Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lays out battle plan against 'shockingly dim' Trump White House
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lays out battle plan against 'shockingly dim' Trump White House
The Trump White House this week sparked chaos across the nation when it issued an executive order that resulted in Medicaid portals getting shut down in all 50 states.Although the administration rescinded the order after mass outcry, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt afterward issued a confus...
Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged countering the Trump administration’s policies by resisting at every turn, arguing that its incompetence makes it vulnerable.
Her remarks followed chaos caused by a rescinded executive order that temporarily shut down Medicaid portals nationwide.
She encouraged activists to take offline action, citing ongoing mobilization efforts.
Her strategy focuses on making governance difficult for Trump, calling his administration “dangerous and cruel” but also “shockingly dim.”
So the guy went out and stated what he wanted to do, we held an election that he won, and the plan is to stand against everything he tries to do. How are we defending democracy exactly?
I also think we ought to stop being consumers at a broad level. It's clear the rich don't actually trickle anything down and instead hoard it to invest. So, they won't spend to prop up the economy.
For one, stop using Amazon. Cancel Prime. Use other search engines than Google. Don't use WhatsApp. Cancel and delete your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter if you haven't already. Don't buy Apple products.
For each of those services and products above, there is at least one alternative.
Unfortunately I can't upvote this more than once. Also, if only I could force people to follow this advice.
I've said it before, the Democrats need to take pieces out of the Republican playbook and stonewall the GOP at every opportunity. The problem is that they Democratic party is really a coalition, whereas the modern Republicans are a hierarchy, so getting everyone to lock shields and advance is damn near impossible. Especially since establishment "centrist" Dems are just Republicans from the 80s and unfortunately they're the ones calling the shots. None of the progressives are stupid enough to tip the boat over while rocking it, so we've ended up here. Again.
For a long time, I thought the Democrats were fighting valiantly but just overwhelmed by the oligarchy and the Republicans. Then I saw that the Democrats keep losing fights they should win, and figured they must be weak and ineffectual. Then I kept seeing them backing off without putting up a fight at all, and decided they were gutless cowards. Finally I noticed that enough of them keep voting with Republicans to always make sure the Republicans more of less win almost every fight, and that they keep starting from a center position and bargaining to the right, and eventually it became impossible to ignore the only conclusion that fits the facts: The Democrats are not overmatched, they aren't weak, they aren't cowards... They are complicit.
I've said it over and over, the Dems need to be more Machiavelli and less Mr. Rogers.
I used to work for social services in Colorado. There was a Lady there that was fired without cause. She fought it, won in court, got her job back, and I'm pretty sure back pay. Beth, talking bout you, she said always fight, she has and it has always paid off.
I'd fight for the back pay, but if someone fired me without cause I wouldn't want to work for them anymore.
A lot of times, the manager that caused all that trouble by firing you doesn't get to be a manager anymore.
In that position you're far more protected from retaliation than a "regular person" -- it's easier to prove with an established history and courts really don't like have their judgments undermined. You've also shown your employer trying to screw with you is expensive.
Go back and do your job to the letter. They're either going to be very wary of pissing you off, or they're going to do something stupid and you'll get another payout.
If you get your job back you may be entitled to severance and potentially pension
Basically, resist. Do not comply in advance. Make them fire you. Challenge that firing in court.
I just hope she comes out of this unscathed. It only takes one loon with a shiv... and now there's millions of 'em.
I would love to start something in my city, and I've already been trying, but it's hard to get people to mobilize. It's disheartening at the very least. Any ideas on how I can be helpful to my country aside from voting?
I'd highly recommend this handy guide on how to find local groups that are building the foundations to fight back.
Get involved in mutual aid groups if possible. Those folks will be able to guide you best on how to be effective in your community.
I've joined a few groups but I feel I'm not doing enough.
Turns out when all you want are loyalists, all you get are dumb assess.
I thought this was obvious to everyone. Heck, Futurama had this as a joke 20 years ago when Zapp Brannigan stuffed his crew with nothing but loyalists who fall apart immediately.
That was much more "chain of command is incompetent but we have no choice but to obey" rather than "blind loyalty". Did you forget the episode where he was dishonorably discharged by the DOOP for blowing up the space station with the ribbon cutting laser? His second in command, Kiff, is literally constantly pointing out how stupid and incompetent Zapp is. Hell, even "I sent wave after wave of my own men against the killbots until their counter overflowed", arguably the worst case of being a loyalist to Zapp, ended in a win for Earth. They didn't fall apart and collapse - they defeated the unstoppable killbot army and got a medal(show them the medal Kiff).
