I said 100,000 who receive at least a year of imprisonment, or deportation, or something similarly severe like getting shot. Someone just getting arrested, I don’t really care about. They already do that, and the damage isn’t always nothing, but I was talking about life-altering punishments.

There were 64,142 felony or class A misdemeanor sentences pronounced in 2022. A year is about the bottom end of prison time for a felony, so that’s probably an okay estimate for the number of people who received that punishment level in 2022.

https://www.ussc.gov/about/annual-report-2022

I’m fine with the six-month timeframe you said. If it goes from 32,000 cases to 132,000 cases then you’ll agree that’s a problem.

I’ll bet $50 against each scenario. I’m fine with not paying each other. The loser can pay that much to the organization of the winner’s choice.

You know what? Sure. I’ll shake on it if you will. If we’re still around and on Lemmy at the end, hit me up and we’ll see how it happened.

So, 100,000 people arrested or otherwise taken from their homes under a new or previously unimplemented legal pretext?

Yes.

I think we need to add a narrow timeframe over which these detentions would occur, like a single week.

Why? 100,000 people over the course of a few months isn't enough of a problem for you?

Is this number separate or inclusive of people who get deported on some immigration basis?

Separate. I'm excluding people who already don't have a legal right to stay in the US. I think the number of people who are technically already vulnerable to deportation, who will be deported, will be much greater than 100,000. As you pointed out, that's already going on. It's hard to measure in a number how much additional cruelty Trump will add to that by doing a "better" job at rooting out and deporting those people, so I'm not including that. The 100,000 is only people who would have been able to stay in the US, or out of prison or extralegal punishment, who now will not.

A lot of people have been arrested at peaceful protests under Biden, so it seems like we’re already at a grim baseline condition. Not sure what the bet is here.

I phrased it as "serious charges" on purpose. Lots of people get arrested at protests and then released, either without charges or with some kind of misdemeanor. Biden didn't invent that, and usually it's being done by local cops who often don't even like Biden, and definitely don't care what he thinks about what they should be doing to the protestors.

I said "serious charges." We can quantify it as a year or more in prison, or something similar or worse that's extralegal. That happens on a very occasional basis here, to a handful of people like the cop city protestors, or to that handful of climate protestors in the UK. I expect that under Trump, the scale of serious charges and prison time or worse for these protestors or some other type of "enemy" will dramatically increase. That's why I quoted the 100,000 people number as a total for all of this extralegal action, deportation and imprisonment and all.

Just to give you a sense of "or worse," what he did last time was issue an order for the National Guard to start shooting them. They didn't, last time, and I expect that they probably still won't in a lot of cases. I think he may create new federal law enforcement agencies which will obey that type of order.

It sounds, to me, like you're saying that Biden is causing BLM protestors to get arrested and held for a couple of days in the local jail, and that's already happening so what's the difference if Trump is creating a new federal law enforcement agency to give them felonies or just shoot them. If I'm hearing you right about that, then I think that indicates a lack of understanding of the grave differences between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. That's what I'm trying to impress on you.

Maybe there are some bills or amendment text floating around you can point to that if passed and successfully enforced would meet this expectation? That includes beating first amendment challenges, right?

I think a lot of this will be extralegal. We can quantify it by saying that if people start getting criminal charges because of what they said on social media, or what they allow to be posted on their social media site, because it was anti-Republican in some sense, the bet is passed. I don't know exactly what the legal structure if any will be surrounding it, so I don't want to involve that into the equation. Whether or not the physical people start going to the physical courtrooms or prisons is the relevant factor. Trust me, if it starts happening, we won't need to quibble. You'll know it when you see it.

Are you guaranteeing all of these scenarios or just any of them? Or should each one be a separate bet?

Is there a betting community on Lemmy where we could post our bet?

It's two scenarios. One is 100,000 people getting deportation or prison time for things that are currently absolutely clearly legal, such as being Hispanic or attending a protest. The other is people receiving charges for expressing, or amplifying or not, a political viewpoint. We can limit that second one to social media, as a way of making it more concrete. We can make those two things as two separate bets, I guess.

