Meaningful elections do not occur in dictatorships.

The GOP lost the midterms and most election since.

In dictatorships, people don't bother voting because the outcome is determined.

Should we persuade people that we are already in a dictatorship?

Stand by for something. . . https://twitter.com/cindylang17/status/1285398373382721537

This is the card my husband had to carry at all times to prove that he voted for Pinochet If he couldn't prove he voted for Pinochet, his life would be in danger.

That's dictatorship.

Now I will define as precisely as I can where we are right now, beginning in 2016. . .

We are tipping toward a regime change.

We currently have dangerous levels of income inequality.

It's not possible to have a healthy democracy when the income inequality is too great.

In the 1920s and earlier we had similar levels of income inequality.

Things were actually worse then because we had no minimum wage, no 40 hour work week, no worker protections, no social security.

Returning soldiers who were injured were left to starve. If you were injured in your factory job, you were left to starve.

If Trump wins the election, what will likely happen is that the Trump-Fox-GOP will tip us into a form of autocracy which Hungarian scholar Bálint Magyar calls a post-communist mafia state: a small band like a "family" control the nation's wealth.
http://ceupress.com/book/post-communist-mafia-state-2

There is a thing called "competitive authoritarianism," which is like authoritarianism-lite.

I might do a thread on the stages of autocracy.

Now, for the people who tell me that things in America have never been this bad. . .

https://scholar.harvard.edu/levitsky/files/SL_elections.pdf

Before you tell me that things in America have never been this bad, consider was life was like for an African-American woman in the year 1860. She didn't even own her own body.

Consider being a Black man in 1930. Things were pretty bad for a lot of people in the 1920s and 1930s.

How did we get out of the autocracy of slavery, and Jim Crow, and women as chattel?

Through the hard work of our liberal heroes: MLK, Jr. Thurgood Marshall, etc. etc.

We didn't really have a liberal democracy in this country until after the Civil Rights movement.

People born after the Civil Rights and women's rights movements inherited an expanding democracy. Before 1955, democracy was for white people, and generally white males, only. That wasn't democracy.

Things started changing in 1955 with Brown v. Board.

We're still riding the backlash from Brown v. Board.

Sometimes when people inherit something, they feel entitled to it. They don't think they have to work for it.

Nope. Nobody owes us a democracy.

If we want it, we have to work for it, every election, every generation.

Rant over.

Here's my suggested to-do list. I'm sure it can be improved. https://terikanefield-blog.com/things-to-do/ 

Yes, it's a shock. We never expected this. I certainly didn't.

I thought we were on an upward slope. I thought democracy would continue expanding and becoming more inclusive.

Adding: Trump wants us to think he's invincible, and he's a good conman. https://twitter.com/vavetisedu/status/1285401386734288900