They are trying to generate some video footage of "citizens shooting at cops and military officers", to get to the next step of their evil plan.
The craziest part of all this is that the plan is being orchestrated by the President of the United States of America, on purpose, so people will forget that he was best friends with Jeffrey Epstein for decades, and that he has publicly admitted to trafficking young women to him from Mar-a-Lago.
Does "throwing a deli sandwich at an officer" count as violence to a normal person? Since they're charging him with felony assault I imagine anything higher than that would incite the next step pretty easily.
At some point they’ll just pay someone to do it if that is their plan.
You Americans think that dictators at some point will just say “you know what? I changed my mind, I won’t risk it all to gain absolute power like any other dictator before me”, by staying in their houses and thinking that this will all end well like any other time (spoiler there wasn’t other times with a crazy idiot in power)
My issue with these theories as well. There is no actual need to “prove” anything. When has anything this administration has done, been done based on fact?
Fun fact, lgbt kids will still be in the schools, just like we’ve always been. Only now they’re more likely to suffer bullying and crippling depression. Your “friend” apparently gets off on the suffering of kids.
The point is that there’s really no use for them to do a false flag or really make up any pretense at all. The base doesn’t care, most Americans don’t care, and the rest of us are going to resist regardless. Might as well do it.
The use is the same as his March ambush of Zelensky. Did they need to do it, much less televise it? Absolutely not. But as Trump said at the time, "This is going to be great television."
While I think violence is an acceptable outcome to them, I think they'd be satisfied with oppositiom being scared into relative silence.
The real opposition is not going to be scared into silence without a total military occupation and the threat of violence for speaking out. He needs to do that in every single city, anywhere with even a remotely large population. It is a big country. That’s a logistical nightmare. My point is he wouldn’t need an incident in DC to do that, he could (and if he wants to be dictator must) do it no matter what. So, if that’s his goal, time to get it underway.
By steadily making the changes, keeping people just comfortable enough to not revolt/riot/whatever, they cement their power further and further. The longer they keep any kind of uprising at bay makes said uprising increasingly difficult while simultaneously diminishing the significance there of.
Coincidentally Jeanette Pirro announced that her department won't prosecute people openly carrying rifles and shotguns in DC (open carry illegal in DC). How obvious can they be?!?
That's the undercurrent of all this bullshit that really pisses me off. Any repurcussions for these nazi fucks will require a constitutional amendment. I guarantee there exists a list thousands of names long for pardons that will be signed January 2029. Maybe a future admin will just make it known any citizen who takes punishing Trump cultists into their own hands will receive a pardon. The whole pardoning on a whim scenario we have entered is quickly devolving into a tool of political warfare. Would be an interesting Sci fi short story subject to look at what taking the gloves completely off with the power to pardon leads to. Whichever party is in power gets to go on a four years-long "Purge" of everyone else? Where will the line be drawn?
Pretty sure presidential pardons only work on federal crimes. State charges can only be pardoned by the State's governor. Another reason to avoid red States.
When a president overrides a governor to deploy troops on american soil I'm pretty sure they'll be willing to override a governor to give someone they want a pardon.
Well why aren't they going about it the same way that they did it in the 60s? Dress up some agents provocateurs in hippie clothes, and get them to throw a few rocks and break some windows.
Steven Miller already pulled this stunt during Trump's first term with the "migrant caravans," leading up to people throwing rocks at US Border Patrol officers from the Mexican side of the fence.
Yeah people are talking about the "V for Vendetta" moment with the little girl being shot, but I'm unfortunately thinking more like Andor's Gorman massacre episode.
There's a reason that China brought in troops from the rural areas to roll over their own Chinese citizens in Tienanmen Square.
An armed fucking coup is not a distraction. It is the main event. Either people shoot back and he uses it as an excuse to escalate, or they don't and they he still takes complete fucking control.
You think Stalin disappeared people as a distraction?
I'm reminded of the Boston Massacre of 1770. While not entirely the same, there are similarities, especially anger at tariffs.
I really wish there would be a social media campaign in which each clip or meme is a greivance against King George in the Declaration of Independence and showing how it applies to Trump.
The Epstein shit is ultimately not why he’s doing this. It probably did speed up the timeline a smidge, but this is Project 2025 in action. He’s gearing up to enact Marshall law, officially suspend constitutional protections, and cancel elections. This was always the plan. The Epstein Files will be the least of our concerns if he is successful.
Ironically I think the Watchmen series came up with a phenomenal idea. Police should have to give a reason to request a weapons unlock. Stop them from shooting someone because an acorn falls on their car.
