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bluesbassman

(20,387 posts)
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:07 PM 12 hrs ago

I do not want to "move forward" after this era.

Sharing this from a friend’s FB post. It says exactly what I’m feeling.

“I do not want to “move forward” after this era. I want to salt the ground. I had coffee with a Democratic friend who still talks like November is a cure and policy is a balm. Win the midterms, take back the presidency, pass better laws, move forward. That language is how rot survives in America. That is how the worst men in this country learn that no matter what they torch, some clean-suited moderate will eventually bless their crimes as history and call it healing.

America’s core bipartisan religion is forgetting. Republicans light the match, Democrats sweep the ash, and everyone in the press room starts whispering about unity before the smoke has even cleared the rotunda. No. We can win elections and prosecute the people who broke the republic. If you do not do both, your policies are just expensive wallpaper on a burned-out house, and the arsonists are already circling the block with a bigger can of gasoline.

History is a bill we keep dodging. The North won the Civil War, the South won the memory. Reconstruction was left for dead, white terror became law, and Jim Crow swaggered in through the breach. That was a political decision to walk away before the work was finished, to protect comfort over Black lives. America pays interest on cowardice, generation after generation, and the bill never shrinks.

The Supreme Court just gave the game away in the Louisiana Voting Rights Act case. They are willing to let states manipulate maps for partisan gain, even when everyone with a functioning brain knows race is braided through the whole thing, but the second the law tries to remedy racial exclusion directly, the Court recoils. White comfort survives. Black political power gets told to wait. Again.

Power always protects itself in this country. Nixon walks free. Ford tells America to calm down and turn the page. January 6th is followed by Merrick Garland dozing through history while the plotters host podcasts and prep for the next coup. If you do not punish an attempted authoritarian takeover, you are not restoring order. If you treat a coup attempt like a zoning violation, you are begging for a second draft.

Every time Democrats claim policy alone will save us, I want to throw something. I want universal healthcare, labor rights, climate action, all of it. But if you let a movement vandalize the country, loot the courts, and terrorize the public, then hand the next administration a mop, all you have done is build your future on poisoned ground. Policy on top of impunity is wallpaper over black mold. That rot never stays buried.

Hope gets weaponized in America. Hope without truth is a sedative. Hope without memory is a drug. Hope without accountability is a country sleepwalking into its own erasure. I do not want slogans that make frightened liberals feel spiritually exfoliated for six minutes. I want a politics that names the crime, shows the receipts, and refuses to look away.

King’s warning about the white moderate was a police report. The people begging him to slow down were respectable men in suits who loved order more than they hated segregation. That disease is alive every time a liberal pundit calls Trump “divisive” instead of criminal and tells the country to be patient while donors process their feelings.

Blunt voices are oxygen right now because the country is choking on euphemism. Democrats talk like clarity is rude, like naming the threat too directly might upset the donors. Republicans scream their desires with a sledgehammer until the language seeps into the drywall. I want Democrats who can speak with that same force about democracy, civil rights, memory, law, and the price of letting fascists slide.

I want Democrats to win, obviously. But I refuse to clap for another era of polite restoration draped over unpunished evil. I refuse another cycle where Republicans commit crimes against the republic and Democrats are told to show emotional maturity. If this country wants a future, then memory, accountability, and consequence cannot be optional. If we skip that again, the next strongman will not bother with fake electors. He will come with the army.”
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DNrUvPJxQ/?mibextid=wwXIfr

