If they push this through, it is imperative -- a moral imperative and a functional one -- that we grab all the power we can and then supplant Social Security with a universal safety net, so their little con game was for NOTHING and the people they screwed over get paid twice. https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1259542211789717506

The Republican Party is trying to kill social security and the way they're doing it right now is putting the gun in vulnerable people's hands and saying, "Pull the trigger or starve. Pull the trigger or lose your home. We're not taking your Social Security. You're doing this."

It's the cruelest trick in a long line of dirty ones and we have an imperative, we have a command from on high, that they profit nothing from it. That they do not get away with it.

We have got to destroy the Republican Party. Carthago delenda est. The survival of the country, the human race, the planet as a fit habitat... it all depends on there being no GOP left anywhere near the levers of power. While we destroy them, we have to deny them everything.

And it is not hyperbole when I say they have to be destroyed. Donald Trump spent his day today whipping himself and his acolytes up into a furor over a made-up "ObamaGate" that amounts to "Someone, somewhere, tried to hold us accountable for our crimes."

And tomorrow, if any reporters bother to corner any Republican politicians and ask them about it, they will go from "I don't have time to read tweets" to "Well I'm sure the president thinks so" to "Obviously we're taking this very seriously" because the alternative is unthinkable

Because the alternative is they challenge him, and if they challenge him then they are at war with him, their president, their party leader, going into an election, and there is nothing he can say and nothing he can do that will horrify them more than the thought of losing does.

He will lead them into the real version of the imaginary witch hunt he has spent three years shrieking about, he will do it instead of leading on the coronavirus, he will do it as part of his campaign, he will do it to tank the Democrats' campaigns, if not the whole election.

And while he's doing it his allies and his administration will be shredding social security, the affordable care act, the independent federal judiciary.

When's the last time you saw something trending with 1.5 million tweets? Some of that is brand new accounts created to boost the hashtag, some of it is people commenting on the number of tweets and thus raising it. Some of it's the hate machine, some of it is organic hatred.

I fear today was a dangerous turning point, in a way that won't be fully apparent except in retrospect. If the GOP doesn't find its long-term planning ability -- forget courage or a spine or whatever, it doesn't have those things -- and confront him, we're headed into new waters.

And if you think it's hyperbole to say that we're heading into full, open, unabashed and unabridged fascism now... consider that the people who've been warning you about that and him since 2016 also said there would be a disastrous body count, and that was supposedly hyperbole.

Some of us told you it was going to be this bad.

Listen to us when we tell you it's going to get worse.

We've all been RTing people saying "The cruelty is the point" for how long now. It's time to understand what that means, where it was headed.

They're looking at making people opt out of future Social Security payments in order to get a fraction of the economic relief we need.

That's cruel. It's downright sadistic. It's taking advantage of people they're charged to help, in order to advance their larger agenda.

But while we say that the cruelty is the point, remember: the agenda is there, and it is being served.

Be ready for things to get worse.

Listen to the people who told you it was going to be bad.

And watch out for one another, because in the end, we're all we have.