Political Memes

that one person/the executive branch should not hold that much power and a direct vote for the president seems like an awful way to try to get a qualified person into office.

A significant portion of the right believe in a Unitary Executive and that is what they’ve been working towards for decades. They believe the president has the power to control the entire federal executive branch. They’ve taken SCOTUS through activist judges and regulatory capture and can now get the rulings they want.

Our current situation really is the culmination of almost 70 years of rightwing efforts. They've built pipelines to train and vet their bureaucrats and policy wonks. Their base is extremely mobilized and there are dozens of grassroots movements with varying interests. At the end of the day they all show up to vote for their guy(s) to push their party the direction they want. It’s worked and that party has mainstreamed extremism. If the nascent left is able to wake up and avert a crisis it'll take decades of work to undo the damage.

I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.

Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here