Well they’re many things, but laws and procedures that will be useful in the sense you described need to be ones the regime either wants to stay in place or doesn’t care enough to notice. The bill in the article is neither.

That’s not how government procedures in totalitarian states work.

The masses are already (to an extent) riled; what they need now is leadership so their energy can be spent on productive acts of resistance rather than a weekend protest every two weeks.

That you think the issue is a lack of leadership is… not realistic.

And there the question becomes: Who cares? Their office is now meaningless

Not even close. “The legislative branch won’t save us from fascism” and “The legislative branch retains influence to hinder fascism” are not mutually exclusive positions.

No legislation for LGBT rights is gonna pass either way, so the timing for pushing it is a moot point.

Then why the fuck did you bring up the timing of pushing it?

Can I have that while defending the people currently being kidnapped and sent to God knows where (or to God directly)?

You can. But there might be symbolic legislative action being put forward while you do it, horror of horrors.

The basis for the basis should be defending the people being persecuted now, not drawing a line in the sand that the administration is going to sprint over. Challenge what the fascists are doing now rather than hppe you’ll be able to challenge them later. I hope I don’t need to quote the poem.

No, the basis for the basis is getting fucking organized. You may notice that there are people standing up and speaking, quite prominently. The issue is not that no one is speaking for the people who are being fucking disappeared by the secret police; the issue is that there is currently no serious power base or appetite for serious action in the general population with which to fucking stop them, in large part because left-purists decided to sign over all levers of government to the fascist regime without any fucking ground game to challenge it when it rolled into possession of one of the most powerful states in the fucking world.

This doesn’t sound like a procedural method that can frustrate fascist aims; it’s just a sentence on a piece of paper saying “you can’t do this one thing”.

… what the ever-loving fuck do you think laws and procedures are

Step down so people with spine can take the position and use it to do things that actually matter. What I expect from a legislator in 2025 (and to be fair my expectations are irrelevant as I’m not American) is to use their position as a podium from which they can tell the people to protest, strike, practice mutual aid and otherwise resist the administration in ways that matter.

This loops back around to “My choice of practically pointless symbolic action will Rile The Masses™ and their choice will not!”

Legislation would be nice in addition to that, but representatives whose whole “contribution” to anti-fascist resistance is to write a bill and call it a day? They can fucking get lost.

It’s not about whether the nitwits in Congress can get fucked, as individuals. The question is whether this, as the action of the still-extant opposition party, is appropriate. While it is almost purely symbolic, seeing as mentioned it has no chance of passing, it is exactly what the opposition in the legislative branch are supposed to do. It’s what they’re uniquely empowered to do by their office.

LGBT people are near the top of the regime’s shitlist, but look at who is being actively persecuted right now. It’s not LGBT people;

Holy fucking shit.

Pushing a pro-LGBT bill at this stage of the fascist takeover is empty grandstanding with no benefit whatsoever.

You’re right, let’s wait for the horses to bolt to bar the barn doors. Luckily, passing legislature is a super quick and easy thing, so once the crisis is in full swing and not just the extensive rollbacks of LGBT protections current happening, we’ll be able to comfortably slot the bill.

Settle in for the long fucking haul. Build plans. Build the basis for plans. Build the basis for the fucking basis. Nazi Germany lasted 12 years, and that was with a world war to take it out. Pinochet’s Chile 17 years. Franco’s Spain lasted some 40 years. And, may I note, Franco’s Spain came into power in a much more leftist and activist country, with extensive labor organizing, than 2025 USA.

The “Anything that doesn’t have immediate effects is pointless!” view is going to get more people killed, just like the fuckwits sitting out the election in 2024 because the Dem candidate wasn’t going to fix any immediate problems have already signed death warrants to the toll of literal millions.

Many of us are going to die going forward. It’s unlikely that there’s going to be a massive outpouring of support to save many of us. Our deaths are unlikely to provoke spontaneous unorganized mass resistance. Wishing that public attitudes will reach a fever-pitch and a crisis will save us from our massive lack of actual organization and support in the population is downright delusional.

but getting mad at them now after you’ve prevented them from doing anything at all just seems petty.

It would seem to be a trend.

