Domestic consequences of the 2024 US presidential election: the quickening

[Uragan]

Sure but the observation holds in other comparisons
Insular pre-Nixon China vs Taiwan is a very similar scenario

And trade-friendly post-Nixon China certainly seems to have learned the lesson.

I don’t think I can agree with that either.

 

[VividVerism]

Well, was he wrong? These tariffs are going to drive huge D gains in 2026 midterms.

I don't want to count those chickens before they hatch. A democratic win, if not a blowout, was predicted in Congress for all 3 elections Trump ran in, IIRC, and did not come anywhere close.

In the meantime: Trump's policies are causing real harms to real people, and need to be resisted.

 

[elliptic]

Trump often invokes William McKinley as his favorite president.

Didn’t he get shot? I thought he preferred presidents who didn’t get shot. /s

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

So, given the new tariffs, how long before USians consumers start feeling the pain? Do you have any insight?

I guess not too long, probably less than three months, when inventories will have to be replenished and companies will start to charge consumers for the tariffs. My understanding is that stagflation is coming and it will hit hard in the US (and also in Europe), while the rest of the world tries to figure out how to keep on doing business without US consumers.

At least I guess that every USian, including hardcore MAGAs, will understand how much the US used to rely on cheap manufacturing.

I've been waiting on the new Unifi XG 10g switches with POE+++, and the arrival has been bumped from March to "coming soon." I have no clue if the Ubiquiti Canada store imports stock from the US or directly from their manufacturers in China. I'm hoping for the direct route because otherwise, I suspect they are sitting out bringing them in until something falls apart.

 

[Dzov]

I've been waiting on the new Unifi XG 10g switches with POE+++, and the arrival has been bumped from March to "coming soon." I have no clue if the Ubiquiti Canada store imports stock from the US or directly from their manufacturers in China. I'm hoping for the direct route because otherwise, I suspect they are sitting out bringing them in until something falls apart.

Oh shit. We were thinking about replacing our infrastructure at work and I didn't even think of tariffs months back when estimating prices. Oh well.

 

[reimu240p]

Also since places like walmart live off of cheap foreign goods it's going to be very funny to see the fallout (not that i'm opposed to walmart going belly up but a lot of people take big box stores and their cheap goods for granted).

Just read this:
View: https://medium.com/@aletheisthenes/on-april-20th-2025-the-united-states-will-cross-the-point-of-no-return-0aecac04cfc3


As a European it sounds implausible but with Trump anything's plausible. What do you people think?

Could see it happening but i think balkanization is more likely in the long term rather than trump turning the entire US into a fully authoritarian state. "resist the militias" also get fit and find like minded people. Finally stop using smartphones and social media. get comfortable with utilities like tor as well if online surveillance crackdowns do happen, would highly recommend to start scrubbing social media profiles.

 

[Ajar]

Well, was he wrong? These tariffs are going to drive huge D gains in 2026 midterms.

Not if the midterms don't happen, which apparently James Carville also says...

But also, no. I think Democratic politicians should be following the examples of Booker and Sanders, rather than James Carville's recommendations.

 

[LtKernelPanic]

So, given the new tariffs, how long before USians consumers start feeling the pain? Do you have any insight?

I guess not too long, probably less than three months, when inventories will have to be replenished and companies will start to charge consumers for the tariffs. My understanding is that stagflation is coming and it will hit hard in the US (and also in Europe), while the rest of the world tries to figure out how to keep on doing business without US consumers.

At least I guess that every USian, including hardcore MAGAs, will understand how much the US used to rely on cheap manufacturing.

As someone who works in retail I processed a bunch of price increases yesterday for my department. Could be just a coincidence but who knows what the he’ll is going on anymore.

 

[GohanIYIan]

I don't want to count those chickens before they hatch. A democratic win, if not a blowout, was predicted in Congress for all 3 elections Trump ran in, IIRC, and did not come anywhere close.

In the meantime: Trump's policies are causing real harms to real people, and need to be resisted.

