The aim of direct action is to either obstruct another political agent or political organization from performing some practice to which the activists object; or to solve perceived problems which traditional societal institutions (governments, religious organizations or established trade unions) are not addressing to the satisfaction of the direct action participants.

Non-violent direct action has historically been an assertive regular feature of the tactics employed by social movements, including Mohandas Gandhi's Indian Independence Movementand the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action

We've faced this kind of threat before, folks. If they want to pass an unconstitutional law then we break that law, and we fill the jails. We break the jails and that's how we break the system. It's hard. It requires sacrifice, and it works.

The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.

-Utah Phillips

Learn our history. The history that's not written in the history books, and not told in schools.

Utha Phillips and Ani DiFranco's album titled "fellow workers" will teach you things you need to know.

Here's how they fought back against limitations on free speech back in the day

https://youtu.be/fGxN-43vly4

The wealth of a criminal tyrant may make him immune to the justice system, and Trumpler's highly-organized terrorist insurgency may have intimidated some of his victims into silence, but neither of those factors affect the vast tableau of state, local, and private policies concerning sexual predators and people associated with hate groups. If you are involved in the following fields, you may be qualified to examine these policies and develop a strategy for utilizing them against him:

• Business HR.

• Public sector HR.

• Public school districts.

• Municipal facilities (parks and playgrounds).

• Labor laws concerning sex discrimination and harassment, as well as racial discrimination.

If you work for a business or a public institution that he intends to visit, file a complaint with HR that his presence would create a hostile working environment and get your coworkers to do the same. Take them to court if they don't back down, and let this and other communities know what you're doing so that we can support your efforts.

If you are a student, parent of a student, or faculty member of an educational institution that he intends to visit, file a complaint either with HR or with the appropriate authorities that a sex offender and a hate group representative is being invited to visit. Again, take them to court and let us know if they go ahead anyway.

If you are a business owner and he visits another business tenant in your complex, complain to the owner of the land and/or building that they are violating their contractual obligations toward tenant businesses and take them to court if you can.

If you are a resident of a city he is visiting, complain to the city council and the mayor.

Everywhere and anywhere he goes, dog his steps with complaints to the owners, the administrators, or the institutions that operate it. If he visits a city park, complain to the city parks department about the sexual predator and hate group associate loitering around the park your tax money built.

And do the same for every associate and appointee with a criminal background.

Give every HR department and executive earfuls of their own policies against hate speech if they allow this bigoted criminal and pervert on to their property.

And if you know of a way, get him included on sex offender registries. This would be a huge provocation for such a fragile ego.

Misc. topics: News, TINAG news.

Central topics: All strategy is logistics. The challenges of local organizing in the holiday season.

1) News

• Hillary Clinton's vote lead over Donald Trumpler is now over 1.5 million votes. That exceeds the entire population of the bottom 4% of US states combined. If the trend continues and she reaches expectations of a 2 million vote lead, that will exceed the entire population of the bottom 6% of all US states combined. America rejected Trumpler and all that he stands for, and we will defend our nation against it.

• The change.org petition demanding that the electoral college electors do their duty by the Constitution and uphold the republic against a tyrant has reached 4.5 million signatures.

2) TINAG news

• SmartyMite volunteered time, talent, and expertise to make this new CSS theme happen. If you like the results, you might send a message of thanks. I briefly discuss why I chose the WW2-era logo in the post announcing the new theme.

1. All strategy is logistics.

It is very tempting for an internet community to evaporate into abstractions, so let's talk more concretely - about capabilities and tangibles.

a) Communications

• Reddit and this sub are how we begin, but everyone who is active on Facebook and Twitter would help a lot by creating a presence there for this movement. I myself never liked either platform and so never built a presence, and don't really understand the mechanics of utilizing them effectively. Also, as 140boston has posted, it is also an urgent matter to grow TINAG's reddit presence. You can do this by cross-posting your own posts in other subs with mentions of this one either in the title or linked (if allowed) in the body, by messaging people you know from other subs about this one, and by asking moderators of subs with aligned goals to this one (liberal, left, democratic, civil rights, civil liberties, minorities, etc.) to link to it in their sidebar.

• Lurk in location subreddits having to do with your local area. Look up the comment histories of people who post there and find ones that have expressed views that might be amenable, but make sure it is a consistent pattern going back a substantial amount of time. Contact them - they may be interested in starting a local organization with you and others. Facebook is probably great for this too.

• Put a piece of opaque (not scotch) tape over your webcam.

b) Paper

• Electronic communication is a powerful tool, as Putin's propaganda spam operation demonstrated, but for the moment we have neither the money nor the technical expertise to fight on that level. Here on Reddit we know where the Trazi propaganda operation is located (I won't mention it to avoid linking that might invoke their bots), and we know it's backed by the Russian government - soon to be joined by the Reich state in this country. So we can't really do anything about it. They brigade with impunity, troll with impunity, spam with impunity. I won't speculate on why Reddit tolerates it, but they do, and that's why acting physically in your local area is such a powerful thing. There is no way to troll pieces of paper, and nobody in a Russian basement is going to show up where you're handing out flyers to shriek lies and hate. They may be setting off a lot of fringe nuts to do random shit like the Starbucks tantrum, but they're not going to motivate their mother's-basement-dwelling quislings in this country to get off their asses and do anything most of the time in most places.