Philosophical inbreeding is also not good.
He is definitely confused, weak and incompetent, backed by confused, weak and incompetent Republicans.
Let's just hope they are so incompetent that they can't do as much harm as they would like to. Fingers crossed.
It isn't chump and his taintsuckers you gotta worry about.
It's the army of Federalist Society lawyers and policy experts around him. They've spent decades figuring out the removed in the armor of our governmental system. Figuring out how to dismantle it piece by piece.
Edit - wtf is that removed about? Wait....oh. bot thinks I did a racism.
I don't mind removed, but the group of people I don't care for is the removed. They're almost as bad as removed!
To attack the c h eye nk in someone's armor shouldn't be censored. Its a word that has meaning other than rascist. Bot should be smarter.
Ha. Reminds me of an Asian standup comedian who had this routine about how he grew up in the inner city where the basketball nets were made of chains and so the chains didn't go 'swish,' they went 'chіnk.' So when guys wanted to play basketball, they said, "let's go shoot us up some chіnk."
Thank you, Cyrillic letter і, for letting me bypass the bot to tell that joke. Because I've remembered that joke for years.
lemmy.ml removes certain words, other instances don't.
Fucken hell, that's the correct fucking way to define a gap in armor. Bullshit. I really want to try a bunch of slurs out and see what sets it off.
It's clbuttic bowdlerization.
Wait until you try the in-game chat in Rocket League. You can't even type "Discord". It's a banned word. 🤡
Go removed ahead you removed.
Are you saying your comment was edited?
.ml replaces certain words with "removed"
In this case it seems to have been this term.
The "r" word will be removed too.
I haven't noticed what the others are. I swear fairly often and those haven't been removed. I would guess only things that are slurs etc.
Edit: It was removed from my link as well. LOL. Look up "gap in suit of armor" if you haven't figured it out already. Kinda ironically, when it's used as a slur it's against chinese people.
"Tyranny is eroded by a sea of small acts. Everything matters."
A lot of Lemmy users really need to understand this. Far too often I see people deride any action that doesn't immediately fix all problems in the world as worthless or meaningless, simply because they lack the imagination needed to see how small actions can add up to big changes.
Even if the actions really do nothing, they get people active and organized, so that they can take more effective actions later on.
I honestly think a lot of this criticism is people's internalized rationalization for why they themselves don't take action.
It's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
That's true, but it can also be used in reverse as a pacifying mechanism. For example, contributing to making the US the most incarcerated population in the world with ridiculously strict "tough on crime" legislation and then pardoning a small fraction of prisoners. Another example is forcing student loan debt to stick around through bankruptcy, but then forgiving a tiny fraction of loans. It's a move to pretend change is in motion, but it's so small and so slow that it's never going to actually solve the problem. This is especially bad when the other party makes such huge moves in the negative direction while we're supposed to be content with tiny steps toward "progress".
Neighbor, you're who they're speaking to...
What is this pacifying people from, do you imagine?
Like, let's say Trump gives the order to disband all DEI committees everywhere, and a lot of people who like theirs resist the order to do so at every turn. Malicious compliance, straight-up refusal, sleight of hand. This pacifying resistance means they won't...?
Well, they focused on one issue and ignored the convicted rapist insurrectionist in the room.
This Lemmy user has the right idea.
Incrementalism got us here. At some point, you have to realize that you can't stop a flash flood by bailing with a solo cup and shouting "I'm helping!"
It's a stalling tactic to placate chumps while they sell us all out.
The difference being that the incrementalism was outsourced to elected officials. What I understand that sentence to mean to say is that it needs every one of you who is able to do anything of any magnitude. It adds up. And like kattfisk says, you get active and organized. You have more power than you think and democracy is more than just drawing a few crosses in a box every few years.
I mean, who is going to do it if not you? What have the heroes from the Democratic party been up to since the peaceful transition of power? Some of the Dem senators voted for many of Trumps catastrophic picks. In a time where the White House is flooding the zone (as Steve Bannon put it some time ago), Shumer is giving speeches on the senate floor, that no one is listening to and Dem leadership is scheduling emergency meetings for after the reason for the meeting goes into effect. Finally AOC shows some kind of leadership and calls upon all of you to mobilize and resist fascism and you react with "it's a stalling tactic"? Please realize that you want the same thing. But if you want a mass movement, you will need to be organized on a smaller scale first or else it will fizzle out quickly.
I strongly disagree. As in all things, you need to pick your battles.
