The Death of the USA

[Agi Hammerthief]

… It'd seem far easier to sweat out the next four years and hope for a return to sanity after the next election, assuming there is one.

it feels like Vance ist already in campaign mode.

[chango369]

The United States has told its allies that it does not plan to participate in military exercises in Europe, according to reports.
The move, the latest in Donald Trump’s pivot away from the bloc, would see America pull out of exercises beyond those already scheduled for this year.
The withdrawal concerns exercises that are on the “drawing board”, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen.
It means that Nato countries will be forced to plan exercises without the participation of the US military, the largest in the alliance.

...

US ‘to cease all future military exercises in Europe’

Yeah, at least as an ally.

[Calilasseia]

So, the descent of the USA to "Black Death era Mongolia" status is well under way.

[Tortured_Genius]

This popped up in my feed. A US Senator lays out some of the corruption perpetrated by Musk and Trump in the public domain in the first 6 weeks of the Trump presidency.

It's a bit long, but that's because the amount of corruption is gobsmacking. There's stuff here that I'd missed simply in the sheer volume of corruption (I'm sure the US taxpayer is ecstatic to be paying 400 million for "armored Teslas"). This is just some of the stuff in the public domain, so there's bound to be even more behind closed doors.

It is very, very clear the USA is being looted.



I'd observe that with this level of blatant corruption Trump and his cronies cannot ever let themselves be ousted from power and face prosecution for this level of very public criminality.

[Calilasseia]

Meanwhile, after reports of what happened recently to Francis Collins when he took part in a public event, this cartoon is now associated with a quantifiable probability of becoming a nightmare reality:

This Is Where The Rabid Reich Wing Are Taking the USA.jpg (89.57 KiB) Viewed 3240 times

[Tortured_Genius]

Well now it's creeping over the Atlantic.

I'm seeing adverts for goods and services (things like data cloud storage) advertised as being based in the EU rather than the US.

The anti-Elon poster campaign in London (and a few other places in the UK) when shared on social media are attracting a peculiar and disproportionately large number of critics who write using a distinctly non-European idiom and repeat US right-wing "talking points" which any native knows are not based in this version of reality. Farage in particular seems to be a beneficiary of these "critics". Likewise news stories.

The frog-faced Quisling has been quiet of late at least - but the AI generated "grassroots" campaign in support of Reform-whatever-the-fuck-it's-called-today-Limited could well be laying a quite nasty backlash for him when he finally emerges from the bloodletting in his own cabal.

[romansh]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c6hfde ... d4tj6nvs2l

[The_Metatron]

I was on BlueSky until today. Today, I realized there are no solutions there.

Oh, it’s all well and good to toss about clever insults and rants, but it ultimately solves nothing at all. All it does is amplify anger.

Instead, today I started training. Good old PT. Maybe I can regain my failing health so I will be fit enough to act to make some of these problems go away. The solution to all this fascism noise is going to take physical force. I’ll need to be fit to apply that force. Got my first mile marching in today. Next week, I’ll increase the time and the load. I figure a thousand miles should do it.

If not, I’ll soon enough die with the full knowledge I wasted my life defending this shithole of a country, leaving my sons with less than I had. What a fuckin’ accomplishment.

[Tortured_Genius]

I was going to caution restraint and against over-reaction, but this weekend we had:

260 unnamed people "disappeared" into an El Salvadorian prison without any form of due process. The administration straight up ignored a court order in doing this.
Armed unidentified individuals (FBI?/US Marshals?) breaking into independent government agency offices and locking out the staff.

There's no other way to describe this as anything other than a full blown coup since there appears to be no process in place to actually enforce restraint on the Executive branch by the Judiciary or Congress.

All I can do is wish you folks luck in stopping this shit. Hopefully the "normal" way of resolving these things via peaceful protest will work, but the sheer size of the USA works against the sort of relatively bloodless corrections we've seen in Ukraine, South Korea, etc.

