This is the right take.
What I mean is that the conditions for totalitarians to succeed have been forming, with the Patriot Act as a major turning point. I don’t think this is a controversial view, even among centrists.
You complaining about totalitarianism with zero fear of direct consequences is identical to conservatives going on media outlets to complain about being silenced.
Nah, these are totally different things. I’m talking about disturbing trends and risks, you’re doing a Baghdad Bob which is pointless IMO.
“Your complaining about the family next door being stoned when you damn well know they aren’t coming for you-- they aren’t, right?-- is just like conservatives making up some entirely contradictory crap like yelling about being canceled while they enjoy airtime on a major news network.”
I think I didn’t write my original post clearly enough, and @iron81 thought I was saying that US is currently a totalitarian state. Which would be a stupid definitional circle jerk about exactly how much totalitarianism is enough to be a totalitarian state, blah blah blah. Not interested. The point is that the conditions for rising totalitarianism are increasing over time, and people should be worried, not dismissive.
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I for one would welcome totalitarianism if it was paired with some level of competent technocracy at this point. We are running out of time rapidly on several fronts and consensus building is a major barrier to civilization not flying off one of several really high altitude cliffs.
The idea that we can have a representative Democracy and social media is getting more laughable by the day. We have huge numbers of people taking livestock dewormer to treat a virus we have effective vaccines for. Those people losing the ability to influence policy is a feature not a bug.
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There seems to be an assumption that conservative dominance over the federal government means they get to control the entire country for some meaningful length of time. I think it would be far more likely to trigger a fracturing that ends the USofA as we currently understand it. The Putin/Russia analogies are skipping over the part where there used to be an entire Soviet Union, which shocked everybody by completely disappearing in like an hour and a half one afternoon in 1991.
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This is how I see it going honestly. The USA continues to be a thing officially but in practice every state goes its own way.
Yeah this. I can’t certainly see how the US could wind up in full-blown fascism, but a lot of institutions and oppositional power bases need to be destroyed first.
I’ve been reading a shitton about Latin American dictatorships lately. Here’s the main differences between them and us I can think of:
- Ability to kill political enemies. This is a massive jump that maybe was breached in the 60s, but at least for now is a bridge no one seems ready to cross. You know Trump dreamt every night if he could just kill a few enemies like his buddies Duterte, Erdogan, and Putin. For this you need dedicated assassins. Right now the military brass and intelligence community sides with necons and neolibs, not Trump. Which sucks in a lot of other ways but at least makes it very hard to do targeted killings of Americans.
- Corrupt judiciary. So far ours is holding for the most part. They’re awful, but they’re not meddling in election fraud.
- Politicians are beholden to corporate donors. As much as that sucks, one benefit is that almost all major US corporations have a ton of minority and liberal bourgeoisie employees who won’t stand for their employer supporting tyranny, at least for now.
- Blue states control most of the economic power in this country.
- Last summer gave Rs a preview of what the anti-fascism protests might look like. Their base may have all the guns, but the left has 10x more people ready to get out in the streets. That matters. Boomers aren’t getting out there and fighting a street war with their rascal scooters and oxygen tanks.
- Free press. They’ll still get trashed for general suckitude, but CNN not coddling Trump’s lies was huge imo. If they had tried to play middle of the road and stay out of the fray, it would have made life a lot easier on Trump. CNN comes out of this looking better than NYT. It’s going to take a lot of dead people before the free press totally dies in this country.
- Hollywood - still pretty much all liberal.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. But my point is there are still plenty of institutions Americans have come to take for granted, that El Salvador, Russia, or Wiemar Germany never had - which will have to be destroyed before fascism takes hold.
The scenario I see as more likely is the Rs rigging the election enough for one party rule, then just running the country into the ground on auto-pilot. Maybe a decade of this things will get bad enough that some kind of civil war erupts. But by that point everyone except maybe 20% of the hardcore nutjobs will be sick of the Rs ineptitude.
The lesson on those Latin American dictatorships is your days are numbered once 80-90% of the people hate you, even if you have all the guns and shock troops. And those had backing from the US to prop them up much longer than they otherwise would have survived.
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I don’t think how other countries became fascist/totalitarian/whatever is the right framework to understand how things might go. How empires collapse seems much more relevant. Rome, Britain, French, Soviet, etc.
Yeah when the US dollar isn’t the world’s reserve currency anymore is when I hope to be out of the country and never coming back. Things are going to get awful when we can’t print our way out of every jam.
Not that we won’t bring the whole world down with us, but hopefully I die before that happens.
So why can’t other countries print their way out of jams? It’s because the us is the reserve currency? I read recently European countries don’t just print money like we do.
Not sure how any of this works lol
European countries can’t print because they ceded that authority to the European Central Bank. Other countries can’t print because it triggers inflation.
Well they’d have to print Euros.
GB can try to print their way out of a jam, but their currency will tank relative to USD.
When we print our way out of a jam it’s mostly just fucking over China and internal debt holders and savers.
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What I’m saying is that you may not need to go anywhere to leave the country. I think the worst things you personally might have to fade are ecological. CA as a whole will otherwise probably be fine.
Yeah but look how pissed off people in the US are in a time of record unemployment. They’re even pissed about the record unemployment.
Now imagine 20% unemployment. There will be bloodshed.
What is your definition of “record unemployment”? The UE rate is below the historic median.
I say this with love because your posting is awesome:
OK, Boomer
I’m post-boomer by 5 years.
I have a right to die without worries because I didn’t bring kids into the world. That is the tradeoff. Either you die surrounded by love and still filled with worry for the future. Or you die unloved and alone, but at least not giving a fuck about the future.
I’m not dying alone and freaking out about what happens after I’m gone. Fuck that.
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