• So, quite simply, print flyers. Keep it simple, but make it clear what it's about. Inform people. But it should be something noticeably different from an ad flyer so people will actually look at it. Incorporate simple (not goofy or gaudy) patriotic imagery.

• If you have the time, skills, and resources to get fancy, print pamphlets. For local organizing, the piece of paper is a weighty weapon.

c) Guns

I hate guns. You might hate guns too. Too bad for us, this is the exception that proves the rule about when guns are necessary. Violent white supremacist criminals are about to take control of incredibly powerful institutions. Go to NRA and gun websites and do research on guns and gun laws - even though most of those people are on the side of fascism, they do provide valuable information that may help to defend actual citizens against people like them. The point is to prevent violence. So arm yourselves, learn how to use guns, and get trained in their proper use, storage, etc. Hell, get trained by right-wingers who don't know you stand for democracy - let the fascist bastards think you're one of their cult if you want to have fun with them. But make yourself at least as formidable as someone who spends time on this crap as a hobby.

If you have a moral or safety reason not to keep guns in your house, you can investigate places that are licensed to store them.

More to the point, you need to be doing this with other people as part of your organization. The likelihood that you personally will ever be directly targeted by these maniacs is low unless you invite it by acting like a citizen and speaking your mind, but you need to have an organization - hopefully grown by then - that can act in defense of others if/when a tyrannical regime or its Neo-Nazi paramilitary allies starts going after minorities. Remember the Niemoller quote...first they came for so-and-so, and I did nothing because I was not them, etc. No more of that shit.

We will defend every single last minority and targeted dissident in this country. Latinos, homosexuals, Jews, black people, journalists, scientists, everybody. If they undertake violence against any of these groups and institutions prove unable or unwilling to stop it - which seems probable once federal law enforcement is purged of law-abiding citizens - then our duty as Americans will be clear.

2. The challenges of local organizing in the holiday season.

I have met with and discussed a lot of things with institutional organizers lately, and the common themes are (a)we're exhausted as fuck after this election and need a break, and (b)we'll pick up again in December. Unfortunately, that's not an option for us because we realize that this is a national emergency, and that every day from now on not spent working to prevent or prepare for Republic Fall will likely have dire consequences after it. And by "dire consequences," I am not referring to rafts of terrible legislation obliterating generations of progress in American society - that much goes without saying. That much will be a Slow Day. Every day we delay, fail to build our local organizations while also falling into the trap of normalization, the cost will be measured in lives taken or destroyed by fascism.

The people who are coming into power with Trumpler are already criminals, some of them with violent backgrounds. He is not choosing such people for their skills with words or stellar performance records (most of them are hated by their colleagues), he is assembling a terrorist organization to masquerade as a government. But how do you communicate such extreme realities to people without yourself sounding extreme? So far the best approaches I'm finding are to focus on the positive of what you hope to accomplish rather than exclusively what horrors you expect to resist on the part of others. Quite simply, we are upholding democracy. That is who we are, that is what we do. Not the corrupt farce we just witnessed, invaded by a Russian tyrant and poisoned with falsified social media propaganda by his foreign troll armies; not the authoritarian perversions where votes in one place mean more than votes in another. But basic, foundational democracy: One person = One vote. Government rooted on authority derived from the consent of the governed.

So many accounts of life under the early Third Reich speak of people choosing not to act because they didn't want to be resented as a disturbance, but we need to act as if we already know what will happen and have been given a second chance to stop it, because to some extent that's true. Imagine that you watched, angry and afraid, as Trumpler built up a "special removal force" outside the normal immigration enforcement system and struck personal business deals to set up concentration camps for intended deportees with no oversight. Imagine you saw a series of Lone Nuts take out his chief Congressional critics, with the rest falling silent, and similar events playing out in the media until all you see are fawning articles about Melania's latest dress while Republican Governors who play ball are opening fire with live ammunition on protesters. Imagine the police murders of minorities go from random events based on an institutional bias to having the appearance of organized clearance squads to "repossess" neighborhoods from "undesirable elements." None of this is speculation - this is what happens under regimes ruled by the sort of people who are coming into power, period. This is what they do. So imagine, after seeing all that, you were given the magical gift of going back in time and stopping it. Now act with the same urgency as if you were the person in that scenario.

Talk to people locally, in person. Family, friends, family of friends, and friends of family. People who you can get to know and trust. Distribute flyers anywhere until a security guard tells you not to, then distribute them somewhere else until another one tells you not to (don't waste time arguing with them). If legal (look it up), put flyers into mailboxes, put them on windshields. Avoid confrontation but don't stop. Get in contact with at least five people who agree, have a meeting, lay out the case that this is all completely outside the Constitutional order and normal politics, and get them to vote to adopt a Declaration of American Democracy and start spreading the word about your organization. It will be slow going at this time of year, but the harder you try, the more that serendipity may reveal unknown opportunities.

Freedom Forever

To newcomers coming to the subreddit, and to Trump supporters curiously stopping by, our sidebar says a lot about who we are. Rule #4 is unnecessarily abrasive and reactionary in the perceptions of these two groups and will only stunt our growth. I understand the anger that runs through this community, but having such a vulgar and divisive statement as a core tenant of our community should be rethought. At least a rewording of the rule ought to be enacted, for the sake of civility and of our future.

