/social laws - voucher based Medicare, end of social security, no more protected group protections at all i.e. legal lgbt discrimination, abortion, etc etc.
I’m actually on team WAAF most days but don’t see this happening. We’ll be relevant. Evil, probably, and actively making the world a worse place, sure, but still relevant.
In that scenario America would still be “relevant” but only as an exporter of entertainment for the English speaking world, in much the same way as Britain is only “relevant” as a destination for tourists hooked on costume dramas. Deal with it.
I’m not full on “WAAF” like some here, but this is overly optimistic.
The Democrats lost 2 senate seats in 2018 and might nominate Joe Fucking Biden as the next presidential nominee (which would absolutely crater the aforementioned “young people’s interest” imo).