u/Azal

Nah fam, blaming the voters.

Trump wasn't some "We never knew what he was like", we had him as president for four years, and yet somehow in four years we went through a fugue state and reelected him as a country. So... yea... blaming the voters on this one. *ANYONE* surprised is a mouth breathing idiot.

First… I’m not reading all that

So... seeing as I wasn't *actually* talking to you, beginning like that I'd like to know how the fuck you actually thought you'd get any message across beginning like that.

A good chunk of the post had *absolutely nothing* to do about the red/blue states or voting so go off I guess.

However

>but are you aware that there are 2 congressional districts up for re-election this week to replace members who accepted cabinet positions

And how did that work out? Oh. People still voted Red? Double digit victories? I'm shocked I tell you. shocked.

I appreciate it. I really wish I weren't in my situation either and if I had the means I'd be getting me and my parents the fuck out of here. But stuck with it and just trying to figure out the best way to help those that will be in more danger than I. I've got at least the luck of looking like the people that are taking over (the downside is that's why I can discuss the way I do, I get to hear it from them because they look at me and think "Oh he'll be on our side.") but I know I will never be safe.

When you say part of it will be reality, that's the point I'm really going down. Even with the wall of text, it still looks neat and tidy how the battle lines will be drawn, and the US has a bad habit of thinking like that, all our wars have been pretty "This side vs This side" even back to our civil war. But what will be coming is a war where the sides will be best expressed as a "gagglefuck of people." Hopefully when blood is spilled there may get some sense and we figure out how to pull out of the nosedive, but to have hope would make me an optimist.

At least I did laugh about the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate you not sending any more. Thanks to the Republicans after every shooting we have so many that we're swimming in them.

I really would love the kicking the Trump admin in the ocean, but living in a red state that is cheering for this, I don't think that's going to happen.

Collapse, that's far more likely and will look rather middle east 2.0. Our biggest states money wise are on the west coast and more politically aligned with Canada than anyone, and our east coast is more European minded. There's a reason in the US a constant whining is "Coastal elites" so the political fight is going to go after them, especially if they resist any wars for expansion which is going to be the case. If things get bad enough, they potentially would secede which would lead to another civil war, which was caused by the last batch of secessionists.

The thing is, the people who are aligned with this administration are the ones that still support the southern secession, now if the Republicans didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all so I don't expect them to take the will of blue states breaking off as "See, we were right all along" and instead go for an attack instead.

The trouble with... all of that... and why I say it'll look like the middle east is when that goes down, we're going to lose our nice dividing "red/blue Republican/Democrat left/right" divisions... which normally would be great, except it's going to be all sorts of ideological areas in active combat. Those that have fully shoved the current administrations rhetoric down their throat will be pro-expansionisitic. They're actually a pretty tiny minority, I'm surrounded by Trump voters at work and when I tell them about the "51st state" or annexation of Greenland rhetoric they're horrified. Partially because the draft has always been in our mind and now they're considering their kids going to war with a former ally... these guys mock Canada, but invading has *never* been in the thought process in our lives to the point that most people forget the war of 1812 happened.

But the largest church in the United States is the Catholic church, which until the last decade has really seemed to have been politically out of it, but now it's been putting pressure on Rome to the point the Pope has called it out. I've been waiting to see if we'd end up with a US Anti-Pope. The trouble is, the *MUCH MORE* politically powerful church is the second biggest single church in the US, *AND* the biggest of the current religion in the US, Protestantism, headed up by the Southern Baptist Church. The Southern Baptists were created pre-Civil War literally over the purposes of slavery, and while they have shut up about slavery they keep their southern roots and having grown up down there... they've been ready to go to war for years against the "Mary Worshipers" and "Jesus killers" (Catholics and Jews) to turn the country into the "Rightful Christian country it should be." So now we potentially might be getting a nice religious civil war going down, we've got waiting in the wings the Mormons, they're an odd bunch, very insular. One of their tenants is to be prepared for the end times and build communities together, effectively it's a religion of doomsday preppers. They're by far a smaller group, but far less infighting and as I say, are prepared for "The Collapse". And the biggest concentration of them is in Salt Lake City, Utah... where the great salt lake is drying up and the dirt under it is toxic and being blown over the city. But that's fine... their holy land where they expect Jesus to descend is just East of Kansas City in Missouri... where the reason they're not really there in force is because Missouri literally had a law to legalize hunting Mormons in the 1800s, so surely no bitterness there. The Southern Baptists is biggest concentrated from Florida to Texas, the Catholics have the biggest gathering in Chicago so that nice North/South thing will come up again, now with a potential holy crusade in the middle from a third group.