That's not true. A GOP House majority was definitely the mainstream prediction in 2016, and while there was some hope of retaking the Senate it was still a bit of a long shot. I also don't think it's really true of 2024 where Democrats would have had to run the table in the swing states and their two red state seats to hold onto a slim majority.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

Oh shit. We were thinking about replacing our infrastructure at work and I didn't even think of tariffs months back when estimating prices. Oh well.

I'm in the same boat. I've got a badly needed network infrastructure rebuild, and I have to retire our production vSphere cluster as the hardware is EOL.

 

[Dmytry]

Also since places like walmart live off of cheap foreign goods it's going to be very funny to see the fallout (not that i'm opposed to walmart going belly up but a lot of people take big box stores and their cheap goods for granted).

Could see it happening but i think balkanization is more likely in the long term rather than trump turning the entire US into a fully authoritarian state. "resist the militias" also get fit and find like minded people. Finally stop using smartphones and social media. get comfortable with utilities like tor as well if online surveillance crackdowns do happen, would highly recommend to start scrubbing social media profiles.

I think it's a cargo-cult attempt at a dictatorship.

They look at something like Russia where Putin simply started a huge war that completely fucked their economy, and he's fine. They also look at propaganda against every-unfriendly-dictator-who-got-sanctioned-by-the-US-ever. The latter's economy is doing terrible, of course.

But it is a consequence, or at most, a correlation. It is not the cause of a dictatorship, except at times indirectly (e.g. when CIA or KGB turn a banana republic into a dictatorship when their favorite leader fucks up the economy and faces a loss in the elections).

Fucking up the economy is not good for the dictatorship project. Even a well established dictatorship can collapse when fucking around like this.

edit: ultimately i sort of feel that the election hinges not on election rigging and economy, but on whether they overestimate how much they can get away with, or not.

After his 2016 win, Trump said that if the US didn't have electoral college, then he would have campaigned differently and he would have won anyway.

And I think there is a lot of truth to this, not in the part that he would have won anyway but in the sense that, yes, the way they act depends on how well democracy works. If they think they can rig the elections more, then they make use of that to institute policies that turn more voters against them.

The outcome of the election thus hinges not on how much they rig the elections or how much they turn their voters against them, but on how well they estimate everything - if they overestimate they will lose, if they don't overestimate they win.

If they think they can disenfranchise ten million voters, that means they will institute policies that lose them ten million voters, comparing to the situation where they don't think they can disenfranchise anyone.

 

[Lt_Storm]

:: stares in 2008 ::

Color me skeptical.

how we handled 2020 gives a little hope that we won't do that again.

 

[Lt_Storm]

This is something I wrote a few years back, during the first round of "we need a revolution" talk during the first Trump administration. It still holds.

“We need a revolution!” You have no idea what you’re asking for.

“We need a revolution!”…you say, from the comfort of your computer, powered via a reliable grid, which also powers the fridge where you have food you purchased from the supermarket, which had produce and such trucked in across a functional highway system, from highly productive farms, with knowledge that you are protected by both a police and fire department, that you have recourse to the law, and that you are minutes away from expert emergency health care.

It’s easy to talk about revolutions when you’re in a position of comfort. Somehow, I don’t think you’d be so eager if you experienced the reality of such a war. Everything I listed above — all of it — would be gone for the duration…and quite likely for a long recovery period afterward. We’d slip into third-world status, and it would take us years to climb up to even a modicum of stability again. And the best part? You probably won't get what you want out of said revolution, as these things have a nasty tendency to go awry, get co-opted by fanatics and/or cults of personality, and you wind up with a glorified banana republic (or a whole slew of same claiming bits of the dismembered corpse of the United States).

This isn’t the late-18th century, with largely self-sufficient local communities. This is the 21st century, and revolution means mass death on a scale that would make COVID-19 look like a picnic by comparison. Want to see what a modern revolution looks like? Take a peek at Syria’s reality since 2011…and multiply that several-fold to account for the vast size and population of the United States.