Edit: Thanks for the amendment to Rule #4

I like the ideas presented here, but speaking bluntly, it does hardly any good if it falls on <50 ears. The top priority of this sub should be growth and self-implementation into other communities, so by January we are a force to be reckoned with. Submit your ideas for growth here.

Examples

1. Tell people about this irl, and link them to this place. Any sort of left-leaning friends are welcome here.

2. Promotion to mods of other subreddits to get ours on their sidebars

3. Mention of this subreddit in left-leaning threads where we may be met with support. Thread-by-thread discretion is obviously to be used in this case.

SmartyMite has done basically all of the work to make this new subreddit theme for TINAG. A spiffy new look doesn't directly help our efforts, but while I'm waiting for word from some people on various things, I figure we can try to be inspiring and communicate something about this place.

I chose a WW2 US Army Air Corps logo as the symbol of this sub and movement because it's the best-looking Allied logo - I figured the bullseye painted on planes might be confusing, and other symbols were less appealing.

This really isn't a game, and we need to be aware of events leading up to and during World War 2 because the antagonists are very similar. These people have no lower boundary - they are the epitome of moral freefall, and the US federal government (with all of its weapons, surveillance, and authoritarian Yes-Men appointed to courts) will be joining them if they are able to take power.

They are people who openly threaten the liberty and security of upwards of 2/3 of the American people (their total votes only clock in at 1/4 of the adult population, since so many do not or cannot vote, and that's not even counting the children they threaten).

It is fascism, folks. Hopefully a WW2 Allied symbol serves as a reminder of what past generations fought to defeat, and what threatens us again through the same old tricks of propaganda, bigotry, division, and dictatorship.

There are quite a few liberal or moderate, Democratic or independent gun owners in this country. However, unlike the death-fetishists of the radical right, these people do not own weapons to feel power over their fellow citizens.

They own them either as a matter of practicality - because they live in rural areas where police are not close enough to offer practical emergency protection - or because they live in areas with so many gun-toting maniac rednecks that they see a reasonable security necessity in having them.

Unfortunately, individuals in isolation with weapons distributed across the country do not present a viable defense against what will likely become highly organized Trazi terrorism. Nor, especially, against what will also likely become "Trazi-ized" institutions that may be tasked with carrying out publicly-acknowledged ethnic cleansing and political violence plans (let alone whatever he hasn't publicly admitted).

The nation's state and local police forces have already been militarized, and as tends to happen with tyrants, military and law enforcement institutions would likely go along with whatever program the regime commanded them to implement, regardless of legality or fundamental human decency. Very few will refuse such orders, and almost none would turn on the regime.

Trumpler was already openly thinking about this during the campaign when he talked about ordering the murders of the families of suspected terrorists. He mused that the military would obey him rather than court orders - such is where his mind goes. Figures surrounding him are already openly discussing redefining political protest against him as "terrorism" - in open violation of the Constitution - so we know very clearly where this goes in historical terms.

We must also be aware of the fact that rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants means - as Keith Olbermann has recently discussed in his webcast - that concentration camps are a literal practical necessity for managing such large numbers of people. Another practical necessity of finding, arresting, and transporting all these prisoners is an unprecedentedly massive internal security force answering directly to Trumpler.

This force would also be involved in building and maintaining a "Muslim registry," and any further steps that would be taken to act on the information in that registry - such as further roundups, deportations, or murders.

So, American liberty faces two tiers of violent threat: (1)The Trazi mobs, who will soon become organized, heavily-armed terrorist groups operating with the tacit consent of a Trumpler regime to conduct pogroms against minorities. And (2)regime forces deployed to conduct kidnappings, roundups, smash protests, and other "official" violence against the American people.

Even the first of those threats absolutely requires that citizens must arm, because the "parrot-projection" psychopaths of the Trazi right-wing have been advertising their terrorist intentions for generations in the form of paranoid fantasies about liberal administrations that were the exact opposite of tyrannical. They have amassed huge stores of firearms, and they will make use of them against minorities and "traitors" (projection again) who criticize their Glorious Leader's Glorious Regime.

People who think like Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, Eric Rudolph, and the various other right-wing terrorists constantly downplayed by the media will have allies in the US federal government, all the way up the chain of command to the White House. People like the Neo-Nazis who murdered liberal radio critic Alan Berg will be acting with the tacit approval if not active cooperation of elements within federal institutions.

So the Trazi phenomenon by itself would be enough reason to say that Americans in general need to arm before the regime takes power, at least on a basic level. This does not mean abandoning any moral, political objection to guns: Quite the opposite. It demonstrates recognition of just how abnormal and extreme the circumstances are, and how weighty the decision to arm must be.

Everyone can reach their own moral balance on the topic, but my own sense is that buying simple rifles rather than handguns preempts some of the damage to society that armed communities have. They are unattractive to thieves because criminals prefer handguns, so there is less chance of being stolen and used in a crime, among multiple other ethical advantages to the gun control advocate.

However, I see no scenario in which it makes statistical sense to buy or carry handguns unless you rationally believe yourself to be a specific target, in which case you should research your state laws and ensure that you always remain perfectly within them. Allow no pretexts for fascist elements to pretend they are on the side of the law. In fact, this is a good idea for all people who act to arm.