34 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
I do not want to "move forward" after this era. (Original Post) bluesbassman 12 hrs ago OP
This is brilliant LearnedHand 12 hrs ago #1
;-{) THEATRE OF LAW Goonch 12 hrs ago #2
The Theatre of Flaw. calimary 3 hrs ago #33
"That language is how rot survives in America." Solly Mack 11 hrs ago #3
You are 100%. Criminals go to jail not back into circulation so they can plot the next attack on law and order. flashman13 10 hrs ago #19
You're right. The Bundy group should have gone to prison. Solly Mack 10 hrs ago #20
Every single one of them. January 6th might not have happened if they had gone to jail. flashman13 10 hrs ago #21
This is fiction. And it's probably from 2021. maxsolomon 11 hrs ago #4
And your proof is? paleotn 11 hrs ago #5
So what's the "fantasy"? bluesbassman 11 hrs ago #6
You've never had coffee with a Democratic friend? Scrivener7 9 hrs ago #24
Not sure if it's real or not but democrats having coffee together JI7 9 hrs ago #25
After we struggle to retake the White House in 2028.... paleotn 11 hrs ago #7
Even if we wanted to "move forward", I don't know if it is possible? kentuck 11 hrs ago #8
Thanks for posting this.. Escape 11 hrs ago #9
I want a NEW DEAL! FakeNoose 11 hrs ago #10
"Heh! You don't like the RAW DEAL?" kentuck 9 hrs ago #27
And what exactly elevates us above the beasts of the field.. except.. BattleRow 11 hrs ago #11
The world is waiting to see if the Republic has the balls to completely clean house and Bev54 11 hrs ago #12
This post does an excellent job of defining Buddyzbuddy 11 hrs ago #13
Thanks bluesbassman. Prairie_Seagull 11 hrs ago #14
Outstanding summation of our current situation. NoMoreRepugs 11 hrs ago #15
The Regime & their "supreme" Court need to be held accountable. nt TBF 11 hrs ago #16
In retrospect, the United States would have been better off misanthrope 10 hrs ago #17
No "moving forward". no "vengeance". . . DinahMoeHum 10 hrs ago #18
Agreed, to me "moving forward" was Obama's biggest mistake, although I will admit that I don't know if his hand was Escurumbele 10 hrs ago #22
I'm with this person! Joinfortmill 10 hrs ago #23
I can't move forward with all this baggage. Iggo 9 hrs ago #26
Nothing will happen as long as so many Democratic lawmakers do AIPAC's bidding Ponietz 8 hrs ago #28
America BigMin28 8 hrs ago #29
I agree--Salt the earth! lastlib 8 hrs ago #30
Thank you for sharing this. We need to hear this. yellow dahlia 8 hrs ago #31
Yes and progressoid 7 hrs ago #32
Oh, yes, no f***ing "look forward not back" this time. JHB 3 hrs ago #34

LearnedHand

(5,557 posts)
1. This is brilliant
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:16 PM
12 hrs ago

Says exactly what I’m feeling too. And I fear most of the party is walking right down the middle of that look-forward road. I fear receipts won’t matter. Evidence won’t go anywhere. That it’ll be Merrick Garland on steroids.

Solly Mack

(97,221 posts)
3. "That language is how rot survives in America."
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:50 PM
11 hrs ago

Yep.

People said with the Bush Regime - allow them to escape justice and the next republican president will do worse.

Same could have been said about allowing Nixon to get off without accountability.

Being allowed to resign is NOT punishment.


King’s warning about the white moderate was a police report. The people begging him to slow down were respectable men in suits who loved order more than they hated segregation. That disease is alive every time a liberal pundit calls Trump “divisive” instead of criminal and tells the country to be patient while donors process their feelings.


I've been thinking about the same thing today. (Letter From a Birmingham Jail)

flashman13

(2,548 posts)
19. You are 100%. Criminals go to jail not back into circulation so they can plot the next attack on law and order.
Fri May 8, 2026, 08:16 PM
10 hrs ago

One item that was left out of the post. The DOJ under Obama failed to arrest and prosecute the criminals that pointed guns at Federal agents during the Bundy Mini-Rebellion in Utah. They never collected any of that owed lease money from Bundy either. And his crazy son went out and did the same thing all over again.



This is what I'm talking about:

Not this:

Solly Mack

(97,221 posts)
20. You're right. The Bundy group should have gone to prison.
Fri May 8, 2026, 08:19 PM
10 hrs ago

So-called/Self-styled "Constitutional Sheriffs" need to be brought down too.

maxsolomon

(39,099 posts)
4. This is fiction. And it's probably from 2021.
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:50 PM
11 hrs ago

They didn't have "coffee with a Democratic friend who still talks like November is a cure and policy is a balm."

They made up a straw man so they could write a little fantasy.

bluesbassman

(20,387 posts)
6. So what's the "fantasy"?
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:57 PM
11 hrs ago

Do you think accountability is lost? Do you think if and when Democrats take back the power they should just follow the same path as their predecessors and “forgive and forget”? How do you think we got to this point we’re at now? I don’t understand your hostility towards what was written, please explain.

JI7

(93,849 posts)
25. Not sure if it's real or not but democrats having coffee together
Fri May 8, 2026, 09:02 PM
9 hrs ago

is a common thing.

paleotn

(22,600 posts)
7. After we struggle to retake the White House in 2028....
Fri May 8, 2026, 06:58 PM
11 hrs ago

Burn the fucking bastards to the ground and piss on their ashes. No more making nice. Not after this. And any Dem who says otherwise needs to be labeled an appeaser and promptly run out of the party.

kentuck

(115,544 posts)
8. Even if we wanted to "move forward", I don't know if it is possible?
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:05 PM
11 hrs ago

Too much damage has been done. The mess has to be cleaned up. We have to change the status quo. We have no choice.

