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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 26, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is there anything to this: "The Coup We've Feared Has Already Happened"?

The coup we’ve been fearing has already happened. Utterly servile to Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to convene the House of Representatives for even pro forma business (and by extension Congress) indefinitely, thereby shielding Trump from all manner of inquiry and accountability, not least the Epstein files, and giving him de facto full dictatorial powers. The longer the shutdown continues, the more irrelevant Congress becomes. Next expect unilateral executive decrees on assuming full funding authority, essentially rendering Congress defunct. It may never reconvene. Suspension of the Constitution cannot be far behind. Dictatorship came to us while we slept.

Is this what it seems like to me — just more lefty pearl-clutching and crying wolf — or is there something to the arguments James Bruno and Tonoccus McClain are making?

The longer the shutdown continues, the more irrelevant Congress becomes. Next expect unilateral executive decrees on assuming full funding authority, essentially rendering Congress defunct. It may never reconvene. Suspension of the Constitution cannot be far behind. Dictatorship came to us while we slept.

I already want to buy this plan, Tonnocus, you don’t have to keep selling it to me. A guy can only get so erect.

But seriously, if Democrats believe they have a well-founded fear that we are on the precipice of the Fourth Reich, and the only thing that stands in the way is continuing Congressional business as usual, then why are they grandstanding over healthcare-budget cuts?

Wouldn’t putting up with those for, at worst, 3 to 7 years and then reverting them to much applause next time Dems are in power, be much preferable to being derelict at the exact moment when the normal procedure of Congressional business could preemptively stop the 1000-year Orange Boot?

This has all the seriousness of the people who allege that they live in existential dread of the Reichsführer-SS kicking their door down and disappearing them to American Auschwitz, and choose to fight back against this dread future by…attending 3 hour protests and plastering their face and presence all over public social media feeds.

Resistancelib boomers and shrieking fascism hysterics are by and large different people, with the latter covering their faces and the former expecting a hybrid regime, not the sort of thing that carries out purges and white terrors. Trump's shutdown behavior is actual evidence for the resistancelib boomer idea.

All I can tell you is that, in my area and social circles, the resistancelib boomers and the shrieking fascism hysterics people are in the same group of people, shrieking about fascism. And I haven’t seen very many masks at the local protests.

What I’m saying is, everyone near me who is even vaguely liberal is yammering on about the impending authoritarian fascist Nazi state. If I were inclined to be a Trumpstapo agent, I would have no trouble racking up huge numbers of people to be disappeared. Not even from edge cases like “They made a joke that can be vaguely interpreted as unflattering to the Fuhrer.” This would be from straight up “I wish I could shoot him myself,” “How can you not see he’s the same as Hitler,” “We must resist Trump at every turn,” “If Trump invaded Hell, I would put in a good word before Parliament for the Devil,” type commentary.

And yet they still show up to protests unmasked driving their personal vehicles and splatter their presence all over social media.

If you don’t see the same things in your area, I’m sure there are reasons, I’m just describing what I see in my area. But this fundamentally unserious phenomenon is a real thing.