Swordgeek

Lots of discussion points here, but let me address two or three in particular:

blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public

Nope. No, it really doesn’t. Trump was never a legitimate contender from his opponents’ perspective (due to dirty foreign money) and his true believers would stand buy him as he ate a live baby on TV.

Take a look at some approval polls that show he still has significant support from Americans. (Likewise with Musk, likewise with DOGE.)

Second point: It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t NEED legitimacy or approval any more. He’s in power, Musk is at his right hand, and the two of them are acting with complete impunity. Seriously, they should both be hauled off in chains and tried for treason, not to mention hate crimes and hundreds of less-sexy crimes. But they’re not, and so it just doesn’t fucking matter.

Thirdly, where did it come from? We’re discovering now that the Christian hard-right has been carefully staging this for HALF A CENTURY! Since not long after Roe v. Wade, they have been laying the groundwork for what Project 2025 is carrying out right now: A ruthless coup backed by religious extremists and foreign opponents. The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973. PNAC was founded in 1997. And there are more.

Fundamentally, Trump’s first term was to see how much they could get away with. When they lost the 2020 election, the Nazis spent four years purging the party of unfaithful (i.e. people with either thoughts or morals, or maybe even both), then won last year, and were finally able to remove their veil: The government no longer needs the will of the people to execute their extremist plans.

Wrong group.

I work with a number of developers who don’t know how to find and edit a file on their computer.

Literally.

Yeah, good luck with that.

We don’t want your “authority and influence” any more. The US has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they cannot be trusted with the power they’ve got.

Yes.

The amount of harm already done to your country by Trump and Musk is immeasurable, and will take a generation or more to recover from.

The amount of harm done to your standing in the world is equally bad. The world was skeptical after Trump’s first term fucked over the rest of the world, but we were hopeful that maybe the US had learned their lesson?

Nope. They elected a fascist. They RE-elected a known fascist, felon, rapist, idiot-child, psychopath. Worse, they bolstered Musk to get into a seat of unauthorized and unimaginable power.

When Trump announced his idiotic tarrifs, Canada collectively said “that’s it - we’re divorcing.” When he pulled back on the idea for 30 days, Canada said “don’t care, still divorcing.”

Trump is following the exact model of Hitler, and it’s only a matter of time until he actually invades either Greenland or Canada if he’s not stopped. The USA has to collapse into ruin and rebuild from scratch before anyone is going to trust them again.

On review sites in particular, there are kickbacks involved - and free/OSS products can’t pay as much as for-profits.

Well for one thing, you’ll find out how many Canadians are willing to use a gun in defence of their country, despite very few being invested in the American gun culture.

Also, it would likely be the beginning of WWIII.

“What MAGA all agree” is a fool’s errand, like most universal consensus questions.

But here are a few high points:

• Some genuinely believe the rhetoric about how Trans/brown/non-Christian/etc. people are destroying the American way of life, jobs, safety, sports, the economy, and whatever they get pointed to at any given moment.
• Some are outright racists, bullies, and fascists, and absolutely love what Trump is doing right now.
• Many are just frustrated with their lot in life, and are willing to try anything (except personal action) to improve things.
• Many more feel like they’re just a few paycheques or a small windfall away from living the rich life like Musk et al. As about 90% of lottery winners can attest, winning $10M or so doesn’t make you obscenely wealthy, and it’s still pretty easy to piss it all away. They have no concept of the difference between “rich enough to not work” and “rich enough to own multiple superyachts.”

Most importantly, a large subset of this last group overlaps with the others, and believe that they only way for them to get ahead is by climbing over the bodies of others.

Don’t drink quite so much.

Seriously, hangovers are a sign of excessive drinking. Last memorable one I had was 16 years ago.