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Liberal supreme court justices’ dissents reveal concerns that the US faces a crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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One thing I have observed about my fellow Usonians is that we all seem to have this strange, misplaced trust that eventually, ONE of our previous institutions will save us.
People crow about how the 2nd amendment will be what helps us prevent tyranny, but also seem to completely gloss over the fact that our police and military operate on an entirely different power level than citizens do. I have watched the US military terrorize people in Afghanistan and Pakistan for 20 years. Why do we think we would do any better against it?
Its the dying gasp of American Exceptionalism, at this point.
Ultra right wing types? My guns will save me!
No they fucking won't, not if big daddy government decides to fuck you specifically, they have more people, more ammo, more guns, armored personel carriers and astonishingly better intel than you do.
Liberals? The law will function and stop this! The system will hold!
Ahem, obviously false.
Both of these are ultimately aspects of American society that are drilled into our heads as being exceptional, unique, and basically better than anywhere else on Earth.
Again, obviously false, in its totality, as basically every aspect of that system is now totally unravelling.
We are not facing a crisis, as if its in the future tense.
We have been in the crisis since Jan 6th....
Our entire legal system is now utterly arbitrary.
This ruling means that Trump can issue an EO to break any law, and no judge can immediately order it stop.... it all has to be drawn out in court for years, by which time, the Executive Branch will just have done whatever the fuck it wanted to.
Even if a case is won after some time... and concludes that agents of the Executive Branch did actually break laws, Trump can pardon all of them instantly.
Trump has just effectively done a line item veto on the 14th Amendment.
He can now do that with any other Amendment or law as well.
The law is dead.
The US military lost against the resistance in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan...
There is no way they would win against a properly organized resistance in the US either.
Problem is people thinking that the guns themselves would safe them from Tyranny, when it is using the guns against the tyrants that is protecting them.
You are glossing over how many casualties that the US endured compared to Iraqis or Afghans. Sure, the Taliban still exists nominally, but Afghanistan endured at least 46,000 civilian deaths, with Iraq enduring at least 100,000 — the US tallied less than 8,000 deaths total.
What happened is that we basically used their countries as a sandbox to maintain our war readiness and funnel money into the pockets of the personal friends of Dick Cheney and his various warhawk confidantes. It was, at its most generous, a massacre, which is what civilian resistance will be, too.
All of this mental Rambo work is paralyzing people from taking any action at all as they retreat inwards and wait for doomsday. It is making us give up on diplomacy sooner.
Things cannot go without casualties. But the more people stand up to fight, the less casualties there will be as the prospect of "crushing" the resistance dwindles from the start.
And people who larp 2A should get a grip that if they claim the armed resistance, they have to take what comes with it.
On the other hand you see a lot of people still in their liberal fairytale land, where they think that if shit starts delivering the suspected instigator and cozying up with the police would help them defeat fascism. See various posts in the 50501 community.
Lets be real about it. Fighting as an armed resistance means people will be killed. Not fighting will lead to being killed at much larger scale, as the killers reign freely.
Partly because hopefully not all of the military will fall in line to fight their own countrymen. But then we are seeing what is happening in LA...
Because they act like being a citizen who owns firearms means that you have an entire gun shed like Arnold Schwarzenegger from Commando. They don't understand that a good chunk of people probably have no business owning the one handgun they do own, would probably find a way to aim at the ground and still miss, and would probably piss themselves if they had to actually raise their gun against another human being. And these are the people who would be going up against people who have bigger weapons, better training, years of experience, body armor, and probably several other officers covering their backs.
They think that a citizen with the minimum amount of training needed to get a license going against a law enforcement or military soldier is in any way close to a fair fight. They think that if one day the Trump administration comes for them, they'll be able to arm up and defend their homes, as if law enforcement will eventually give up like it's GTA5 and their wanted level ran out.
They act like law enforcement and the US military won't follow an "illegal" order. They'll refuse to raise arms against their own citizens. Of course, they ignore decades of systemic racism. A law-enforcement and military culture that traditionally skews hard right. A police system where they insist that military equipment and SWAT-style raids are necessary for every bust right down to local street dealers, and seeing half a dozen cops pulled over even for simple traffic stops. Never mind the ones that would go along because the person who gave the order is also the person who gets to decide what is and isn't legal, and they're trying to avoid being jailed themselves. But they don't understand that not only is a sizeable portion of our military willing to follow illegal orders, they're chomping at the bit waiting for the opportunity to flex their muscles and go full COD on as many brown people as possible with the blessing of the US government. It's not a moral dilema to them. It's a wet dream.