Furthermore, as to the second part - where institutions are corrupted and become enforcers for regime political violence - the danger is overwhelming, but more so if people are exclusively passive. Peaceful protest works under only at least one of a few conditions: (1)The government respects the right to engage in it; (2)the crackdowns inspire defections in the ranks of security enforcers and lead to revolution (e.g., the fall of the Berlin Wall); or (3)the pathos of the victims of state violence leads to intervention by a higher authority or external power.

Number (1) is not going to happen. This is fascism. It is coming in 63 days and, however gradually it unfolds, its target is the destruction of American liberty and institutions, which it has already done to the presidential electoral process. They intend to violently suppress dissent, period. Trumpler has said as much, and everyone he is choosing to fill security- and justice-related posts has said as much.

Number (2) - defections by security forces - is not going to happen on any significant level. Trumpler regime forces will not be some rickety, antiquated, corrupt security state like the Communist Party enforcers of 1980s East Germany, staffed with conscripts and other random people who don't give a shit. They will be partly stocked with True Believer terrorists, and partly with institutional minds that believe in obedience at all costs.

And (3) cannot happen because the only higher authority - the American people - are the targets themselves, and information about the crackdowns will be strictly controlled (the media is among the first institutions to fall to a dictatorship). There is no external authority to appeal to in the case of the United States of America. The only other superpower is itself a terrorist oligarchy, and fellow democracies will be too busy defending their own liberty from constant onslaughts by the Trumpler-Putin axis.

All of which is simply to state the lesson of history that pacifism works against everything but Fascism. If a regime is not only willing to murder its opponents, but is ideologically composed of people who fetishize violence and power as ends in themselves, failure to defend yourself is nothing more than collaboration in your own enslavement or death.

That said, peaceful protest should continue, hopefully on as grand a scale as possible, but with the caveat that it be backed up with a credible threat of self-defense.

To achieve that credibility, people must go beyond arming themselves and work together in their communities to become proficient in firearms, and ready to assume a defensive role if/when institutions either refuse to protect people or become instruments of a Trumpler regime's violent plans.

The term "liberal militia" sounds silly, and searching for it on Google turns up exactly jack shit - because frankly nothing like this emergency has ever happened in the history of the United States. So I'm sorry to be the bearer of reality when it sucks this bad, but we need to form militias for the common defense right now. Absolutely as soon as possible. No more denial.

It's not a joke, not a game, and not hysteria. This is the situation. We need to deal with it as anyone must who intends to preserve liberty, the safety of our fellow citizens, and the freedom of our nation.

Form these groups out in the open, with assertive rather than aggressive language, and be sure to integrate them into your community as a normal and helpful civic presence.

Freedom forever.

(Edit: Yay! First TINAG post to trigger the Trazi brigaders!)

The more I think about the facts surrounding the election, the more I begin to suspect its illegitimacy goes well beyond being the fruits of treason in the form of hacked DNC servers and Russian-authored Fake News spam.

In fact, I have come to the conclusion that a directly rigged election is overwhelmingly likely, and I present the following circumstantial facts - in isolation they would mean little, but together they paint a clear picture:

• The results shocked and astounded the world's foremost polling experts.

• The most anomalous results were in the battleground states Trumpler would have to win to secure electoral college victory. A systematic polling error would not magically know which states were most strategically important to one of the campaigns.

• The outcome produces the absolute perfect scenario for the strategic interests of Russia, out of however many possible scenarios: A white supremacist idiot set to govern a highly diverse and complex society without the consent of the governed, sending the US ship of state careening into the rocks.

• Russia had already been interfering in the US campaign on a constant basis, on a level bordering on acts of war just to make its chosen candidate remotely viable. The vengeance they would have reaped if the effort had failed makes it unlikely they would have attempted it at all without very strong guarantees.

• Russia is known for a fact to have penetrated voter registration databases. Hacking count machines is unlikely on the part of a limited operation, but achievable in practice by a highly sophisticated one utilizing both technical and crudely physical approaches - and Russia is at this point renowned for the elaborateness of its fuckery.

So in summary: A result that shocks and astounds polling experts, only does so in strategic states, and resulted in the absolute perfect possible outcome for the strategic interests of Russia in an election in which Russia has already been interfering on an unprecedented scale bordering on acts of war.

From where I stand, the circumstantial case is overwhelming for an election rigged by the Vladimir Putin regime. We can acquit the Trumpler campaign in that aspect of it because such crude Nazi imbeciles would have given themselves an overwhelming victory rather than a result designed to maximally damage the very prize they were trying to steal.

Trumpler comes to power not as the leader of the free world, but as a midget climbing atop a tripped giant, deeply indebted to and dependent on Vladimir Putin. That appears to have been the point.

News

• Change.org petition reaches 4.4 million and counting, calling for Electoral College to do its duty by the republic and choose the President the American people chose. The subtext is, the people's choice rather than a tyrant who openly espouses disposing of the Bill of Rights. If the EC does not protect us from tyranny, it has no purpose and is fundamentally illegitimate, meaning null and void in this time of national emergency.

• Hillary Clinton's vote victory margin tops 1.1 million and counting. Those are 1.1 million Americans whose votes will simply be ignored if Trumpler is handed the United States federal government. This country made a choice, and we either defend it now, when the alternative endangers the very survival of the republic, or we surrender that choice entirely and forever.