We don’t need a revolution. Nor do 99% of those who claim we do actually want the reality of one. What we need is to reclaim our political process. And that means more than going and voting on the day of the general election. No, it means we need to re-engage the process fully. We need to educate ourselves — from reliable, objective sources, not the bucket of tripe out there in the blogosphere — about the issues and the candidates… and where there are no good candidates, we need to become the candidates. We need to talk with our neighbors, our families, our friends, and actually discuss policies and platforms. We need to make damned well certain that we are there, en masse, at every single election: local, primary, general. Those primaries are particularly important, because we need to stop them from being controlled by the diehard fringe that always shows up to these traditionally low-turnout events. We need to communicate clearly and from a position of knowledge with our elected representatives: by direct contact, by editorials, and yes, by social media. We need to oppose with every dram of strength corporate lobbies, and do so by pressuring our elected representatives at every stage of the process to institute legislative reform — and if necessary, Constitutional amendment — to rein in undue control by oligarchs of our political process.

None of that makes as easy a soundbyte as “revolution”. It certainly doesn’t sound as exciting. And it may be less viscerally appealing than the thought of brandishing rifles and yelling war cries. But unless you really want to see the U.S. carved up into dozens of Ukraines, Iraqs, and Somalias, it’s the realistic choice that yields the desired result.

On one hand, you aren't wrong, violent revolutions are absolutely horrible. But, then, not all revolutions are built on violence; hell reclaiming our political process is still a revolution of a different sort. Which brings us to the real point about revolutions: they are inevitable. We can see this in how the New Deal destroyed the prior status quo of monopoly capitalism, and we can see it likewise in the 1970s-present conservative rebellion against the new deal. So, the question isn't so much one of do we need one or not, but, instead: what is the revolution going to look like?

Is it going to be a coup where a dictator takes power and abuses the populous? Seems likely today. Is it going to be us realizing that those oligarchs have nothing good planned for us and taking political power? That would be nice. The thing is that, regardless, either way, there will be a counterrevolution which follows. And whether that revolution is peaceful depends much on who wins the fight today. After all, there is no more certain way to have the next revolution be violent than making peaceful resistance ineffective or impossible. Because, if resistance and revolution are inevitable, and you make peaceful resistance and revolution impossible, only violence is left.

Which is really why authoritarianism is always dangerous. In democracy, revolution is, typically, a simple affair; often it goes entirely unnoticed. For democracy is built on the peaceful transfer of power, so, when the revolution becomes necessary, voters vote, and the current unstable regime is gone. But, once authoritarianism takes hold, that stops working, which means that, eventually, once the authoritarian state has overreached, the revolution will be violent, for there is no other option. This is why ideas like authoritarianism and monarchy are fundamentally broken: the offer no other out. Which means they make violent revolution inevitable. And, as we have already established, violent revolutions are absolutely horrible.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

I'm in the same boat. I've got a badly needed network infrastructure rebuild, and I have to retire our production vSphere cluster as the hardware is EOL.

Slightly off topic, but I could avoid some of the tariffs because I’ve a four node VxRails cluster sitting idle because Dell forgot the ESXi licensing and then Broadcom happened.

I’m tempted to repurpose the cluster into a Proxmox cluster and migrate to it. Then I’ve only got to deal with the network infrastructure cost increases.

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

Is it going to be a coup where a dictator takes power and abuses the populous?

This has already happened. You've essentially got Palpatine enthroned, with "I am the houses!" to paraphrase.

Except he's nowhere near as competent as Palpatine, doesn't wield the Force, and it's unlikely a granddaughter will take him down.

 

[Lt_Storm]

This has already happened. You've essentially got Palpatine enthroned, with "I am the houses!" to paraphrase.

Except he's nowhere near as competent as Palpatine, doesn't wield the Force, and it's unlikely a granddaughter will take him down.

It's started, but, the fat lady isn't singing.... yet.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

It's started, but, the fat lady isn't singing.... yet.

Until a challenge to Trump & MAGA's authority is decisive, successful, and sustaining, which has not happened, then it's waaaaaaaaaaay past "started", and well into entrenched.

One of my litmus tests for if this is transient or terminal is getting these people quickly, safely out of El Salvador and permanently shuttering this insane pursuit by the Trump Administration.

There could not be a more clear, cut & dry existential abuse of government authority than:

• Sending some people to a foreign gulag with zero due process.
• Admission by the government that it shouldn't have sent them.
• Refusal to rectify it.