Like, even if this bill passed it’d mean nothing in two months as the rest of democracy is dismantled around it

Okay. There are two core problems with this:

1. Even fascist regimes are reliant on a highly procedural state bureaucracy in which law can still be used to delay and frustrate fascist aims - this was true even in Nazi Germany at the height of WW2, wherein lawyers associated with the resistance used legal and procedural methods that predated the Nazi takeover, and some that post-dated it, to buy time and save lives. If the fascist regime is intent on killing an individual it singles out for whatever reason, it will kill them regardless of the bureaucracy; but for the vast machinations of killing or imprisoning large amounts of people, procedural methods still have validity as tools in reducing, delaying, and even reversing individual cases. If this bill passed, and for the record I think it has a snowball’s chance in hell of doing so, it would be amongst the tools which would reduce the damage the fascist regime is capable of inflicting going forward, even if not in any way a replacement for real action by society against the fascist regime.

2. What the fuck are they supposed to be doing, as legislators, if not shit like this? There’s no fillibuster in the House, no major delaying tactics. You could advocate for starting brawls, like another commenter did, but other than achieving the expulsion of remaining Dems with spine from the legislature, which would seem to me a negative consequence rather than a positive, I don’t really know what that’s supposed to accomplish more than you or me going down to the Capitol and throwing hands with Generic McFascist (R-Iowa).

pushing LGBT rights bills? They’re not even at the starting line with that.

Considering that LGBT folk are at the forefront of who this fascist regime is intent on persecuting? Would beg to fucking differ.

The same kinds of Very Serious Leftists who are now saying spontaneous revolutionary action is the only solution that is acceptable.

I remember constant complaints of “The Dems didn’t even TRY anything, they should have proposed bills even if they knew it would fail!” before the second Trump presidency.

Now it seems the chorus has changed to “I can’t believe they’re trying something they know will fail!”

Curious.

no you dumb fuck: this is a physical act that carries a symbolic significance.

“My useless symbolic action will make the masses Rise Up™, while THEIR useless symbolic action won’t!”

👏

just fuck off and say you’re a coward and violence isn’t the answer blah blah liberal nonsense fuck you.

Sorry that I find the idea that Congressmembers brawling will help our situation at all risible.

You want to use violence as the answer to this question, get real about it, not asking clerks and octogenarians to get into slapfights in the halls of Congress on your behalf in the strange hope that it’ll cause a mass uprising wherein you won’t have to lift a finger.

oh it wouldn’t!

So, “They’re pandering to the wrong people; I want them to pander by doing different useless symbolic actions.”

So you agree with my comment you originally objected to. Good. Glad we’re in agreement.

Okay, how will AOC ‘beating the shit’ out of GOP Congressmen stop ICE from deporting children?

So, “They’re pandering to the wrong people; I want them to pander by doing different useless symbolic actions.”

About what I figured.

Okay. So will breaking decorum, yelling, and screaming will ‘pass’ or stop fascism?

please do something more. please do something that fucking matters.

Okay.

As members of Congress, what, exactly, should they be doing?

I hope Zelenskyy manages to play the Moronic Fascist Orange like a fiddle.

Misinformation feels good and makes you feel like you have special, hidden knowledge. Professional advice is boring and mundane.

If the admins are at some point distracted, or otherwise are unexpectedly removed from their ability to moderate for a time, and comms have no reliable moderators, then everything will be… well, unmoderated. Having active users as moderators, even if they currently don’t do much moderating compared to the admins, makes the moderation system as a whole more likely to survive any unforeseen events.

“Last gasps” is a strong word, but symptomatic of a weakening of misogyny in general society, yes. Time will tell if this weakening is another step towards crushing that particular bigotry, or if it’ll experience a second wind in these sickened circumstances.

Uh, then ‘no’.

I’m saying misogyny is, culturally, hundreds of generations deep.

I think the decline of misogyny is the reason. As it’s not as normalized as it once was, yet still a very powerful lingering thread in our culture, men are seeking validation for it where they would have otherwise found validation for misogyny, unasked for and unconditionally, in their everyday social circles in previous eras.

Always been a Clutch fan, but I’ve been listening to Three Golden Horns a lot the past few days.