Sorry if this is not the proper community for this question. Please let me know if I should post this question elsewhere.
So like, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic or jump on some conspiracy theory crap, but this seems like very troubling news to me. My entire life, I’ve been under the impression that no one is technically/officially above the law in the US, especially the president. I thought that was a hard consensus among Americans regardless of party. Now, SCOTUS just made the POTUS immune to criminal liability.
The president can personally violate any law without legal consequences. They also already have the ability to pardon anyone else for federal violations. The POTUS can literally threaten anyone now. They can assassinate anyone. They can order anyone to assassinate anyone, then pardon them. It may even grant complete immunity from state laws because if anyone tries to hold the POTUS accountable, then they can be assassinated too. This is some Putin-level dictator stuff.
I feel like this is unbelievable and acknowledge that I may be wayyy off. Am I misunderstanding something?? Do I need to calm down?
Nah man, this is very concerning. You don’t need to calm down; I think everyone else is too fuckin calm about it.
What I want from anyone supporting this decision is a single example of a situation where the President would need to break the law in an official capacity. I want just one. I’ll not get it, but I’m gonna keep demanding it.
I’ve seen dozens of people, including myself, wondering why there’s no one in the streets over this, it’s a long weekend for a lot of people too.
Honestly, DC is a 10 hour drive for me. If I didn’t think I’d be the lone idiot protesting I’d be on my way because I’m off until Monday.
But there’s safety in numbers. One person in the street will get arrested and end up as a footnote in the local papers, a million people might make them notice.I’ve had plenty of days where i wondered of it was worth my kids living without me to live without him.
I think about this all the time: people commit suicide by gun every day. So they want to die and they have a gun. Even if 99% of them are too depressed to do anything but die, I really think there should have been several attempts on Trump by now. I mean, hit or miss, shoot yourself like you were going to anyway right?
I’m not advocating murder or suicide. I’m just surprised it hasn’t happened.
I’m shocked there haven’t been attempts!
The fact that rational people might decide that stochastic terrorism is the most logical choice on both sides should terrify the FBI and Secret Service. Imagine standing in the middle of that?
I think it epitomizes our cultural complacency nowadays. It’s the same reason why we don’t have mass protests right now. People are too comfortable to give a fuck. Assassins are the seven sigma outliers of the distribution but the whole distribution has shifted so far to the complacent side that we just don’t have any anymore.
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Every fucking day
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They are not in the streets because they are endless scrolling on their phones.
The king of Sweden has a similar exemption from the law, but he also doesn’t hold any political power. I also don’t know how waterproof his status is if he did something heinous enough.
Trump already has done heinous stuff.
The king of Sweden doesn’t control the most powerful military in the world.
He doesn’t control much of anything, actually!
Yup! There’s also the fact that kings usually tend to at least care about their country’s welfare somewhat. Republicans don’t give a shit about anything but money, power, and theocracy.
Theocracy is a mean to money and power.
True, but there are true believers in there that actually believe Jesus is coming back and such.
I suppose some do, sometimes I wish they were right and that they would j just get raptured already. No need for a new Kingdom and tons of massacre, just come and take them.
Capitalists. Capitalists are bipartisan, and that’s why Biden is doing this big nothing.
What about if the president wants to be a naughty boy, but doesn’t want any of those pesky consequences?
a single example of a situation where the President would need to break the law in an official capacity.
I definitely don’t support the ruling but Obama has ordered drone strikes that killed children. Does that mean Obama should stand trial for murder? I think the idea is that the president is given the authority to do things most people can’t, and because of that, they can’t be held to the same standard as other people, at least while using that authority.
There really aught to be a line though. There can’t be blanket Immunity on every single presidental act no matter what. Ordering the assassination of the al-Qaeda leader and ordering the assassination of the Democrat leader should not be considered equal actions under the law. Trump is already arguing that his conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results was an official action of the president. There’s no way that should be considered valid.
What laws of our land were broken? Which statute? Has Obama been charged with anything and if so what? Because he didn’t have immunity from criminal prosecution, remember, so if this is your example you’re going to need to show that a former president a) had to break the law, b) couldn’t have accomplished the thing with existing powers, and c) faced criminal prosecution for that “official act” when they shouldn’t have, as a result of not having this immunity.