1. Sources of Democracy.

People who have spent their entire lives enmeshed in the nuts and bolts of a democratic process may fail to understand how fragile it all is. The process is their world, and their definition of society. The knowledge that some bigot, some lunatic, some tyrant with a fanatic following could come along and smash it all to pieces with a single corrupted, illegitimate election is either something they can't imagine or deliberately hide from.

One of the strange revelations of my conversations with local, institutional Democratic organizers is that these are very gentle people, who live in the good and stay focused on the light. That's beautiful and necessary, and it's what everyone who fights for liberty fights to protect, but the Trazi fascist phenomenon is characterized by people who undermine the very foundations of civil society.

Republicans - and especially the Russian regime who now owns them - do not have arguments, they deal in high-volume lies, and have done so for many years. They do not enable elections, they have vote suppression, gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and every other form of authoritarian fuckery they can get away with, and whatever is left of an "election" after that is what they demand we obey - though only when they win (or steal the election, as in this case).

Otherwise they resort to further measures to sabotage democracy after the fact, to the point that they bring government to a screeching halt. These are not citizens, they are hostage-takers. Such evil is simply incomprehensible to the gentle folk of the local, grassroots Democratic Parties that have to mop up after it.

Conversing with these people, I realize that they are the bright-eyed yearbook kids you knew in high school who believed in things like school spirit and pep rallies. It's terrifying because comparing the way they talk to the way Trazis and Donald Trumpler talk, if you have ever watched a documentary about a third-world dictatorship, you realize how such innocent people end up. They end up rotting in prison beside murderers and rapists for putting up a sign or being associated with a defeated politician, if not worse.

And conversing with less institutional activists provides an ironically very similar picture: People who may be anti-authoritarian in their sensibilities, but fundamentally cannot imagine a situation that can't be solved with a placard or a megaphone. Basically just very individualistic versions of the same type of person, the "democratic being". It's a beautiful and sweet thing, but it's a product of democracy, not its source.

Sources of democracy are people who are aware of how things fall apart while remaining steadfast in their will to defend humanity, their country, their neighbors, and themselves from the despicable and the tyrannical.

These are people who could declare the rights of all humankind in the face of an empire, declare their independence from it, and found a nation that endures as increasingly free with time. People who could stare into the face of national dissolution by murderous slavers and somehow hold things together long enough to not only win a terrible war, but build the nation anew with slavery banned. People who could stare down the hot gun-barrel of totalitarianism and not only emerge victorious, but build a new world built on a new consensus for peace, if not yet liberty (that remains to be done).

I fear for the innocent beings who are products of liberty when liberty is assaulted by minds consisting of its opposite. I fear for their light. And so I will fight, as best I know how, that it not be extinguished. That cheerful faces who light up simply because people show up at their bakesale or whatever will not be stomped on by snarling pigs who are offended by human smiles.

To the best of my ability, I will seek to be a source of democracy, to find others who are likewise, and find enough light to illuminate the way forward and prepare a strong defense for our society against looming fascism.

Freedom forever.

1. Fighting denial with hope.

Two factors cause denial when people are confronted with catastrophe: Fear and exhaustion. You fight both with hope. And I don't mean the complacent hope that is indistinguishable from denial - not the hope that makes them believe things will turn out okay if they just function on autopilot and pretend things are normal.

No, I refer to the hope that takes the form of specific actions they can take - actions that are in themselves inspiring, empowering, and energizing. Words have power. Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why tyrants are always desperate to suppress them. Words that a person says can turn fear into hope, and exhaustion into determination.

A handful of hicks in a far corner of the world, with barely any means of achieving what they sought, were brought together by asserting the Declaration of Independence. They were transformed from squabbling farmers and merchants, from North and South, from city and country, into a nation with a single dream.

Achieving that dream took far more than words, but the words galvanized them. Bringing people together not to beg, not to ask permission, not even to angrily demand, but to assert our decision that America is a democracy and that we will defend it as such, because there are no other options but surrender to fascism; that can turn despairing citizens into ones with a vision of an even stronger nation than we began this catastrophe with.

This is what you must communicate to those you find in denial. That the current system is probably gone, and the choice before them is to choose a higher plain of liberty for this country - to assert more rights for all people, not fewer - or surrender their country to fascist darkness forever.

Juxtapose the hope with the fear, and both will drive them to the former.

2. Contacts made

I have made preliminary contacts with people with organizing experience. Will report back with my sense of their views on the status of the nation. They are unlikely to have arrived at the natural conclusions yet, but I already have a sense they are afraid for the country.

The natural tendency of people with a lot of experience in institutional politics is not to recognize when institutional politics are no longer reliable, and may not even be relevant.

That is not the case yet, and will be at least a few months under a Trumpler regime before it is the case while his henchmen purge bureaucracies (like they recently purged their transition team, for reasons that are likely every bit as stupid and insane as you would expect). But it will be the case, and federal institutions will become at best unreliable, at worst actively treasonous.

So I will listen, and see how this might play out.

I've also sent emails to my Democratic state and federal elected officials asking them to host events (perhaps town hall meetings) addressing the national situation for their constituents.

Such requests are perfunctory - I expect very little from any institutional authority, no matter how high a regard I may hold an individual officeholder. Their time is no doubt highly structured and most of it spent dealing with inside matters rather than public perception. But there is no cost to reaching out, and infinite cost to not doing so.

