Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) demanded federal officers vacate the state after agents shot and killed a second person in Minneapolis on Saturday. “Donald Trump, I call on you once again: Remove…
There’s a world of difference between “was always like this” and “could only be like this”.
This is precisely what the fall of Nixon has been building up to, brick by brick. But the fact is that sitting presidents could do literally whatever they wanted since at least the Bush era. It’s almost a wonder it took this long for someone to take advantage of that possibility. In that regard, it has been like this for a long time, they’ve just been very careful about what they do. And the funniest thing is that they still are. I find the claims for example that Trump is doing this to provoke a violent reaction so that the army can be deployed almost comical. Why? If you need to provoke a reaction, provoke harder. If you don’t, well, why don’t you just deploy the army for no good reason. He can, after all. He could literally attempt to murder his political opponent by coughing at him knowingly while having COVID. Bush could gaslight the entire NATO into furthering US imperial goals in the Middle East. Bush was allowed to walk away with what was essentially a stolen election. For all we know, Clinton could’ve been raping children on Epstein Island while he was sitting president. It’s been like this for god knows how long, this is the first guy with the sheer audacity to do it out in the open.
The could be different is then another question, right? I think you see the problem about how far this reaches. Almost everyone with a significant amount of capital in the US is all in on this. Media is playing along the party status quo, the faces of tech can finally come out of the closet and fall in line as nazis, insurance companies have been death dealers for the longest time, and now, a slimy greasy businessman and not politician is in charge of the country. Could it be different - sure. But the house cleaning is effectively insurmountable. Every career politician on corporate bankroll, wall street, CEOs, boardrooms, corporate private militaries, and of course, the human waste who proudly exercise their 2nd amendment rights to serve their oligarch overlords. So yeah, it could be different, but it won’t be, not like this. The system is not set up in a way that you can democratically elect someone that isn’t beholden to the interests of the same people, and is willing to do anything about it. And even those who would be willing to do anything about it will find that all the other branches are long time gone. The same supreme court that gives Trump a complete blank check to bypass the legislative branch can take the same blank check away from any progressive president for reason. You can’t rely on party lines in the legislative to help you out either, if you’re a progressive president you were miraculously elected as an independent - dems are in just as deep as GOP.
So yeah. It’s paralyzing, it’s demoralizing, but it’s also just the reality. The knob only goes way up or slightly down. Up to you how to react to that. In the same situation, I decided to up and leave my home country. It was the best decision ever.
Again, the question is what is the anything you want to fix. Where is your milestone? You want the morons with guns off the street, sure, assuming the Thiel machine catches some rocks in its cogs and there’s going to be elections, you ride it out for three more years, by some miracle Musk doesn’t steal the election again and bing bang boom, you have it fixed. And by fixed, we mean you gently escorted the problem back into the bottle and loosely popped in the cork. The root causes - oligarchic big tech, hostile SCOTUS, far-right thinktank, misinformation centrals - are still there. For all intents and purposes, it’s not like this anymore, but it’s actually still like this, it’s just quieter for a couple of years.
There have been many different eras in America, and although the current one is terrible, there will be another, one way or another.
When you see America as being a single static thing, you view it as an unchanging monolith that has never had periods of time where elements of it were better – making it so that the only choice you have is to “love it, or leave it”.
But these are faulty views, and that is a false dichotomy. We are participants in the history of the country, not merely spectators. Through collective action we can change its direction. We did this before via blood, sweat, and tears in the first gilded age, and we will have to do it again here in the second.
There’s a world of difference between “was always like this” and “could only be like this”.
This is precisely what the fall of Nixon has been building up to, brick by brick. But the fact is that sitting presidents could do literally whatever they wanted since at least the Bush era. It’s almost a wonder it took this long for someone to take advantage of that possibility. In that regard, it has been like this for a long time, they’ve just been very careful about what they do. And the funniest thing is that they still are. I find the claims for example that Trump is doing this to provoke a violent reaction so that the army can be deployed almost comical. Why? If you need to provoke a reaction, provoke harder. If you don’t, well, why don’t you just deploy the army for no good reason. He can, after all. He could literally attempt to murder his political opponent by coughing at him knowingly while having COVID. Bush could gaslight the entire NATO into furthering US imperial goals in the Middle East. Bush was allowed to walk away with what was essentially a stolen election. For all we know, Clinton could’ve been raping children on Epstein Island while he was sitting president. It’s been like this for god knows how long, this is the first guy with the sheer audacity to do it out in the open.
The could be different is then another question, right? I think you see the problem about how far this reaches. Almost everyone with a significant amount of capital in the US is all in on this. Media is playing along the party status quo, the faces of tech can finally come out of the closet and fall in line as nazis, insurance companies have been death dealers for the longest time, and now, a slimy greasy businessman and not politician is in charge of the country. Could it be different - sure. But the house cleaning is effectively insurmountable. Every career politician on corporate bankroll, wall street, CEOs, boardrooms, corporate private militaries, and of course, the human waste who proudly exercise their 2nd amendment rights to serve their oligarch overlords. So yeah, it could be different, but it won’t be, not like this. The system is not set up in a way that you can democratically elect someone that isn’t beholden to the interests of the same people, and is willing to do anything about it. And even those who would be willing to do anything about it will find that all the other branches are long time gone. The same supreme court that gives Trump a complete blank check to bypass the legislative branch can take the same blank check away from any progressive president for reason. You can’t rely on party lines in the legislative to help you out either, if you’re a progressive president you were miraculously elected as an independent - dems are in just as deep as GOP.
So yeah. It’s paralyzing, it’s demoralizing, but it’s also just the reality. The knob only goes way up or slightly down. Up to you how to react to that. In the same situation, I decided to up and leave my home country. It was the best decision ever.
See, this is the problem with pretending that things were always like this, it makes it so that you think it’s impossible to ever fix anything.
Again, the question is what is the anything you want to fix. Where is your milestone? You want the morons with guns off the street, sure, assuming the Thiel machine catches some rocks in its cogs and there’s going to be elections, you ride it out for three more years, by some miracle Musk doesn’t steal the election again and bing bang boom, you have it fixed. And by fixed, we mean you gently escorted the problem back into the bottle and loosely popped in the cork. The root causes - oligarchic big tech, hostile SCOTUS, far-right thinktank, misinformation centrals - are still there. For all intents and purposes, it’s not like this anymore, but it’s actually still like this, it’s just quieter for a couple of years.
There have been many different eras in America, and although the current one is terrible, there will be another, one way or another.
When you see America as being a single static thing, you view it as an unchanging monolith that has never had periods of time where elements of it were better – making it so that the only choice you have is to “love it, or leave it”.
But these are faulty views, and that is a false dichotomy. We are participants in the history of the country, not merely spectators. Through collective action we can change its direction. We did this before via blood, sweat, and tears in the first gilded age, and we will have to do it again here in the second.