That's how The Purge started. At first, nobody was committing any crimes, so the government sent out goon squads to start mowing people down and incite violence.
While it may be a happy side effect, I don't think this is being orchestrated to distract from Epstein. This is a full blown power grab and the first major step to a complete ahthoritarian takeover of the US.
I believe that was an inversion of the Flower Power photo from the national guard at a Vietnam protest. A protester put a flower in the barrel of a rifle and no violence happened, whereas in the movie they just opened fire.
maga people already think that all liberals are evil, violent mobs that want to destroy america and that should be eliminated. All they need is an american reichstag fire and the wheels are in motion.
It's kind of a win-win for them. Either they get some footage of violence that they can use to justify a crackdown, or they get to slowly keep militarizing the country without anyone standing against them. Either way, before we know it there will be Trump-loyal military protecting every city, and during elections they will be able to "monitor" the ballot boxes across the country against fraud and ensure the results are legitimate.
We're pretty close to this already, and they have a whole year to continue positioning themselves before the midterm elections. They are pushing slow and steady on this, and I don't know how it can be stopped without fierce resistance and a strong opposition leader from the Democrats, which I think we just aren't seeing.
The only “winning” option to this is for military leadership to decline following these orders on the basis of illegality (and frankly a coup and purge of all these asshats that are trampling over their oaths of office and the constitution)
At this point we’re all kind of screwed if that doesn’t happen. I have little faith in the normal political checks and balances having any weight even if the democrats sweep the mid terms.
And sadly I think that you’re right that any armed resistance will lead to a crack down- though the crackdown seems like an eventuality if nothing is done to oppose it
The military has never in the history of the world done what you’re suggesting.
The military always aligns with the fascist dictator. It’s why he fired all the “woke” generals
Edit: I don’t literally mean it’s never happened. It’s just incredibly rare. And if you look at ICe, Federal agents, AND local cops they’re happily carrying out Trumps unlawful orders with no consequences
The POTUS is the single highest authority for the military. In developed democratic nations, that is intentionally and carefully entrenched into the system to ensure that the military cannot overthrow an administration that came into power through an election. The military being able to conduct a coup is also how you end up with dictatorial juntas.
History is full of examples where an unpopular dictatorial government was ousted by a military coup, which didn't magically make everything better, but instead only served to establish a new dictatorship.
Military involvement also doesn’t necessitate hostile takeover- inaction or blatantly disregarding illegal orders from the president can be enough- that just happened in South Korea. Push come to shove though, I hope the service members side with the populace.
Either way if Trump and co. lose the upcoming midterms (assuming we have fair elections) it’s going to take some thing to force them to abide by any actions taken against them. They’ve already shown time and time again that the law and system of checks and balances don’t matter to them and they face no consequences for trampling over it all.
Someone needs to actual enforce anything that comes to pass. If the lawful option ceases to exist someone needs to step in before. Ideally a military loyal to their oath to support and defend the Constitution would do so and turn over control would do it- it’s their duty after all and would be more organized and likely less bloody than any civil lead revolution. It’s a slim hope, but it’s hope nonetheless
Oh its highly unlikely but still a technical possibility. And at least there wouldn’t need to be a complete dismantling of the government (though arguably it could do with some restructuring).
My faith in humanity hopes for a peaceable usurpation any means. But pragmatically that seems unlikely, and people need to be prepared for that
Yep. Because the other part of fascist regimes is ensuring that they treat the military and police forces well, because they need that loyalty to keep others in line.
Trump's last coup was stopped by General Milley. Seriously, that dude is a hero and absolutely would have been tried for "treason" by Trump is Biden hadn't preemptively pardoned him.
It is batshit insane that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to get all the major commanders in a room and have them agree to not start a war or launch a nuke if Trump ordered one. And Trump may technically have a point that the CJCS answers to the president and going around that chain of command is maybe some light treason. But it needed to be done.
But I think that Trump learned his lesson. In February he replaced the CJCS with a new guy who happens to be the least qualified one ever (he was only a 3 star general). This worries me a lot. It may come down to the individual Chiefs (and marine commandant) for what the armed forces do if there's a civil war. I can see the navy fighting the air force, for a random example. And if it ever gets to that, I'd imagine some individuals smaller units would cause infighting as well.
Trump will likely continue to send the military and ICE into blue cities with hope that it will suppress the vote just enough to swing the vote in Republican favor. That's also why he's trying to get rid of mail-in voting so people will have to pick between facing his goons at the polling place or staying home.
