> I mean, I guess we'll try to find competent and sane leaders again in 4 years. I don't know? There's not much else we can do at this point if this is the level of irrationality you're dealing with.
There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. People really need to start preparing for this reality.
In April 2025, Trump called for investigations into pollsters who determined that Trump has a low approval rate, calling the pollsters "criminals".[1] If Trump criminalizes
publishing data that shows disapproval for his party, then there would be no public data that works as a checksum to detect rigged election results.
The man who presided over Jan 6th and the fake electors plot is definitely not going to accept an unfavorable outcome to the election now that he has much more power than he did in 2020.
Honestly, I don't get the logic behind opposition to the SAVE Act. In nearly all functional democracies (and many poor-functioning ones), you are required to show a state-issued ID document.
If the failure of the SAVE Act was the only thing allowing a Democrat victory, then there's something seriously wrong with the American democratic system.
I mean don't Americans have at least one document issued by the state proving that they are, you know, American?
"Q: Is it true that under the SAVE Act married women will not be able to register to vote if their married name doesn’t match their birth certificate?
A: The proposed SAVE Act instructs states to establish a process for people whose legal name doesn’t match their birth certificate to provide additional documents. But voting rights advocates say that married women and others who have changed their names may face difficulty when registering because of the ambiguity in the bill over what documents may be accepted."
Nearly every country I know of has solved the married woman name-change issue. The US literally does not have a process to manage official name changes?
It's literally so darn simple everywhere - previous official issued ID, marriage license copy, 2 newspaper ads stating the name change. There might be minor variations here and there depending on the country, but that's all you need to get your name changed anywhere on official documents. The real headache comes in changing previous unofficial documents afterwards, such as certificates, etc.
This is literally not an excuse for the Arsenal of Democracy.
Oppose government actions that restrict free speech and free press. Do not assume that free elections are an independent variable that don't depend free speech and a free press.
From the personal safety viewpoint, the single best thing you can do as an American today is leave the country. Being working class without much in the way of assets precludes the more lucrative destinations, but there are still many countries out there that are pretty easy to emigrate to, even if quality of life there is lower than what US can offer today.
To any country with a reasonably stable political system and society that is not bitterly divided. Ideally also the one that is not significantly involved in any major geopolitical power struggles, and is self-sufficient when it comes to basics (i.e. can feed itself if needed).
> There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now.
That's overly alarmist. The one thing the US has going for it when it comes to elections is that they are run by the states, not by the federal government, which insulates them from a lot of possible election meddling.
Things like the SAVE Act are incredibly concerning, though. It's unclear if the worst provisions of it are even constitutional, but it's also unclear if SCOTUS will actually do the right thing if SAVE gets passed.
And certainly people are going to end up being disenfranchised, regardless of what happens, and of course more of them will be left-leaning voters. Higher voter turnout tends to give the GOP worse electoral results; they know this, so they focus on voter suppression. It's disgusting.
So yes, I think we should be worried, but your statement is overly alarmist and not helpful.
> That's overly alarmist. The one thing the US has going for it when it comes to elections is that they are run by the states, not by the federal government, which insulates them from a lot of possible election meddling.
Ah, that's reassuring. I'm sure Republican state officials won't allege mass voter fraud in 2028 and discount votes they claim to be from illegals when it seems like the election isn't going their way. And I'm sure there won't be violence threatened against election workers from the voters for harboring such fraud, either.
Would you have believed a few months ago that the US government would be trying to strong-arm foreign nations who are nominally allies into compliance with its policy preferences? Here's another recent example of that: https://www.dw.com/en/france-voices-shock-at-us-calls-to-dro...
I have been warning for years (often here on HN) that the US risks tilting into a failed state due to political extremism, and its generally been dismissed as an impossibility - there is no way, people insisted, that an extreme fringe could reshape the American polity because of the Constitutional guardrails, the rock-solid institutions, the societal norms. Well it's happening right in front of us now. Just this week we're seeing the National Science Foundation dismantled, the nonpartisan Librarian of Congress arbitarily fired, the President demurring on TV when asked about his duty to uphold Constitutional guarantees of due process.
You identify a bunch of looming electoral problems yourself. The problem is that it doesn't require a great deal of electoral corruption to sway the outcome. Some states will cheerfully go along with the executive's agenda, those that don't will be denounced as having rigged their own elections. The whole hysteria about illegal immigrants is based on the specious claim that one party is importing them wholesale and somehow converting them into voters to steal elections from conservatives forever. The right has been selling that argument for over 30 years, going back to Newt Gingrich.
>Would you have believed a few months ago that the US government would be trying to strong-arm foreign nations who are nominally allies into compliance with its policy preferences?
What do you mean? Hasn't the USA pretty much ALWAYS done this?
>The whole hysteria about illegal immigrants is based on the specious claim that one party is importing them wholesale and somehow converting them into voters to steal elections from conservatives forever.
In fact, the whole hysteria is based on the existence of tens of millions of illegal immigrants who are committing huge numbers of crimes and are systematically discriminated against because of their illegal status. And when your political opponents so loudly try to deny such an obvious for everyone problem, it is stupid not to take advantage of it.
I don't know, maybe I don't understand American politics, but from the outside everything seems pretty clear to me.
The USA has not always done this. It has historically thrown its weight around (see any history book) but has historically maintained a far greater emphasis on diplomacy and international comity rather than the outright bullying we see now. You will note that I specifically referred to the US' behavior toward nominal allies. If you disagree, please provide some examples.
> millions of illegal immigrants who are committing huge numbers of crimes
A trope wholly ungrounded in fact, which has been debunked any number of times.
There are absolutely not going to be free and fair elections 4 years from now. People really need to start preparing for this reality.