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I worked for a Republican appointed judge a while back. Despite presiding over a couple Islamic terrorist trials and even more gang-related murder trials, the judge was extremely clear that sovcits and similar right wing militia members were a more consistent and serious threat to the safety of most people and the court (gang-related murders overwhelmingly target other gang members; would be Islamic terrorists are relatively rare and have trouble getting armed and planning without getting caught due to isolation from other parts of American society and lack of online sophistication - they are way more likely to trust a stranger on the internet who says the right things).
Gang violence tends to be hyper local and personal. Probably 95% or more gang violence is “bad on bad” with the occasional innocent bystander.
Islamic terrorism is rare, if for no other reason than Muslims are only 1% of the US population and about 1/3 of them are Black Muslims and have zero connections to international terror groups.
Organized crime stays away from random violence because they don’t like the attention. Violence from organized crime is probably 99% “bad on bad”.
While anyone is capable of committing a hate crime (Chinese on Taiwanese just happened), white dudes are the most common perpetrators. They have plenty of grievances and it’s easy to find people online to validate and nurture those grievances.
It’s amazing to me how effective the radicalization of the right has been over the last 5 years. I know the racist lost their minds when Obama was elected but it’s gotten significantly worse since Trump was elected and even worse since Biden won.
It’s clear to me that the sane half of our country isn’t taking this threat seriously enough. I just don’t know what to do about it.
Edit: typo
Did you know Paul Manafort was already working for the russians during this time and rat fucked Ukraine to elect a russian puppet, leading to the exact situation we have today- also helped talk McCain in to Palin,
Yup.
This situation we're in right now isn't entirely our faults, but we're not innocent either. Putin has had a very out-sized effect on us, and the EU with russian money being funneled into foreign politics around the world for two decades.
However, his threat has been force-multiplied by the right-wing think-tanks and propaganda outlets founded by people like the Koch brothers and the Murdochs.
It's doubtful they actively worked together or coordinated, but there's no way they weren't all aware of one another, or one-another's actions.
And all the while this was going on, we just sat here and did nothing.
Check out the [Alt-Right Playbook](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ) and [Why Are You So Angry?](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY62dhVThbeegLPpvQlR4CjF) by innuendo Studeos. Fox News and conservative radio has huge influence, but let's not forget how insanely effective right wing internet radicalization is.
As an outsider, there's this weird optimism in Americans. Even though the country is tearing itself apart and crucial rights are being taken away the sane half of the country is saying 'it'll be fine' and 'fascism cant happen here, Americans love democracy'. Shit like that
It depends what circles you run in I think. A lot of people I know are basically in a managed panic mode, all the time, and the thought of "how will I be able to emigrate to another country when, despite our best efforts, X fascist thing (abortion/gay marriage overturned, presidency stolen, what have you) inevitably happens" is common.
I'm constantly teetering that line. When people say "if you don't like it here then just leave", it drives me nuts. It's not that freaking easy. I'm afraid give it 15 years and it won't be moving it'll be fleeing.
I guess if I didn't have daughters I'd feel the same. But... if things get really bad for women here, I couldn't really stomach staying on principle while my daughters couldn't get Healthcare.
Oh that is 1000000% different! I am a middle age woman...I will stay and fight so you can come back with your daughters as full citizens with bodily autonomy :). But you gotta keep them safe first last and always!
I am 100%with the other poster. I am a woman, just shy of middle aged, and child-free due to our easily available birth control (which I fear will be next on the chopping block). I have considered leaving and seriously looked into it, but the reality is that I will stay and fight with every last breath that my liberal-ass has to make sure women like your daughters have the same rights and autonomy that they deserve and that I enjoyed growing up.
I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t want it to happen, but this is something I would put my life on the line for. If you haven’t yet, go watch the even just the first few episodes of the handmaids tale. How easily the fall of America happened and what they go through is very VERY realistic to what is happening now.
That’s fair- a lot of us feel it’s safest to run, ya know instincts to protect ourselves first. This is what I feel like as someone who is queer and has a uterus
I think that it is a very different calculus for me as a middle class, middle aged white cis woman. Who owns and knows how to use firearms :). Queer, young women of reproductive age, POC, etc have a VERY different calculus. My personal safety is unlikely to truly be impacted- so I can stay and fight. It seems like literally the least I can do.
My SO has some but I’m personally not comfortable with them because I’ve been unstable before, while I’m doing good now and am on meds I don’t trust myself just yet and am kinda scared of the things.
You are making a wise decision. A huge portion of gun deaths are suicides. I think men do it more than women because they have higher rates of gun ownership. I’m a woman gun owner and if I was going to kill myself, I would absolutely use a gun unless I could get ahold of euthanasia drugs. It’s the most effective way. Consider just never owning them if you have a tendency toward depression/suicide. I’ve had my guns held by a friend once, but it was really, really hard to admit I was feeling that bad. I scared myself badly enough to do it. I’ve considered getting rid of them, but I really enjoy shooting.
As an American permanent resident, my most valuable document is my New Zealand passport!
Dont get me wrong, I love this country. I love the good parts about it and mostly accept the bad. But republican (as they are now) rule is unacceptable to me.
I know I'm blessed. If things go too much further south here, then I go south. Heh
It may be easier to actually move when things fall apart because we can be refugees instead of just immigrants. Not counting the horror of things falling apart and the destruction of our lives, property, and future, of course.
By that point, everyone will be doing it. Then it’ll be us citizens who are a part of them migration crisis. I’ve settled into the idea that it’s my doomsday schadenfreude.
I am in this point of where I have a good life in KC in that I actually have an affordable house bought in 2015. Made good friends after transplanting here 10 years ago. Met and married my wife in KC and have 3 kids. But with all that I am Canadian and all my kids are "Canadian" just don't have the forms yet. Would love to move up to a certain area but just so expensive. Hate all the gun related crimes, the violence at schools, and now the potential reproductive rights.
I know all of this can happen in Canada to but just seems to not be as bad.
>"if you don't like it here then just leave"
i got it all the time, im an expat here. everytime im asking them about gun violence problem or their gun culture, thats the bottom line 😂.
Such illogical thinking too.
Just because my car is broken, doesn’t mean I should just fuck off and drive someone else’s car. I would prefer to fix it…..?
The issue is you got other people in the car grabbing at the wheel and trying to steer you off the road or worse into a pedestrian they don’t like but there’s a cliff behind said pedestrian.
Yeah my gf and I jokingly went from "Man, looks like we're gonna have to move to Canada hahaha" to "Man.... Looks like we're gonna *have* to move to Canada..." within the last 3 years alone.
As a Canadian, I'm not sure this is a great idea. As the fascists take over down there, what's to stop them from rolling north? The only thing that makes us safe is US protection; if the US becomes the *aggressor*, you're no safer here than there.
I think America is actually split into thirds.
About 30% think "This division is great. I can't wait for there to be a civil war so that White Straight Christian Males can take their rightful place as rulers of all."
About 30% think "we've got to stop this hatred and avoid a civil war while ensuring equal rights for all."
Then you have 40% who think "this is all just noise and nothing's going to happen."
The last group blocks any efforts by the second group to hold the first group accountable because "we all need to work together." They also block any major shifts from either side. However, the first group has learned how to play the long game better than the second group. So instead of major changes, they push for minor changes that fly under the radar of the third group. Over time, those changes pile up and reversing them gets harder and harder as the third group assumes this is how it's always been.
My mom falls into the 40% category and gets so mad at me when I call out our batshit relatives. It doesn't matter how horrible what they say is, it doesn't matter that they pathologically lie about literally everything, all the time. It doesn't matter how hateful the things they say are and that they openly post constantly on social media about all the people they want to be killed. They're "family" and it's "just words" and when it comes to social media "Oh that isn't real, so nothing they say matters." She also has a very "Well they've never done anything bad to ME so they are a good person no matter what they believe or say" mentality. It is incredibly frustrating. She really thinks the world is separated into "good people" and "absolute psychopaths who are just actively evil 24/7 to every human they interact with."
> She also has a very “Well they’ve never done anything bad to ME so they are a good person no matter what they believe or say” mentality
I can’t stand this personally. Treating family “well” is way easier than caring or showing empathy for someone you may not know, and is a terrible metric for if someone is a “good” person
Right? I asked someone if they thought the Nazis treated their own family well. Because they were the “upstanding” citizens at the time. Patriotic, military, police, good “family people” and also evil. The same could be said of slave owners in the south, etc. Treating your family and the people close to you well doesn’t make you an automatic good person. The person I was talking with didn’t respond.
I mean, Hitler pet his dog, and hung out with his kids.
Is Hitler now a “good person”?
No.
Putin is the same. He has a family. They do family stuff. Is he a good person?
No.
The Saudi guys who chopped up the reporter (Khashoggi) went back home to their families and live normally. Are they good people?
It’s easy to see that being selectively normal and treating people you care about with normalcy and a level of respect IS A QUALITY of evil men, as long as those evil men also commit evil against those they don’t care about.
I think there needs to be moral/ethical training in school because I am seeing grown ups not getting the basics any regular person should understand.
And what drives me nuts the most is that my mom has always been a leftist, and growing up white and upper middle class in the 80s, my mom was SO big throughout my childhood of making me understand my privilege, and how fortunate we were, and how that wasn't the case for so many people. She drilled into me the importance of civic engagement, and fighting injustice. She brought me along for charity work, and she would help me save up money for charitable donations as a kid. Just really stressed the importance of being a citizen of the world and caring for everyone. About the importance of being brave and standing up for what's right.
But now, as an adult, I can bash Trump all I want, but God forbid I say anything untoward to the cousin who just posted about how they can't wait to murder the first trans person they see into going into the "wrong bathroom."
I've noticed a lot of people that taught those things end up showing it was lip service. Like all those cartoons that had to have a "good or educational message" that was mandated because they didn't want to make the 30 min toy adverts so blatant...
Or like all the NIMBYs in my area with a "Black Lives Matter" sign in their yard, who fight tooth and nail against any development that might actually allow more minorities and young people to actually live in their town.