And this is my point exactly. Obama hasn’t been prosecuted for those drone strikes, nor for the operation that killed Bin Laden; and he won’t be, because those acts did not break United States law. When the President needs to do something most people can’t, they use powers imparted under existing law - the president already has quite a lot of power, you know. In the few cases the President has needed more than that, they’ve had to go justify it and get the other branches on board, at least nominally (looking at you, Bush Jr, and sending the Guard to the middle east to get around needing Congress to send the regular Army ಠ_ಠ). This is the way the system was designed, with checks and balances on each branch.
Long story short I’m sorry to say I find your example lacking and my challenge remains unmet. I very much appreciate you engaging in good faith though, so thanks!
I’d say Biden doing something official to null and void this decision would be good. He won’t, obviously, but it’s an example.
This is a 5 alarm fire. It’s very concerning. This is precariously close to the end to the quarter millennium of the American Experiment. Seriously.
The likely scenarios, as far as I can guess are that…
a) if Biden wins with anything less than a substantial majority, there will be violence. b) if Biden just scrapes a win, violence seems likely. c) if Biden loses, the violence will be long lasting and possibly irreparable in the next generation or two.
They took a torch to your constitution. All for the sake of a very, very evil man.
I am quite afraid, to be honest. The people who are not concerned do not appear to have familiarity with some very significant and recent (ie - less than a century ago) world history.
This is not just a conventional political pendulum shift where every so often you find yourself in vociferous disagreement with where things are going. This is a fundamental shredding of societal fabric.
I would very, very much like to be wrong.
They took a torch to your constitution. All for the sake of a very, very evil man.
The heritage foundation has been working on this long before the angry orange was a viable candidate. He is just the current face because he is belligerent enough to follow through on what they want to do and does a bang up job of riling up the conservative base.
If he was out of the picture they would be doing the same things with someone else who wouldn’t be nearly as effective, but they would still be going down the same road.
That’s one of the things that really gets me about all this. This didn’t happen suddenly, but there has never been any actual effort by the opposition party to counter it. They never address the trend in any organized way, and never really raise awareness of it. The closest they get is to fundraise off the threats, but it never translates into action or progress. If anything, they organize to ostracize the few members of their party that do speak forcefully about it.
It’s horribly depressing, but the only people around to fight the actually evil people are slightly less evil people.
The only reason democrats, as a whole, are a better alternative to republicans is because they chose a different portion of the population to pander to in order to gain power.
It really fucking sucks.
If it’s close at all I don’t see how MAGA and the GOP don’t just steal the election. I really think Biden is going to need at least 2020 electoral numbers to win safely.
Biden won the 2020 election by 50,000 votes.
That’s a funny way to misspell 7 million.
Hell, Clinton won the popular vote by over 3 million.
If the popular vote won the election you’d have a point.
Is that how American presidential elections are won? Or did a small lead in voters in a few counties tip the swing states?
The worst part is that those who do not understand this will tell you you are insane, catastrophizing, should just focus on your own life, and will get angry at you for really caring… while the ones who do understand, generally just get depressed.
Meanwhile, our political system implodes as we have passed the climate threshold. Rivers in Alaska are running orange as a result of permafrost thawing. That means we are releasing methane now, means its only going to get worse faster.
Thank god I have never wanted and do not have children.
So all bets are off? If violence is inevitable and the alternative is a de facto dictatorship, maybe the liberal Americans should strike first while they still can, e.g., assassinating orange man and other conservative leaders.
No, it can be done “legally.” Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
If President Biden suspended habeas corpus as allowed by the Constitution as required to protect public safety from seditionists who, remember, have made public threats of violence, and rounded them up, that would be an official act and he would be immune from charges. Furthermore, there would no longer be the votes in the House to impeach him.
ETA: Scare quotes. This would buy quite a lot of time as the issue worked its way through the courts. It might even incite open rebellion, then the question would be essentially moot.
I’ve never wanted a Death Note more than I do now.