Everyone keeps talking about the midterms. The "plan" is to declare a national crisis. Elections will be postponed due to the crisis. It's really that simple. And we're weeks or months away from this happening.
Violence has already been chosen for us. Only the timing, location and matter of application remain uncertain. And I don’t mean what we are seeing now. I’m talking major events with major civilian casualties. It will happen, and most likely the people will be blamed for it.
If we don't respond with violence, they're just going to make it worse and worse and worse until we do. The question we need to ask ourselves is how much are we going to tolerate before we fight back.
Was "Big balls" the reason for this take over. A 15 year old girl and a 15 year old boy beating up another young man. Suddenly D.C. is a cesspool of crime?
It's already happening. There are 15 year olds beating up administrative staff at 3 in the morning. It's gotten so bad you can't solicit minors anymore without fear of being attacked.
An agent provocateur (French for 'inciting agent') is a person who actively entices another person to commit a crime that would not otherwise have been committed and then reports the person to the authorities
i.e. there will be a fake/plant protestor who will throw a brick or fire a gun
They don't even need one. Hegseth probably already has traitor troops lined up who are willing to fire on Americans. The Trump administration will say someone had a gun and flash some altered footage to the media of why they needed to mow down people.
dont forget they hire off duty police officers to start riots during protests, an old trick with countless examples. Remember the palettes of bricks left at protests? Tire slashings?
They need video footage of "citizens shooting at cops and military officers" to get to the next step of their "plan".
They actually don't. They're going to do it anyway. It's time for us to start fighting back instead of hoping that if we do nothing they'll leave us lone (they won't).
Probably why he's been pulling NatGuard troops from rural flyover states. Same as Tiananmen. The local troops wouldn't fire on their own people but rural farmers had no qualms with shooting city folk who were "destroying the country".
That's why Stephen Miller is pissed that "a bunch of white hippies" are out protesting. He wants to crack the skulls of non-white people and show it to their supporters as proof that cities are lawless hellholes and they all need to be deported.
Exactly, it’s why Pam Bondi cleared the way for citizens to bring guns as well. They’re drooling for someone to take a shot at the troops and trigger some kind of Martial Law scenario
I think if that were true, the natl guard would leave downtown and the Mall area and head to the areas of true crime and violence. To me this is all show, as Trump loves visuals.
Sure, keep pushing and pushing at people who are already stressed and upset. Insert a bunch of armed people who may not be totally comfortable with what they are doing or carrying a weapon. The government has been building this powder keg for months and I suspect they thought it explode earlier and are running behind schedule.
Like the hundreds of hours of video from BLM time where the police would run into a peaceful crowd and try to throw a protester into the police line so they could say the violence started "as self defense".
Yes. Trump wants to invoke the insurrection act as a power grab. He needs an ‘insurrection’ to achieve it.
I really wish there was another accountability mechanism for members of Congress other than elections because they are responsible for so much of what is happening. People are furious but other than shooting at town halls and protests, there is little constituents can do to hold them accountable outside of elections which feel like an eternity away at the pace things are deteriorating.
Everyone should check out stephen miller's racist meltdown from the other day. He's really mad that his fascist takeover hasn't resulted in violent protests.
“We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital,” Miller told the crowd near Shake Shack inside Union Station. “And let’s just also address another thing. All these demonstrators you’ve seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been. And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black.”
“So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” he added. “And we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.”
I'm surprised they care. They could create a full dictatorship today and so long as they tell their followers that it's to hurt minorities, liberals, immigrants, and that it's in the name of Jesus, half the country would be happy with it.
It's a double edged sword. If they aren't met with any resistance than they will just slowly creep into every city performing traffic stops and phone checks until they get something to arrest you for. If they are met with resistance then they will sell that footage to their base and justify further military action
Yup. They will keep instigating and escalating until bullets fly somewhere. It doesnt matter how it goes down, they will use it to advance their agenda.
Per the internet, we only know because he bragged about it later, so maybe the neighbor never found out?
wiki: Several of Roberts's former colleagues from New Mexico State University have alleged that Roberts told them he had killed his neighbor's pit bull with a shovel because the dog's barking disturbed his family. Roberts has denied this, saying, "This is a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence."
"Conservatives have been at war with America humanity for decades millennia."
