“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
If I didn’t know any other context, I’d say these two were exploring each others brown starfish.
More than likely yes, and they were fucking children too.
Wtf? They’re very brazen.
From 2006:
ROBIN QUIVERS: Yeah, do you have an age limit or would you–
FUTURE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If I- No, no, I have no age–. I mean, I have an age li–.
ROBIN QUIVERS: The upper bracket–.
FUTURE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.
He started to say he had no age limit, then seemingly corrected himself by deflecting onto Former Congressman Mark Foley, who sent sexually explicit instant messages to 16 and 17 year old boys. Whether he was more deterred by the ages themselves or the fact that it was a scandal is an exercise left to the reader.
How can this guy be your president, US folks? It was absolutely well known.
Even now, still no appropriate response. Instead, just more of what was also totally foreseeable: corruption and fascism.
How can you allow this to happen?
If you don’t act now, you will be the next dictatorship.
A lot of us didnt vote for this guy…
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there won’t be a next election if you don’t fight back.
Why do you think ICE needs a budget of 100 billion? Are you seriously so naive as to believe that it’s about illegal immigrants?
Edit: This is not a call to violence, but merely a warning to finally wake up. I don’t think you can still rely on your legal system as it is obvious broken beyond repair, but I do think it is possible to remove this despot by civil means. My suggestion: a general strike across all industries – if there’s one thing that scares your rulers, it’s loss of profit.
What would you have a normal person who likely can’t afford to miss much in the way of work do? I am asking sincerely.
Outside of throwing everything away to Luigi it up, I’m not sure what a single person could hope to accomplish.
Even considering the protests, which one would think have had enough people to accomplish something an individual could not… what exactly are they to do that would make things better? Seems like the nonviolent protests are just being ignored to me, but even if they were violent, what exactly are they to direct it towards?
It’s a thing I have been wondering in the face of the calls to “do something”, and I don’t know the answer to what this “something” is.
Organize a general strike - on the biggest scale possible, a scale that cannot be ignored by your news outlets (social media giants included, of course).
Your employer won’t be able to do anything about it if there are enough people participating.
Find allies even in the ranks of the conservatives as there must be people not ok with this wreched course.
I have nothing better to offer. Only the warning not to remain inactive like my great-grandparents, Germans who were not Nazis but who did not act when it was still possible.
But yes, this will take courage and might mean hardship. I’d say it’s still the best option - but yes, it’s easy to say for me as I’m not involved.
General strikes don’t work if you are living paycheck to paycheck. Most people in America are in a bad situation financially.
I interviewed old timers who were involved in the early unionization struggles of auto workers and other industries. Those folks really lived under the thumb of landlords and employers and segregation and so much more bullshit than people remember.
Resistance to employer shit and abuse develops by people being neighbourly and helpful, by building bonds, by sharing their common outrage, and by connecting the dots.
Talk about pay with coworkers, it’s illegal for an employer to restrict such talk. You don’t necessarily have to unionize, but you do have to organize. This means finding solidarity at work, even if the coworkers are boring or misogynistic or different.
You know, apes strong together and all that. Build community around resistance to authoritarianism.
General strikes worked in 19th century Europe. I think y’all might have it a little better then they did. More to the point: union memberships are used at the time of strikes exactly to break the cycle of not being able to protest for being too poor.
Then it will probably end up in a system like today’s Russia. Trump or Vance as the sole ruler above the law.
That would be disastrous not only for US citizens, but for the whole world.
I don’t disagree, I’m just saying there are practical reasons why general strikes are hard to organize, compared to say protests or riots.
What would you have a normal person who likely can’t afford to miss much in the way of work do? I am asking sincerely.
Thank you for honouring the spirit of a forum. The honest answer, from an old fuck’s perspective, is that it entirely depends on
- what you know
- what you are capable of
- what opportunity you have
- and who you know
Outside of throwing everything away to Luigi it up, I’m not sure what a single person could hope to accomplish.