How much were you thinking? I don't really want to bet, to be honest. I'm happy to give you some amount of money if it doesn't happen. I'll be so happy that I won't give a fuck. If I win, we can set it up that you have to give that amount of money to some kind of charity or operation that's trying to resist. I don't want the money. It's not a fun thing for me to talk about.

I'm not talking about throwing a tantrum.

It's likely that in the coming years we'll be looking at mid-ranking army officers having to decide whether they want to deploy inside the United States and start shooting Americans, or say fuck it and go rogue along with all the men and women underneath them. Judges and lawyers will be deciding whether they're going to apply obviously insane laws, business as usual, or throw in their hats with the clear facts of justice and cross their fingers that it'll work out. There are going to be a lot of decisions like that, large and small, by people under a lot of pressure and risk without it really being clear what the right thing to do is.

If the model from the top is, "stick with your existing habits and pretend the other side isn't planning to slit your throat as soon as you reach the head of the queue, because it would be inappropriate to deviate from how things are supposed to be," we're even more fucked than the fucked that we were.

Biden could get on TV from the press briefing room and say, "Trump didn't do any kind of transition to us in 2020, and he hasn't complied with any of the laws surrounding how to make a transition now. He's said he wants me imprisoned and on trial for treason. I don't see that holding a transition meeting would be productive in any way. I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like he's planning to go rogue against the fundamental constitutional principles that underpin our democracy, and I don't plan on being friendly to him for as long as that's the plan."

It's easy for me to sit back and criticize when I'm not in Biden's impossible position. But yes I am criticizing anything that normalizes Trump as the constitutional leader of the US and worthy of continuing the respect and traditional role you would normally give to the person in that position.

In a speech Thursday, Mr. Biden said he had assured Mr. Trump "that I would direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition. That's what the American people deserve."

What the fuck?

Okay, Mr. Petain. The American people deserve someone who will set the example in resisting fascism. Trump is not pretending he's planning on anything peaceful or orderly, even in the transition, let alone after it.

I get what he's trying to do. But what the fuck?

In many ways, the Democratic leadership responsible for Donald Trump’s return to power. Let's explore why.

Fixed the headline.

I mostly agree with the article itself. I would just urge anyone who wants to read the headline and absorb only the general sense-picture "Democrats = bad" to read the whole thing.

Assigning some blame to corporate-friendly Democrats who turned their backs on most of the people on the ground fighting for real change, and failed to do much of anything successful when the wolves arrived at the door for real in 2016, is completely fair.

Now that the shit-storm has arrived for real, though, I think that deciding you want to make anyone who's a Democrat into your enemy, and so reduce your coalition size from 70 million people to maybe 1-2 million if that, sounds like suicide. We will either hang together or we will surely hang separately. Nobody you're talking to, or going to be in a position to be talking to anytime during the coming storm, had anything to do with failing to prosecute Trump effectively or betraying Bernie Sanders. They worked with what was in front of them, same as you.

Read the article. I'm usually in defense of Democrats, but I fully admit that I think it's a mostly fair assessment of how we got here and what we do from here.

Sure. 100,000 people hauled away by the cops when they haven’t done anything or committed what we would now consider a crime. Mass deportations of currently legal immigrants, or serious charges for people who participated in a protest but nothing else, is the obvious possibility.

That and laws or federally enforced law-facsimiles of some kind that mean you get punished just for a certain viewpoint that would be fine now. It could be a crime for a social media company or a private citizen to debunk election fraud claims from 2020, or something similar to that.

Give it a rest. I can argue back my point of view to you, and we can go back and forth a little, and it's pointless.

I can guarantee you that people in large numbers will get their doors kicked in by the police and hauled away, and laws will get passed that make it a crime to be anti-Republican. How wide a scale and how bad that all will get isn't certain, but I think it will be pretty bad.

Your days of pointing at the Democrats as the problem need to stop, and their days of pointing at the Bernie Sanders crowd and the Palestine protestors as the problem need to stop, because even if we (edit: ~~don't~~) do put all that bullshit aside and start fighting together against the real enemy for real, we might not win. I really don't care who's right anymore. Before the election, I did. That stuff is over.