At present, there is literally nothing standing in the way of this behavior being expanded to cover more people: citizens, dissidents, opposition politicians, directors & officers of businesses... other than the Trump Administration just not bothering to push that far.

It's possible the only reason you can't hear the fat lady singing is because she's already bound, gagged, and disappeared to a gulag.

 

[N4M8-]

Except he's nowhere near as competent as Palpatine, doesn't wield the Force, and it's unlikely a granddaughter will take him down.

Does that mean we cannot hope Vance will toss him down a power shaft?

 

[Macam]

Until a challenge to Trump & MAGA's authority is decisive, successful, and sustaining, which has not happened, then it's waaaaaaaaaaay past "started", and well into entrenched.

One of my litmus tests for if this is transient or terminal is getting these people quickly, safely out of El Salvador and permanently shuttering this insane pursuit by the Trump Administration.

There could not be a more clear, cut & dry existential abuse of government authority than:

• Sending some people to a foreign gulag with zero due process.
• Admission by the government that it shouldn't have sent them.
• Refusal to rectify it.

At present, there is literally nothing standing in the way of this behavior being expanded to cover more people: citizens, dissidents, opposition politicians, directors & officers of businesses... other than the Trump Administration just not bothering to push that far.

It's possible the only reason you can't hear the fat lady singing is because she's already bound, gagged, and disappeared to a gulag.

About that:



Link

 

[N4M8-]

About that:

Link

Should be sufficient for impeachment and removal. But doubtlessly Republican will downplay it.

 

[Lt_Storm]

Until a challenge to Trump & MAGA's authority is decisive, successful, and sustaining, which has not happened, then it's waaaaaaaaaaay past "started", and well into entrenched.

Certainly headed that direction. On the other hand, McCarthism was entrenched until very suddenly it wasn't.

One of my litmus tests for if this is transient or terminal is getting these people quickly, safely out of El Salvador and permanently shuttering this insane pursuit by the Trump Administration.

There could not be a more clear, cut & dry existential abuse of government authority than:

• Sending some people to a foreign gulag with zero due process.
• Admission by the government that it shouldn't have sent them.
• Refusal to rectify it.

At present, there is literally nothing standing in the way of this behavior being expanded to cover more people: citizens, dissidents, opposition politicians, directors & officers of businesses... other than the Trump Administration just not bothering to push that far.

Yes, this would be the reason I said "Seems likely today". I'm not particularly optimistic. But, it all isn't settled yet either. We are in the middle of the singularity, past the event horizon, predicting what lies beyond is inherently fraught, even when it seems likely that things aren't going to shake out well.

It's possible the only reason you can't hear the fat lady singing is because she's already bound, gagged, and disappeared to a gulag.

Very possible, but, more likely, because I am not willing to give up hope. Alternately, because, by the time she does sing, things are going to be still worse yet and we will look back at these ramblings as the optimistic hopes of a sweet summer child. As I said, not optimistic but still hopeful.

 

[sporkman]

But like Palpatine, it all ends with Trump. Quite literally, no other human on this planet has the same level of political power as he does. JD Vance doesn't. Absolutely no one in the GOP can garner the same level of followers. It really all begins and ends with Trump.

I always thought that part of the Star Wars stories were stupid, but it is oddly appropriate. Even "Operation Cinder" is analogous to now.

I think the tanking of the stock market is Trump's revenge for being prosecuted during the Biden admin. It's a feature, not a bug.

 

[sporkman]

Should be sufficient for impeachment and removal. But doubtlessly Republican will downplay it.

I think Republicans kind of know that's where it will end but they're all in denial and are more comfortable relitigating wokeness. There likely are conversations behind closed doors about the possibility of removal, but no one has the guts yet. They're all still waiting to see what he does next because the first one through the door will get destroyed.

But like if you see the Apple and Walmart corporations sinking like the titanic, you bet the GOP will finally grow a backbone.

 

[Shavano]

I think Republicans kind of know that's where it will end but they're all in denial and are more comfortable relitigating wokeness. There likely are conversations behind closed doors about the possibility of removal, but no one has the guts yet. They're all still waiting to see what he does next because the first one through the door will get destroyed.

