It's worth remembering that the civil war was a slave revolt: Slaves started liberating themselves and a few radical white folks decided to help. This challenged the very legitimacy of the state. The Northern response was to neutralize the threat by killing or allowing the most radical elements to be killed, then compromising with the remaining resistance. The South thought that this strategy wasn't radical enough, so their repose was to increase violence against the oppressed. Because the North wouldn't also increase violence, the South first secedeed so they could increase violence without Northern restriction, then, not believing that to be enough, attacked the North. The modern US is a synthesis of these two strategies. We saw this immediately after the assassination of Lincoln, with Southern slavers rolling back gains made during the civil war as far as possible. This became the second phase of American slavery, which lasted until WWII. As a reminder, we are in the 3rd phase of American slavery since it remains legal as long as a person can be compelled to admit to a crime. Every 4 years we get to choose a government that exercises one of these two strategies: eliminate radicals and compromise with moderates, or unrestricted class warfare on the population. The slave revolt was a third option: direct action. It turns out, direct action gets the goods. #USPol

What are you going to do when the regime falls? After calling all your friends, after the great memes, after the parties, what are you going to do to make sure it never happens again? What world should we create? Taxing billionaires is great and all, but we could build systems where billionaires are impossible. Is hoarding wealth and using it to control people even something we should consider part of a functional and humane system? Any system where one group of people doesn't have rights means that anyone can be stripped of their rights, like has happened with all the US citizens who've been illegally detained and deported by ICE. Does the concept of "rights" that must be defended with violence, that can be stripped away by people who can exercise more violence, even make sense? Or should the bedrock of a functional system be the obligations that we have to each other and to society, that cannot be severed or taken from us, that tell us we *must* defend regardless of whether systemic oppression will impact us or not? Americans have been so restricted by the limitations of the two party system, only able to choose between options acceptable to different sections of the capitalist class. Would we even be able to imagine what we could do if those restrictions went away? The fall of the Berlin wall was a surprise. The fall of Assad was faster than anyone expected. One day the government of Nepal was an unrepentant oligarchy, the next it was on fire. Everything can change in an instant, faster than anyone expects. No one can predict revolutionary change. Will you be ready if the opportunity presents itself? The US cannot be fixed. The economic system is a ponzi scheme that has been patched again and again, but has finally run out of options. Racism, sexism, and Christian nationalism are baked into the system at every level. Trump gutted the system of soft power that held the US economy together, now there is only a slow decline. Even after he's gone, the damage is done. Once we let go of how to fix something that cannot be fixed, we can start to imagine something that cannot be achieved within the current system. This is a time of opportunity. Do not burrow so deep in terror that you miss your chance to dream. #USPol

Two things are worth noticing right now: 1. The military brass *did not* respond well to Trump and Hegseth. 2. The deployment to #Portland keeps getting delayed. The military will never say "no" to the president (unless he's literally ordering them to open fire on unarmed civilians or something equally obviously illegal). But there are ways to not comply that don't necessarily involve refusal. Brass showing that they aren't aligned with Trump may weaken his billionaire backers, who might be realizing now that weak dictators who can't lead their militaries tend to get toppled... and their oligarch-backers tend to end up against walls. If folks being ordered to send troops to #PDX don't want to comply, delaying until the there's an initial response from the lawsuit would be basically impossible to detect. The deployment to LA went far too fast, running into logistical challenges like troops sleeping on the floor. The delays we've already seen could indicate either a more careful approach or quiet resistance. Trump will continue to escalate at every chance he gets. I would be surprised if PDX didn't give him a fight. I doubt the troops will become more interested in serving a guy who's stabbed them in the back and wasted their time at every opportunity. It is still possible troops just won't deploy. Trump will make something up about how just the threat of an intervention was enough to make things safe or something like that. If we see that, it's 100% the military telling him to kick rocks because he's not competent enough to know when to back down. Honestly, I think Trump wants revenge for the resistance PDX put up at the end of his last term. Any backing down from that is absolutely a big loss for him.