It's not that Americans themselves are getting more fascist, more hateful. If anything, Americans are becoming more tolerant.
It's that a small set of extremely rich people is getting bolder about funding extremism, bolder about supporting coups, bolder about buying courts.
This is partly why all this is happening. Look at Texas presidential election margins:
@alexwild Perhaps. And with gerrymandering, more right wing legislators get elected.
But where gerrymandering doesn’t factor in, for example,
Abbott won by 10 points, a landslide.
Paxton, someone the Republicans want to impeach? 8 points landslide.
Texans are to blame a lot.
@Sameagle @staidwinnow @alexwild I play a lot of video games. And sometimes I read/hear something in a game that sticks with me. Very recently, it's a line in Guild Wars 2 that's pretty relevant to this: "Propaganda doesn't have to be convincing. Just pervasive."
And I think that really rings true: as long as propaganda is spread as far and as wide as it can, it will eventually find ears that will listen. Those that know better will eventually tune it out. Eventually still, become demoralized by its ever-present nature, losing the will and energy to argue with its mouth-pieces, to debunk its fallacies, or even just deal with the emotional toll it takes.
Before long, it piles up and it becomes impossible to find the truth buried under all that shit, and it begins to look like you're alone and out-numbered by the ones propagating the lies. I don't think it's just gerrymnandering. I think it's the relentless propaganda machine they've set up.
@Sameagle Anything to turn a profit. The greedy are absolutely carnivorous. They'd burn the whole damn nation themselves and aalt every square inch of our own soil if they could profit off it.
But now it's not just news. Now you have mega-churches with congregations in the thousands on any given Sunday being fed right-wing extremism wrapped in holy scripture. Pastors, who legitimately believe Trump is a Messiah (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Me07dg2VBmU), able to change entire political and religious sentiment in a single sermon, and now they act as propagandistic mouth-pieces.
The good news is, as the OP showed, these people are losing support. These groups always follow a cycle of becoming ever-more radical, and as they do, they lose members, and become more desperate, and therefore more extreme, making them lose more members as they become more radical, and the cycle repeats until only the most loyal and extreme remain. Then they do something truly unbelievable, and they burn out.
@alexwild Bud, as an Afro-Indigenous queer person? You're extremely goddamn wrong. America was founded on genocide and slavery. It was always like this. Rank and file citizens who are part of the majority need to reconcile with that. The framing you're presenting here is minimizing the responsibility of folks who just rolled over and let it happen. We are in our Weimar era.
Schwarzenegger, who was raised by an abusive Nazi of a father, even felt compelled to speak up because things are that bad. Please do yourself a favor and rethink this idea you're fixating on. It's not the only cause. White Americans ARE becoming more fascist and less tolerant. I have to live the byproduct of that. Even in California where I've been my entire life.
Stop this. It's insulting to anyone who has to live with the consequences of people like yourself refusing to take any accountability because you think you personally haven't contributed. Not pushing back is culpability. Not sticking your neck out as an accomplice to marginalized groups is culpability. Don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us with this crap.
@alexwild I listened to an interesting interview yesterday that relates to this. Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist who studies the factors that lead societies to civil war and terrorist violence. She discussed how similar America is to other countries where demographics had shifted to put the historic majority into the minority and the anger of the old majority escalates into extreme rhetoric and violence towards "other-ed" groups. She compared us to Rwanda and Orban's Hungary, among others.
One thing that struck me about her interview was her discussion on public figures who stokes fear and used inflammatory language to rile up a base to do their bidding. She calls them "ethnic entrepreneurs" and she put people like Rush Limbaugh and, of course, Donald Trump in that category.
She's worth looking into as she has written so much on this topic. I can send you the podcast link as well, if you are interested.
Here you go. I hope you don't mind Rick Wilson. I try to listen to liberals and former Republicans to get multiple perspectives on issues. He is the Lincoln Project guy. Anyways here you go.
https://resolutesquare.com/podcasts/428evAYKbcrekUPvAQCATa/exploring-ethnic-entrepreneurship
Rick Wilson talks with Barbara Walter, author of "How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them." They discuss conditions that lead to modern civil wars, the role of ethnic entrepreneurs, and political polarization vs political violence.
@alexwild I've noticed this in a lot of attitude surveys.
When people are asked "How has your attitude to X changed?" and it's become more liberal, but when they're asked "How has the public's attitude to X changed?" people think it's become less tolerant.
In the UK, I think a lot of it is driven by this lame duck government enjoying smashing the place up.
@alexwild I found it disturbing (but not surprising) that a relative who previously claimed to be a free speech libertarian exclaimed to me that he was now Republican only because while Biden is president his retirement stocks went down.
I was in utter silence as he explained this to me.
Some people don't see the forest for the trees and want to (unsubstantiated) blame all their current woes on the one position that they see as the thing they can control. And this dude is pro-LGBTQ+ rights, pro-free speech, anti-cop. And it's a mind bogglingly shallow reason to want to vote for Trump. Even when he didn't vote for him last time around.
Edit: My reply: "it's all risky". Investments aren't a guarantee.
Citizens United sicced billionaire black money funds on the USA
...bolder about their messaging to stupid white people with guns that "the woke" are going to come after stupid white people with guns next...
That said, I'd like to believe your American tolerance take.
@alexwild I'm hoping you're correct on the more tolerant part but then I see that 74 million voted for an obvious authoritarian grifter. Does not make me optimistic.
But, no question, the rich absolutely think this is their moment to get a choke hold on democracy.
Yeah, "louder" doesn't necessarily mean "larger numbers of." But a lot of people make that assumption/mistake.
They're louder, so we hear them and hear about them a lot more. But that just means they have powerful microphones, megaphones, and platforms. It doesn't mean they outnumber us.
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." ~ Albert Einstein https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/gop-popular-front-white-nationalism/ - scandals of DeSantis and DJT, how the GOP's white nationalism extends beyond these two, and the history of the American conservative movement https://businessinsider.com/ronald-reagan-uses-racist-language-against-africans-in-released-tape-2019-7 - a declassified tape of a conversation between Reagan and Nixon from 1971 revealed Reagan expressing racist remarks about African delegates in the UN #racism #nationalism #GOP #politics #history #conservatives #facism
Oh my god, is this a banger or what?!?!
Right and wrong, moral compasses, hasn't existed in America a decades.. This is what happens when we validate and justify everything..
Jamie
@alexwild On the relevant side, only the extremely rich matter, since times immemorial. Effectively Americans are getting more fascist and hateful.
That has been the only real change; barely resisted by "other Americans".
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