It's absolutely possible to take a counter productive action with the best of intentions.
Any kind of on the ground movement or mobilization needs political support in the halls of power. It's what made the resistance demonstrated against Trump the first term possible, and the dynamic goes both ways. On the ground resistance gives political actors the space to be resilient. Resilient politicians give in the ground movement space to work.
Basically all other Democrats other than Bernie and AOC shrivelling up and hiding in their shells will have a chilling effect on our ability to organize on the ground.
It's funny. sounds like you're giving up already, and blaming the Dems.
You got Bernie and the Squad.
If you want to put some backbone in the Dems in office, go out and start a voter registration drive. Let them see that there are people who will support them.
start a voter registration drive
What? The time for a voter registration drive was a year ago. We're well past that now. You can't vote out a dictator.
It's time for more direct action. We need protests. We need strikes. We need people in the streets fighting for their rights because they're being taken away by the day.
sounds like you’re giving up already
What is it about the lemm.ee domain that produces accounts with the most cringe, awful takes?
Understanding and recognizing how the world functions isn't equivalent to giving up. Nor is "hope" for the sake of hope any kind of a strategy. And yes. The Dem's are the fucking problem and always have been. Nothing about this fascist takeover would have ever been possible with out the complicity and milquetoast politics of Democrats. They are a worthless and abhorrent party with no integrity and barely worth supporting, beyond the weakest possible argument of them being the "lessor" evil. The rise of fascism would be impossible with out the previous 30 years of normalization politics out of Democrats. Start a voter registration drive? Give me a fucking break with the navel gazing. Voting isn't going to save the Union.
We may need the squad to break away from a Democratic party that has shown its self incapable of wielding power in such a way as to prevent the rise of fascism. What we'll need for on the ground movements to be successful is support in some way from the halls of power. That doesn't necessarily mean working with Democrats.
The Dems have given up. Because it's time for them to take a vacation after playing the part for their rich donors for the last 4 years.
finally, a person with a STRATEGY. so sick of the whining.
she needs volunteers for personal escort and safety. i think she is going to be targeted.
Look at the "secret service detail" he picked.
He picked loyalty over skill, actually DEI
Just a few inches to the right
Few More Inches
He got rid of DEI to make more room for cronyism.
First president with gage earrings.
If all Dems had her tenacity and honest interest in helping the middle class, we wouldn't be where we are.
If Democrats could say "poor" we might not be where we are.
Thankfully Republicans will do it.
She encouraged activists to take offline action
Based
She is possibly our best hope.
That would be a great plan if the Dems were not spineless at best and complicit at worse
People see comments like this and get discouraged to vote or do anything meaningful. Life is choosing the lesser of two evils. By not choosing you have chosen the greater evil thus making you complicit.
Bullshit. Electoral reform in the blue states must happen. Red states as well but we all know republicans stance on more democracy.
Democrats have lost their "we are the only people resisting the republicans" privilege. They should have lost it long ago but we sure gave em every chance we could. No more chances, no more safe states/seats.
This shouldn't be hard to pass. Alaska already has a Ranked choice voting system. Plus Democrats are huge democracy supporters... right?
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
That lesser evil still don't want Medicare for all, raise the federal minimum wage, and building more affordable housing-- all of which are actually what suffocate many Americans in the ever worsening wealth inequality. That's why people took the chance to vote Trump who promised tax cut, even though most Americans know they it doesn't actually benefit them but the 1%.
Look outside of the American mainstream news bubble and discourse that want you to pick the two lesser evils, instead of thinking outside the box. The only way for ordinary Americans to win basic rights is to organise and mobilise by advocating both ranked choice voting and promoting third parties. It won't happen in federal level so start on the local and state levels, and the changes will go up the chain to federal level. It's not like Americans haven't gone and out mobilised before for a better change. The people simply need to rediscover that they have the power.
People see comments like this and get discouraged to vote or do anything meaningful.
So shut up and be happy.
*Life in MURICA...
Good luck to her.
Her point is that everyone has to pitch in and do their little bit to make things harder for this administration. This resistance has to be built from the bottom up.
I already wasted 20 years of my life in sacrifice to politics. I want to be done and other than venting about how we're doomed I more or less am done, thank you.
I hope I'm wrong, and I earnestly wish her luck but I do not owe a population of people who chose Trump a single solitary fucking thing. I'm bitter, exhausted, and my patience is gone.
Have the balls to just say you want her to fail.
People help her and do it together, or it doesn't work. Band together against nazis.
