HeavenlyPossumAug 27, 2025

US Democrats are so enamored with the idea that Trump is “distracting” because a fundamental pillar of US liberalism is that nothing real can ever happen. It’s just not allowed. So when real things do happen, like a fascist takeover and military occupation of the US capital, they can only conceive of it in terms of messaging, of signs and symbols.

The real world ended in 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Bill Clinton became President and neoliberalism settled in as The End of History.

The first real thing that will ever happen to many of these people will be their own deaths.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dem-strategists-urged-party-trump-military-takeover-1235415635/

Dems’ Messaging Nerds Urged Party Not to Talk About Trump’s Military Takeover

Democrats’ favorite research firm told Democrats to avoid discussing Trump’s “rising authoritarianism” and focus on tariffs instead.

Rolling Stone
Show threadDavid Mitchell 

@HeavenlyPossum

I was young when the west started crowing about the “End of History” which seemed to me then to be rather over the top (even for those heady days as millions of people were free to move and choose as they hadn’t been before).

But it appears that a great many people took it quite seriously, perhaps because they never really believed in history in the first place, instead living in a close and cozy world peopled only by themselves, perhaps a supporting character or two, some distant heroes or villains, and millions (billions) of vague disposable NPC spear-carriers.

It takes a specific and purposeful kind of effort to imagine a world full of real, vibrant, exciting people as fully realized as oneself, and to then extend that to centuries or millennia more of equally rich, vibrant, and varied people.

The End of History (TM) gave those with poor imagination the excuse they needed to settle into a deep and selfish rut of self-serving, unexamined consumerism and avarice.

Aug 27, 2025 at 1:53pmWeb