Historically assassination doesn’t really work out well, and I’d imagine that’s doubly so here, where the president’s really just a sock puppet for the billionaire class.
I know it’s wrong, but doesn’t it feel so right?
No. Not at all. That’s honestly not helpful or acceptable talk.
When. I mentioned violence, I was highlighting the extent to which I fear it’s a powder keg. An observation, not an imperative. I hope it’s not. I sincerely hope it’s not.
It is extremely concerning. We no longer have three separate branches of government acting as a system of checks and balances.
Especially with Project 2025 (day one after the election of the next GOP candidate). The executive branch will no longer be controllable by the other two branches. Also, Schedule F will allow all “policy-related” government workers to be rescheduled as fireable employees, allowing the Prez to install loyalists throughout the entire government. It’s definitely time to freak the fuck out.
Anyone who wants to see it https://www.project2025.org/
If you read the PDF that they gave it’s terrifying. Talking about applying to be a Loyalist and only they get federal appointments…and replacing real people in the government.
Textbook step by step fascism.
Let’s pretend to be loyalists and seed their administration with leftists from lemmy.
They have an interview process that combs over, not sure actually…
We know how good they are at combing-over.
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Yes, it scares the shit out of me. Even if we manage to never elect Trump before he dies, the next time any Republican makes it to the presidency, the American Experiment is over.
I think it’s silly to assume that this can’t and won’t be abused by Democrats as well, given time. The worst thing we could do in this situation is make it partisan.
No president should have this power.
Not to defend the democrats too much but even if they do it, the SCOTUS is heavily biased against them which means that they would get heavily punished.
Also at the least the liberal wing of the SCOTUS voted against this, unlike the republican appointed judges.
So there’s clearly one side pushing for this and one trying to prevent it.
It could be abused by Democrats as well. If we get to that point, all hope is lost anyway.
Actually I think it is far worse than you may…
They ruled that the president is immune from prosecution for official acts they would get to rule on what that means.
So if Biden does X; they could rule it not official; but if Trump were to do that same thing, I’ve no doubt they would rule the other wayI have not read the ruling but if this is how it goes then it feels like a slow burn coup by the SCOTUS. The fate of every decision of the president is in the hands of these justices. They now control what is ‘official’ and what is not. They now control the president in some way.
or maybe (hopefully) I’m wrong.
Very similar to Nazis path to power, a lot of provocative action, violence, and people stop giving a shit that they are constantly doing this, an attempt at a violent coup, it dosen’t work, then the people in power create legal pretexts to allow a seemingly legal way to dictatorship.
Says right in the ruling it’s up to the trails court to determine what is official.
That’s only a delay tactic since it’ll eventually come back to SCROTUS
The fact that Clarence Thomas has his name on this ruling really helps illustrate how easy and often cheap it is to simply buy rulings.
I wonder, what do you think the ruling changed? What can the president do now that the president wasn’t able to do before?
Did you read the dissenting judges statements on the ruling? Sitting Supreme Court Justices have publicly given their legal opinion on what the ruling means.
Did you read it?
It’s one more piece of Project 2025.
Trump is the side-show. Stop getting distracted by his fat orange ass. The disorganized, played more golf and gave more bad speeches than any President before him is just a side show. Most of the executive branch jobs that go with the administration each election were left empty in 2016.
Project 2025 is an organized, focused Trump term where the machinery runs for him. Where the mechanics of what to do have been thought out and planned for since 2020. Where he can sit on a gold toilet and truly let other people handle the day to day.
And just sign it all with presidential immunity.
So unless cardiovascular disease does it’s fucking job in the next 4 months (yeah, that’s right, the self imposed I don’t want to deal with it time warp you’re in let you forget that it’s just 4 months away), and bad COVID comes back and hits the SCOTUS hard, it’ll be SCOTUS 2.0 for the entire executive branch of the government come 2025. And like a SCOTUS vote, that 2:1 vote in our entire government will be in favor of authoritarian Christian nationalism. That’s what the the SCOTUS vote on immunity is. It’s not about Trump. It’s about authoritarianism going forward.