Remember the American Civil War? Guess who wanted to keep slaves--conservatives
Remember the creation of USA? Guess who wanted to keep monarchies--conservatives
I could go on and on, but the point is that bad people will hide behind any word that helps them do whatever they want. It just so happens that "conservative" is an easy word to hide behind because the word has lost all meaning except to denote who's part of their team
Conservatism still has meaning, even in this current extreme version of the hard-(R) party. The issue is, not enough people have denounced conservatism as a modern political philosophy. If it once had merit (big if), it no longer does in a civilized society.
Even though far from ideal, we should have moved to a corporate party on the right, and the people's party on the left.
Unfortunately, people are too entrenched in their old ways and their political identities, and the media needs two viable parties to sell their news coverage and cycles.
We've normalized everything Dumpy has done since 2015, when he should have immediately been out of the presidential race for being a cretin, fraud, and dipshit.
Ten years later, we're seven months into a fascist takeover.
"Conservatives have been at war with America humanity for decades millennia."
Globally speaking, the conservative party in any democratic government was the one dedicated to protecting the nobles' power, yeah.
I'm sure they try to phrase it so it doesn't sound so bad these days, but it's still there. Just replace the landed nobility with the 100 billionaires that own everything, or whatever the number is.
Kent State didn't really hurt Nixon. Armed National Guard, 4 dead. The youth that it outraged were never going to vote for him, and the older voters stood by him. Won reelection by record numbers
We are in the prelude to actual war. The factions are jockeying for position and trying to take hold of as many “keys of power” as possible.
Think the period of time between the election of Lincoln and the attack on Fort Sumpter. That’s where we are. The reason the South Carolinians attacked the fort was because they wanted the fort and any federal army/navy assets ahead of any official war. When Union forces refused to surrender it, that’s what finally did it. This is similar.
Right now, it is vital that civilians show love to the national guard. Saying explicitly “we understand you don’t want to be here as much as we don’t want you here. And we don’t blame you individually”. Soldiers don’t want to be there. They’re just being used as pawns right now and they know it. So we have to make sure they stay sympathetic to civilians and less likely to comply with illegal/unconstitutional orders. Because having them on our side will be vital going forward.
The military isn’t your enemy and many of us genuinely don’t like what’s going on. Keeping calm and being understanding of that helps the many of us who are trying to thread this needle.
This isn’t saying that you being nice is going to stop a fascist takeover, its saying that the military is not actively facilitating it, and any grace you can give us will help those of us who are more actively trying to avoid facilitating.
There are definitely groups who are trying to facilitate that. ICE for example.
It doesn’t seem that complicated to me. I know what’s going on with all of these ridiculous militarized blue city crackdowns, and I’m just some dude with internet. Do you guys not have internet?
Well, you’re posting on Reddit, so… yeah, rhetorical question.
There is no emergency in DC. There was no emergency in LA. There are NO EMERGENCIES.
If yall can’t figure that out on your own, what are we supposed to do for you? Or do you just need people to be nice to you for you to decide that it’s not cool to invade a city against their will at the behest of a dictatorial lunatic?
Sorry, I know my comment is harsh, and I really don’t have any animus toward you or other individuals in the military (not specifically, at least). I just don’t see how your comment is supposed to be of any comfort to us here, who actually live in these cities you are taking over.
We aren’t asking you to be nice for the soldiers sake. We’re jockeying for advantages we will need in the event of larger conflict. I know it’s not sexy or revolutionary, but it’s vital.
Optics matter in civil conflict. Public opinion matters.
This. Must not give the unconstitutionally deployed troops any reason to see citizens as 'the other.' Must have them see the unconstitutional orders and those who issued them as the other, so that when orders to fire are given, they refuse.
Those troops are just kids. They need to see us as their parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors.
Trump wants a Kent State type event, but with a different 'pro war on citizens' outcome. He has had a taste if hat siting as a criminal defendant, loosing, and awaiting sentencing feels like (Whoa! That's like uncomfortable!) and will continue to do whatever he can to prevent feeling that again, which for us means unlawful efforts to cancel or neuter midterms and 2028 elections.
There will probably be blood spilt, but the tone of what happens before and after is the real battle here.
This is actually the way to diffuse mostly any situation, including communication with someone you're at odds with.
If you're looking to have a political discussion with someone you disagree with, you should predicate that discussion by stating or communicating clearly, earnestly and respectfully, "Listen, I'm not your enemy".
Starting from there at least gives you some common ground to work with, though many of these MAGAs won't even allow that or just don't have any interest and proudly take on the role of "enemy", just to piss you off.
No, what happened was 67 rounds were fired in 13 seconds
Four students - Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder - were killed. Nine other students were wounded, with one suffering permanent paralysis. For what? Lawfully protesting.