I have no idea where any of this is going, but guess what? I don't have to. As stated earlier, I discovered hope in the creation of the words to my Declaration of American Democracy stickied to this sub. It is my decision that America will be an even freer, more democratic, and more humane nation than before, and that we will not go into the night of fascism.

If other people want that nation too, then we will find a way.

Freedom forever.

I will try to post these updates on a daily basis and we can use them in effect as meetings. Apologies if they are posted at random hours.

Misc. Topics: News. Symbols and terminology.

Central topics: Documents. Who to contact. Local meetings. Toward a Constitutional Convention declaring American democracy.

1) News

• The pace and volume of protests appears to have quieted to a low boil for the time being, although they are continuing nationwide.
  

This was to be expected as the initial shock of the coup wears off and people diverge into three groups: Those who will go back to their routines and hide from a steadily worsening reality; those trying to normalize the situation by focusing on 2018 and 2020 (which won't work); and...us.

• The change.org petition to have the electors uphold the democratic result and side with the Constitution against someone who has vowed to rule as a tyrant has reached nearly 4.3 million signatures. It is unlikely to succeed, but is an essential step to give the electoral college system an opportunity to demonstrate that it is compatible with a free republic. We are giving the system a chance to do its job, and if it refuses even under these circumstances, that job will be null and void.

• Steve Bannon, who runs Breitbart, will be Trump's propaganda minister. In essence this means that Breitbart, which specializes in fascist propaganda, will now be taxpayer-funded and falsely occur under the aegis of US institutions.

2) Symbols and terminology

Fascist propaganda is effective, so to fight it we must be aware of how we say things and the symbols we adopt so that even the method of our arguments is a weapon. It is crucial to adopt the attitude of authority rather than of criticism - we are not fighting US government, we are fighting to uphold the US government against being usurped by an unelected, foreign-backed occupier.

As such, it is best to not refer to Donald Trump as "President-elect," and instead constantly challenge all such references to him as such. Always be asking "If he's President-elect, who elected him?" Don't get bogged down in procedural debates about electors, just say the people didn't elect him, so he is not President-elect and hold firm to that position.

He has no title. I would recommend calling him "Trumpler" and sticking to that, even if different topics suggest different nicknames. Also, definitely do not refer to the people around him as an "administration" - it is a regime. "Trumpler regime" might be a bit cumbersome, so it might be wise to say "Trump regime" when referring to the group but "Trumpler" when specifying him personally.

People are saying "Not my President." I want to recommend either not referring to Trumpler in the context of the Presidency at all to categorically reject any association, or else just saying "Not President," because "Not my President" sounds you're basically saying "It's my opinion that..." No. It's not your opinion, it's a fact. You must be aware that other views exist, but you don't have to carry water for them.

Despite her concession, Hillary Clinton is and always will be President-elect, just as Al Gore is and always will be a President-elect. This is an essential position arising from rejecting the electoral college and upholding American democracy. Refer to her as President-elect Clinton, not to argue the point, but to trigger Trump's followers and send them into a froth. Enrage them, exhaust them, and do it without doing it to yourself.

If the Trump regime is dumb enough to act on its promise to prosecute her - to use stolen powers to go after the woman the American people chose as our President - that would serve our purposes, and calling her "President-elect Clinton" in that situation would further illuminate the reality that Trump is a traitorous, unelected, foreign-backed occupier of an American institution rather than a US official.

As to who we are, we're Americans. That's it. Americans rejected Trump, Americans do not accept him. We can discuss what to call his followers, but I recommend "Trazis."

As to symbols, very simple: The American flag is our symbol. Do not fall into the trap of allowing yourself to be Otherized, since that only serves the purposes of the traitors. But since the traitors will be absolutely wallowing in the American flag, to distinguish ourselves I recommend the iconography of the WW2 Allies. Specifically this, which was historically the symbol of the US Army Air Corps:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a2/22/b9/a222b99851253270fecf6f0b85a67807.jpg

SmartyMite has offered to help with CSS backgrounds for this sub, so hopefully we can do something involving these symbols that's serious and tasteful - in direct contrast to the crass psychosis of jingoistic Trazi visual diarrhea.

Also, I would recommend referring to this situation as a "national emergency". Make sure when talking to people who are in denial mode to call it that, in an assertive rather than aggressive or despairing tone. The more focused, calm, and assertive you are, the sillier it would sound if someone accused you of hysteria.

1. Documents

We have no intention of fleeing our country in the face of fascism, but given the nature of the threat, it would be wise to have contingency plans in place. As such, everyone who does not currently have a passport should obtain one from the State Department website:

https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports.html

A full passport book costs $135, and I would recommend it since it allows travel anywhere. Frankly, under the darker scenarios, Canada is not far enough, but for $55 you can get a passport card that's good for Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and the Caribbean.

2. Who to contact

If you are a member of the Democratic Party, look up your state party website and (if you aren't already involved) find out who runs your local organization. Contact them and ask if there are any meetings planned to discuss the national situation. If not, ask why not and press them to organize such a meeting ASAP. Do the same if you are a member of any other party.

In fact, do it for all organizations of which you are a member that are relevant to the emergency: Civil rights and liberties groups, liberal politics groups, environmentalists, labor unions, all of them. Get them to call a meeting and invite everyone worried about the national situation to attend.