High odds on Project 2025 because I know you fuckers under 40 won’t be voting in the numbers boomers or GenX do. You’ll stock up on the steam summer sale, maybe get a Costco crate of cool ranch, tuck in, and try to pretend it’s not happening instead.
Yea, it sucks, but the vote is basically Kamala or Trump. No or yes on Project 2025. And if project 2025 goes in, America really is dead and shit is going to get violent.
Not sure another play through of Mass Effect Legendary or BG3 is going to be able to block that out this time.
Good time to remind people that a higher proportion of millennials and gen z voted in mid-term elections than baby boomers or baby boomer babies (gen x) did at equivalent ages.
Millennials voted in the last presidential election at a rate that represents the highest level of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. Gen Z seems poised to do something similar, as this will be the first presidential election where a majority of Gen Z will be old enough to vote.
Additionally, gen x is the only generational cohort that voted LESS in the last mid term elections than the one before it, i.e., participation in elections declined for that cohort. I guess they were too busy… idk, doing whatever gen x does instead of voting.
This whole post is just one long “the kids are the problem because of their phones and video games,” but I’m pretty sure the most politically active youth generations in modern history aren’t ruining democracy by playing video games.
Anyway. Basically what I’m saying is: ok boomer. Oh well, whatever, nevermind, right?
Millenials are old now. We’re not “the youth”, we’re like mid-30s to early 40s.
Four years ago, when the last presidential election occurred, the millennial age range was 24-39. Beyond that, I’m comparing generational participation in elections at particular ages.
Further, not all of Gen Z will be of voting age for this election, so the youngest generational cohort where all members of that cohort are able to vote is still millennials, i.e., millennials are the youngest generation able to fully participate in elections.
I’m not saying millennials are all “young,” I’m saying that in terms of electoral participation statistics, they’re the youngest generation able to fully participate, and that compared to when Gen X and Boomers were going, Gen Z and Millennials participate (and have participated) at higher rates than the generations above them.
This is contrary to the subtext of the Boomer Lite (Gen X) poster to which I’m responding that implies younger generations are too busy distracting themselves with their phones and video games to participate in politics.
It seemed really obvious to me that he was talking about actual youth, ie Zoomers. But you started throwing a bunch of statistics about millenials.
Millenials are a politically active generation. The fear is that Zoomers are not. That was the point I got from his comment.
As I said, Gen Z has, so far, participated in the elections they’ve been eligible for at higher rates than any previous generation since the age of voting was made 18, including millennials.
The youngest of Gen Z is currently about 12 years old, so they’ve had less elections to participate in with a smaller percentage of their generational cohort able to participate. Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
The youngest generational cohort that are all above the voting age are millennials, which have also voted at higher rates than Boomers and Boomers Lite at similar ages.
Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
…compared to previous generations at that age.
Youth turnout is still abysmal, it’s just less abysmal than previous generations.
K
Lol, not a boomer.
All I hear is I can’t vote for this asshole because Israel. Or, I’m not doing this (Trump and Biden) again.
And games are everyone these days. From boomers to high schoolers. Granted, I think the number of boomers is likely less than all the rest. I’m sure Steam is doing a hefty sales level from GenX on down.
And there absolutely is a time warp of avoidance in general. Even the media has less energy for the election crap of late.
Oh, bonus, sentencing for trump is being delayed until after the election.
Yep. I’m so over American politics and I think the nation is headed in the wrong direction. I feel that the people are powerless against changing our trajectory. I had been considering doing a PhD abroad and this is really pushing that decision now.
Do it. Do it now. You know what kind of person lived a life knowing they made the right decision?
Everyone that left Germany in 1932.
Let’s say the best possible thing happens. Biden crushes Trump, the Republicans lose so many seats Team Not Fascists can push through Constitutional Amendments.
What would Democrats actually change for the better?
Do you think that is likely?
Or will you be spending the rest of your life wondering if this is the election year that starts a civil war in one of the the most militarised nations on the planet? Do you want to be in a major nuclear power where one side specifically hates cities when it has a civil war?
