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?

Nobody answer, this guy might be a fed

I’d just like to step in here and remind the people at home that appeals to hypocrisy are a logical fallacy. Just because someone isn’t doing what they say should be done doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Thanks, I’ll hang up and listen.

Edit: Forgot to add one thing. This conversation is about collective action, a particularly silly place to judge the actions of a single individual

Not a lawyer but I wonder how much teeth that law has. The GOP/Trump has put on a clinic on how to legally gum up the wheels of justice, it seems like unions could try the same. Delay, argue technicalities, appeal, rise, repeat…

For example: if you spend 2 months in court arguing about who organized what and what they’re technically striking for, damage could still be done even with the strike broken up. Multiply that by a few major unions and it adds up.

You can already see a similar plan coming together with UAWs 2028 contact expiration plan. Its not a general strike, there’s just coincidentally a lot of strikes at once.

Of course there’s a stricter set of laws and leeway when you’re not a corrupt oligarch so it wouldn’t work. But it’s fun to think about…

Oh huh, interesting… 📃✍️

Yes, all the things they’re doing are indeed part of a plan and all of that plan is bad. It’s more that some of what they’re doing (right now, actively) is hurting people and setting up for even worse things. Erasure is bad but you’ve gotta pick your battles, its much harder to stop any of this when they take away your ability to vote.

Wouldn’t composting just release more greenhouse gasses? We need a more effective means of carbon capture, or maybe directly repurpose them as some sort of nutritional paste

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.

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

Why not go out doing something exciting at least?

It’s easy to make statements like that before desperation sets in. Starving is an awful way to die, death after nuclear fallout is excruciating and slow, you won’t enjoy any sunsets when the smoke from burning cities fills up the sky.

50 years from now when you’re freezing in a cold muddy ditch, you’ll be wishing you died a martyr taking the 1/1e10000 chance to fix it.

Edit: I’m legally required to clarify that martyrdom can result from non-violent acts 🙂