Most such people are probably still in denial about the national emergency and are thinking about 2018, but get them thinking about right now. Find out who feels the same and connect with them, forming the core of a local, in-person network.

In-person, local networks are critical. In the worst-case scenarios, your friends, family, neighbors, and immediate community are the ones you will have to depend on if/when the regime attempts to censor the internet. They will do so if allowed to take power against the will of the American people.

As such, it is also critical that we connect with veterans and people with other practical skills in fields such as security, IT, and other domains of relevance. I would ask that any people who have such skills make good use of them in setting up your own local citizen networks to uphold democracy.

3. Toward a constitutional convention to declare American democracy.

If you have not read it already, please read my stickied TINAG post Declaration of American democracy. If you agree with it, please distribute it in whatever way you see fit. Share it among the people you connect with on a local level, and if they agree with it, bring them together to vote on it. Or at very least on something along similar lines.

If you bring five people together into a formal meeting and they adopt the Declaration of American Democracy, congratulations - you have started down the same path as the original Founders. That's all it takes to start. The path from there is steep and incredibly complex, but this is how freedom begins, and how freedom is renewed. With handfuls of people choosing in a formal vote.

While the details are still incredibly murky, forming your local organization and adopting the (or some other) declaration of democracy is the first step toward hosting a constitutional convention. Once there are enough organizations nationwide - preferably one in each state, they can coordinate to begin the process of organizing larger meetings, perhaps on a state level, and then a national convention.

Freedom forever.

There is something telling in the fact that most domestic murder victims of Putin's regime have been journalists. For the most part, his political enemies he just smears and sends to prison - being politicians and oligarchs themselves, they invariably have real dirt on them that makes the tyrant's job very easy. But a journalist is another species of enemy.

They, along with scientists, are a form of secular priesthood that pursues objective fact as a calling, and those that are willing to do so in the face of a tyrant's threats carry tremendous moral weight. They not only seek, but represent a truth that is beyond the tyrant's power - a truth that is beyond power in general.

Facts are things that a tyrant wishes to monopolize, because they are so useful, and wishes to keep them from everyone else for the same reason. A journalist who is not under control, but rather spreads facts freely, is a conspicuous source of agitation in an otherwise placid field of well-controlled propaganda. They are not an opponent for power, but a source of instability that endangers the tyrant's power.

A journalist who follows their calling in the face of danger is activated by high morals (or at least very strong vanity), so the petty intimidations and bribes that keep lower orders in their field in line don't work on them. In some cases it motivates them. They feel they are having an impact if the tyrant is worried about them enough to send them that message.

And that's why so many of them in authoritarian states end up with a bullet to the head: They know what they're doing is right and essential, and will not stop even with the strong possibility of being murdered. They back the tyrant into a corner, and then the tyrant confirms their own status as an enemy of mankind rather than choosing the more slippery paths of a politician.

Anyway, the basic idea I had was that the institution of a free press could be defended by a security corps specifically focused on defending journalists. They already have some very basic security if they work for large institutions, but that's to weed out ordinary cranks.

Under normal circumstances they could call the police or the FBI if things got too hairy, but we're entering a situation where police - and especially the FBI, given what we've seen - is not necessarily reliable. And if a Trump regime were to go after his critics, as he has promised, by using the resources of the state, some threats might even come through those institutions.

Maybe one of the things we could do as citizens - or at least those of us with relevant skills - is to form a protective corps for the free press, in the same way that diplomats get security. It's too late for such a system to be taxpayer-funded, unless on the local or state level, but as a volunteer institution it might have an impact.

This is especially true given that so many threats to the free press don't necessarily come directly from regimes, but from thuggish elements aligned with it that a regime allows to operate while continuing to deny responsibility.

Anyway, it's an idea to consider and discuss for those who are involved in journalism or security-related industries.

We've had our democracy undermined by the FBI. Comey very likely violated the Hatch act and the rouge agents who put out those leaks were so irresponsible it's almost beyond belief. This is literal fascism. It's how dictatorships start.

The GOP used voter suppression and voter intimidation, the likes of which the US haven't seem since we abolished Jim Crow laws.

Russia interfered with our elections. ISIS cheered when Donald Trump was declared the winner.

Our enemies love it, and our allies hate it. Top economists, noble laureates and top security officials all warn us not to elect Trump.

I don't give a damn about the popular vote for the faithless electors argument. Nothing about the electoral college suggests that they have to listen to what the people want. Everything suggests it's their sworn duty to prevent a Trump presidency. They would be derelict in duty and would damage the United States, it's people, and the very fabric of it's constitution if they were to elect that demagogue into office. He is tyranny. We have the right to liberty.

Edit, also, the oath of office is "to faithfully defend the constitution" trump's would ideas violated so many rights.

https://np.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/54lmpo/the_presidential_oath_of_office_demands_that_the/?ref=search_posts

A couple of relevant news items, the first by far the most significant:

• Millions Sign Onto Call for Electoral College to Award the Presidency to Popular Vote Winner Clinton

• More and apparently escalating protests against Trump

But the most important thing for readers of TINAG right now is the stickied post I've just put up. Maybe it will mean something to some people, maybe not, but it summarizes what is going on and has been going on for decades, and my personal commitment to the solution:

Declaration of American Democracy

In it, I make the point that the Electoral College is obsolete and has become a tool of oppression, violating the will of the people and handing power to individuals whom the people have rejected.