Even if things go relatively well, this bullshit isn’t ending without one. As a best outcome! The other is no one even doing that! Every two fucking years you’re going to be watching which Congressional seats fall to fascism because one team has just chosen to abandon reality and democracy.
What would Democrats actually change for the better?
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See Canada
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See Norway
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Do like them.
That’s about 20 years of reform.
- GO TO 1
The democrats are not even left enough to be a centrist party in Canada. They will not reform.
While you might be generally correct, some of the legislation passed during Biden’s term is genuinely better than what even Europe could come up with.
More likely they’ll have a party and slap each other on the back for not needing to court the union vote anymore.
You’re right that they could.
Now look at their past legislation. Will they?
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Just know that you’re not the only one that sees it this way. There are a lot of us, but not nearly enough.
All this shit is literally straight out of the Putin playbook. Take control of the courts, take control of what is legal, take control of elections. Republicans were always too dumb and incompetent to be anything but pawns of a better organized evil.
Fascism isn’t some genius-brained thing, it’s just how authoritarians operate, and Putin didn’t invent it.
US politics has always been deeply corrupt, and now it is losing even more of its veneer of legitimacy, which means it’s crumbled that much more.
The Russians aren’t the cause of your woes. Actually if you look at what happened with the neoliberal shock doctrine and the fall of the USSR, the US is way more responsible for Putin than the other way around.
That’s correct, and it doesn’t discount that authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Notwithstanding, people are so indoctrinated with American exceptionalism and USA most free country in the world, we don’t even bother to learn about what Greg Palast termed vulture capitalism and tactics used. Operation Paperclip is heavily whitewashed as “the best and brightest,” leaving out the noun being described, Nazis.
We’re in real trouble and the only ones who can save us from ourselves is ourselves. It will be interesting to see if it will be done before the climate extinction.
The Republican party is engaged in another coup
This isn’t a Democrat vs Republican issue. Obama drone strike killed an American without due process. This is an authoritarian vs libertarian issue.
This is absolutely a GOP issue. They’re the ones doing all of this and also the only ones pushing to go further. The example you used isn’t even close to the same league as what’s being discussed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki
Was it fucked up the kid got killed by a CIA-ordered air strike? Absolutely. But it’s not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be and is a far cry different than what is now possible for a US president to do based on the SCOTUS ruling last week.
But Biden could open a can of whoop-ass right now if he wanted to.
Possibly. The SCOTUS ruling essentially kicked it down to lower courts to decide what’s an official act or not. Trump installed a ton of judges across the country to various federal courts. It could easily backfire on Biden if he tried anything.
Who cares? Let ‘em all have it! They certainly don’t care.
That’s my point. If it isn’t good when this power is available to the president if you don’t like then (or anyone in government for that matter) then they shouldn’t have that power. This is absolutely about removing power from the authorities.
Your first sentence was right. This ISN’T democrat vs republican issue.
But the rest of your message is straight hot garbage.
This is a “united states as it always has operated, republican or democrat, or other parties that existed in the past” vs “united states becoming facist” issue.
Ah yes, totally comparable to a president assassinating his political rival on US soil. Great comment!
Political rival doesn’t mean anything. This ruling means any president will get away with it and we’ll likely need a constitutional amendment to fix. Hopefully ending qualified immunity would eliminate it.
Any president can get away with it, but only one party’s candidates will actually do it.
The party that put these fascist judges on the bench will do it, in case that wasn’t obvious.
If you think it’s the Democrats that’ll fix it, I have a bridge to sell you.
Stop it. Now is not the time. You’re intentionally failing to recognize that we are, in a very real and imminent sense, staring the possible collapse of democracy in the US in the face.
Beau of the Fifth Column on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vNzFQ10uSfU https://youtu.be/0Y-C1fWx37g
“This is now the most important election issue; it has to supersede all of the other ones. The American people now are no longer no longer choosing between two candidates that they really don’t like as many of the previous election cycles have been. They’re trying to make a determination which one is less likely to become a tyrant.”
The only problem I have with this quote is that a large portion of the electorate want the tyrant.
The same people who want the tyrant are the same crowd that wanted covid. There’s too many morons.