Ah, then that suggests is the first few steps should be seen as ‘helpful training’, until you develop a sense of the first item, what you know. A single person can in fact achieve a huge amount, even without thinking so.
So read and watch about resistance to authoritarianism, wherever it arises. Develop a personal curriculum. Ask old folks like me who have been involved in people’s resistance to authoritarianism for a long time, who they like to read.
Unless, of course, if studying history or political thought isn’t your thing.
In that case, start at grassroots in a service position so you can connect with the issues of the people who are the worst victims of abuse, find out how they got there, and what they need. A soup kitchen or something. Maybe stick to secular organizations.
Even considering the protests, which one would think have had enough people to accomplish something an individual could not… what exactly are they to do that would make things better? Seems like the nonviolent protests are just being ignored to me, but even if they were violent, what exactly are they to direct it towards?
Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned by the OG fascists for years, but he smuggled out his writings, which included an analysis of how social movements turn into hegemonic power, which kind of answers your question.
TL;DR: think of social change as walking like a millipede, not a person. There are many leaders, many strikes and protests, many interests coming together, and culture or propaganda is a big part of it working. Educate yourself and your peers.
It’s a thing I have been wondering in the face of the calls to “do something”, and I don’t know the answer to what this “something” is.
Yeah, if you’re a lawyer you don’t really have to ask this question. If you’re a retail worker or a warehouse gnome, okay then, those are limiting circumstances so just bide your time and listen to audiobooks or lectures on the bus, then put in a couple of hours a week or month at a soup kitchen etc…
That ‘something’ just boils down to actively making a better society, however you can, but you know, all the time really. It will develop from there.
Dude, you are getting angry at the wrong person, and also preaching to the choir. 99% of people on this site agree with your point. So why are you yelling at me over an innocuous comment?
I’m not so sure about that. It seems to me that the majority here believe that a few lawsuits from the Democrats could settle the matter — I don’t think so.
Edit: How do you think I’m yelling?
I think that was an actual question and invitation to dialogue, and your first response is to disavow? You mistake genuine concern for anger?
Why?
OP called me naive and implied that I think this is actually about immigration. How is that a genuine question? Insulting someone’s intelligence right off the bat isn’t asking for genuine dialog.
I am pretty sure that was generalized to all the population.
Can’t exactly make such comments on other platforms or you just get shadow banned.
I could also be he never won the election in the first place. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, there has been a lot of talk that the math ain’t mathing when it comes to the elections.
Well, if that turns out to be, you’ll see a protest like we’ve never seen before. Maybe a general strike. I know for sure as shit i wont be going into work the next day after finding out Team Trump actually manipulated the election like he accused everyone else of doing.
No shit.
If you’ve wondered why everything looks like a coup since he got in, perhaps it is because it is one.
https://lemmy.world/post/31401705
https://electiontruthalliance.org/
And if you’re wondering why Democrats like Tim Walz are not even interested in investigating it themselves, well, the existence of certain files and whether or not they are disclosed could have something to do with that.
Saving this one. Needs to be posted in nearly every discussion where trump comes up.
It seems like we didn’t vote for this guy and he cheated his way to winning the election. He made suspicious comments about Elon Musk and how he helped with the election, mentioning something about how he’s really good with that technology. Which Musk also mentioned, claiming that Trump would never have been elected without him.
Then there’s an active lawsuit going on where several counties in New York state found that absolutely no one voted for Kamala Harris in their location during the election, despite having large groups of Democrat residents. Their electronic voting machines received patches right before voting started, which is highly suspicious. That’s being investigated right now.
It appears that the election was likely stolen and we have a president who was never elected. This is how fascist takeovers start, and unless people organize against the government, they’re just going to keep enabling this downfall of our country.
How can this guy be your president, US folks? It was absolutely well known.
Because millions of people didn’t care
Worse than that, millions of people actively chose this. AGAIN.
Millions of people were convinced by their media and algorithms that they didn’t care.
Hate is a hell of a drug. The religious people (primarily Christians) in our country are particularly susceptible to it. Trump pretends to be religious, and his cruelty is embraced by these types.