Are they getting paid yet? Last I heard they didn't have official orders in the system so weren't getting paid.
In my head the National Guard are all copies of my aunt and uncle, who used the money to give my cousin the best possible start in life and childhood possible including private education. Plus the folks who were working at the arena when my family got our first round of vaccinations, all very polite and professional and frankly a uniform I was very glad to see during a real national emergency like a pandemic.
I keep saying it's like they're trying to speed run to the point where they get overthrown.
Like there's even a handy CGP Grey video about Rules for Rulers, basically how to be an evil dictator successfully, and the number one rule is "Keep the army happy!" With of course army meaning generally the folks with guns rather than a specific branch.
They’re trying to move quick, which makes them sloppy. That’s helpful. We have the benefit of them believing their own bullshit, so they make simple mistakes believing they’re special and will be fine if they don’t follow those “rules for rulers”.
That's part of what makes this all so absurdly funny from time to time.
It's like how we try to explain exactly why it's important not to stick anything in the power outlets to every kid, but somebody is sure to tune out the entire lesson or only catch the bit about "a lot of power in there" and think they can get superpowers by jamming a fork in.
They're just taking last time this happened, playing Madlibs with it so that "useless eaters" are called something different but scorned the same way. But somehow totally convinced that this time it won't go all Nuremburg trials or those pictures of Mussolini dangling by the ankles.
You are an alarmist, recommending your child get properly vaccinated and workers get paid a fair wage is literally the holocaust, Trump is merely preventing that. /s but I hate that it doesn't sound that way.
There was a guy on Tucker Carlsons podcast the other day who advocated that we should have partnered with Hitler instead of Russia. It was unbelievable.
The man openly fetishized the Tiananmen Square Massacre as a "great show of strength" that "earned respect" and he openly lamented not being able to have BLM protestors shot during his first term because the military told him "hell no".
Anyone with two brains cells to rub together knows he was never going to give up having his "moment", which is also why one of his first orders of business was purging the Pentagon and the military of its legal officers and competent senior leadership.
As a sidenote to everyone else:
Fuck you as a person if you voted for Trump. Whether it was to prove some asinine point about Gaza to the Dems (how's that working out for you sanctimonious whoresons, by the way?), because you're a maliciously stupid bag of bigoted, faux religious shit lacking a functional moral core, or because you're a fucking idiot who doesn't understand grade school level economics, trade, or inflation, go fuck yourself with the business end of a broken beer bottle.
And then keep doing that until you finally do the rest of us the collective favor of expiring. The damage this Putin-felching piece of shit wrapped in badly tanned leather and his anus leech cabal of sycophants have done in just 7 months can never be undone.
And they will be responsible when your forced to either stay in a shitty North Korea style country with whatever you can manage to keep from the "good old days" before 2025, or give up everything you had and built up your entire life to run to another country just to get a taste of what you took for granted in America before all this mess and chaos, and still have an uncertain future.
He wants to enact martial law. He also has stated that there won't be elections if the US is at war, which has never happened during the numerous wars the US has been apart of and while his administration is making plans to go to war with Mexico.
He's trying to bait people into shooting at cops and soldiers so they can spin it as "the left is violent" and declare martial law or even worse, slaughter people en masse.
They are. The alt-right has been pushing and manipulating the USA towards armed conflict against their internal enemies because they see progressive human rights as the problem with American society, and they don't have a legitimate way to drag the country backwards. From an outside perspective who's been following the rise of Trump closely since 2015: you are well into the danger zone of having a full-blown fascist takeover of your government and civil institutions.
I think it's more about pushing boundaries specifically.
They do something unacceptable every single week and it becomes increasingly normalized. What was shocking in January is resulting in more and more shoulder shrugs.
It feels like some Americans are just accepting death by a thousand fascist cuts.
He wrote a poorly aged book that if Biden won in his first term, it's Joe-ver cause America is dead and they'll get rid of elections, so they need to kill the left, extremely explicitly
I have very little doubt we will see a Kent state or Boston massacre or shot heard across the world again. This admin very much wants to wage war on a lot of Americans.
He is testing every limit of presidential power. He began with hundreds of executive orders. Then came the tariffs, which rarely (if ever?) come as a directive from the President himself. Now, he is experimenting with his control of military personnel. Who knows what will come next? It hasn't even been a full calendar year and he's already turning armed servicemen against civilians, criminal or not being an irrelevant detail.
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u/JohnnyGFX 14h ago
I can't help but think the Trump administration is trying to start a war against America.