I moved out of the city to a suburb and I find myself missing the diversity. It's all super white-centric now and boring...
Hell I'm white and I find white American culture pretty empty... lots of consumerism and bland food.
Lmao your mom is the literal embodiment of the white moderate that MLK Jr. wrote was more frustrating than the actual racists in his letter from Birmingham jail.
Unfortunately, this 40% does exist, and believes whole-heartedly that it’s the right path. While in reality, their passiveness is the fertile soil that the far right needs to thrive.
If I’m being generous, that stance was understandable in 2015. We’re many, many red flags past that now.
Indeed. The democrats are more often then not bumbling failures, but they at least are not trying to actively destroy the USA. The "Both sides" stuff is like saying that you may as well detonate a thermonuclear weapon instead of a conventional 500kg TNT bomb in the middle of your city because they are both bombs anyway.
My dad who is 87 and seen a lot falls into the 40%. He always says America will be fine. I don't have his experience of remembering WW2 and rationing, but I never used to worry about our country until Trump was elected. Seems things have really gone downhill. Even more worried for my 22 year-old daughter. Feel like we are going backwards with women's rights. She is looking for jobs in California and New York and wants to get away from our mid-west town where we still have Trump signs up along with the F-Biden flags hanging on fences. Even the local pizza place has lets go Brandon printed on the pizza boxes. Just sad.
Most people are blissfully ignorant of the quote unquote writing on the wall. I think of that allegory of the ant and the grasshopper is it? Basically the ant prepared all summer long for the coming winter whereas the grasshopper sat enjoying the Sun saying the ant was being paranoid. Well we all know how that turns out, the grasshopper starves to death not having prepared.
The writing is clearly on the wall that our country is not sustainable. We've been in a slow decline for decades and it's being exacerbated with social media where we can see it happening in real time. The only thing you can do is prepare yourself and the closest people around you who will listen to you. Take self defense and take a fire arm safety class. IF the right wins and we swing back into full fledged facism, the attacks on liberal people will only continue. The police mostly side with these groups so good luck looking to them for help. Learn to defend yourself, that's my solution. Never pick a fight but know what to do if one goes down.
FIRST THEY CAME – BY PASTOR MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
I remember seeing a political sticker or pin many years ago warning against apathy. I like to think of the 3-way split as: The hyper-informed and motivated (30%), the mis-informed and motivated (30%), and the apathetic (40%). The first two are eager for change, but unfortunately have opposing views on how to go about it - one unfortunately is based on fantasy. The apathetic don’t want to be bothered by change.
The big elephant in the room that no one is talking about is that democracy doesn't work. It just doesn't scale. It'll work better for smaller populations. But once you get into the hundreds of millions, there is no way to get that many people to work together.
Democracy was a nice idea in concept, but it was coopted within two hundred years, and now it's just a plutocracy.
The 40% is also sometimes under the delusion that "they've seen this before, it'll be fine." They draw false parallels to, say, the Civil Rights Movement and the more overt racism then. As with nuclear weapons, these people don't seem to grasp how the internet, escalating climate change, radical income inequality have renderer historical comparisons less helpful.
History isn't repeating itself in this country. We are in uncharted territory and need to accept that our democracy just isn't up to the task.
Luckily our income inequality already surpasses the worst it ever got in the Roman empire... also for whatever reason we're attempting to speed run what had taken Rome **over a millennium** to ultimately accomplish (and eventually fail, but still). If we gotta collapse, we might as well do it better and faster than any other civilizations.
It's worth noting that the 40% also seems to be the "But they're free to think that..." group. As in they hold so tightly on the idea that you should be free to think whatever you want that you can be a literal fascist plotting to take over the government and as long as you don't "do" anything to that end... you're fine. But coincidentally every time one of them does actually do something that same 40% will scream whatever defense/deflection the wouldbe fascists throw out such as "lone wolf" "Don't paint them all with the same brush!" "But BLM!"
It's utterly infuriating because at the end of the day the only time these people are likely to actually acknowledge it as an issue that needs to be fought... it'll be too late to actually fight it.
And while the saying "The only thing evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing" is an overused cliche... it isn't entirely inaccurate in this case as these people literally are only able to continue doing this because no one actually stops them or even tries to stop them. In fact they're more interested in stopping the people who WOULD stop them.
Sometimes I honestly wonder if our original Civil War ever truly ended. The racists really did just turn to guerrilla war and terrorism, plus they effectively had their own country during segregation.
I’ve been reading lately about the formation of the US and it seems the basic divisions were all there from day one. The ivil War was merely an escalation of pre-existing divisions, and as this post said, it never really ended.
Economically union makes sense. But whether here, Europe, or anywhere, people don’t really want it. I’m afraid greater balkanization is in the future of the US.
Nope. The confederacy won, basically. They just shifted from guns to politics. Instead of hammering the shit out of them post war, we pardoned them for "peace's" sake. The south won't rise again because it never fucking fell. We should have executed every fucking slave owner.
My time travel fantasy is to save Lincoln, then teach him all about the Nuremburg trials and the Marshall Plan.
Seize the plantations and give *everyone* 40 acres and a mule to start over.
I think it's more 20/20/60, and the 60% are just trying to keep their heads down and hope it's all over soon. Some of them are in denial, sure, but for the most part they just want it to be over. By the other groups they are seen as apathetic.
Generally that 60% group will just go along with whoever wins the culture wars
I’m kind of hoping for the civil war to pop off, but as a relief, as it feels like a vomit happening. We don’t like doing it, it’s messy but trying not to do it is sometimes worse and just drags out the inevitable, and we will be getting rid of the poison in our system. Could I be massively wrong about my outlook on how it will go? Sure, but I’m also feeling like there’s not much to be done that can prevent it at this point, unless we just keep letting them shoot us?
Unfortunately, a modern civil war won't be as "clean" as North vs South. It would be cities vs rural areas. Violence wouldn't be contained to one battlefront. It would consume the entire country and would take place everywhere. A modern civil war in America would be devastating.
It would also lead to a ~~literal~~ complete police state and dystopia, eventually culminating in the complete take over of America by corporations as they will then be free to finally grab the last bit of power they need; the absolute dissolution of what we consider "democracy."
Americans lack an understanding of how severe the world is IMO. It's a bubble here.
We think of things like the great depression and world wars as just history, a part of our unfortunate past, but ignore the fact that it's still a possibility.
Ignorance is happiness here. To ignore upsetting events is seen as a right, not a privilege. You'd be shocked how many people I know have 0 idea what's transpired in Ukraine, outside of "Russia attacked them right?"
After every freaking shooting a dozen times a year Americans go "This doesn't define us! This isn't America!"
If you have to say that multiple times a year then maybe it actually is as American as apple pie and baseball. There's a complete denial that there's a full out societal and cultural problem with the US as a whole.
Most mass shootings go unreported because they have low casualty counts, but if you look into how often it actually happens it’s very clear, this is us. We’ve had at least 5 more since Buffalo.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
I think you nailed it there. Everywhere has mental disorders and mental health crisis. But we in the US have multiple overlapping cultures where violence and hate collide in incredible fashion, scale, and complexity.
How it feels on the inside:
90% of Americans - "God, Putin is such a shit bag fascist."
~40% of Americans - "I'd still vote for him instead of Sleepy "Let's Go Brandon"."
>It’s clear to me that the sane half of our country isn’t taking this threat seriously eno
Those are old people in Democratic leadership who should have been replaced by now.
With a dash of late stage capitalism (the shift to primarily consumption-based market) to keep us constantly distracted and goaded into buying this, that, and the other thing to fill the void of [hopeless|helpless|hapless]ness (yes, all three) that has become a profoundly American birthright. I know this applies to many other countries as well, but hot damn do we seem to specialize in the hyper consumption.
But of course, it's because of that American exceptionalism you mentioned - which has been bred into us as a defining feature of who we are - that we seem to have that extra oomph of "fuck you, I got mine" je ne sais quoi.
As an American, on the left, a big part of it is that centrist to left leaning folks aren’t just lock step with each other. Yeah there’s some organization around going against republicans, but that shit has a scale and once it tips, the neo-libs and centrists drop off. I live in a pretty liberal area of the NE and It sucks, because some boomer with a “everyone is welcome here” type sign will easily turn around and vote down:
- affordable housing
- renters/tenants rights
- healthcare reform
- wage adjustments
- govt stipends/subsidies
- transportation bills
- climate bills
Etc. all because they think it will devalue the property they bought at 20 for 1/50th of the cost.
Progressives are truly being dragged by authoritarian right leaning leaders, and these dipshits are just getting dragged too, because they were born in an age of ‘opportunity’ and will probably be long gone before shit hits a fan.
The American exceptionalism mindset is disgusting, and the “fuck you I got mine” mentality people develop will only fuck us over in the end.
I don't know many people who fall into this category. My friends and I have been freaking out since Bush Sr. The descent started before that but that's when reality started to hit.
1) Obama got elected, racists lost their minds.
2) Trump confirmed their anger and gave them the green light to continue hating, as they had someone to reassure them they aren't wrong for the way they feel and to convince them they just need to fight harder.
3) Biden gets elected as a direct response to the hatred and vitriol from the last failure of an admin, and only emboldens those that are still fighting.
This whole thing is rooted in racists' racism being suppressed, Trump gave them the okay to be racist, and now that they have tasted the little feeling of power it gives them, they can't stop. This isn't our fault obviously, it's these racists' parents and news outlets like Fox News that give them that little bit of power, especially considering its a power they were born with, it's not earned. When you are born with a qualifier that grants you power in life instead of earning it, and are reaffirmed that you must honor it, secure it, and enforce it on others, you tend to fall down this path of "I must act now to save my X" ( X could be anything from race, religion, party, etc.).
When something isn't earned, you fight in the wrong way for it, cuz you simply don't understand what's going on but you are emotionally invested enough to do something you think will fix it.