Escape

(510 posts)
9. Thanks for posting this..
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:30 PM
11 hrs ago

Last edited Fri May 8, 2026, 09:51 PM - Edit history (1)

It IS the most important issue of our time.

I want...and ..we should DEMAND, that EVERY person in the Trump administration who broke the law, be punished to the fullest extent of that law.

No fucking compromises or lame ass penalties. No deals cut and no apologies accepted.

If we have to build bigger prisons for the ICE Nazis and the military fools who followed illegal orders and for the cabinet members and their enablers, we should joyfully build them, with no concern for their cost.

And...every person who was illegally detained, deported or worse, should be fully compensated for every wrong they were dealt.



FakeNoose

(42,218 posts)
10. I want a NEW DEAL!
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:33 PM
11 hrs ago

I want Franklin Delano Roosevelt - or someone very much like him - to come forward with all new ideas and a whole "New Deal." It's the best way to sweep the MAGAs into the dust bucket of history and start over.

Please please please - make it happen very soon!

BattleRow

(2,650 posts)
11. And what exactly elevates us above the beasts of the field.. except..
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:35 PM
11 hrs ago

Our ability to read,write,speak..and then create law to provide accountability ...to establish a groundwork for responsibility . individually and collectively.

Bev54

(13,502 posts)
12. The world is waiting to see if the Republic has the balls to completely clean house and
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:39 PM
11 hrs ago

punish those who have ruined the country or not. If not, then kiss any close alliances goodbye for a very long time. There can be no half way and that means the supreme court as well.

Buddyzbuddy

(2,825 posts)
13. This post does an excellent job of defining
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:40 PM
11 hrs ago

what's wrong with my party and what we need to do to fix it. At least one aspect of it.

misanthrope

(9,597 posts)
17. In retrospect, the United States would have been better off
Fri May 8, 2026, 07:49 PM
10 hrs ago

if they had given the former Confederacy the Carthage treatment after the Civil War. Because what was tried didn't work whatsoever.

Escurumbele

(4,107 posts)
22. Agreed, to me "moving forward" was Obama's biggest mistake, although I will admit that I don't know if his hand was
Fri May 8, 2026, 08:22 PM
10 hrs ago

forced to make that decision, or maybe, the decision was made for him. Thugs and the mafia have ways of making decisions for other people.

But this time around, Democrats better have their cojones in the right place and prosecute all these thugs, otherwise, like said in the article, these thugs will continue to do their evil because why not? if there are no consequences, if accountability doesn't exist, then why not continue doing the crimes that make them so happy.

BigMin28

(1,871 posts)
29. America
Fri May 8, 2026, 09:54 PM
8 hrs ago

Has to reckon with it's crimes . All of them. From the beginning to current events. Until we do so honestly and openly, we as a country will never heal and live up to it's ideals.

lastlib

(28,533 posts)
30. I agree--Salt the earth!
Fri May 8, 2026, 10:07 PM
8 hrs ago

Hunt them all down and take them away. Remove them from society Maybe we COULD use all those camps The Traitor wants to build. As I've often said, Shakespeare had the right idea, just the wrong target: "the first thing we do, let's kill all the billionaires." I'm also tired and sick to death of that "look forward, not backward." crap. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it; I don't want another repeat of the last half-century.

progressoid

(53,350 posts)
32. Yes and
Fri May 8, 2026, 11:00 PM
7 hrs ago

Yes and do something about the media and Dem messaging.

IMHO, we wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for an enabling and complicit media.

JHB

(38,315 posts)
34. Oh, yes, no f***ing "look forward not back" this time.
Sat May 9, 2026, 03:23 AM
3 hrs ago

Both Clinton and Obama took that attitude with the malfeasance of their predecessors, and Joe was too entrenched in avoiding the appearance of partisanship.

These people have held a knife to our throats and a gun to the heads of out children. They have a track record of political extermination, and they're not going to stop until we meet the same fate as the Rockefeller Republicans: extermination. Initially politically, but it won't take long for them to get around to making it literal.

Go full bore at the right-wing organizations using the Republican Party as their vehicle. The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society should be treated as seditious organizations, as well as all of their funders.

Have you ever read old anti-communist propaganda? From the first Red Scare, about a century ago now? They warned about how the commies would take control here, by using the rules of our system to put themselves in positions of power. And once enough people were in position, especially positions to enforce the rules, they'd start enforcing the rules on their opponents, but not on themselves, and use that leverage to take total control.

The Republicans have turned themselves into the literal Red Menace. Their guiding light to taking total power is Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

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