But like if you see the Apple and Walmart corporations sinking like the titanic, you bet the GOP will finally grow a backbone.

I doubt it. You couldn't have a meeting of two Republicans without one of them worrying the other is going to tattle to Trump.

 

[tigas]

There is an absolutely brilliant podcast series called "Revolution" by Mike Duncan (IIRC) which covers in depth a ton of different revolutions through history. If there is a lesson I learned from that podcast serie is that as a revolutionary, you always know when you start a revolution and what your end goals are but once you've kicked that chaos engine into action there is absolutely no guarantees that the end result will be anything what you hoped for nor how much blood and tears you will have to pay for that chaotic outcome.

So yeah, by all means, any path to reform is per definition better than a revolution. On the other hand, the gop has rigged the system so thoroughly that I really don't see what a path to reform within the system could be.

IIRC, Duncan's reflections on the common themes from all the revolutions is on the Appendices
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/page/2/
Duncan being Duncan, it's still 12 episodes and 6 hours. But don't let that stop you.

 

[sporkman]

I doubt it. You couldn't have a meeting of two Republicans without one of them worrying the other is going to tattle to Trump.

Well, the GOP waking up to the tariffs is the only way out of this. You have to understand that tariffs are a huge no-no for the institutional and establishment GOP. They are ideologically for free trade and economic efficiency. That's why Mitch McConnell spoke against them. And reports are that the GOP hates these tariffs with a passion, but are afraid of speaking up. Eventually the damage from the tariffs will push them to speak up.

 

[Shavano]

Well, the GOP waking up to the tariffs is the only way out of this. You have to understand that tariffs are a huge no-no for the institutional and establishment GOP. They are ideologically for free trade and economic efficiency. That's why Mitch McConnell spoke against them. And reports are that the GOP hates these tariffs with a passion, but are afraid of speaking up. Eventually the damage from the tariffs will push them to speak up.

They're still more afraid of Trump than of their constituents.

Our task is to change that.

 

[Deleted member 326875]

It will start with the undesirable first. Colored people, LGBTQ+, etc. People, who GOP voters, hate already. There may not much fight from the GOP.

I hope they will at least drop me off at China instead of Latin America....(nothing against Latin America, but I am not from there).

Tariff hurting the right people may be the only hope of stopping the madness. However, the immigration portion may still go ahead even if Tariff is stopped.

 

[Deleted member 14629]

I hope they will at least drop me off at China instead of Latin America....(nothing against Latin America, but I am not from there).

Let's be real, the next step is one well-trod by authoritarian governments. Dropping them off in the nearest body of water. It's so infamous historically, it has a term: death flights.

 

[Lt_Storm]

Well, the GOP waking up to the tariffs is the only way out of this. You have to understand that tariffs are a huge no-no for the institutional and establishment GOP. They are ideologically for free trade and economic efficiency. That's why Mitch McConnell spoke against them. And reports are that the GOP hates these tariffs with a passion, but are afraid of speaking up. Eventually the damage from the tariffs will push them to speak up.

I suppose we will soon see, after all 20% was supposedly the threshold that would have CEOs and the former GOP establishment up in arms. We are there now*, so we will see if it comes to nothing or not.

* edit: Or perhaps not, looks like it might only be 15% right now... But we aren't at the bottom yet.

 

[Neill78]

Does that mean we cannot hope Vance will toss him down a power shaft?

Vance will get force-choked in the first battle for bringing the fleet out of hyperspace too close to the liberal base.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

When 4 "black swans" show up in 24 years (2001, 2008, 2020, 2025) maybe they're just "swans" now?

I don't consider 2001, 2008 or 2020 to be "black swan" events. Rather mundane market crashes.

I rode out all 3 as a stock (broad based, low cost mutual funds like VTI) investor.

This is different.

Maybe the difference in perspective is that I originally posted in a Boardroom thread and the post was moved here.

 

[Macam]

I don't consider 2001, 2008 or 2020 to be "black swan" events. Rather mundane market crashes.

