this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
395 points (98.5% liked)

politics

31081 readers
2657 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
  3. No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
  4. No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

President Donald Trump concluded his Republican midterm convention on Thursday by leading the audience in a pledge ... to himself.

Trump asked the crowd to raise their right hands and begin: “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States.”

The crowd dutifully repeated the line, calling Trump “the greatest president in the history of the United States.”

Trump added: “that loves us so much he can’t even breathe.”

The crowd again repeated the line, but then it got a little harder to follow.

“That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it anyway, I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do,” he said. “There’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am going to go out and I am going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3rd or we are going to vote before that.”

Unable to repeat all of that, the crowd cheered.

Trump realized he lost them and reset.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “Here’s the way you ― “

But he wasn’t ready himself as he got sidetracked by people in the audience. He tried once more to finish, with the crowd repeating after him, but left them behind as he went off on another tangent.

“So help me God,” he concluded.

The crowd repeated that part heartily.

“You know what happens if you don’t vote?” Trump asked. “You go to hell!”

So much blasphemy that he's telling his supporters they're going to hell!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

I agree with everything you said except:

I support restoring the republic and safeguarding fair elections.

Because I support the Balkanization of U.S. Nothing good comes from the continued existence of the this country. Trump's rise to power isn't a fluke, it is merely the natural consequence of courting authoritarianism for the better part of a century.

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Such an outcome would lead to a strong man consolidating power, but first would lead to warlords, oligarchs with their own bastions of power, security services left derelict after the collapse of government would turn to highway robbery, aforementioned warlordism, and organized crime.

Then you have what is left over of the military, and whomever consolidates that, is the new supreme leader.

We could talk all day about how it would play out under different scenarios, but the collapse of governments in the US would be a very very bad thing if we weren't organized to institute a better system. That system could even be broken up into several, countries.

Otherwise the new boss is at best the same as the old, and in all probability much worse, with a lot of pain and suffering before that happens. And when that strongman takes power as an autocrat, future autocrats only get worse.

Plato noticed every single republic follows the same formula from representative government through stages of oligarchic repression to "democracy," as defined by the ancient greeks up until like the 19th century when it became a positive buzzword rather than a strong man rallying the population to seize absolute power. Then the autocracy degrades in time through successive leaders and is overthrown and a republic re-instituted.

No republics have since broken with the formula even if they haven't run through the stages yet.

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah, an uncontrolled collapse could be catastrophic. That's an argument for building decentralized institutions capable of surviving a federal crisis, not necessarily an argument for preserving the existing federal state indefinitely.

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 1 points 38 minutes ago

I am not speaking of preserving this federal state, but a new federal state, in line with the constitution and all of it's amendments, which honestly is a decent framework and better than anything we could hope for if we started new at this point in time.

The feds have ursurped power year over year, they aren't supposed to be doing almost any of what they are doing according to the constitution, and all laws contrary to that are illegal and unefnforceable, according to that highest law.

The feds are supposed to handle international relations, trade, and interstate commerce. But they are forbidden from enacting barriers to trade within the states or movements of people. That's about it.

The States obviously need their own restorations to their constitutions and that of the United States.

Plus practically, you won't get support for an overthrow and new system. You can get support for a restoration, which amounts to the same thing in most ways.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Because I support the Balkanization of U.S. Nothing good comes from the continued existence of the his country.

I recomend you look up the setting for the Shadowrun TTRPG. The federal government fracturing would result in megacorps taking control of various regions of the country very similar to the game, minus all the magic stuff

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 hours ago

Well, what I really support is the Balkanization of the U.S. PLUS the complete and utter collapse of capitalism as a system. But that gets into a lot more of a nuanced discussion than I was prepared for.

But that game sounds sick, though.