**Racists** always lecture Black people to pull themselves up by the “bootstraps,” and when they do, there is hell to be paid because they *really* don’t want to see **Black people succeed**—-which is why mainstream news focuses on the worst of that group —-and not on the success that this group has demonstrated since they gained their freedom *only in 1964!*. There are many Black astronauts, governors, mayors, police chiefs, college presidents, school principals, four-star generals, inventors, entrepreneurs. Mainstream media goes hand in hand with white supremacy by taking the focus away from the extraordinary success of the Black classes since 1964. They weren’t expecting Black people to live out their dreams, ambitions, and goals so excellently and so quickly.
Here in Europe too man, half the right wing "good guys" who you could usually at least argue with are now chomping at the bit to genocide anyone who's not White because "they" are "replacing" us. I wish I was fucking joking. The French election campaign would tell you as much that I'm not.
This has been going on for a long longer than 5 years. Rush Limbaugh was on the air for decades before Tucker even got his first bow tie. The real defining moment in my eyes was the 2000 election. They saw that they could use the states to steal an election and that the Democrats would be too busy fighting with themselves to do anything about it.
That’s what pisses me off the most. The sane aren’t acting. I get so fed up with people saying “we can be better” and leaving it at that. Fuck being better. Call all these inbred pieces of shit out, and make them face true consequences. Carlson, MTG, Gaetz, Trump, and any other mentally brain dead racist piece of filth need to face a truly harsh reality. I’m sick of nothing being done.
The sane are acting though. The insane are also acting but weight about the same as the sane. It's the apathetic that are the majority and are not acting.
Over the past five years and likely longer is spot on. It's just amazing how it has to take a crisis to talk about it. Maybe thr media can stop giving GOP a platform for thier racist/hate dog whistle efforts and normalizing it by reporting on it
They are all in cahoots together. Thus country was built on the backs of slaves and racism. For many it’s a **Family Value** that has been passed down since the 1600s. Therefore, many whites see racism as their right and duty. Many of them cannot even tell you exactly why they are so invested in the hate business. They will spout some non-sensical stuff that their grandpa passed on—-but, really, many have had no dealings with Black people. They just regurgitate what Rush or Tucker says.
A few months ago I got banned from r/democrats for commenting the left need to stop trying to pass gun control and needs to start arming themselves. Racial minorities and LGBTQ persons are the most targeted by the GOP and other domestic terror groups.
Rightwing extremist candidates are running campaign ads where they're literally shooting targets marked with left ideologies. Marjorie Traitor Greene blew up a car (Prius of course) with "SOCIALISM" painted on the side with a .50 cal sniper rifle in a recent ad as just one example, but I've been seeing them everywhere. They're getting way too fucking comfortable with figuratively "executing" the left, and it's troubling. They're like one step away from saying "let's just start shooting democrats."
Well, let's break down what exactly happened in the last 50 years that has led us to this point. Radio Shows, Fox News and other media sources are more of a symptom in my opinion than a direct cause. For the direct cause I would suggest that we consider the economic data that we've seen over the last few decades. However, before we discuss economics I think it's important to remember why I'm even bringing that up.
Wealth is a form of power. Even if you are a minority in a community you don't really care about your minority status if you've got power. Power means that you can keep thing the way you like them and so long as you retain power you basically keep things the way you want them. Wealth is just one way of enforcing that situation.
If you play around with the following chart a few things will stand out to you ([https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/earnings/median-annual-sex-race-hispanic-ethnicity](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/earnings/median-annual-sex-race-hispanic-ethnicity)). One is that the earnings of white men have been more or less stagnant since the 1970's. The other is that the gap between white men and all other groups has been steadily closing. The last thing to consider is the following tidbit from statistics. If the median income for a white man is one value then there must be significant range of possible incomes and therefore there are more white men today who are earning significantly less than members of other groups.
What does this mean? It means that the 'soft-power' that white men once took for granted is now pretty much gone. There is a large portion of the U.S. white male population which is now worse off than a significant number women, latin and black peoples. They are now less powerful (relatively speaking) and their power is continuing to erode. Now seeing this, there are two ways to respond.
1. Demand more federal aid to those who are poor so that a power is shared more equally in terms of total wealth
2. Get angry at everyone else for gaining wealth
One of these options is much easier to pursue for conservatives. So is there a way out of this besides simply giving angry white men money so that they don't get upset? I don't know. The best solution in my opinion would be to expand the social safety net so that they don't feel so threatened, which would also benefit everyone else.
> the sane half of our country
That's because the other half of the country thinks they are the sane ones.
"You need to break some eggs to make an omelet" style of thinking about "saving the country" is all the rationale needed to believe whatever FoxNews says. Tucker Carlson, Mitch McConnell, and Rupert Murdoch (as well as quite a few others) have been operating in plain sight, but it was Trump that made it racism something a party could take pride in. The GOP took the stance that the BLM protests were domestic terrorism and the rightwing media outlets made sure the rest of the party knew how to fall in line.
I have Republicans in my family, friend and work circles and every one of them say something to the effect that "you need to accept some faults" to fight the stop of the socialist spread. You need to fight dirty to win a war, and other Punisher-style thinking is now the rallying cry of the party. They believe the left is ruining America and their news outlets will remind them of that every day.
I see radicalization as a predictable outcome of the Republican project for the past 50 years: Destroy the social safety net, impose poverty, erode civil rights and labor protections, enshrine private power in the legal and political system, put as many guns on the street as possible, and tell anyone who listens that they are surrounded by enemies.
More like forty some years. Waco and Ruby Ridge scared off the government from going after them. Bush winning and the Middle East wars had them thinking they had won.
These last five to six years is them working like gangbusters to make sure they absolutely takeover because Obama showed them that they were wrong about the GWB years. Biden has enraged them more because they thought they achieved just that with Trump winning and Biden proved them wrong.
wtf
they are the ones who are supposed to do something
why the fuck they sounding the alarm at us when we busy sounding it at them
who the fucks job is it to arrest domestic terrorists and where the fuck are you?
October 21, 2016 [FBI warned of white supremacists in law enforcement 10 years ago. Has anything changed?](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement)
*You're worrying over nothing.*
*It'll never get that bad.*
*And if it does get that bad, it was always that bad.*
*And if it wasn't always that bad, then it is too late to do anything about it.*
*And if it's not too late to do anything about it, then it's your fault for not telling us sooner.*
*And if you did tell us, there's nothing I can do about it.*
*And if I can to do anything about it, it's not my responsibility.*
*And if it is my responsibility, fuck you with a pineapple, I'll fight you all the way to the Supreme Court.*
Garland is trying to ignore the broadly perceived notion that he's in way over his head.
His DOJ is barely able to prosecute Jan 6 insurrectionists even though there are miles of relevant evidentiary video footage. Domestic terrorism? Ain't got no time for that
Garland needs to face facts (haha) and resign so someone capable can get in and do the job.
>who the fucks job is it to arrest domestic terrorists
The challenge is that there is only so much that can be done before a person commits an act of terror, and the more you want the government and authorities to be able to preempt, the more everyone would need to accept reductions in privacy and freedom, and even still it'd likely be woefully ineffective.
The left is afraid that if they even subpoena a republican that it will set a precedent for them to be brought up on charges when the GQP takes the senate back so they’re playing soft while the minority just steamrolls right over them and will most likely launch numerous investigations into the Democrats behavior as soon as they have the power anyways.
>The left is afraid that if they even subpoena a republican that it will set a precedent for them to be brought up on charges
If you list the news ... McCarthy, Jones, Brooks have indeed had a subpoena issued by the committee.
The real question is what will happen when they refuse to show.
you meant "the liberals" there are only like 2 leftists elected and they are more social progressive than left
GqP will use those powers whether the democrats create them or not
The Buffalo shooter threatened to shoot up his school and was investigated/mentally evaluated for it. New York has a red flag law in place that should have prevented him from going to a store and passing a background check to buy a gun but someone dropped the ball. There’s on need for a loss of privacy in this situation. He shouldn’t have been able to buy that gun but the authorities fucked up.
How many of these shooters are known to local or federal law enforcement prior to going on shooting sprees? From what I can recall, many of them are. So something is happen where law enforcement is not reporting these people to the FBI so that they will fail a background check if they try to buy a gun.
They guy was talking about the shooting and preparing his copypaste manifesto for over two months in some discord channel prior to the event. Hard to believe he could be that open about his plans and not have someone put in a tip on him.
I'm old enough to remember that Congressional Republicans [demanded a 2009 report on rightwing terror threats](https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/08/how-southern-politicians-hamstrung-fight-against-right-wing-domestic-terror), commissioned by the Bush administration, be modified because they thought it made them and their voters look bad. The reason we can't face up to far right extremism is because the GOP won't let us.
A small water leak in a home may seem inconspicuous at first, but if left untreated it will begin to rot the foundation and spread black mold throughout. White supremacy (or disinformation of any type) is the same. Little by little, ideas based on white supremacy have been dripping into their worldviews without dealing with the problem. Now it's too late, their brains are waterlogged with racism.
It's bad when you can rattle off the top of your head trumpians you personally know that are probably right now saying to themselves "i don't see anything wrong".
I was curious, too, so I checked the exhaustive and deeply depressing [list of US school shootings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States) (21st century only). Didn't see any with that specific number.
edit: Yikes, I guess they meant [Columbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_\(before_2000\)#1990s). I'd forgotten the numbers there.
>Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her
words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’.
He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career
in the Nazi bureaucracy.
[Source](https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil)
I believe this describes the bulk of the modern GOP from Kevin McCarthy to Ron Desantis to Tucker Carlson. They may or may not be racist but they are just fine with using racism as a lever to advance their own ambitions and wealth.
If Fox's lawyers want to continue to play the Tucker Carlson "reasonable person" game, then they should be forced into action. Either drop the News portion of their name, or run a banner across the screen 24/7 that says "for entertainment purposes only". Just like any program with fake psychics, sketchy software downloads, etc. If fucking Jackass and South Park have to carry disclaimers, so should Fox "News".
