"Yes.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 Yes, it's been clear to me for some time now that the odious Farage and the odious Bannon are joined at the hip, both joined to Trump, too. If anyone thinks that the horrific situation now about to unfold in the US will be confined to that nation, they don't understand how interconnected the world is, and how active a global right-wing network is in engineering what's unfolding now.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lupus_blackfur I ask that question, too, but because I grew up in the US South during the Civil Rights period and saw first-hand the bitter determination of many of my fellow white Southerners to resist rights for people of color and to believe all kinds of nonsense to justify that resistance, I have long seen how factors like racism get many of us to vote, over and over, against our self-interest. Racism (and other -isms) is a powerful drug, and a powerfully stupefying one.

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
Spot on.
Im finding atm EVERYTHING is making me anxious.

I empathise with your feelings of being exhausted and depleted. I feel duty bound to keep up to date and informed bc that's what my husb + I do.

But then again what a Dark Time we are living through. It feels like the early days of a war in everything except arms and ammunition.

Today my worry is the raft of Trumps appointments. Not least of all Kennedy who will stop all vax research in USA (and therefore abroad).

So what will happen when a pathogen mutates again as it will one day and there are no labs conducting research. Does Trump ever care.

These appointments are all about fawning to him.

lupus_blackfur

@wdlindsy

Yes.

My circumstances very similar.

Was as stupefied by it then as I am now.

As a young-un, I remember the juxtaposition between "who I think I am" and "is what they are what they want me to be... What I'm supposed to be"...

Very confusing until I was old enough that "who I think I am" took over.

The Wookie

@wdlindsy

Given the narrow margins of the election and configuration of Senate seats up for election in '26 it will only take a fraction of voters to change their vote for the Dems to control Congress and the Senate in '27/28. This assumes we are still having elections by then. Point being we don't need the entire electorate to see their error or have a change of heart. We only need a small percentage shift. Also in '26 Trump will not be on the ballot removing the energized Trump voter that voted a straight GOP ticket this year.

Doug 🌈🇨🇦 :verified:

@wdlindsy if H5N1 bird flu gets loose in the population while vaccine skeptics run health services, 50% of Americans will die. I can't see that ending well.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Oldfartrant You're absolutely right.

William Lindsey :toad:

@NJWookie I really do think that the long game the Republican party has been playing for some years now is to lock minority control in permanently. The system is already skewed to favor minority control with the Electoral College and the Senate, and as Republicans stack the courts, especially the Supreme Court, it becomes increasingly difficult for a majority, if there even is a non-fascist one left now, to overcome minority control.

William Lindsey :toad:

@lupus_blackfur I hear you. Your journey sounds much like mine. Glad to meet a kindred soul.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 Like you, though I feel exhausted and anxious, I find it difficult to avoid the news. I keep telling myself that all too soon, we may find total blackout of news. Trump's appointments are clearly shock-and-awe appointments designed to troll the "libs," but also to show utter contempt for government and the rule of law — to break those precious things, in fact.

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
The thing that concerns me now would be if Trump sets up a MAGA Youth Movement like the 1930s Hitler-esque Hitlerjugend (for boys) or Bund Deutscher Mädl (for girls) to indoctrinate the next generation and provide spies inside the home.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 A good question. In a way, that's already in existence with different clothes and symbols now, isn't it?

Godfrey642

@wdlindsy
Im not sure I know what you mean ?
Are there groups in USA already?
Are they compulsory as Hitlerjugend was?

William Lindsey :toad:

@Godfrey642 I don't mean organized groups akin to the Brownshirts or Hitler Youth. Just that the MAGA cult now extends to younger men who are behaving in cultic ways — often, including dressing in ways that identify them as Trump supporters when they gather together — which puts some folks in mind of what happened in Germany.