this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
415 points (98.1% liked)

politics

19120 readers
2127 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The problem is this is the US. This is the world's most major superpower. This is the nation whose companies fed and propped up the Nazis. Because what little of democracy there was in the US is now certainly going to fall, it's going to drag the whole world with it. Too many shitheads in too many countries, including Germany, will be willing to follow suit, and all the major superpowers left will be all too willing to prop them up with little to no regard for what rules they won't break in the process. We might even see the US trying to strong-arm nations in the same way China has been trying to strong-arm Taiwan. At a time where the surveillance and control tools at their disposal are at a dystopian high. At a time ramping up for chaos due to major environment and resource collapses that we have been foreseeing for decades.

Absolutely. The tendencies are visible all over the world and there will be grave consequences for all of us. However, there are differences. In Germany for example after the horrors of WW2 the political system was specifically designed to prevent something like this from happening again (ironically the creation of the german constitution was heavily influenced by the US). Which sounds like a good thing at first, but what happened in the last decade was basically this: The right wing parties became stronger at every election and as a result there were coalitions forged between opposing parties to prevent right wing parties from taking over power. And this in term lead to years of standstill in political decision making, dragging down the country, because opposing parties tend to block each others ideas. Which in turn made the right wing even stronger, because they now had someone to blame for the resulting mess. Germany and by extension Europe as well have a lot of bureaucracy, which on one side gives a bit of a shield against hostile takeovers, but has a downside of inefficiency in acting to protect democracy too. It's not looking too good, but Trump's habit of pissing off his allies might have a net positive effect of uniting people against this bullying and encouraging them to get their shit together. But I think it's to early to tell. Could as well sway in the other direction and produce Trump bootlicking countries like you said.

About surveillance technologies, indeed the possibilities set our current situation apart from when Nazis came to power in the past. It's absolutely crazy to witness how a commercial surveillance industry disguised as ad services (Google/Meta/...) created a monster that makes Orwell's 1984 look like a children's book, and most people still don't even understand the implications in order to realize what they're up against. From a european perspective, there is an upside in that at least for now the EU is actively trying to limit the power of those mega corporations. These processes however are chugging along at snail pace due to the aforementioned bureaucracy. Slow, but steady. Which is at least something.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. It's such a broad topic and there are no easy answers.