OKAY, so we've got the religious fights I've been hearing rumblings my entire life going, but religion is taking a back seat, lets see what else we have happening. The South wants to bring back Jim Crow against the blacks, but surely that'd be localized, the South has *never* attempted to pressure states to do what they want to do (see the Fugitive Slave Acts to see how dripping with sarcasm that is.) Frankly the South has been ready to restart its Civil War for the past 160 years, and I've been saying the Trump administration is them winning it, so you'll have a racial war going down in the same time, and if you look up the Tulsa Race Riots, you'll see the US really knows how to go all out on a race war.

Now just political ideology wars. Sure, as I said, only the most hard core MAGAts want to go to war with other countries, but this country has been spending the last 20 years splitting the political ideologies from each other to a point I have no idea how we can come together. I have had to keep my mouth shut politically in jobs because I'm always outnumbered and retaliation can happen. Because of such I get to hear such wonderful things about how they believe Democrats are pedophiles and believe the Pizzagate thing. Now of course I think Republicans are unforgiveable fascists... but holy fuck it's not like I don't have a massive pile of evidence on that one, but that shows even the bias of I have no idea how I can ever trust one again. For the most part, the left is in the cities and the right is in the country. So of course the right wingers keep saying "Fine, we can cut off cities out of food" but dont' realize the numbers of people and guns do outnumber in the cities, and when people start starving they will invade. It won't save the cities, people will die if that goes down as people in this situation tend to not think in the long term and will destroy instead of trying to grow... and but the country folk won't make it through any better... yet seem perfectly willing to think they can try.

And finally, the one that's more theoretical as I only have *some* historic perspective to work off of, but I've heard *no* rumblings about it, however movements seem to show it. Company towns. We did have some history of towns owned entirely by companies, where you were paid in company scrip and the company owns your home. I grew up in the hometown of WalMart, and I've made "jokes" about the Walmart military being the security, but Arkansas has weak gun laws, walmart has a massive security operation, has made it a point that if you want to do business with them you have to move to their home area and has made sure to clear out any competition. There are surrounding towns that papers are finding that the Walton family ends up owning 75%+ due to shell corporations to buy up the land of the towns. Amazon has been trying to take over towns with their distribution centers, running anything out and running on low taxes but they're really decentralized, and President Musk has outright stated wanting to bring back company towns. Now, there aren't many willing to fight and die for a company here. Left and Right, most people hate these major corporations (but not enough hate to stop giving them money and power), but thinking about Bentonville, if things go down like I'm predicting above, you'll have these very powerful companies that have consolidated land and people and has enough money to effectively buy a military... well security becomes a "militia" to protect the stability of the town, now people can get on board with that. Once the militia has stabilized the area around where it's not in danger from the fighting... now what? People belong to that company. And then while the others are fighting, they can expand. We may see a rise of feudalism within the US.

I realize this is all tin foil hattery, but this is a perspective of someone in the middle of it watching some of my tin foil hat predictions coming true and listening to what people are willing to yell about. This would probably be "entertaining" as in watching a train crash entertaining for all of you across the world, if it weren't for the part I never mentioned... the US military. Their ideologies are as split as the US... so all of the above will be trying to scoop up the military. Even companies have been some of the biggest hiring of former military for security, both digital and physical. Again, probably not so bad if we weren't bristling with nukes and at least a couple of these groups I mentioned in fighting are outright doomsday cults.

Thoughts from someone who lives in a state where the general populace, police and political leaders all are in agreement with the current administration and the nearest bastion that isn't completely surrounded is over 500 miles away. I'd say send help but if we get to that point, I'll be in the ground before yall get here.

No, I live in the US and in a red state.

Seriously, the news is trying to spin it as "Oh they changed their plans" but seriously they've been hyping the fuck out of the visit and suddenly it's "JD is joining but they're only going to a military base"

Even the dumbass republicans are going wtf.

I’m from the UK and the general feeling is not just distrust of the US government but also the complete disbelief that the American people could vote that fat traitorous wanker back in yet again. It is completely unfathomable.