It’s just layers of indoctrination, basically. It’s not the majority of Americans, it’s around a third, but they vote in very high percentages, and the actual majority of Americans don’t vote.
So, we have this loud, delusional group with the most power right now purely because the majority of Americans don’t care to vote.
Media and propaganda. They are very powerfull. Greed as well.
~30% of the country really wanted to hurt other people because their lives were messed up, they weren’t rich, or they wanted to be richer.
I’m not USian, but from what analysts worth their salt would say, it is combination of-- but not limited to-- intentional dumbification of Americans, the opposition not really being opposition, the US Supreme Court legalising bribery, the atomisation and polarisation of American communities, de-industrialisation, growing wealth inequality and general corruption. These contributed to the growth of frustration and populism among the voters to vote for anyone who is “not establishment”. Someone who “tells it like it is” unlike most politicians who always do politician speak. In the minds of many Americans, Trump may be a grifter and a pervert, but they see him as genuine. If the democracy is a sham after all, might as well pull down the mask and show tje country for what it truly is. That’s why people say Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The same symptom is happening across the world which is why we’re getting the same far right populism.
Yeah it was pretty much inevitable, sooner or later. The same is true for several other countries whose citizens are here on Lemmy laughing at us or chastizing us about it, not realizing that the same thing is coming for them, too.
- We didn’t really have a democratic choice
- Most of my countrymen are stupid and proud of it
- Most of the people who are aware of how bad it is are not willing to break the law or upset the status quo to fight it
- Reform and revolution take organization but that takes time and effort that most can’t afford.
- People who were aware of how bad things were and are getting have become exhausted and constantly feel powerless to the point they can’t find the strength to keep trying
Those with the time/wealth/power to do anything are too blind or unsympathetic to do anything real. Those without time and resources lack the resources to do anything influential without organization which they also lack the time and resources to create as well.
We’re already in a dictatorship. But you likely have time to stop your country from following suit. Make sure there are good guys left to beat the shit out of us in the end
Edit: to clarify, by “we didn’t have a democratic choice” I was referring to gerrymandering, vote suppression, and other things like winner take all states. I voted and I know there were a surprising number of people who voted blue despite being lifelong republicans. It didn’t do anything because we don’t have democracy.
- We didn’t really have a democratic choice
You had “NOT TRUMP”, a former prosecutor with a firm grasp of the law and the progressive half of Biden/Harris. … who was also Not Trump. If you wanted to ensure Trump didn’t get in , the box was right there.
They just needed to vote “not Trump”. How fucking hard is that?
Man, this gets hard to repeat so many times.
Hey love, calm down. I was referring to gerrymandering and vote suppression not the inability to vote for the lesser evil.
I did vote and in fact a surprising number of my peers voted blue despite the fact they typically hard line republican. It made no difference because our state is an all or nothing state, so as long as you can gerrymander well enough around cities and convince rural areas to vote red out of fear, ta da the red party gets all the marbles as if the entire state voted unanimously.
That’s what I meant by not having democracy.
I was referring to gerrymandering
For the 273645234th time, gerrymandering does not play a part in a presidential election. Voter suppression, sure. Gerrymandering affects congressional elections.
Agreeing with the main statement here, but there are knock on effects to gerrymandering. Higher races get fewer votes from places where the elections aren’t competitive. With few competitive races there’s less benefit to voting, so marginal voters stay home. That’s why a motivating ballot question is considered a political benefit.
And gerrymandered states can also give the impression that state level results are a foregone conclusion as well. With the electoral college, where the number of votes on the losing side don’t matter, living under a red trifecta creates an impression that the state itself will never flip.
Yeah, which is why Texas was able to push so many republicans through into congress when votes show that it wasn’t so stark.
100%
“B-but she’s a woman!”
It really gets hard to repeat to you people that voting against someone is how we got trump in the first place. And you want to do more of that?
How can you allow this to happen?
I love how people ask questions like this, like we’re gods who can snap our fingers and magically stop the fascists who outnumber us. The number of people who wanted it to happen outnumbered the number of us who didn’t want it to happen. Simple as that. Can’t even blame the electoral college.
