## A Plan for Defending Democracy: Building a Strategic, Cross-Party Coalition
We urgently need a concrete plan—a grand coalition—to defend democracy. If we truly mean #NeverAgain, the moment to act decisively is now. Democracy, basic freedoms, and human dignity itself are under threat.
Trump’s administration openly defies the Supreme Court, imposes extreme tariffs (up to 143% on China!), and now even threatens prison camps for political dissenters. To me, this isn’t just politics—it’s a terrifying erosion of civil liberties, constitutional norms, and the rights we once assumed were untouchable.
But outrage alone isn’t enough. We need a practical, targeted strategy that can truly stop this authoritarian slide.
### My Proposal: A Cross-Party Centrist Coalition in the U.S. House
Given how narrowly divided the House of Representatives currently is, I believe a small number of moderate Republicans from agriculture-heavy, purple or swing districts—especially in states with "top-two" primary systems like California and Washington—could join with centrist Democrats to flip the balance of power.
The goal isn’t a traditional partisan victory. Instead, it’s to create a powerful legislative firewall that can:
- Uphold and enforce Supreme Court rulings against an administration inclined to ignore them.
- End economically catastrophic tariffs that devastate American farmers and workers.
- Block authoritarian measures, like prison camps for political dissidents.
### How This Coalition Could Work Practically:
1. **Moderate Republicans take a stand**:
They commit publicly to oppose unconstitutional actions, reject extreme tariffs, and protect civil liberties, even if it means breaking from party leadership.
2. **Strategic Electoral Guarantees**:
- Democrats, especially in California and Washington’s top-two primary districts, would strategically "stand down," pledging not to run strong Democratic challengers against these Republicans.
- Progressive activists would temporarily focus their resources elsewhere, understanding that preserving democracy must come first.
- Centrist Democratic donors and influential grassroots groups would promise robust funding, political defense, and organizational support for these moderate Republicans, ensuring their survival against inevitable MAGA-backed primary challengers.
3. **Electing a Coalition-Friendly Speaker**:
The coalition could elect a moderate, compromise Speaker—someone from either party who firmly commits to:
- Protecting constitutional norms and enforcing judicial rulings.
- Ending catastrophic trade wars and protecting U.S. agriculture.
- Stopping authoritarian actions, including any plans for political imprisonment of dissenters.
4. **Allowing Independence for Progressives**:
This arrangement does not silence progressive voices or policies. Progressives would still freely critique and push for their agenda. But, crucially, on foundational issues—civil rights, human dignity, rule of law, economic sanity—the entire coalition would stand united.
### Why Would Moderate Republicans Take This Risk?
The threat from Trump and the MAGA wing will be fierce. Moderate Republicans will face harsh political backlash. That’s exactly why the coalition must pledge, explicitly and publicly, powerful electoral support and funding. These Republicans must know they’ll not stand alone. A true coalition demands solidarity and strong defense for its courageous members.
### Why This Unconventional Coalition Matters Right Now:
This strategy is not politics-as-usual. It’s bold and challenging. But with democracy itself on the line, ideological purity tests must be set aside. Coalition-building is the most pragmatic choice in extraordinary times.
I urge all who value democracy—progressives, centrists, moderates, libertarians, independents—to come together. Protect our courts, preserve the rule of law, safeguard livelihoods, and stand firm against authoritarianism. The stakes are too high to let partisan differences keep us divided.
### If #NeverAgain Means Anything, We Must Act Boldly:
Let’s move beyond partisan comfort zones. Let’s support principled Republicans who bravely oppose authoritarianism. By uniting now, creatively and courageously, we can prevent tyranny before it fully takes hold.
This coalition is how we protect each other. This is how we ensure freedom survives.
The moment is here—let’s act.
For years when I lived in Uruguay we’d buy laptops and phones overseas and bring them back for ourselves but also everyone we knew. Uruguay like most countries in Latin America have very high tariffs on electronics. It’s a stupid tax which hurts the local economy a lot. There is no world in which it makes sense to manufacture high tech electronics in a tiny country of 3 million people whose economy is based on banking, tourism, and agriculture. Nor does it really make sense on Mercosur (South American trade block) level.
So it was cheaper to buy a round trip ticket to Miami and buy your iPhone than to buy it locally. There are restrictions on how many devices you can bring in, and to be safe unboxed everything to show i wasn’t bringing in products for resale. But basically every time someone from Uruguay travels outside of South America they’ve got a list of things to buy and bring back for friends and family.
There were attempts and making peer to peer market places for the informal tech mule economy but those got shutdown for obvious reasons.
Now I live in New Zealand which is a country which strongly believes in free trade and I’m able to buy whatever I want locally or directly from overseas. I’ve got to pay the VAT (GST style sales tax) but other than that it doesn’t matter where I buy it. It’s great.
The US is choosing to move towards the system that has failed to serve Latin American countries for decades. Ironically enough given Trump and republicans are pushing it but these trade barriers are really popular with a lot of Marxist economists. 😆
The thing is we know what will happen. The price of an iPhone in Canada and Mexico will be 40% cheaper than in the US. Same thing with laptops and everything else made in China. This will cause a booming retail business along the border. Initially out of reclaimed shopping centers, temporary pop up stores, etc… but there will be so much money in it that you’ll see it get established fast. It doesn’t require much to do a pop up electronics store.
Then Americans discovering they can get their name brand consumer and electronics goods across the border will start rushing to get goods at the old pre-Trump prices. Fly to San Diego, take the light rail train to the border, go shopping, come home. At first it’ll be folks buying for personal consumption and friends. But we know if a tax on consumer goods is over 10% then there becomes an economic incentive to evade it. All of a sudden instead of having a problem smuggling drugs and people in to the US you induce economic demand for mass smuggling! Gangs control smuggling partially because it’s illegal and you need extra legal use of violence to regulate the market, but partially because you can control access to the supply.
With electronics and other consumer goods, these will be imported and sold freely in Mexico and Canada. So anyone can buy them. And once inside the US then there’s a massive digital market to resell them, after all there’s nothing illegal about reselling that iPhone or Nike shoes you bought but never used or even unboxed. This is similar to the reason people steal Amazon deliveries. Fencing the stolen items is really easy.
So it’s easy to smuggle stuff (especially at low volume), easy to buy the product, easy to sell it. The effect of these tariffs is going to be an absolute explosion of cross border smuggling in to the US. It’ll make focusing on drugs and people trafficking really hard. It’s is going to completely undermine effective border control. It’s ironic because Trump has built his political career around the idea of border security. But these protectionist tariffs will undermine that project.
Large systems with strong economic incentives are complicated and hard. The global economy is the largest of these complicated systems.
New Zealand gets a lot of rainfall in storms but this past few days it’s been particularly notable.
For folks who don’t speak metric, that’s 13 inches in a 24 hour period, and over 16 inches of rainfall in some places over 36 hours. It did cause some flooding!
It’s about as much rain in 36 hours as Los Angeles, Denver, Anchorage, Calgary, or Madrid get in a full year.
The user DID keys are still active but their associated domain name / user names are not and the identities at blocked by bluesky’s moderation system that Turkish users can’t opt out of.
