All money buys is ease. History shows time and again the shortcomings and lazy efforts of the plutocracy when the surface is scratched. The question is how clear and decisive a fight can be mustered using the equal war chest of the less angry who comprise the majority
One thing I find especially galling is that many of the well-off people who gleefully (or just blithely) watched the gutting of democratic institutions and the transformation of the US into a Petri dish for fascism, will be suffering in ten years like the rest of us and blame “the left” for it.
What most pundits and meme-creators don't or refuse to understand is that Trump's cultists and other supporters - except for the wealthy - really like about him is not what he did/will do for them but 🔥🔥🔥 WHAT HE WILL DO TO THE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS THEY HATE if reelected.
That’s the thing about fascism. It sucks for pretty much everybody. It is definitely worse for some groups more than others, but no one’s life is ultimately made better by it, even the ones who start off thinking it’s gonna be great.
even the billionaires, who in the current U.S. system merely have to worry about their vehicle going into water (deliberately, tesla driving error) and (exploding, impervious to harm), some of them are going to die too. when they were at near zero risk.
You’d have thought our shared human vulnerability to Covid would have made them aware of the value of the social contract, but instead they drew the exact opposite lesson.
Knowing this, however, requires one to read a book or take a history class or two. Weirdly enough, this take away rarely came across in those thousands of hours of History Channel shows about the various arms of the Nazi war machine.
Uninvited opinion: It is the laziness of the center-left establishment that allows evil to flourish. They give us no coherent program to rally around. Where is the concise, compelling alternative plan to "Project 2025"? There may be 999 potential plans, but that adds up to effectively 0 plans.
I’m not sure a book or a history class will do much good. Americans have decided that fascism and Germany are identical, so I don’t think anybody will find anything to be learned.
Kind of. Obviously throwing a book at someone does little good, but--and Seth's research is crucial here--the current attitude was *taught*. The current attitude didn't just arise, rather it was cultivated in people through outreach, community building, and marketing.
'Nazis were just EVIL!! Hitler was just EVIL!! Good thing America isn't EVIL!! But also maybe aliens???' seems to be what History Channel has churned out for decades, by and large, so of course the US is largely unprepared for this moment.
That's why I hate the Weimar comparisons people make. The idea that the US left is anywhere near as powerful or dangerous as the German Communist party was in the 1920's and 1930's is just crazy.
Yes…just ask any of the non-Jewish people in WW2 Germany who looked the other way and mistakenly thought they’d be ok..didn’t quite work out like that. Hitler and his fascist ideology took down the entire country…regardless of who you were, how much money you had or what you believed. All destroyed.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign ….
by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." So Lincoln was a little early.
That’s what the post Civil War was. Workers had no rights, American factories had a higher death count than European battlefields. If they objected too much, they were murdered by the police.
We got out of that through massive waves of activism and violence, and that reprieve is over.
Yeah, sounds pretty grim ...so, maybe we should try to get these "progressive" billionaires who haven't had time to engage, to get off their butts and start buying up some media assets....
Comments
Microscopic?
Depressingly small?
Laughable?
I’m all out of hope that things can get better before they get catastrophic.
That’s what the post Civil War was. Workers had no rights, American factories had a higher death count than European battlefields. If they objected too much, they were murdered by the police.
We got out of that through massive waves of activism and violence, and that reprieve is over.