Jan 6,2021 says hi.
Jesus, Clovis, let it go.
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Itâs a conversation. If you donât like donât read it.
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so your point is that jan 6 could/never happened in russia? neither did any BLM protest, or a pride parade. even political rallies cannot really happen in russia, unless itâs government budget employees forced to go to luzhniki
My point is America is only different from Russia in degree today and the degree of difference is rapidly eroding.
Jan 6 was literally the president of the United States cheering on the violent overthrow of the democratic process. People died and itâs just pure luck they werenât elected officials.
I donât see the chasm between that and Putin poisoning his political rivals that you do.
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I donât disagree but degrees matter.
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you donât have to convince me there are degrees. i was well aware of us becoming a totalitarian russia down the road in 2014-16. but even in russia, people mostly argue that a concerted effort to dethrone putin or medvedev was possible somewhere along the way, and it was a focused campaign to disenchant the populace of politics that ultimately dwindled the able and willing opposition to nothing.
the doom and gloom is something we all feel from time to time. turning off completely and not participating in elections and discourse in spite of the gloom is what makes the decline inevitable.
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I agree. But Iâm finding it very hard to argue voting is going to help.
Trust me the last thing I want is to give up but I honestly canât see the path forward. Thatâs why I was asking earlier and so far I unfortunately have not seen anyone explain that path.
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I agree with this and I think that people just arenât going to like the answer. The path forward is to work as hard as conservatives day after day, week after week, year after year. One problem is that normal people and progressives just donât want to admit that the conservatives just want it more and work harder for it.
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Iâve been making this case for a long time. Democracy requires super-majority support for the process so that the losing side is willing to abide by the results when they lose. Nothing Democrats do really matters because Republicans have convinced enough of their side to doubt the validity of any loss. All of the complaining about what Democrats should do ignores this central issue. And Iâm not sure that getting rid of gerrymandering and voter suppression is enough to fix this.
It seems like the end result is the fall of the current regime and the erection of another. The question is whether it has to be a slow slide into totalitarianism and how much and what kind of resistance we are willing to put up to prevent that.
itâs becoming painfully clear that voting cannot be the only instrument of democracy, and there are hundreds of ways we can contribute, thag i know about, but also hundreds that i donât.
I donât see a lot of evidence that the breakdown of the American state is impending; rather, a new form of quasi-feudal capitalism is emerging in which the US will function much more as a set of interlocking geographical regions with distinct laws and social norms, especially around women, sex, and gender, but also fundamental differences in labor protections and social safety nets. Itâs pretty obvious that the eDems wonât succeed in stopping this (because they arenât really trying) and are basically unwilling to use the fiscal and tax policy tools that would make a meaningful difference at the federal level. This means that real political power is in a state of perpetual capture by what Thorstein Veblen termed a âleisure class.â
Republican gerrymandering and whatnot is basically a symptom of this larger transformation, which theyâve strategically implemented over the course of decades. Welcome to the Squid Game. The Supreme Courtâs mowing the lawn. Etc.
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It does look like the people it represents.
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It means she loves you and wants to connect with you.
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Do I seem cynical or about to give up? Then perhaps there was another way to take what I said. More along the lines of how itâs good that people will stop thinking they donât need to do anything since they can rely on rule of law
I get pretty annoyed by the people expressing sentiments of giving up, to the point of not necessarily even giving them space to just vent if thatâs all theyâre doing with those expressions.
Even if I actively slowed you down from taking this view because I was annoying about it or something, it still makes me feel more hopeful to see you espouse it
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Damn how have we ever disagreed to the extent we have, lol
Seems you may also be implying Trump and Putin are the symptoms, not the disease
Edit: oh I might have misread a bit and thought you were saying the focus on dethroning above all else or even absent anything else, was what disenchanted the populace. That doesnât take away all my original sentiment though, if thatâs not what you were saying
i meant that putinâs regime pivoted quickly to dissuade the population from participating in politics. and that focus worked, opposition was made to look like the fringe, and only a minority missed them when they were murdered.
if normal political processes were allowed to happen, the opposition could have stopped putinâs reset of his presidential terms. but alas, it all started with taking control of the media and judiciary.
eta: and polonium ofc
i was not implying that, i donât think, although i do believe any particular dictator is a symptom of greater nationalism or fascism that can overtake a country.