Dr. Brad Rosenheim has moved!Everyday, when I #transit to work, I pass cranes building new shiny high-rise apartments. #Bicycle lanes are routinely blocked for heavy equipment, even dug up and eventually repaved. It is a boom town at the moment in #StPetersburg. New buildings, stores, restaurants. It is visible capitalist progress, without the "annoyance" of progressivism.
I worry that if that is what #fascism brings, more people will embrace it. We have been sliding to the right for several elections now. Moms4Liberty just implanted 2 idiots to our schoolboard who will start pushing for book bans and open hatred of the underrepresented. Climate? It will become a non-issue to those who like shiny new things, even as our sewers begin to back up with seawater.
But we shouldn't judge a book by its cover or a city by its cranes. There is rot under the surface. I mentioned a failing #sewage system. Growth for the sake of growth is bad - we've added many hundreds of bedrooms to our downtown without adding any #PublicTransportation except one bus lane. The book bans will come back to bite belligerent board members as families eventually support their children rather than trying to change them. But is this how long we have to wait? Is there another way?
Or will the #fascists be powerful enough to somehow scapegoat the powerless for the problems that their lack of leadership on uncontrolled growth brought us? I worry that #ClimateChange will not change the direction of the #PoliticalPendulum, or it will do so too late. I wish I had a more intense local voice than simply writing opinions to the newspaper. People need to hear #progressive ideas while they lurch towards fascism, so that they have a solution in their memories when things turn ugly.