I was hoping the Anti-Vaxxers would take themselves out by refusing medicine… Too many of them survived…
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Every prison is for-profit.
how?
Police unions. Less than ten percent of federal prisons are private. Who do you think lobbies more: 10% of prisons or the unions for 90% of federal prison employees?
The public ones still give out contracts for all of the services performed.
oh i see, you mean every US prison. couldn’t think of a reason why any prison would be for profit this side of the pond
I mean the UK put a dude in prison for four months for having a miniature Master Sword on a street alone thanks to CCTV.
yes but i seem to be missing the for-profit bit of that arrest
CCTV operators, piggies doing the arrest, entire court system, prison, all the fucking private contractors involved?
It sincerely feel absolutely insane. Completely beyond any party line bullshit - I’m almost as concerned with what Obama would do with this as what Trump would do with this.
This sort of ruling has no place in a democratic society. It is beyond reprehensible, it is utterly absurd.
The fact that it has been basically accepted by the general public - no riots, no large-scale outcry - sends a dire fucking message.
“May you live in interesting times”, indeed.
Democrats don’t like riots, if leftists protest too hard liberals are the first to tell them they’re hurting the cause.
You must simply VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!!! every few years, that’s the extent of political action requested and allowed by liberals
Don’t forget, when voting fails and the candidate loses, it’s the left’s ( and young people’s) fault, not the candidate.
The riots are coming.
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I an not even American and even I am pissed at that dumb ruling.
And what is even more annoying is that I read that what is considered an official act is not clear, so a court will need to decide if an act was official or not, and that court will be the SCOTUS.
So they could easily decide that acts Biden performed was not official, but the same acts performed by Trump was official, and invent some crap about context being different in som complex way, so with this ruling they have moved the power from the POTUS to the SCOTUS while POTUS stays the fall guy.
I get the feeling that what Trump did to earn his felonies isn’t exactly covered. Mainly because there is no way that could be considered an official act
Didnt they just say, that it was an official act?
I believe they did.
We’re completely fucked. The cult of 45 has a superpower few people understand: bottomless stupidity. It’s more frightening than it sounds. They will destroy themselves for their orange god, and take the rest of us with them. They have nothing to lose, and their only desire is for their dictator to “make the libruls cry”.
And as usual, the leaders of the Democrats are bringing educational pamphlets to a gun fight.
And they’re not even good pamphlets! They’re trite bullshit!
It’s not stupidity, it’s loyalty to the level of irrationality.
You’ll understand the current American right if you assume that they have no attachment to the meaning of their words, and the prime axiom they operate by is: “My team is always right”.
They use words as weapons to convince those who can be swayed by them, but they themselves are immune to being swayed by words, and largely indifferent to their literal meaning - only their emotional content.
This is not to deify the left, they have their own problems.
The working class folks on the right have a lot more in common with the working class folks on the left than they realize or will admit to themselves. They see “liberals” as both the enemy and the source of all their problems. Trump and the Republicans could dismantle Social Security and Medicare and every social program that exists, causing tremendous harm to working class people on both sides…and Trump’s cult followers would still blame the left for it. They consistently vote against their own interests and fail to acknowledge facts or truth. If that’s not stupidity, I don’t know what stupidity means.
When he went to Miami to be indicted he was disappointed because not a single person showed up. Hard to square with all these supposed super fans. Grateful Dead or Phish had more loyal fans.
I appreciate the counterpoint and hope it means something. The polls show Biden trailing Trump by an uncomfortable margin. Not that I put much faith in polls anymore.
The polls, they are the issue atm. Truly It’ll all come down to the election.
I believe that most of it is a bluff. There will be minimal actual Trump supporters taking up arms. We saw that at the 1/6 joke. There will be some violence but it will be stamped out. These people had children die in Afghanistan fighting religious fundamentalist. It’ll look like most of their protests where only 4-6 people actually show up. We are a nation of over 300 million.
Humans, Americans especially, have become too domesticated for unnecessary slaughter. 99% of the population have never even killed their food.
I had “The USA becomes a Failed State” pencilled in my calendar for November, not for July.