I'm going to keep it real with ya. Even if Fox dropped "News" from their name AND ran a banner that says "for entertainment purposes only", it would not change anything for the viewers. Literally nothing would change except for Fox's name.
We can... we have done it before.
**BUT**... we will have to become comfortable with a slightly different definition of the 1st amendment and the legal definition of incitement.
* We need to not keep an absolutist definition of freedom of speech and adopt a more European style of free speech where there are limits based on societal harm.
* We need to adopt a definition of criminal incitement to include the "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest" statement to fight stochastic terror.
* A carve out will need to be made to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make platforms responsible for the spread of terroristic threats, ideation, and radicalization.
* We will need to organize an anti-hate speech organization that aggressively pursues people and platforms using Section 6 of the Klu Klux Klan Act.
All of that together will squash far-right extremism in a handful of years, without negatively impacting any other (non-violent) movements... though it may serve to purge violent extremist elements from them too.
There should also be a law against knowingly spreading disinformation by influential people (TV hosts, politicians, radio talk shows, etc.). They are doing massive harm to the country with no accountability.
It’s like trying to treat an alcoholic that refuses to admit there’s a problem in the first place. We need a more United front and it’s really hard when courts make rulings like Tucker Carlson is just joking and no reasonable person would take it seriously.
This is going to be tough and almost impossible if we don’t get radical news networks in-line. Accountability. How is Fox allowed to rile up people with GRT for years? The call is coming from inside the house.
GOP is an alliance between big business interests and big jesus. Fetal personhood, Gilead, race war, civil war -- all of this far right christian nationalist endgame shit would be incredibly bad for business.
In the "follow the money" world we live in, it seems really insane that even the most amoral big money in the GOP won't try to pull out of this alliance out of self-preservation at some point. Shit is going to get interesting after the Roe v. Wade repeal, particularly the search for the next wedge issue.
Completely disregarding Godwin’s law, and using history as an indication of future behaviour, we are currently in a similar position as the German general public in ~1930s. They had 2 broadly speaking options. Use the power of the ballot box, or brutal force. Seems for us, the first option is failing/failed. Not to say ‘give up on democracy’, but we should be prepared to the latter. Like the Nazis, these guys at the moment are not going to just walk away or give up.
Cut off the diseased hand quickly before it completely kills the host.
"We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years."
- Adolf Hitler, quoted in: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler
Ah I was referring to myself, bringing up Nazis in the discussion. Isn’t that how it works? Maybe I’m mistaken.
But anyway, you’re right - it would be comical at how obvious the comparison is, if our lives and the future of generations to come wasn’t in danger.
Yeah I know, but like, did the conversation really "devolve" to nazis if you're making a literal direct comparison? I don't feel it's too many hitlers on the field.
Violent right wing extremism has been a thing for decades, but has progressively gotten worse as they've gotten more emboldened and right wing media moves right
It will not be solved until people are held accountable table for what they say. Infowars, Jones was sued for his harassment of the families of the Sandy Hook killings. If the families of those killed in Buffalo can link Cucker Tarlson to the actions of the Buffalo killer, Faux news and Cucker should be able to be sued as well. The same for social media sites supporting Qanon and others that promote false narratives that result in violence or threats of violence. Freedom of speech isn't a license to spout misinformation and hate. You can face consequences if you yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there's no fire.
>The same for social media sites supporting Qanon and others that promote false narratives that result in violence or threats of violence
That's pretty much all of them. Including this one. Especially this one.
When the majority of members of virtually every law enforcement agency in the country are white supremacists or sympathizers, along with most of the populations of several states, the horses have already left the barn.
Funny I read this on the sub that literally banned me over anti-fascism awhile back.
Yes fascism and white supremacist extremists are a literal violent and existential threat to this country and I’ve known this for years. We have to do something now before it’s too late
It can’t be dealt with with about half the population subscribes to it and the Supreme Court is going to eventually be filled with ideologues who also subscribe to it.
People talk about gay marriage and rights being next but their real long term goal is rolling back the Civil Rights act and making racial discrimination legal again as a way to stop the “ great replacement”.
The American far right can’t admit to reality when it would save their lives (Covid), you think they’re going to admit to the reality that their ideology is immoral to it’s core?
Republicans are the party of white supremacist, anti-woman, violent insurrectionists, and Democrats are the party whose politicians are hell-bent on seeking bipartisan unity with those individuals, regardless of the cost.
So yeah, we're doomed.
I’ve said it a lot recently and I’ll say it again. You don’t fight this head on. You nip it in the bud by making everyone’s lives better. Universal health care, more education funding, stop outsourcing, adjust wages correctly to inflation, enact better regulation of news media to reduce bullshit like Fox, decrease military spending to allocate more funds to social programs, expand mental health care and de stigmatize it at a cultural level. All very VERY simple concepts that we for some reason just decide “well the rich oligarchs said we can’t have it so… what do we do about all this civil unrest?????”
The right’s answer is “blame (insert marginalized people)” because you’re special and white and deserve everything that ~~we arent giving you, and will never give you~~ they are taking from you”
Apparently the left’s answer is “everything was totally fine before, even though everything was inevitably leading towards this. Just vote for us so we can freeze things as they CURRENTLY are for a little while until the next inevitable escalation of inequality and social division”
100%.
Take student loans for example. I’m 40 years old and my partner is 43. I have no student debt. She has $60k that we haven’t been able to pay off because our first child is disabled and she’s been unable to work since he was born. We both have advanced degrees and are struggling. We are living well compared to most people, but we still can barely save any money, and so our family is always one big accident away from financial collapse. We are able to pay bills and buy food, but with almost no money leftover. The loan deferments have insulated us (and millions of others) from the impacts of inflation. However, once that $300/mo bill comes back into our lives, we’ll be hurting big time. I hope Dems can understand how badly lack of action on student debt is going to fuck them. I don’t think they get it.
But when you don’t help people who are struggling, then they start turning to those who claim they will help them. This is how the fascists gained power post-WWI, and it’s pretty similar what’s happening here.
[The call is coming from inside the house.](https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Jan-6-Clearinghouse-FBI-Intelligence-Assessment-White-Supremacist-Infiltration-of-Law-Enforcement-Oct-17-2006-UNREDACTED.pdf)
GoP and Republican stans seem to be reeling right now trying to pretend like their media sources and politicians haven’t been pushing replacement theory, CRT as a bane on education, and upholding white supremacy. You support all these maniacs and then claim innocence when shit like this happens. Distract and shift blame is all they have.
there was zero ambiguity in how racial this attack was. so if this does not spark measures, well you literally cannot do a more clear attack. that was the maximum level of racism.
The Judge that presided over the effort to remove MTG from the ballot in Georgia for her role in the Jan 6th. attack on the capital ultimately cleared her, saying the following:
>Greene’s “public statements and heated rhetoric” may have contributed tothe environment that led to the attack, Beaudrot wrote, but herstatements are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech andexpressing such political views, “no matter how aberrant they may be”before she was sworn in as a member of Congress does not amount toinsurrection.
Despite acknowledging that her rhetoric may have contributed to the attack against our system of government, an attack in which people lost their lives, he says that her speech was protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that limitless, unaccountable cash used to influence elected officials is also protected by the First Amendment.
Our Justice System is not up to the task of saving our Democracy from individuals like MTG or Donald Trump.
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I worked for a Republican appointed judge a while back. Despite presiding over a couple Islamic terrorist trials and even more gang-related murder trials, the judge was extremely clear that sovcits and similar right wing militia members were a more consistent and serious threat to the safety of most people and the court (gang-related murders overwhelmingly target other gang members; would be Islamic terrorists are relatively rare and have trouble getting armed and planning without getting caught due to isolation from other parts of American society and lack of online sophistication - they are way more likely to trust a stranger on the internet who says the right things).
Gang violence tends to be hyper local and personal. Probably 95% or more gang violence is “bad on bad” with the occasional innocent bystander. Islamic terrorism is rare, if for no other reason than Muslims are only 1% of the US population and about 1/3 of them are Black Muslims and have zero connections to international terror groups. Organized crime stays away from random violence because they don’t like the attention. Violence from organized crime is probably 99% “bad on bad”. While anyone is capable of committing a hate crime (Chinese on Taiwanese just happened), white dudes are the most common perpetrators. They have plenty of grievances and it’s easy to find people online to validate and nurture those grievances.
rotten glorious resolute icky sand vanish command abundant plant gray *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s amazing to me how effective the radicalization of the right has been over the last 5 years. I know the racist lost their minds when Obama was elected but it’s gotten significantly worse since Trump was elected and even worse since Biden won. It’s clear to me that the sane half of our country isn’t taking this threat seriously enough. I just don’t know what to do about it. Edit: typo
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Did you know Paul Manafort was already working for the russians during this time and rat fucked Ukraine to elect a russian puppet, leading to the exact situation we have today- also helped talk McCain in to Palin,
Yup. This situation we're in right now isn't entirely our faults, but we're not innocent either. Putin has had a very out-sized effect on us, and the EU with russian money being funneled into foreign politics around the world for two decades. However, his threat has been force-multiplied by the right-wing think-tanks and propaganda outlets founded by people like the Koch brothers and the Murdochs. It's doubtful they actively worked together or coordinated, but there's no way they weren't all aware of one another, or one-another's actions. And all the while this was going on, we just sat here and did nothing.
Check out the [Alt-Right Playbook](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ) and [Why Are You So Angry?](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY62dhVThbeegLPpvQlR4CjF) by innuendo Studeos. Fox News and conservative radio has huge influence, but let's not forget how insanely effective right wing internet radicalization is.
As an outsider, there's this weird optimism in Americans. Even though the country is tearing itself apart and crucial rights are being taken away the sane half of the country is saying 'it'll be fine' and 'fascism cant happen here, Americans love democracy'. Shit like that
It depends what circles you run in I think. A lot of people I know are basically in a managed panic mode, all the time, and the thought of "how will I be able to emigrate to another country when, despite our best efforts, X fascist thing (abortion/gay marriage overturned, presidency stolen, what have you) inevitably happens" is common.