I rode out all 3 as a stock (broad based, low cost mutual funds like VTI) investor.

This is different.

Maybe the difference in perspective is that I originally posted in a Boardroom thread and the post was moved here.

Regardless of the classification, I agree with the distinction on this one for a few reasons.

One, it’s entirely self inflicted.

Two, it’s self inflicted precisely because it’s qualitatively different in that the previous three events occurred against the backdrop of the globalized, post WWII order that led to free trade and general, broad prosperity. This is looking to materially overturn that order basically overnight and it will spill over because of the US size and influence and the timing.

Three, it’s coming combination of all the other shenanigans, in terms of wholesale dismantling the federal government, which has its own ramifications, but basically will accentuate the problems, certainly domestically.

So the usual advice of “chill, keep calm and carry on” doesn’t necessarily apply here.

 

[CPX]

Four, the normal tools of economic recovery won't be available once we do remove our collective heads from our collective asses given the first three.

 

[Visigoth]

They're still more afraid of Trump than of their constituents.

Our task is to change that.

But isn't that the reason they are not speaking out against Trump already due to them being afraid of their constituents? Since if they speak out against Trump they are likely to get primaried by their own constituents that are fully in support of Trump. Sure we're seeing some push back in some of the recent town halls, but will that be enough for them to feel safe to openly oppose Trump if they are up for re-election soon?

 

[SomeHandleThatStartsWithS]

But like Palpatine, it all ends with Trump. Quite literally, no other human on this planet has the same level of political power as he does. JD Vance doesn't. Absolutely no one in the GOP can garner the same level of followers. It really all begins and ends with Trump.

I always thought that part of the Star Wars stories were stupid, but it is oddly appropriate. Even "Operation Cinder" is analogous to now.

I think the tanking of the stock market is Trump's revenge for being prosecuted during the Biden admin. It's a feature, not a bug.

I don’t think it does. There’s been irreparable damage to the state. The GOP and its backers have gotten what they want, and have the hands in every lever of power to remain there. At least with out significant, systematic and structural change.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Well Congress wants to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where NPR gets a good chunk of its funds (mostly indirectly because local affiliates buy programming from it using federal funds). Or they keep threatening to, anyway, but I've always interpreted the threat as an attempt to bully NPR and PBS into more favorable coverage of Republicans.

Unfortunately, I still hear a lot of "sanewashing" of the Trump/MAGA actions/programs when I listen to NPR.

Would the people step up and contribute enough to keep those services running if they really cut off CPB funds? Maybe. If so, I think those services would become better, no longer having to beg from government and no longer having to care about losing the good will of the government. They're already the best news sources I know of in the US.

A couple of decades back I spent years putting quite a bit of money and a massive amount of volunteer hours into independent radio. To quite good effect.

If NPR is willing to get on the ball and hardcore about reporting - yeah, I'd go back to significant support. But they need to stop the sanewashing.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

But isn't that the reason they are not speaking out against Trump already due to them being afraid of their constituents? Since if they speak out against Trump they are likely to get primaried by their own constituents that are fully in support of Trump. Sure we're seeing some push back in some of the recent town halls, but will that be enough for them to feel safe to openly oppose Trump if they are up for re-election soon?

Here's my position as a voter to the politicians of whatever stripe:

Meaningfully oppose Trump and cripple his agenda, or millions of us will do our best to ensure you never hold office again.

 

[The Sheep Look Up]

Unfortunately, I still hear a lot of "sanewashing" of the Trump/MAGA actions/programs when I listen to NPR.

"Decorum", "professionalism", and an ombudsman and board that are utterly fucking terrified of ever being criticized as liberal by the frothing right wing loonysphere.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

Very possible, but, more likely, because I am not willing to give up hope. Alternately, because, by the time she does sing, things are going to be still worse yet and we will look back at these ramblings as the optimistic hopes of a sweet summer child. As I said, not optimistic but still hopeful.

Interpreting any of my positions as having given up hope writ large would be a gross misinterpretation.

It would be worth rigorously disambiguating hope from denial.

Denial stands in the way of changing what we're doing that's not working. Hope is what motivates adaptation to create opportunities to achieve different results.