Meanwhile we've got our own Quislings to deal with and the cold war with Russia appears to be hotting up again. It's been obscured by the other shit going on, but FSB spy and sabotage groups are being busted and diplomatic staff expelled on a continuous basis all over Europe. If we have a repeat of the 2018 Salisbury chemical attack or similar the government would be hard pressed not to activate article 5.

This is all getting far too sodding interesting.

[The_Metatron]

!	GENERAL MODNOTE I moved the conversation about BlueSky to the topic I’d already started on that subject: Who’s On BlueSky? My last post here mixed a couple of subjects here, I apologize. The_Metatron

[The_Metatron]

My training has started well, a step at a time.

The boots I’ve worn in uniform for my last ten years on active duty needed repairs. The heel pads were disintegrated. I sent them away a few weeks ago to have them repaired. I wore them on yesterday’s march, and the repairs are perfect. No hot spots, and they fit me feet absolutely perfectly.

I’m increasing my distance daily. Next week, I start carrying weight while I march. I still have my old Alice (LC-1) field pack, which is also well worn and as comfortable as such a pack can be. It’s an external frame utility back pack I was issued while assigned to a tactical air control party. I’ll start with five kilos, and increase it as my strength and endurance improves.

I suppose, as my body weight falls from training, that extra weight in the pack won’t mean so much.

There are old skills I’ll need to sharpen, land navigation, escape and evasion, concealment. It sounds like I’m preparing for combat, which is exactly what I’m doing. Luck favors the prepared.

[The_Metatron]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/roberts ... =119921304

Looks like the whores are rebelling a bit against their pimp.

I say this because it’s obvious the supreme court is bought and paid for by Trump. I see little evidence beyond this little bit of rebellion to suggest otherwise.

[Papa Smurf]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/roberts ... =119921304

From that article I just learned that Trump recently wrote the following:

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law

That is perhaps the most scary thing I have heard him say to date.

[Tortured_Genius]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/roberts ... =119921304

From that article I just learned that Trump recently wrote the following:

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law

That is perhaps the most scary thing I have heard him say to date.

That was a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte - I'm wondering who supplied him with it since it's unlikely Trump read up on it himself.

I actually find it amusing that he thinks he's Napoleon given his apparent mental acuity. (More fuel for the 25th amendment).

[Papa Smurf]

I know it's from Napoleon. I wonder if Trump knows. He does seem to admire just about all dictators so I guess it's possible.

[Matt_B]

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce" would seem an appropriate retort.

[Fenrir]

The word "save" is doing an unimaginable amount of heavy lifting in that quote wrt Chump.

Only thing he ever saved is a steak in the process of drowning in tomato sauce "keeechurp".

[Papa Smurf]

The word "save" is doing an unimaginable amount of heavy lifting in that quote wrt Chump

It does, doesn't it. That statement is actually self-confirming in that it makes it clear, in the most unambiguous way possible, that the USA does need saving; from Trump that is, not by him.

[Tortured_Genius]

The firehose of shit continues.

Yesterday he signed an executive order to shut down FEMA.
Today an executive order to shut the DOE.

Obviously doing this via executive order rather than through Congress is unconstitutional, but the slow pace of legal processes and lack of enforcement means that in practical terms it'll already have happened by the time any rulings are made.

Never mind. I'm sure if they pray enough large scale disasters requiring a co-ordinated response won't happen and all those faith schools they'll be able to pay for with taxes will be producing good little christians so gawd won't smite them.

"Thoughts and prayers" as a response to mass shootings has been a US staple for generations, but I didn't think it had been shown to be effective enough to be adopted as the national response to climate change and other large scale disasters.

It's clear he's taking apart the infrastructure that allows the USA to function as a developed nation.

[Calilasseia]

It's clear he's taking apart the infrastructure that allows the USA to function as a developed nation.

And as a corollary, my statement about the USA becoming Black Death era Mongolia is about to become a nightmare reality.