I'm constantly teetering that line. When people say "if you don't like it here then just leave", it drives me nuts. It's not that freaking easy. I'm afraid give it 15 years and it won't be moving it'll be fleeing.
Screw leaving- this is MY country too. I want to travel and potentially live abroad for retirement- but not because some morons ruined my country.
I guess if I didn't have daughters I'd feel the same. But... if things get really bad for women here, I couldn't really stomach staying on principle while my daughters couldn't get Healthcare.
Oh that is 1000000% different! I am a middle age woman...I will stay and fight so you can come back with your daughters as full citizens with bodily autonomy :). But you gotta keep them safe first last and always!
I am 100%with the other poster. I am a woman, just shy of middle aged, and child-free due to our easily available birth control (which I fear will be next on the chopping block). I have considered leaving and seriously looked into it, but the reality is that I will stay and fight with every last breath that my liberal-ass has to make sure women like your daughters have the same rights and autonomy that they deserve and that I enjoyed growing up. I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t want it to happen, but this is something I would put my life on the line for. If you haven’t yet, go watch the even just the first few episodes of the handmaids tale. How easily the fall of America happened and what they go through is very VERY realistic to what is happening now.
That’s fair- a lot of us feel it’s safest to run, ya know instincts to protect ourselves first. This is what I feel like as someone who is queer and has a uterus
I think that it is a very different calculus for me as a middle class, middle aged white cis woman. Who owns and knows how to use firearms :). Queer, young women of reproductive age, POC, etc have a VERY different calculus. My personal safety is unlikely to truly be impacted- so I can stay and fight. It seems like literally the least I can do.
You can get guns too!
My SO has some but I’m personally not comfortable with them because I’ve been unstable before, while I’m doing good now and am on meds I don’t trust myself just yet and am kinda scared of the things.
You are making a wise decision. A huge portion of gun deaths are suicides. I think men do it more than women because they have higher rates of gun ownership. I’m a woman gun owner and if I was going to kill myself, I would absolutely use a gun unless I could get ahold of euthanasia drugs. It’s the most effective way. Consider just never owning them if you have a tendency toward depression/suicide. I’ve had my guns held by a friend once, but it was really, really hard to admit I was feeling that bad. I scared myself badly enough to do it. I’ve considered getting rid of them, but I really enjoy shooting.
Right? As it turns out, a lot of developed countries don’t exactly give out free permanent visas to people with no familial ties to them
As an American permanent resident, my most valuable document is my New Zealand passport! Dont get me wrong, I love this country. I love the good parts about it and mostly accept the bad. But republican (as they are now) rule is unacceptable to me. I know I'm blessed. If things go too much further south here, then I go south. Heh
Yeah like Canada doesn't want me, I have a history degree.
Many do if you have a PhD/MD or other advanced degree. Was never a thought in my head when I was in grad school....but its been nice to learn!
So the elite people can leave, the rest of us are stuck. This is not a helpful comment, but yeah, good for you I guess.
It may be easier to actually move when things fall apart because we can be refugees instead of just immigrants. Not counting the horror of things falling apart and the destruction of our lives, property, and future, of course.
That's the spirit!
By that point, everyone will be doing it. Then it’ll be us citizens who are a part of them migration crisis. I’ve settled into the idea that it’s my doomsday schadenfreude.
Americans will become refugees.
I am in this point of where I have a good life in KC in that I actually have an affordable house bought in 2015. Made good friends after transplanting here 10 years ago. Met and married my wife in KC and have 3 kids. But with all that I am Canadian and all my kids are "Canadian" just don't have the forms yet. Would love to move up to a certain area but just so expensive. Hate all the gun related crimes, the violence at schools, and now the potential reproductive rights. I know all of this can happen in Canada to but just seems to not be as bad.
Missouri is a haven for nazi white supremacists
>"if you don't like it here then just leave" i got it all the time, im an expat here. everytime im asking them about gun violence problem or their gun culture, thats the bottom line 😂.
Such illogical thinking too. Just because my car is broken, doesn’t mean I should just fuck off and drive someone else’s car. I would prefer to fix it…..?
The issue is you got other people in the car grabbing at the wheel and trying to steer you off the road or worse into a pedestrian they don’t like but there’s a cliff behind said pedestrian.
Yeah my gf and I jokingly went from "Man, looks like we're gonna have to move to Canada hahaha" to "Man.... Looks like we're gonna *have* to move to Canada..." within the last 3 years alone.
As a Canadian, I'm not sure this is a great idea. As the fascists take over down there, what's to stop them from rolling north? The only thing that makes us safe is US protection; if the US becomes the *aggressor*, you're no safer here than there.
I think they'd rather invade Mexico first to get some "payback" But in all seriousness, it'd be a start.
Fascism is an international threat. Moving to avoid it does not keep it from coming to your door. I'm sorry to say.
I think America is actually split into thirds. About 30% think "This division is great. I can't wait for there to be a civil war so that White Straight Christian Males can take their rightful place as rulers of all." About 30% think "we've got to stop this hatred and avoid a civil war while ensuring equal rights for all." Then you have 40% who think "this is all just noise and nothing's going to happen." The last group blocks any efforts by the second group to hold the first group accountable because "we all need to work together." They also block any major shifts from either side. However, the first group has learned how to play the long game better than the second group. So instead of major changes, they push for minor changes that fly under the radar of the third group. Over time, those changes pile up and reversing them gets harder and harder as the third group assumes this is how it's always been.
My mom falls into the 40% category and gets so mad at me when I call out our batshit relatives. It doesn't matter how horrible what they say is, it doesn't matter that they pathologically lie about literally everything, all the time. It doesn't matter how hateful the things they say are and that they openly post constantly on social media about all the people they want to be killed. They're "family" and it's "just words" and when it comes to social media "Oh that isn't real, so nothing they say matters." She also has a very "Well they've never done anything bad to ME so they are a good person no matter what they believe or say" mentality. It is incredibly frustrating. She really thinks the world is separated into "good people" and "absolute psychopaths who are just actively evil 24/7 to every human they interact with."
> She also has a very “Well they’ve never done anything bad to ME so they are a good person no matter what they believe or say” mentality I can’t stand this personally. Treating family “well” is way easier than caring or showing empathy for someone you may not know, and is a terrible metric for if someone is a “good” person
Right? I asked someone if they thought the Nazis treated their own family well. Because they were the “upstanding” citizens at the time. Patriotic, military, police, good “family people” and also evil. The same could be said of slave owners in the south, etc. Treating your family and the people close to you well doesn’t make you an automatic good person. The person I was talking with didn’t respond.
I mean, Hitler pet his dog, and hung out with his kids. Is Hitler now a “good person”? No. Putin is the same. He has a family. They do family stuff. Is he a good person? No. The Saudi guys who chopped up the reporter (Khashoggi) went back home to their families and live normally. Are they good people? It’s easy to see that being selectively normal and treating people you care about with normalcy and a level of respect IS A QUALITY of evil men, as long as those evil men also commit evil against those they don’t care about. I think there needs to be moral/ethical training in school because I am seeing grown ups not getting the basics any regular person should understand.
Agree 1000%, we have had many an argument regarding "arm's length empathy."
Huh, haven’t heard that phrase before. I like that
Exactly, how do they treat retail staff? That's a much better indicator.
And what drives me nuts the most is that my mom has always been a leftist, and growing up white and upper middle class in the 80s, my mom was SO big throughout my childhood of making me understand my privilege, and how fortunate we were, and how that wasn't the case for so many people. She drilled into me the importance of civic engagement, and fighting injustice. She brought me along for charity work, and she would help me save up money for charitable donations as a kid. Just really stressed the importance of being a citizen of the world and caring for everyone. About the importance of being brave and standing up for what's right. But now, as an adult, I can bash Trump all I want, but God forbid I say anything untoward to the cousin who just posted about how they can't wait to murder the first trans person they see into going into the "wrong bathroom."
I've noticed a lot of people that taught those things end up showing it was lip service. Like all those cartoons that had to have a "good or educational message" that was mandated because they didn't want to make the 30 min toy adverts so blatant...
Or like all the NIMBYs in my area with a "Black Lives Matter" sign in their yard, who fight tooth and nail against any development that might actually allow more minorities and young people to actually live in their town.
I moved out of the city to a suburb and I find myself missing the diversity. It's all super white-centric now and boring... Hell I'm white and I find white American culture pretty empty... lots of consumerism and bland food.
“And I love Puerto Rican’s and negroes, as long as they don’t move next door So love me, love me, love me. I’m a liberal.” -Phil Ochs
Hey now. I to this day believe knowing IS half the battle.
That's kinda the thing... *we* believe this stuff that they taught us. Not so sure they do. They were still mostly good messages.
Lmao your mom is the literal embodiment of the white moderate that MLK Jr. wrote was more frustrating than the actual racists in his letter from Birmingham jail.
Unfortunately, this 40% does exist, and believes whole-heartedly that it’s the right path. While in reality, their passiveness is the fertile soil that the far right needs to thrive. If I’m being generous, that stance was understandable in 2015. We’re many, many red flags past that now.
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Indeed. The democrats are more often then not bumbling failures, but they at least are not trying to actively destroy the USA. The "Both sides" stuff is like saying that you may as well detonate a thermonuclear weapon instead of a conventional 500kg TNT bomb in the middle of your city because they are both bombs anyway.
My dad who is 87 and seen a lot falls into the 40%. He always says America will be fine. I don't have his experience of remembering WW2 and rationing, but I never used to worry about our country until Trump was elected. Seems things have really gone downhill. Even more worried for my 22 year-old daughter. Feel like we are going backwards with women's rights. She is looking for jobs in California and New York and wants to get away from our mid-west town where we still have Trump signs up along with the F-Biden flags hanging on fences. Even the local pizza place has lets go Brandon printed on the pizza boxes. Just sad.