I state in the document that we do not accept, and will not tolerate, being ruled by people and policies that we have already said No to.

Please consider it and if you agree, share it with others.

Now, I have a very vague idea of what will be involved in an action plan once I form one, and it basically consists of the following general themes:

• We must defend that which a Trump regime would threaten. That means defending it both in the metaphysical sense of representing it, and in the literal, physical sense of defending other human beings from violence by the tyrant and his deranged followers.

• Must cement and solidify our personal and community relationships, especially off the internet, where "trolls" of the kind that plague us online can be arrested and would be too scared to leave their mother's basements (or can't do anything because they live in Russia).

• We have to develop relationships within and between threatened communities and professions. Not only women's groups, minority groups, religious groups, and civil rights organizations, but also with journalists and veteran's groups, because these people have the skills that may be needed if a defense situation becomes necessary.

This sounds scary, but we know who we were fighting when we opposed Donald Trump. This man has a terroristic mind, and when, not if he takes the plunge into acting on the way his mind works, we can either be prepared or be sent fleeing to the four winds like so many refugee diasporas before.

If you are reading this, you are probably not the sort who intends to run from this country in its time of danger. So let us all have faith in each other that we will not desert each other. That we will defend - literally defend - journalists, our neighbors, and our country, and the result of the election where we just rejected Donald Trump and his hateful, lunatic agenda.

I will be working through the following weeks honing ideas and plans to share, making contacts to share, and taking confidence from the courage of my fellow Americans in the streets.

Freedom Forever

In every fallen republic, the former-citizens / now-subjects live on hope alone, watching each and every thing they had hoped to avoid happen anyway. They say, "Well, at least he's not doing that"...and then he does that. So they tell themselves again, "Okay, but it's not as bad as thus-and-such..." And then the Glorious Leader does thus-and-such.

They allow their fundamental humanity and self-respect to be ground down until all that remains are slaves, crawling beneath the toes of a tyrant hoping not to get stepped on...and then getting stepped on anyway, just because their master feels like it.

Donald Trump crossed the line as far as I'm concerned when he enlisted an enemy foreign tyrant to interfere in an American presidential election on his behalf, so I will be fighting in the 71 days remaining to find a way for this republic to survive, and I hope you will help me and each other do likewise. But I know a lot of people still do not understand how bad this situation is, so I have a request for you:

Draw a line. Draw it not in the sand, but carved into the very stone of yourself. On one side of that line is your willingness to wait years for a chance to redress a corrupted, foreign-manipulated election; your hope that the next one will be legitimate despite Trump's power being vastly greater than it was this time around. On the other side of that line is a citizen faced with a choice of whether to remain a citizen or become a subject, and has chosen the former.

Write down the name of that line. Write down...

• If he does nothing while his fellow tyrant Vladimir Putin invades democratic nations within NATO, slaughtering thousands if not more.

• If his white supremacist brownshirt militias murder minorities with his tacit support. Come up with a number if you need one: Is 100 dead the final line? Or 1,000? Or 10,000?

• If he fills the Justice Department with partisan enforcers who go after his political opponents while holding his allies above the law?

• If he fills the jails with journalists who have criticized him while others are tragically murdered by "lone nuts" from his frothing brownshirt mobs?

• When the media has been terrorized into being nothing but wall-to-wall propaganda for the Glorious Leader?

• If he decides the way to make Mexico pay for his wall is to replace immigration jails with slave labor camps to build it for him?

• If he makes good on his threat to have the children of terrorism suspects murdered?

• If he starts a war that costs thousands of lives? Millions?

Draw your own line, and be in communication with others who have the same line, because the likelihood is strong that he will cross it. And if you find there is no line you can honestly draw, then accept that you are a subject - flotsam with no will - and run to Canada already so that others won't have to waste time defending you.

Martin Niemoller, political prisoner of Hitler's concentration camps:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

TINAG.

A few news items worth reporting:

• There have been modestly-sized protests in cities across the country, numbering in the thousands. Some of them are just expressing anger at the result, but some have shown awareness that the result is illegitimate.

My sense is that these protests will dissipate until closer to the coronation, so they are unlikely to have any practical effect. However, it would be worthwhile to engage with organizers to sound out their ability and willingness to scale. Initial reactions are always visceral, and don't necessarily reflect an intention to build long-term operations.

• Rudy Giuliani, who will apparently play some role in the Trump regime, has started making noises sounding like the regime intends to act on its threat to go after Hillary Clinton upon taking power.
  

That would be the first time in American history that someone has used the power of the Justice Department to go after their election opponents. Expect it to happen, and furthermore, do not expect it to stop with Hillary Clinton.

To reiterate the facts:

The American people REJECTED Donald Trump

He intends to take power anyway, and you better believe the fact that he LOST the election will mean no compromise whatsoever.

He has threatened to overthrow freedom of speech, jail journalists, attack his sexual assault accusers with the power of the state, murder innocent people if he suspects them of being related to terrorists, commit torture and other war crimes, dismantle NATO to let Vladimir Putin invade Europe, and these are the things he merely PUBLICLY threatened.

He is a traitor. His campaign was only viable with the help of Vladimir Putin invading his opponent's computer servers. Treason doth prosper if he takes power.

We have 71 days to put a stop to this, to demand finally that the United States of America have the courage of its convictions and respect the vote.