Democracy Fan Girl

“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” (Wendell Berry)

[Morgan J. Freeman @mjfree]

And just like that, it’s completely VANISHED from the media.

A sitting congressman, Ted Lieu, said on the record the Epstein files are being blocked because they show Trump raped and threatened to kill children.

Lets make this viral again 👇

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@Docziggy @Angry_Staffer @PNWFlowerGurl Everything Trump touches dies. Including law licenses.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@Angry_Staffer Please tell me this can be undone when he’s finally gone from office. Just because the DOJ is corrupted, can’t the next leader undo this action?

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@Phil_Lewis_ Completely on brand for this administration, no?

[Eric Markowitz @EricMarkowitz]

https://t.co/dFEzoaUtZ6

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Presidents Bush and Obama should make a joint visit to military cemeteries in the UK, Canada, France, Poland, Denmark, etc to say "the America you remember remembers your friendship and sacrifice."

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers an astonishing eulogy for the end of American dominance thanks to Donald Trump: "This bargain no longer works."

It's rare that a world leader speaks so candidly about how the world really functions. This speech will be studied in the history books...

"We knew the story of the international rules-based world order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically," Carney said during an address at the Davos World Economic Forum. "And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim."

"This fiction was useful and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes," he continued. "So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works."

"Let me be direct, we are in the midst of a rupture not a transition," said Carney. "Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid the bare risks of extreme global integration."

"But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons," he said, clearly referring to Trump. "Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructures as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination."

Carney's analysis offers a refreshingly honest perspective on the post-World War II order. Western nations, led by the United States, created a sophisticated network of global institutions and rules that privileged their interests, often at the expense of developing nations. It was a flawed system that nonetheless brought peace, stability, and prosperity to the nations that it was created to benefit.

"The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied, the WTO, the U.N., the COP, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat," Carney said.

"And as a result many countries are drawing the same conclusions, that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains," he continued. "And this impulse is understandable, a country that can't feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself."

Carney was driving at a hard truth that MAGA refuses to acknowledge. Despite what Trump thinks, European nations haven't been content to accept a kind of vassal state status simply because they're scared of the United States. They've gone along with the world that America designed because it directly benefited them in concrete ways. Now that Trump is stripping away those benefits, they're going to begin decoupling economically and strategically from the United States. Canada's massive recent trade deal with China proves that.

The problem is that Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters are too ignorant and paranoid to understand that the system they're destroying helps them. They take for granted the American dollar's status as the global reserve currency. Once these hidden pillars that hold up the world start crumbling, quality of life in the U.S. will plummet.

"But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable and there's another truth..." Carney continued. "If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate."

"Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty, sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure."

There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. Thanks to the stupidity, pettiness, and egomania of Donald Trump, America has been hurled into a dangerous new status quo. The rest of the world will never trust us in the same way again, but if we can remove him from power and vote in Democrats, we can at least set about undoing some of the damage.

The future is uncertain, but what is certain is that our country will only survive if Democrats are the ones at the wheel.

Please ❤️ and share if you think that Trump is destroying America.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@BarbaraComstock @NormOrnstein What an epically petty man.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@Angry_Staffer Where it all began!

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@esjesjesj @mehdirhasan Just as tacky as the current occupant, sigh.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@highbrow_nobrow @atrupar If Hitler and Joe McCarthy had a baby…

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@Angry_Staffer We’re living in the upside down.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@bsw5020 Amen Brian! Amen.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@SykesCharlie What happened to this man that he is so morally broken and hateful toward so many fellow human beings?

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@strategywoman I’m so sorry for the way the US president and Vice President treated the Ukrainian president and the people of your great nation. Trump and Vance are small-minded men with mean spirits. The backlash in the USA has been swift among those who aren’t the puppets of Putin.

[Democracy Fan Girl @dbushsuf]

@ANNELAMOTT Please stay active on the cesspool of X. We need you @AnneLamott to help remind us we are brave and have work to do.

[Liz Cheney @Liz_Cheney]

Our nation’s democratic system functioned last night and we have a new President-elect.  All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections. We now have a special responsibility, as citizens of the greatest nation on earth, to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years. Citizens across this country, our courts, members of the press and those serving in our federal, state and local governments must now be the guardrails of democracy.

[John Pavlovitz @johnpavlovitz]

Kamala Harris didn't lose, America did.

As a nation, we collectively failed her—and in doing so we failed girls and women, the LGBTQ community, people of color, Muslims, Jewish people, immigrants, the sick, the poor, the elderly, the people of Ukraine, and Gaza, and the planet.

It's unthinkable, that instead of being able to celebrate a beautiful, hopeful new chapter in the story of this nation with a leader who appealed to the best of our natures—we will instead be holding a postmortem for democracy as we enter our 250th year, stewarded by a malevolent sociopath who despises empathy and shuns the law.

I truly thought we were better than this, that our shared humanity would show up. I thought we would reject this hatred and ugliness once and for all.

I hate being wrong about the majority of the people of this nation.

I don't know what's ahead. All I know is that good-hearted human beings are more necessary now than ever.

We did all that we could to avoid this moment, but now that it's here we'll just have to decide who we will be.

There is no way to comprehend or measure how grievous an error this is, but the only thing the decent people of this nation can do is wake up tomorrow and fight like hell for what we still believe is worth the fight, and we will.

I'll be doing that with whoever has the strength to join me.

I'm mourning the country we could have been and the one we apparently are—but I refuse to give up believing that compassion is the right path, that diversity makes us better, and that love is greater than fear.

[Seth Abramson @SethAbramson]

RETWEET this. Every day. Until Election Day.

Anyone anywhere in America who tells you Donald Trump will be better for the economy needs this tweeted at them IMMEDIATELY.

[Elie Mystal @ElieNYC]

What is he confessing to here?