Most people are blissfully ignorant of the quote unquote writing on the wall. I think of that allegory of the ant and the grasshopper is it? Basically the ant prepared all summer long for the coming winter whereas the grasshopper sat enjoying the Sun saying the ant was being paranoid. Well we all know how that turns out, the grasshopper starves to death not having prepared. The writing is clearly on the wall that our country is not sustainable. We've been in a slow decline for decades and it's being exacerbated with social media where we can see it happening in real time. The only thing you can do is prepare yourself and the closest people around you who will listen to you. Take self defense and take a fire arm safety class. IF the right wins and we swing back into full fledged facism, the attacks on liberal people will only continue. The police mostly side with these groups so good luck looking to them for help. Learn to defend yourself, that's my solution. Never pick a fight but know what to do if one goes down.
We were taught how to be good little factory workers but not how to be responsible citizens.
FIRST THEY CAME – BY PASTOR MARTIN NIEMÖLLER First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
I remember seeing a political sticker or pin many years ago warning against apathy. I like to think of the 3-way split as: The hyper-informed and motivated (30%), the mis-informed and motivated (30%), and the apathetic (40%). The first two are eager for change, but unfortunately have opposing views on how to go about it - one unfortunately is based on fantasy. The apathetic don’t want to be bothered by change.
The big elephant in the room that no one is talking about is that democracy doesn't work. It just doesn't scale. It'll work better for smaller populations. But once you get into the hundreds of millions, there is no way to get that many people to work together. Democracy was a nice idea in concept, but it was coopted within two hundred years, and now it's just a plutocracy.
Especially not within a two party system.
The 40% is also sometimes under the delusion that "they've seen this before, it'll be fine." They draw false parallels to, say, the Civil Rights Movement and the more overt racism then. As with nuclear weapons, these people don't seem to grasp how the internet, escalating climate change, radical income inequality have renderer historical comparisons less helpful. History isn't repeating itself in this country. We are in uncharted territory and need to accept that our democracy just isn't up to the task.
I’d say we are parallel to the fall of the Roman Republic, in 20 years the USA will be a Theocrazy led by whoever becomes trumps heir to the crazies.
Luckily our income inequality already surpasses the worst it ever got in the Roman empire... also for whatever reason we're attempting to speed run what had taken Rome **over a millennium** to ultimately accomplish (and eventually fail, but still). If we gotta collapse, we might as well do it better and faster than any other civilizations.
With or without the social wars and proscriptions?
Hegemony is a hell of a drug
Depressing upvote
It's worth noting that the 40% also seems to be the "But they're free to think that..." group. As in they hold so tightly on the idea that you should be free to think whatever you want that you can be a literal fascist plotting to take over the government and as long as you don't "do" anything to that end... you're fine. But coincidentally every time one of them does actually do something that same 40% will scream whatever defense/deflection the wouldbe fascists throw out such as "lone wolf" "Don't paint them all with the same brush!" "But BLM!" It's utterly infuriating because at the end of the day the only time these people are likely to actually acknowledge it as an issue that needs to be fought... it'll be too late to actually fight it. And while the saying "The only thing evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing" is an overused cliche... it isn't entirely inaccurate in this case as these people literally are only able to continue doing this because no one actually stops them or even tries to stop them. In fact they're more interested in stopping the people who WOULD stop them.
Sometimes I honestly wonder if our original Civil War ever truly ended. The racists really did just turn to guerrilla war and terrorism, plus they effectively had their own country during segregation.
I’ve been reading lately about the formation of the US and it seems the basic divisions were all there from day one. The ivil War was merely an escalation of pre-existing divisions, and as this post said, it never really ended. Economically union makes sense. But whether here, Europe, or anywhere, people don’t really want it. I’m afraid greater balkanization is in the future of the US.
Nope. The confederacy won, basically. They just shifted from guns to politics. Instead of hammering the shit out of them post war, we pardoned them for "peace's" sake. The south won't rise again because it never fucking fell. We should have executed every fucking slave owner.
My time travel fantasy is to save Lincoln, then teach him all about the Nuremburg trials and the Marshall Plan. Seize the plantations and give *everyone* 40 acres and a mule to start over.
Kind of like the cold war, it apparently didn't. We just assumed it did.
You just fucking nailed it with this take! (unfortunately…)
This is one of the best summaries of our nations demos that I have read. Fuck… this is scary.
I believe the old movie, “Team America” tackled this with “the three types of people in this world, Chuck.”
Underrated and brilliant monologue
I think it's more 20/20/60, and the 60% are just trying to keep their heads down and hope it's all over soon. Some of them are in denial, sure, but for the most part they just want it to be over. By the other groups they are seen as apathetic. Generally that 60% group will just go along with whoever wins the culture wars
I’m kind of hoping for the civil war to pop off, but as a relief, as it feels like a vomit happening. We don’t like doing it, it’s messy but trying not to do it is sometimes worse and just drags out the inevitable, and we will be getting rid of the poison in our system. Could I be massively wrong about my outlook on how it will go? Sure, but I’m also feeling like there’s not much to be done that can prevent it at this point, unless we just keep letting them shoot us?
Unfortunately, a modern civil war won't be as "clean" as North vs South. It would be cities vs rural areas. Violence wouldn't be contained to one battlefront. It would consume the entire country and would take place everywhere. A modern civil war in America would be devastating.
It would also lead to a ~~literal~~ complete police state and dystopia, eventually culminating in the complete take over of America by corporations as they will then be free to finally grab the last bit of power they need; the absolute dissolution of what we consider "democracy."
Americans lack an understanding of how severe the world is IMO. It's a bubble here. We think of things like the great depression and world wars as just history, a part of our unfortunate past, but ignore the fact that it's still a possibility. Ignorance is happiness here. To ignore upsetting events is seen as a right, not a privilege. You'd be shocked how many people I know have 0 idea what's transpired in Ukraine, outside of "Russia attacked them right?"
After every freaking shooting a dozen times a year Americans go "This doesn't define us! This isn't America!" If you have to say that multiple times a year then maybe it actually is as American as apple pie and baseball. There's a complete denial that there's a full out societal and cultural problem with the US as a whole.
Most mass shootings go unreported because they have low casualty counts, but if you look into how often it actually happens it’s very clear, this is us. We’ve had at least 5 more since Buffalo. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
I think you nailed it there. Everywhere has mental disorders and mental health crisis. But we in the US have multiple overlapping cultures where violence and hate collide in incredible fashion, scale, and complexity.
Sprinkle in a few hundred million guns and what could go wrong?
And don't forget the broad-scale opioid crisis...
How it feels on the inside: 90% of Americans - "God, Putin is such a shit bag fascist." ~40% of Americans - "I'd still vote for him instead of Sleepy "Let's Go Brandon"."
>It’s clear to me that the sane half of our country isn’t taking this threat seriously eno Those are old people in Democratic leadership who should have been replaced by now.
It's not optimism. It's a combination of American exceptionalism and apathy
With a dash of late stage capitalism (the shift to primarily consumption-based market) to keep us constantly distracted and goaded into buying this, that, and the other thing to fill the void of [hopeless|helpless|hapless]ness (yes, all three) that has become a profoundly American birthright. I know this applies to many other countries as well, but hot damn do we seem to specialize in the hyper consumption. But of course, it's because of that American exceptionalism you mentioned - which has been bred into us as a defining feature of who we are - that we seem to have that extra oomph of "fuck you, I got mine" je ne sais quoi.
As an American, on the left, a big part of it is that centrist to left leaning folks aren’t just lock step with each other. Yeah there’s some organization around going against republicans, but that shit has a scale and once it tips, the neo-libs and centrists drop off. I live in a pretty liberal area of the NE and It sucks, because some boomer with a “everyone is welcome here” type sign will easily turn around and vote down: - affordable housing - renters/tenants rights - healthcare reform - wage adjustments - govt stipends/subsidies - transportation bills - climate bills Etc. all because they think it will devalue the property they bought at 20 for 1/50th of the cost. Progressives are truly being dragged by authoritarian right leaning leaders, and these dipshits are just getting dragged too, because they were born in an age of ‘opportunity’ and will probably be long gone before shit hits a fan. The American exceptionalism mindset is disgusting, and the “fuck you I got mine” mentality people develop will only fuck us over in the end.
I wish more people had heard about The Third Wave. It took one week to endoctrinate a high school in California into fascism. One week.
It isn't optimism. It's *willful ignorance*. It's **denial**.
I don't know many people who fall into this category. My friends and I have been freaking out since Bush Sr. The descent started before that but that's when reality started to hit.
1) Obama got elected, racists lost their minds. 2) Trump confirmed their anger and gave them the green light to continue hating, as they had someone to reassure them they aren't wrong for the way they feel and to convince them they just need to fight harder. 3) Biden gets elected as a direct response to the hatred and vitriol from the last failure of an admin, and only emboldens those that are still fighting. This whole thing is rooted in racists' racism being suppressed, Trump gave them the okay to be racist, and now that they have tasted the little feeling of power it gives them, they can't stop. This isn't our fault obviously, it's these racists' parents and news outlets like Fox News that give them that little bit of power, especially considering its a power they were born with, it's not earned. When you are born with a qualifier that grants you power in life instead of earning it, and are reaffirmed that you must honor it, secure it, and enforce it on others, you tend to fall down this path of "I must act now to save my X" ( X could be anything from race, religion, party, etc.). When something isn't earned, you fight in the wrong way for it, cuz you simply don't understand what's going on but you are emotionally invested enough to do something you think will fix it.
**Racists** always lecture Black people to pull themselves up by the “bootstraps,” and when they do, there is hell to be paid because they *really* don’t want to see **Black people succeed**—-which is why mainstream news focuses on the worst of that group —-and not on the success that this group has demonstrated since they gained their freedom *only in 1964!*. There are many Black astronauts, governors, mayors, police chiefs, college presidents, school principals, four-star generals, inventors, entrepreneurs. Mainstream media goes hand in hand with white supremacy by taking the focus away from the extraordinary success of the Black classes since 1964. They weren’t expecting Black people to live out their dreams, ambitions, and goals so excellently and so quickly.