And some of them are dumb enough to believe that the "doomsday preppers" will stand up and defend us, because this is the exact situation they've been prepping for! They don't understand that the preppers are MAGA themselves. If anything, most of the 2A gun nuts that are armed to the teeth would be more likely to gleefully join the Trump administration than stand up to them. And even if there is a doomsday prepper that actually isn't MAGA, they'd simply be overwhelmed by a military raid who would just seize the weapons and leave what's left of him as a splattermark on the walls wherever the bullets splattered his brain.
It wouldn't be a fair fight or anything close to it.
I've never met a single American gun owner that didn't know how to operate their firearm with ease unless it was their first day handling one. It's not some scary or complex thing to use. I've been shooting guns since I was six years old.
I also don't know anyone that thinks much if any of this kind of stuff. Though I do have SOME faith in the military behaving themselves, maybe not the national guard.. but the other branches.
This leads me to believe that you were raised in a household/community that was extremely gun-friendly. Not everybody has the same experience. I'm in my 50s and could count on one hand the number of people I've ever met who owned or have ever handled a firearm, and the idea of allowing a 6 year old to use a firearm even in a supervised environment would probably get you a visit from child protective services around here.
And there's also a major difference between shooting targets in a supervised environment and actually pointing your gun at a human being who is firing back at you.
Rural living in the USA is an interesting thing, I wouldn't say my family was extremely gun friendly. My mother hates them but my father wanted to start hunting again and it was a good way for him and I to bond as there wasn't many other mutual interests. The vast majority of boys (and some girls) in my grade school through high school all hunted and "owned" several firearms before they were able to drive a car. I knew how to maintain my weapons, hunt, prep, and butcher all kinds of wild game before I was out of high school. It's just a culture thing. These days I'm a city slicker so it seems like a different world in my past now but it's certainly where I came from.
And you are right, it is a different thing in a gunfight. But life and death situations make people do extreme things.
Look at it this way. Think of the "city slickers", as you put it. I'm going to assume you're not talking about cities like Dallas or Houston, where gun ownership is obviously much more common. I'll assume you're talking about those who weren't raised around guns. If push came to shove right now, how many of them would you trust with a weapon? How many of them are more likely to hurt themselves or you than they are their adversary? Would you want any of those people covering you in a shootout?
A majority of people fall in that category. I know people I'd barely trust with a Super Soaker, let alone an actual firearm. And while I fully agree with you that extreme situations make people do extreme things, especially when they have nothing left to lose, there are limits to that. It's not going to turn your average first grade teacher or bank teller that barely got their firearms license into a military sniper just because bullets start flying at them. At most, it'll help someone to stop pissing their pants out of fear to grab the gun and control their terrified shaking long enough to fire off a few rounds that at least go in the direction they want the bullets to go.
Oh right like the US military hasn't lost a bunch of wars against barely-trained insurgents over the last idk better part of a century
Fuck outta here with this soldier worship rhetoric
The fuck you think you're going to do there, Rambo? You think you're gonna win a firefight against SWAT agents armed to the teeth? You think a bunch of neighbors are gonna come to help you and turn it into a modern day shootout at the OK corral?
And if you do, what do you think the result's gonna be? Do you think if you just wait it out, it's like GTA 5 where your wanted level will just go away in a few minutes? That they'll all just say "Aw, shucks" and give up? What's gonna happen is that they're going to call for even more reinforcements who have more weapons, armor, and attack dogs. The best possible outcome for you is being dragged out after taking a few non-lethal shots and charged with murder/attempted murder of whatever cops you shot. The worst is that they'd be removing the splattermark that used to be you and anything that so much as twitched in the house off the walls with a squeegee.
This assumes you even see them coming. Most likely they're just gonna raid your house while you're out cold at like 2 in the morning, giving you exactly zero seconds to even try reaching for the weapon you think you're gonna be able to use. You're not gonna be standing tall against tyranny making a stand defending your home. You'll be dragged out of the house in your underwear at about 2:01, hoping that they didn't shoot your pet hamster for casting a menacing shadow in the process. And that's the good outcome.
Life isn't an action movie. You are not Rambo. You are not John Connor. If you were in that situation, you would do exactly two things: 1) Shit your pants, 2) Repeat.
They won't even be dragged out of a house in the middle of the night.
The house will be obliterated by a reaper drone from miles away.
Who is "they"? What you wrote doesn't describe anyone I know. The people I know are deeply afraid, angry, and at times despondent. They try not to think too much about what's happening and just live their lives hoping that this will pass in 2027 or 2029 because they can't come to terms emotionally or mentally with what will happen otherwise.