I still believe we sealed our fate the moment Trump was elected.

[shockey80]

Some mistakes cannot be fixed. Some mistakes take control of everyones fate. You can only rebuild after the mistake has run its course.

I have no idea how this is all going to end, but I am pretty sure it is not going to have a good ending.

[strangedaysindeed]

1. Think Great Depression

and Chump wasn't elected, he was installed.

[Runningdawg]

14. Yep

Depression followed by the next civil war. America won't recover, it will balkanize or become a Dictatorship. I always thought this might happen, sad that now I am so old I will be one of the first to go without much of a fight.

[unblock]

2. it's easy to see donnie going away. it's not so easy to see that fixing the underlying problems.

we'll still have foxnews and heavily gerrymandered districts and an intolerant white male supremacist republican party spoiling for violence and in a position to at least keep progress to a very slow pace.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Hillary was elected. The election was stolen.

[pandr32]

5. +1

[lunamagica]

10. Yes, we should never forget that

[unitedwethrive]

4. Exactly, the GOP has no use for Democracy, because there are not enough rich, white guys

to keep them in power. First they tried little things like gerrymandering and voter restrictions, which they soon realized could only hold off the masses for so long. What they needed was a large scale coup of every branch of government. This has been decades in the making, including the grooming of judges to appear non-bias when nominated for a high level court.

Even if they lose both houses of congress, they had them for what was really needed: to gain the Supreme Court for the next 30 years. (Not to mention locking in tax cuts for the wealthy.) In that time all of their work will come to fruition. Between the court and holding onto the presidency through rigged elections and cheating, the elite class will remain elite for generations to come.

To change the tide will take a full scale revolution, and not just at the ballot box (which is a start). But, with the ruling class keeping many of the rest of us focused on basic survival, such revolutions are harder to mount.

[mythology]

6. There is a certain path dependency, but it predates Trump

It's Mitch McConnell announcing he was going to do everything he could to make Obama a one term president. It's in Johnson pushing through the Civil Rights Act. It's in the parties becoming more ideologically sorted. It's in a million things, good and bad.

Trump is a symptom, not the cause. But I fundamentally disagree that you wait this out. It's not a cold. It's people making bad decisions. We have elections right around the corner. We have a great chance to overcome Republican gerrymandering and win the House and decent odds of taking the Senate in spite of facing a really rough set of seats coming up. But more than that, we have a lot of great candidates running at the state and local level. If we support those candidates today, they will be better prepared to run for higher office in the future. Throwing our hands up and saying we have to wait for people to stop supporting Trump just delays that.

[Bluepinky]

7. The Republicans and Russians are in collusion to destroy our democracy.

They want the same thing: to end our experiment with democracy, to end the idea of equality for all, to stop the free flow of ideas. Takeover of the USA is the crown jewel, and it’s almost complete.

[uponit7771]

8. +1, they don't believe in Liberal democracy

[Hortensis]

9. Lol. No idea how it ends, but fate sealed anyway?

If you're going to despair yet again, maybe bring a little more energy and commitment to it? I do agree we will live the future, whatever it is.

Btw, what's the thinking on fate? In a world of galloping change, how long does "fate" last on average before it's steamrollered by the next fate?

[Maven]

11. I agree that anyone who thinks we will go back to "normal" after this is fooling themselves.

What the future holds is anyone's guess. But based on history, I think that it's likely that things will get a lot worse before they get better.

[maryellen99]

12. I'm expecting him to use Nuclear Weapons either before midterms or by the end of the year

It’s what his base wants.

[Oneironaut]

13. Yup. It's like America swallowed a cyanide capsule.

It doesn’t matter if you regret it after the fact. You reap what you sow, even if the decision was on impulse.

[brooklynite]

15. Well, it's been nice knowing you...

...if we're doomed and irretrievable, not much point trying?

[Maven]

16. Is that what shockey is saying?

No, I don't think that it is.

We have to fight like hell to avert the worst of what is coming. But there is no going back to "business as usual" after this.

[brooklynite]

18. "we sealed our fate"..."it's not going to have a good ending"

[Maven]

19. I don't disagree with either of those statements

(except perhaps for the use of "we" -- "we" didn't do this)

I do think that there is an inexorable process in motion that will lead to disastrous consequences. There are too many Democrats clinging to notions of collegiality, decorum, proper procedure, the resilience of our institutions, and the like, when those notions were thrown out the window by our adversaries long ago. They want to pretend as though this is a temporary hiccup and the political machine will return to a normal hum once this wrench called Trump is removed. But the machine itself has been corrupted. It has serious design flaws that have been exploited to bring about this outcome. It isn't returning to normal without some painful and potentially violent changes.

As I said, we must fight like hell to protect ourselves and our country from the worst effects of this political moment. But there will be terrible consequences for what happened in 2016 and what has been happening for at least the last 30 years.

[Calculating]

17. Three strikes and you're out

The first strike was Nixon.
The second strike was GWB.
Trump is the third.

Three crucial cases where we elected the wrong president, and it led to disastrous consequences for our nation. Electing Obama was good, but then we elected Trump who's destroying all the progress Obama made.