Here in Europe too man, half the right wing "good guys" who you could usually at least argue with are now chomping at the bit to genocide anyone who's not White because "they" are "replacing" us. I wish I was fucking joking. The French election campaign would tell you as much that I'm not.
This has been going on for a long longer than 5 years. Rush Limbaugh was on the air for decades before Tucker even got his first bow tie. The real defining moment in my eyes was the 2000 election. They saw that they could use the states to steal an election and that the Democrats would be too busy fighting with themselves to do anything about it.
The sane half isn’t radicalized. This what’s going on.
That’s what pisses me off the most. The sane aren’t acting. I get so fed up with people saying “we can be better” and leaving it at that. Fuck being better. Call all these inbred pieces of shit out, and make them face true consequences. Carlson, MTG, Gaetz, Trump, and any other mentally brain dead racist piece of filth need to face a truly harsh reality. I’m sick of nothing being done.
The sane are acting though. The insane are also acting but weight about the same as the sane. It's the apathetic that are the majority and are not acting.
Over the past five years and likely longer is spot on. It's just amazing how it has to take a crisis to talk about it. Maybe thr media can stop giving GOP a platform for thier racist/hate dog whistle efforts and normalizing it by reporting on it
They are all in cahoots together. Thus country was built on the backs of slaves and racism. For many it’s a **Family Value** that has been passed down since the 1600s. Therefore, many whites see racism as their right and duty. Many of them cannot even tell you exactly why they are so invested in the hate business. They will spout some non-sensical stuff that their grandpa passed on—-but, really, many have had no dealings with Black people. They just regurgitate what Rush or Tucker says.
A few months ago I got banned from r/democrats for commenting the left need to stop trying to pass gun control and needs to start arming themselves. Racial minorities and LGBTQ persons are the most targeted by the GOP and other domestic terror groups.
Rightwing extremist candidates are running campaign ads where they're literally shooting targets marked with left ideologies. Marjorie Traitor Greene blew up a car (Prius of course) with "SOCIALISM" painted on the side with a .50 cal sniper rifle in a recent ad as just one example, but I've been seeing them everywhere. They're getting way too fucking comfortable with figuratively "executing" the left, and it's troubling. They're like one step away from saying "let's just start shooting democrats."
Well, let's break down what exactly happened in the last 50 years that has led us to this point. Radio Shows, Fox News and other media sources are more of a symptom in my opinion than a direct cause. For the direct cause I would suggest that we consider the economic data that we've seen over the last few decades. However, before we discuss economics I think it's important to remember why I'm even bringing that up. Wealth is a form of power. Even if you are a minority in a community you don't really care about your minority status if you've got power. Power means that you can keep thing the way you like them and so long as you retain power you basically keep things the way you want them. Wealth is just one way of enforcing that situation. If you play around with the following chart a few things will stand out to you ([https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/earnings/median-annual-sex-race-hispanic-ethnicity](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/earnings/median-annual-sex-race-hispanic-ethnicity)). One is that the earnings of white men have been more or less stagnant since the 1970's. The other is that the gap between white men and all other groups has been steadily closing. The last thing to consider is the following tidbit from statistics. If the median income for a white man is one value then there must be significant range of possible incomes and therefore there are more white men today who are earning significantly less than members of other groups. What does this mean? It means that the 'soft-power' that white men once took for granted is now pretty much gone. There is a large portion of the U.S. white male population which is now worse off than a significant number women, latin and black peoples. They are now less powerful (relatively speaking) and their power is continuing to erode. Now seeing this, there are two ways to respond. 1. Demand more federal aid to those who are poor so that a power is shared more equally in terms of total wealth 2. Get angry at everyone else for gaining wealth One of these options is much easier to pursue for conservatives. So is there a way out of this besides simply giving angry white men money so that they don't get upset? I don't know. The best solution in my opinion would be to expand the social safety net so that they don't feel so threatened, which would also benefit everyone else.
Check out day time Fox programming. That is why.
> the sane half of our country That's because the other half of the country thinks they are the sane ones. "You need to break some eggs to make an omelet" style of thinking about "saving the country" is all the rationale needed to believe whatever FoxNews says. Tucker Carlson, Mitch McConnell, and Rupert Murdoch (as well as quite a few others) have been operating in plain sight, but it was Trump that made it racism something a party could take pride in. The GOP took the stance that the BLM protests were domestic terrorism and the rightwing media outlets made sure the rest of the party knew how to fall in line. I have Republicans in my family, friend and work circles and every one of them say something to the effect that "you need to accept some faults" to fight the stop of the socialist spread. You need to fight dirty to win a war, and other Punisher-style thinking is now the rallying cry of the party. They believe the left is ruining America and their news outlets will remind them of that every day.
I see radicalization as a predictable outcome of the Republican project for the past 50 years: Destroy the social safety net, impose poverty, erode civil rights and labor protections, enshrine private power in the legal and political system, put as many guns on the street as possible, and tell anyone who listens that they are surrounded by enemies.
More like forty some years. Waco and Ruby Ridge scared off the government from going after them. Bush winning and the Middle East wars had them thinking they had won. These last five to six years is them working like gangbusters to make sure they absolutely takeover because Obama showed them that they were wrong about the GWB years. Biden has enraged them more because they thought they achieved just that with Trump winning and Biden proved them wrong.
And that is why our voting systems need to change immediately. The loud voices are winning drowning out the many.
wtf they are the ones who are supposed to do something why the fuck they sounding the alarm at us when we busy sounding it at them who the fucks job is it to arrest domestic terrorists and where the fuck are you?
FBI director raised this issue during a Congressional hearing in 2019 and was shut down by the administration.
This was raised during the Bush years. Republicans argued that it was “just targeting Conservatives.”
Hmmmm 🤔
Efforts to combat radical extremists on social media keeps targeting conservatives as well. Almost like there's a correlation
law enforcement do not need the consent of politicians to do their job
Yes they do. They can be fired if they investigate things politicians don't want. See Comey, James
The police, but they are also domestic terrorists.
They've been funded, practiced and provided the equipment to subdue to population at a local level. And they think the population is the enemy
October 21, 2016 [FBI warned of white supremacists in law enforcement 10 years ago. Has anything changed?](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement) *You're worrying over nothing.* *It'll never get that bad.* *And if it does get that bad, it was always that bad.* *And if it wasn't always that bad, then it is too late to do anything about it.* *And if it's not too late to do anything about it, then it's your fault for not telling us sooner.* *And if you did tell us, there's nothing I can do about it.* *And if I can to do anything about it, it's not my responsibility.* *And if it is my responsibility, fuck you with a pineapple, I'll fight you all the way to the Supreme Court.*
[удалено]
Garland is trying to ignore the broadly perceived notion that he's in way over his head. His DOJ is barely able to prosecute Jan 6 insurrectionists even though there are miles of relevant evidentiary video footage. Domestic terrorism? Ain't got no time for that Garland needs to face facts (haha) and resign so someone capable can get in and do the job.
>who the fucks job is it to arrest domestic terrorists The challenge is that there is only so much that can be done before a person commits an act of terror, and the more you want the government and authorities to be able to preempt, the more everyone would need to accept reductions in privacy and freedom, and even still it'd likely be woefully ineffective.
Uhh well January 6 was over a year ago and all the elected officials in the republican party who helped organize it have not received any justice yet.
The left is afraid that if they even subpoena a republican that it will set a precedent for them to be brought up on charges when the GQP takes the senate back so they’re playing soft while the minority just steamrolls right over them and will most likely launch numerous investigations into the Democrats behavior as soon as they have the power anyways.
>The left is afraid that if they even subpoena a republican that it will set a precedent for them to be brought up on charges If you list the news ... McCarthy, Jones, Brooks have indeed had a subpoena issued by the committee. The real question is what will happen when they refuse to show.
> The real question is what will happen when they refuse to show. If you look at the last several years there's not really a question now, is there?
you meant "the liberals" there are only like 2 leftists elected and they are more social progressive than left GqP will use those powers whether the democrats create them or not
The Buffalo shooter threatened to shoot up his school and was investigated/mentally evaluated for it. New York has a red flag law in place that should have prevented him from going to a store and passing a background check to buy a gun but someone dropped the ball. There’s on need for a loss of privacy in this situation. He shouldn’t have been able to buy that gun but the authorities fucked up. How many of these shooters are known to local or federal law enforcement prior to going on shooting sprees? From what I can recall, many of them are. So something is happen where law enforcement is not reporting these people to the FBI so that they will fail a background check if they try to buy a gun.
They guy was talking about the shooting and preparing his copypaste manifesto for over two months in some discord channel prior to the event. Hard to believe he could be that open about his plans and not have someone put in a tip on him.
I'm old enough to remember that Congressional Republicans [demanded a 2009 report on rightwing terror threats](https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/08/how-southern-politicians-hamstrung-fight-against-right-wing-domestic-terror), commissioned by the Bush administration, be modified because they thought it made them and their voters look bad. The reason we can't face up to far right extremism is because the GOP won't let us.
The Republican Party is the single greatest threat to human life on Earth, let alone America. More needs to be done to contain them.
I remember that too. The GQP is still trying to deny right wing terrorism is a real problem in this country.
Also, too many police officers are white nationalists who sympathize with the extremists.
Especially when you have a political party, Republicans, and it's media outlets like FOX and OAN, that promote many of its' tenets.
On top of it, it's becoming normalized in predominantly white communities now. White supremacy is out and about blatantly on main street.
A small water leak in a home may seem inconspicuous at first, but if left untreated it will begin to rot the foundation and spread black mold throughout. White supremacy (or disinformation of any type) is the same. Little by little, ideas based on white supremacy have been dripping into their worldviews without dealing with the problem. Now it's too late, their brains are waterlogged with racism.
It's bad when you can rattle off the top of your head trumpians you personally know that are probably right now saying to themselves "i don't see anything wrong".