The more people who are still convinced that their own side needs to be made into the enemy in any respect, the harder that fight will get, and it'll already be hard, and bad.

Bernie Sanders did that, and it did great. It wasn't enough to win, partly because the Democrats fucked him.

At this point, you'll have to contend with massive social-media operations which are working against and shaping the narratives that most of the country use as a substitute for news, to understand what's happening in the world. I think the time to be able to do it has passed, for a little while, without on-the-ground anti-electoral organizing on a massive scale.

See who you can find in your area. It's about to get real, I think.

All the people who were doing that are now pushing RCV or other election reforms that would make it realistic for third parties to be able to get all the way to winning. The third-party people who are running in FPTP elections are, almost universally, either attention-seekers or deliberate spoiler candidates. Bernie Sanders, when he was running, joined up with the Democrats instead of running as a spoiler candidate, because he's making an earnest attempt at making things better.

It doesn't really matter now because we've slipped one rung down the civilizational Maslow pyramid now, and are in for a fight to preserve the right in any capacity to elect who we want in power. But, whenever we make it back out to the other side of that, it'd be nice to remember to reconfigure the system so third parties can actually win, first, and then run third party candidates after that, not the other way around.

Sanders got fucked in 2016 and the Democrats who get nominated aren’t great and yes it’s partially the Democrats’ fault they got so few votes in 2024. I strongly disagree that it’s chiefly their fault, but that horse is out of the barn now, and also the barn is on fire now and connected to the house with the children inside.

There will be some incredible shit going down in the next few years. It’ll be a challenge to have any sort of elections in 2028 that have anything non-Republican in any position to win anything. I don’t think it will happen.

If you want to have a conversation about how we get left-wing values to win in future elections, start with how we fight to preserve basic freedoms like elections that don’t have Trump’s election integrity squad in charge of them, and free speech online, and the military not being used against American protestors.

I hope I’m wrong but I think some real shit is going to go down real soon. I don’t think we should assume elections are going to be normal and then plan from that assumption.

If someone didn’t say thing A, but you’re pretending they did so you can make a big fuss about how they’re wrong about thing A when they actually said thing B, please don’t do that.

In fact, in general, it’s not good to try to “win” the conversation. If you said your thing, and they said their thing, and you all had your chance to understand it and make any counter arguments and ask questions, then the mission is accomplished. Not everyone has to see things the same way, just understand each other.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t figured out that it was all a ruse from the beginning.

“Biden has BETRAYED Israel, he paused weapons, he pushed for a cease-fire. He yelled at Netanyahu and threatened some sort of mild theoretical consequences if he just rolled over Gaza with a line of bulldozers and killed 90% instead of 10%. We need him out NOW.”

“Biden has BETRAYED the people of Gaza by failing to prevent Netanyahu from the war Netanyahu unilaterally started, sending weapons shipments like every other US President has always done, also don’t pay any attention to the substantial differences between Harris and Biden on this issue, just focus on the fact the we need him out NOW I mean her.”

“Biden has BETRAYED the people of middle America by letting millions of immigrants in, shutting down Trump’s most horrible policies, migrant crime, look at this person whose daughter died. We need him out NOW.”

“Biden has BETRAYED immigrants by failing to completely undo decades of racism in immigration, only shutting down the most heinous 30% of Trump’s policies even with the Republicans fighting tooth and nail to stop him shutting down that 30%. It’s all his fault, also he made it worse in some vague emotionally-loaded ways. We need him out NOW.”

And the centrists bought it, and the leftists bought it too, and they never even compared notes to realize they were getting the exact opposite messaging and a good part of all sides of the messaging was made-up emotionally loaded lies tailored to what would make an impact. Most of the stuff about Biden just got reused against Kamala Harris unchanged, and it was so well-worn by that point that it still worked.

And they never paid all that much attention to what they were getting in, when they got him out now I mean her.

And now, we’ve got it in instead, and god help us.