But I don't want her to fail. I want to be wrong, desperately. I legitimately want to feel fucking stupid about being doomer in 4 years.
I'll probably try to help in non-risky ways at best but I think I might be pretty useless anyway. Being an atheist and terrified of death/non-existence yet also resenting having been born doesn't tend to make one particularly productive in meaningfully resisting death cult nazi's.
shockingly dim
When you hire yes men, you get some pretty dumb people.
Simple Sabotage Manual
If only AOC didn't whip up a battle plan to prevent the union strike when she voted to protect the rail corporation.
Oh no, this option isn't perfect in every way for all people, and thus indistinguishable from being worthless?
Yup, get used to it, electoralism is an enemy of all but the strongest class
Can you imagine if Republicans approached Trump this way?
She deserves criticism for that, and she should apologize. Your downvoters either support strikebreaking or support AOC even when she does the wrong thing.
She deserves criticism for that but she still does a lot of good and should not be discounted. Saying “if only” kinda sounds like “I would like this good thing she’s suggesting (the subject of the article where they are responding “if only “), if only she didn’t do something I disagreed with once”. A more productive tact would be “I still don’t like that she didn’t support the striking rail workers but the plan she describes here is …”
Bit late. I appreciate her efforts to resist, and we all need to do that, but it honestly is too late now. The time to resist this was last year. Now we’re in disaster recovery, which requires a whole different kind of resistance, and it feels like even people like her don’t quite understand where we are now.
Because of all the people who haven’t fucking listened to the warnings, we’ve entered actual fascism, and regular resistance won’t work anymore. Thinking it will only makes more of us believe small actions or Strong Words will save us. This isn’t 1930 Germany like we were warning last year, it’s 1939 Germany now, and der führer is beginning to build the camps.
Are you going to keep ignoring us when you’re ruffling the ashes of your compatriots from your hair? I honestly believe you will.
You've convinced me. I was planning to start attending my local town meetings and lend my support to the few outnumbered progressives there, but instead I think I'll just hoard canned goods and hunker down.
You must be fun at resistance parties. I guess it's time to annihilate ourselves through labor then (งツ)ว
I’m just saying we need different, more modern strategies. What we’ve been doing doesn’t work.
We can do better. I don’t know the answer, but we can’t keep doing the same things.
I think both you and her are wrong. Dems lost big in this last election. So it's time to take a fucking step back and ask why. What needs changing? The party is in trouble. And they are in trouble because they are listening to big business and political consultants and not voters and people like AOC and Bernie. Kamala was supposed to be easy 'safe' candidate to defeat Trump. How'd that work? Hillary was supposed to be the 'safe' candidate to beat him the first time. Safer than Bernie and his 'crazy radical platform' of actually making the country work for the fucking people who live in it. How'd that work out?
Maybe having candidates that manipulate the primary process and count on superdelegates doesn't work. Maybe putting someone forward who polled at 2% among Democrats before election season doesn't work. Maybe 'I'm not Trump' isn't fucking good enough to win the White House.
Unfortunately I don't see many Democrats talking about this lesson, let alone taking it to heart. So I am looking forward to four more years of complaining and hopelessly attempting damage control while putting forward no new ideas whatsoever.
I think both you and her are wrong. Dems lost big in this last election. So it’s time to take a fucking step back and ask why.
We can ask all we want. The party's about to appoint Pelosi's choice for chair. Again. They're never going to change.
So it's time to take a fucking step back and ask why.
Obviously we should ask why. But any answers we come up with in response to whatever strategy we’ve been using will be horribly outdated already because we’re no longer operating under even a veiled democracy.
That was the biggest answer to ‘why’ this last time. Because this is outright, honest to dog fascism. That’s why nothing worked. Because you cannot fight fascism with normal discourse. Because Dems, the media, and everyone still tried to pretend we were working under the status quo when we absolutely were not, and anyone trying to call that out was treated as some kind of alarmist. And the fascists know this, and take advantage of it in their propaganda. Most of us don’t want to believe there’s a true, real, legitimate fascist movement, and fascists use that against us.
It doesn’t actually matter how good Dem candidates are – Dems could run Jesus himself, seen by all as descending from on high and streamed simultaneously on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, and it wouldn’t have mattered. They would easily reject Jesus and get all the centrists to oppose him. We’re in an unprecedented age of propaganda owned exclusively by a handful of sociopaths who know they can buy sentiment, views, and votes. They did, and there’s little we can do about it.
It doesn’t matter what democrats say or do at this point. We’re past that.