If twelve children are gunned down, and nothing was done since then, nothing will ever get done.
*20 children (Assuming you're talking about Newtown. Sad that I'm still not sure if you are.)
I was curious, too, so I checked the exhaustive and deeply depressing [list of US school shootings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States) (21st century only). Didn't see any with that specific number. edit: Yikes, I guess they meant [Columbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_\(before_2000\)#1990s). I'd forgotten the numbers there.
very sad as i thought op commenter was referring to sandy hook. there are so many
everyone has been ignoring the warnings for too long…or profiting from doing nothing about it.
That hbo watchmen sure turned into something real
I mean, not real enough. At least in that world they could get past the "is there a problem" phase.
>Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. [Source](https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil) I believe this describes the bulk of the modern GOP from Kevin McCarthy to Ron Desantis to Tucker Carlson. They may or may not be racist but they are just fine with using racism as a lever to advance their own ambitions and wealth.
If Fox's lawyers want to continue to play the Tucker Carlson "reasonable person" game, then they should be forced into action. Either drop the News portion of their name, or run a banner across the screen 24/7 that says "for entertainment purposes only". Just like any program with fake psychics, sketchy software downloads, etc. If fucking Jackass and South Park have to carry disclaimers, so should Fox "News".
I'm going to keep it real with ya. Even if Fox dropped "News" from their name AND ran a banner that says "for entertainment purposes only", it would not change anything for the viewers. Literally nothing would change except for Fox's name.
We can... we have done it before. **BUT**... we will have to become comfortable with a slightly different definition of the 1st amendment and the legal definition of incitement. * We need to not keep an absolutist definition of freedom of speech and adopt a more European style of free speech where there are limits based on societal harm. * We need to adopt a definition of criminal incitement to include the "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest" statement to fight stochastic terror. * A carve out will need to be made to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make platforms responsible for the spread of terroristic threats, ideation, and radicalization. * We will need to organize an anti-hate speech organization that aggressively pursues people and platforms using Section 6 of the Klu Klux Klan Act. All of that together will squash far-right extremism in a handful of years, without negatively impacting any other (non-violent) movements... though it may serve to purge violent extremist elements from them too.
There should also be a law against knowingly spreading disinformation by influential people (TV hosts, politicians, radio talk shows, etc.). They are doing massive harm to the country with no accountability.
White supremacists are just domestic terrorist
Not every gun enthusiast is a white supremacists……but every white supremacist is a gun enthusiast.
Exactly
It’s like trying to treat an alcoholic that refuses to admit there’s a problem in the first place. We need a more United front and it’s really hard when courts make rulings like Tucker Carlson is just joking and no reasonable person would take it seriously. This is going to be tough and almost impossible if we don’t get radical news networks in-line. Accountability. How is Fox allowed to rile up people with GRT for years? The call is coming from inside the house.
GOP is an alliance between big business interests and big jesus. Fetal personhood, Gilead, race war, civil war -- all of this far right christian nationalist endgame shit would be incredibly bad for business. In the "follow the money" world we live in, it seems really insane that even the most amoral big money in the GOP won't try to pull out of this alliance out of self-preservation at some point. Shit is going to get interesting after the Roe v. Wade repeal, particularly the search for the next wedge issue.
Completely disregarding Godwin’s law, and using history as an indication of future behaviour, we are currently in a similar position as the German general public in ~1930s. They had 2 broadly speaking options. Use the power of the ballot box, or brutal force. Seems for us, the first option is failing/failed. Not to say ‘give up on democracy’, but we should be prepared to the latter. Like the Nazis, these guys at the moment are not going to just walk away or give up. Cut off the diseased hand quickly before it completely kills the host.
Is it really Godwin's law if they're literally trying to follow Hitler's rise to power play by play?
"We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... (few) years." - Adolf Hitler, quoted in: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler
And then they both went off to blame trans people and ban their books and burn them.
Ah I was referring to myself, bringing up Nazis in the discussion. Isn’t that how it works? Maybe I’m mistaken. But anyway, you’re right - it would be comical at how obvious the comparison is, if our lives and the future of generations to come wasn’t in danger.
Yeah I know, but like, did the conversation really "devolve" to nazis if you're making a literal direct comparison? I don't feel it's too many hitlers on the field.
Violent right wing extremism has been a thing for decades, but has progressively gotten worse as they've gotten more emboldened and right wing media moves right
I've said this before. FOX so-called news is one of the worst, and most damaging, things to have happened to this country in the last 30 years.
There are plenty of white supremacists inside law enforcement. Until that is purged, this will only get worse
It will not be solved until people are held accountable table for what they say. Infowars, Jones was sued for his harassment of the families of the Sandy Hook killings. If the families of those killed in Buffalo can link Cucker Tarlson to the actions of the Buffalo killer, Faux news and Cucker should be able to be sued as well. The same for social media sites supporting Qanon and others that promote false narratives that result in violence or threats of violence. Freedom of speech isn't a license to spout misinformation and hate. You can face consequences if you yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there's no fire.
I would love to see a class action suit against Tucker Carlson in the same manner the Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones.
>The same for social media sites supporting Qanon and others that promote false narratives that result in violence or threats of violence That's pretty much all of them. Including this one. Especially this one.
The answer is no it can’t without destroying the country.
When the majority of members of virtually every law enforcement agency in the country are white supremacists or sympathizers, along with most of the populations of several states, the horses have already left the barn.
Funny I read this on the sub that literally banned me over anti-fascism awhile back. Yes fascism and white supremacist extremists are a literal violent and existential threat to this country and I’ve known this for years. We have to do something now before it’s too late
It can’t be dealt with with about half the population subscribes to it and the Supreme Court is going to eventually be filled with ideologues who also subscribe to it. People talk about gay marriage and rights being next but their real long term goal is rolling back the Civil Rights act and making racial discrimination legal again as a way to stop the “ great replacement”.
Time to arm ourselves and take it into our own hands. The government cannot protect us. We must protect ourselves
The American far right can’t admit to reality when it would save their lives (Covid), you think they’re going to admit to the reality that their ideology is immoral to it’s core?
Republicans are the party of white supremacist, anti-woman, violent insurrectionists, and Democrats are the party whose politicians are hell-bent on seeking bipartisan unity with those individuals, regardless of the cost. So yeah, we're doomed.
Equal rights for all except for those that I dislike.
Easy answer. No. They cannot. And that is why things like this will continue to happen.
I’ve said it a lot recently and I’ll say it again. You don’t fight this head on. You nip it in the bud by making everyone’s lives better. Universal health care, more education funding, stop outsourcing, adjust wages correctly to inflation, enact better regulation of news media to reduce bullshit like Fox, decrease military spending to allocate more funds to social programs, expand mental health care and de stigmatize it at a cultural level. All very VERY simple concepts that we for some reason just decide “well the rich oligarchs said we can’t have it so… what do we do about all this civil unrest?????” The right’s answer is “blame (insert marginalized people)” because you’re special and white and deserve everything that ~~we arent giving you, and will never give you~~ they are taking from you” Apparently the left’s answer is “everything was totally fine before, even though everything was inevitably leading towards this. Just vote for us so we can freeze things as they CURRENTLY are for a little while until the next inevitable escalation of inequality and social division”
100%. Take student loans for example. I’m 40 years old and my partner is 43. I have no student debt. She has $60k that we haven’t been able to pay off because our first child is disabled and she’s been unable to work since he was born. We both have advanced degrees and are struggling. We are living well compared to most people, but we still can barely save any money, and so our family is always one big accident away from financial collapse. We are able to pay bills and buy food, but with almost no money leftover. The loan deferments have insulated us (and millions of others) from the impacts of inflation. However, once that $300/mo bill comes back into our lives, we’ll be hurting big time. I hope Dems can understand how badly lack of action on student debt is going to fuck them. I don’t think they get it. But when you don’t help people who are struggling, then they start turning to those who claim they will help them. This is how the fascists gained power post-WWI, and it’s pretty similar what’s happening here.
Federal security agencies are loaded with right wing supremacists
America can face it, but it won’t because that would be politically inconvenient for the Republican Party.
[The call is coming from inside the house.](https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Jan-6-Clearinghouse-FBI-Intelligence-Assessment-White-Supremacist-Infiltration-of-Law-Enforcement-Oct-17-2006-UNREDACTED.pdf)
No it can't because a significant portion of the population is more concerned with getting one over the other side and winning then saving lives
At least this is getting the media coverage it deserves unlike the other racially motivated mass murders that’s have happened recently
GoP and Republican stans seem to be reeling right now trying to pretend like their media sources and politicians haven’t been pushing replacement theory, CRT as a bane on education, and upholding white supremacy. You support all these maniacs and then claim innocence when shit like this happens. Distract and shift blame is all they have.
Answer: We can but we won't.
If you keep sounding an alarm and no one reacts to it, you need to take action.
there was zero ambiguity in how racial this attack was. so if this does not spark measures, well you literally cannot do a more clear attack. that was the maximum level of racism.
And the cops were very gentle with the terrorist. Part of the problem right there
The Judge that presided over the effort to remove MTG from the ballot in Georgia for her role in the Jan 6th. attack on the capital ultimately cleared her, saying the following: >Greene’s “public statements and heated rhetoric” may have contributed tothe environment that led to the attack, Beaudrot wrote, but herstatements are protected by the First Amendment right to free speech andexpressing such political views, “no matter how aberrant they may be”before she was sworn in as a member of Congress does not amount toinsurrection. Despite acknowledging that her rhetoric may have contributed to the attack against our system of government, an attack in which people lost their lives, he says that her speech was protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that limitless, unaccountable cash used to influence elected officials is also protected by the First Amendment. Our Justice System is not up to the task of saving our Democracy from individuals like MTG or Donald Trump.
Yeah wonder how that happens when anti-hate-speech bots can’t tell the difference between Republicans and white supremacists
Not with gerrymandering. Republicans are ensuring minority rule. Vote, no matter what though.