“One thing we have really found is a place to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said. Americans are segregating by their politics at a rapid clip, helping fuel the greatest divide between the states in modern history.
One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the party in control has a supermajority in at least one legislative chamber — which means the majority party has so many lawmakers that they can override a governor’s veto. Not that that would be necessary in most cases, as only 10 states have governors of different parties than the one that controls the legislature
This can only end badly as conservatives seem to have no problem ruling over land in empty states.
Considering how things are going here in Urop, unfortunately I think fascism for everyone is what’s going to happen in the coming decades. Ask yourself how easy it will be to get rid of fascist dictatorships that have panopticon-level surveillance capabilities and far reaching control of the media landscape including traditional media and the Internet
nah. i mean, maybe stable authoritarianism is a risk, but its not currently what’s happening. we can catastrophize about what will happen decades from now all we want, but the fact that fascists exist right now doesn’t mean they’re gonna win, or that they will organize an effective surveillance state, or that that surveillance state will last. all it means is that we have bigots screeching about bigotry, which historically is nothing new whatsoever, and even if we’re ramping up to nazi 2.0, our response should be the same. fight back.
Have you been paying attention the past 25-50 years? I’m not someone who became a pessimist because of Trump. The problem is largely structural, baked into our social, political, and economic institutions. It’s because I’m a student of history and politics that I think the way I do. The patterns in our political life over the past several decades have many historical analogies, none of them good. I believe in fighting back, but sometimes strategic retreats are necessary to win a war.
i’m not currently in a position where a “strategic retreat” is possible. if fascists take over, i’m fucked, and alot of the people i love are fucked. so forgive me if i don’t want to die to win your war. the reality is, no matter what you think you’ve discerned from historical records, the information landscape, the technology, and the material conditions are different now then they were then, and having such certainty about decades into the future is, to my mind, mostly foolish. analogies are not prophecy, and portents of doom are useless at best. doomers suck, the world has changed, is changing, and will change, and if we don’t involve ourselves with that process then your prophecy will come true.
i dunno, this whole attitude just pisses me off, honestly. i don’t care for your imagined apocalypse. people need help right now, fascists need bashing right now, not decades from now. maybe you are currently politically engaged, taking the necessary steps to stop this bullshit in its tracks, that would be great, but to be honest that usually isn’t the case for people who seem resigned to just let the tide take them. the reality is that we’re all going to die, regardless of if fascists take charge or the earth burns or we all live in paradise. everything we build is gonna turn to dust. and we can whine about that all we want, mope about how its hopeless, but living life that way is boring and stupid. the past is just books, and the future is just stories. all we have is now.
i genuinely used to feel the way you do, too. it turned out it wasn’t because i really had enough knowledge to be certain the world was ending (fun fact, you don’t. nobody does, and every single person throughout history who thought they did died of something that wasn’t the end of the world, or is currently living in a conspicuously not-ended world.), but because i have clinical depression. if you already want to die, you can confirmation bias your way into a near infinite quantity of information justifying that belief as it turns out.