I'm in the US and I have the same feeling. Surrounded by coworkers who have.

I honestly have lost all faith in the people of this country.

Canada... we had the same sort of thing with our Conservatives. Tom Cotton comes to mind and he's still in.

Please please please do not make the same mistake and roast her.

they just show up and everyone’s gotta be pretend they’re welcome.

US here, do you? I mean I know your politicians might, but I figure the populace can do a good job showing how "welcome" they are... (seriously, if you somehow chuck them off the island without a boat I'll be cheering for you.)

There's a weird moment where it's "Fuck, here we go aga... wait... it's not our fault this time?"

I'd like to remind we're only 3 months in and that's the scenario we're looking at.

I don't have the imagination for what the country will look like by December.

US here.

I'm betting we'll be outright giddy this year compared to next year.

I'm stuck in a red state and surrounded by them...

It's not great!

I mean, the bar isn't exactly a high one to cross in our situation. The *ONLY* good thing about Trump is his five year old with a shotgun strategy in he's as likely to fuck up a bunch of Republicans on his way of hurting everyone else. Trump is for Trump and no one else.

Vance at least will believe in the party... when I say competence I don't mean in running the country. I mean competence in when being in control if not a tyrant, but a good enough puppet that he won't tear down the foundations of the reign.

Understand, when I say competent... that's the *worse* category.

You'll have to rinse/repeat a lot with this administration. Vance will be *marginally* better/worse. Basically he won't be absolutely unpredictable, but he'll be competent.

I for one welcome our Finnish overlords.

Y'all, I live in the US. Listen to this. We had the same shit conversation with Harris. How many people I had to tell this "A vote is not a valentine, you're not professing your love for the candidate,. It's a chess move for the world you want to live in."

Yes, I'll agree our Dems can suck, and I'd love someone else... but for the love to my neighbors up north, don't do the same dumbass move the US did and go "Eh, they're not good enough" and bring in someone who's a terror.

Not even WWII history, US history, again not Texas schoolbook approved.

Grew up in the South: "Remember the Alamo", "It's heritage, not hate!", "War of Northern Aggression", "States Rights", "The South will rise again!"

All angrily yelled about a war 160 years ago, all angers that have been left to fester because a group has lied about them and was never dealt with. These are not statements of olden days. These are things you'll see commonplace in the south today.

The Alamo: Fought because a bunch of slavers invaded a sovereign nation (Mexico) for the purposes of trying to peel it off and get it into the Union to have more slave owning states to control the government. Mexico was a non-slave nation.

War of Northern Aggression: The South shot first. And they'll blame other situations, like federal control (that'll be discussed in next point), or John Brown with bleeding Kansas... who John Brown did go on a merry murder spree, but against slavers specifically moving up to Kansas to... again... try to outnumber the non-slave states so they'd have control over the federal government.

States Rights: The Constitution of the Confederate States of America specifically prevents states from outlawing slavery... so no fucking states rights. And on southern aggression when it comes to states rights, the South kept putting bills pre-Civil War to force northern states to allow their bounty hunters in to chase fugitive slaves. There were non-fugitive blacks that were kidnapped and taken back to the south to be enslaved.

The South Will Rise Again: These statues that were all over that's upsetting people getting knocked down weren't put up post Civil War, they were put up by the Daughters of Confederacy which became a group in 1890, and got most of them put up between 1900-1910, all the way up to the 50s, the eras of Jim Crow segregation. They're in 31 states. There were 11 states that seceded. The flag that most people call the Confederate flag is in fact the Virginia Battle Standard, the actual Confederate flag was determined to look too much like a flag of surrender ironically months before they surrendered. Virginia keeps asking/demanding Minnesota for their flag back, claiming heritage... thankfully Minnesota keeps telling them it's their heritage that they took it.

Most of this is not known by people living in the country. The lies are repeated far more than the truths. If you visited the South and didn't know anything about the US Civil War you'd be convinced the South won.

2025 at this point, I'm convinced they got their victory.

I mean... I lived close to Tulsa and learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre years later through NPR.

Oh, right, Trump's trying to get rid of woke stuff like that.

Not talked about, but I *can* talk about the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Ludlow Massacre without retribution from the US. I am able to.

I'm concerned when the US military is given full "The people are the enemy" attitude and to protest it becomes illegal.

I've been wondering where the US Tiananmen Square is going to be.