And those people still absolutely love him and will do anything for him and to keep him in power. The only option left after losing the election would be civil war, but even if enough people were ready to go all out and start one, we would lose that war because they have the government and its resources, including the military. That’s the problem with democracy, you see–majority rules and if the majority decides they don’t want a democracy any more, then it’s over.
Tldr: he draws the line at 12 years old
So, 13 is too old, huh?
Does he? He says he doesn’t want to be like Foley with 12 year olds. That’s not an answer.
I guess that’s true… He didn’t say anyone below 12, he just said he has no age limit, then added that 12, specifically, was an age he wasn’t interested in.
What an absolutely disgusting old man this guy is. He really is the personification of everything wrong with this country.
Release the list and investigate+arrest every fucking person on it.
look as much as I detest the guy, that’s not what was actually said
The question was whether he had an age limit… a maximum age he would consider as a cutoff.
Trump went to the opposite extreme.
Makes you think.
Are you sure that’s not exactly what that number was?
Jesus Christ… His cut off is fucking TWELVE?!
Not exactly. The quote is:
I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.
So I guess his cutoff is 13 which is absolutely no better.
Twelve could be his upper limit
Or he just doesn’t like numbers that have a word equivalent, like “dozen” or “score”. So anything other than 12- or 20-year-olds is fine. Cue up Nate Bargatze as George Washington.
Naw 13 is when they start to look like his daughter
Or you could read it the other way he’s disgusted the congressman would risk his career over someone so old.
But he stops himself. What he really meant was “No, I have no age limit.”
Then again he rarely tells the truth
Okay seriously is it Elon? Why are they finally fucking attacking this again when we have KNOWN for two decades at least. Why is this news again? Who is pushing this? I want to know WHY it’s suddenly sacrifice trump time. I have no love for him but this doesn’t just happen.
Because he didn’t release the files, said they didn’t exist, and then said they were created by the democrats. It’s the Streisand effect. So people are applying pressure by finding what they can without him
I think it’s Elon.
Trump also pays outsized mind to social media in general and Twitter in particular.
The most common theory is it is push back from him trying to replace Powell.
Ah, the old blood. That makes sense. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 10 years it’s that it doesn’t matter if we have the information and evidence. It matters if the news is willing to play your story and spin it for you
So which network billionaires does he rub elbows with?
You’re absolutely right. Truth doesn’t matter, networks push certain stories and remove other stories.
It went from locker room talk with him acting offended children were being harmed (also by “illegals”) to why won’t he release the records.
His baddy status is more confirmed.
I think trump is just a walking loyalty test. They’re allowing this to continue to make DAMN SURE of who’s willing to support him absolutely no matter what.
I demand Trump be arrested
FUTURE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.
Was that Mark Foley? IIRC, he was caught with (male) Congressional Pages, who are older than 12. But the key thing about Foley was that he was caught. So I read this as “I don’t want to get caught with someone underage”…
You forget that Trump is a pathological liar. Never tell the truth when a lie will do.
Trump was almost certainly aware that the congressional pages were around 16 or 17 years old. But Trump wanted to say something nasty to tear someone else down, and that’s exactly what he did. It’s exactly what he always does.
So what Trump was really saying was, “don’t look at me! Look at that other “perv”! I’m definitely not a perv! “
Classic projection, as with practically every other statement that flies out of that disgusting mouth of his.
Who could do that to a twelve year old? I only beat and rape 13 year olds
Ignoring the actual content of what he’s saying here for a minute, it’s amazing to hear how different his speech patterns were at this point. He’s actually capable of composing a single sentence. Now it sounds like he’s just creating a mashup of a bunch of unrelated sentences.
FUTURE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.
Ok, so thirteen and above. Now we know.
If you put this in context to all of the other things he’s said and done, then it’s a no brainer that 12 is the bottom age.
The Epstein Files: Trump, Trafficking, and the Unraveling Cover-Up
put together by auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
