TL;DR: "Making democratic threats legible," i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.
Saved you a click.
I really appreciate the TLDR, as I like to know the point before I start reading the support of it. However "legible" is a horrible word for this as precise as it might be.
Once a threat becomes legible — primarily, by an elected authoritarian beginning to act in authoritarian ways once in office — people start prioritizing democracy in a way they didn’t beforehand.
Which I would rephrase as saying: 'When politicians act like dictators, document it, yell it out, and call them out."
And even that's to long and not direct enough.
So the populace has to be intelligent enough to grasp that their democracy is being threatened?
Yup. We're fucked.
But that’s been met with “you have Trump derangement syndrome” or “that will never happen, you’re exaggerating” or 1000 variations for over a decade now.
If the horse won't drink, you just keep leading it to water until it eventually gets thirsty.
The horse will eventually drink as it must to survive.
You're better off helping those that want to be helped
The metaphor meant that, as Trump continues to injure his own supporters, reminding them that he is behaving as a dictator may eventually stop them from resolving cognitive dissonance by being defensive and instead by blaming the culprit. Basically, every time you lead the horse to water is a new opportunity to drink, increasing in urgency over time.
But by all means, help those who want to be helped first.
"Water is a democrat hoax. They put weird spy tech in it! Real men inhale hydrogen sulfide for hydration. It's Trump approved!"
Or just drown the fucker.
Seems like they stopped shy of the good stuff:
Worse, in the examples they give, the legislatures and/or judiciaries stood against the dictators.
Here, we have decades of propaganda fueled by the oligarchs that has removed the world view of a third of our population from reality, and it's not just Trump - the Republican party is in on the deal, from Congress to SCOTUS.
It's not the same battle. It's not the same order of magnitude. It's at least two orders of magnitude harder.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fight; rather, we should fight all the harder.
But that's why I'm not certain partition / civil war type solutions are off the table.
Even shorter TL;DR: keep stating the obvious-- it's not obvious to everyone.
It's also impossible, as this requires people to read and understand, something most Americans aren't very good at. Most Americans believe what their news organizations tell them and since they've had a free pass to lie for decades now, lying is all they do.
so the article is bull shit then. thanks for saving me the trouble
Fascim has already "took hold".
Yeah we've been trying that for the past decade and are repeatedly told we're overreacting.
I really don't get how people cannot get having paramilitary randomly grabbing, shooting, killing folks. Heck break car windows. cars are sacrosanct in this country. I mean seriously folks. This is not how a normal free society behaves. It drives me nuts how no one seems to get the bill of rights. We learned this in school. The declaration of independence and the greivences which are mirrored in the bill of rights to prevent the things the founding fathers fought to stop.
It drives me nuts how no one seems to get the bill of rights. We learned this in school.
Decades of propaganda have convinced people that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to 'criminals' and 'illegals'.
yeah you get the bs like they meant citizens when they wrote this and its like. Wrong! They specifically used terms throughout the constitution and you can tell it is deliberate and we know from their writings they realized how many rights were effectively nullified if it does not apply to all.
Although at the same time, enshrined in there is the idea that some are worth about 60% as much as others.
Not to defend the racist fascists, mind.
Yes along with a mechanism for change to get rid of things like that.
If they didn't want it there they wouldn't have put it it. Just like they were careful not to actually get rid of slavery.
They don't care because the goons aren't grabbing their family members and smashing their cars.
There's a huge number of people who don't give a shit about anything beyond the ends of their own noses.
Seems worse than that. I mean I could not care about anything but me and mine and still not want others to suffer or at the very least recognize that this could eventually get to me. I mean there has to be some kind of cruelty or stupidy or mix of both to actually want and support this.
Step 1
Step 2 DONE
Americans getting off their ass to actually do something? Nah. One protest every six months on a weekend is all they can muster.
Liberal slop that posits we must return the wholesome big chungus good old days of healthy American democracy (as if the US wasn't born out of wholesale genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of an entire continent). You can tell this article was written by someone who just wants to go back to esting brunch while the US plunders the planet. Does the article even mention workers? If it does, it makes far more effort to put its stock in "institutions", "courts", and "elites".
American fascism is not an abberation, but the logical conclusion. This article comes from the perspective that we have to save the current system as opposed to even considering a new one.
Fascism Is Possible Not in Spite of Liberal Capitalism, but Because of It
Clintonite cosmopolitan liberalism claims that these oppressions are atavisms of the past, even though they are renewed every day. It promises to unite the world Benetton-like in a multicultural global market, where everyone is equally free to exploit and be exploited. Liberalism will occasionally apologize for its racism, sexism and colonial massacres, and may make affirmative action reforms to stabilize its rule and rationalize production, or in the case of the US government’s eventual concessions to the civil rights movement, to compete ideologically with the Soviet Union. But there is one place where it can never acknowledge illegitimate hierarchy: the workplace. And it is precisely here that the contradictions that propel the world toward fascism are rooted.
Ive observed the Polish "fight for democracy" in recent years up close and I call bullshit. I've worked as a tech for a key "democratic" NGO behind some of the biggest protests, and Ive been on the front-lines providing security to the Women's Strike as it was assaulted by pigs and fascist militia. Most people, particularly here, don't care about abstract ideas. They care when they feel their freedom, their money, their chances are being taken away.
We had pro-democratic marches of liberal parties mobilizing mostly middle class for years and it changed nothing. Crossing the line on abortion laws did that, as it affected the working class.
digression
Personally I believe people love talking about ideals, but they are either in the ideological fan-base/larping niche, or they can afford considerations higher then securing their roof and food for the next month or they use it as a cover for what they believe will benefit or injure them personally. Most fascist supporters will claim they actually only support the "economic program" of the far right, most wont be able to give any specifics of it. Most people calling themselves left are not even members of a trade union. However we fancy ourselves deep in our brains we are still tribalistic aggressive apes fighting for resources, and trying to use as little energy for that as possible. But we love to make up justifications for it.
Every major opposition strike in "communist" Poland happened after the prices of meat went up.
Don't get me wrong; people fight for the cause, commit their life to it. This is necessary for any change to the better to be possible. Organizing is key. Mobilizing the actual working class is key. No one cares if the middle class is unhappy when the power is solidified. And trumpists will have much more votes than anyone expects again, if they manage to disappear enough people from the system for wages in some low income sectors to go up. Or even just give some people a sense of pride or a new shared enemy.
Woman's Strike was a failure in many ways, but it did mobilize enough people to vote to bring back any actual left into the parlament and slightly grow liberals margins. Barely enough to take over the parliament, after which conservatives won the presidential elections (and we got this). This american style conservative-liberal duopoly has been going strong for the last 20 years. Democracy did not win, and whoever claims so is not watching closely. We might slide down hardcore right wing, we might stay at benevolent neocon liberals, or we get a friendly visit for an old occupier, you never know.
edit: spellcheck
but by convincing a critical mass of people that they’re just a normal politician — no threat to democracy at all.
A.K.A: we're pretty much fucked. We have Faux News, Newsmax, OANN, and an endless supply of YouTuber/podcast jackasses to keep The Base believing the Turd Reichs version of reality. Now we also have CBS and potentially CNN to join that group....
:(
Doesn't the constitution tell Americans what to do when this happens? Isn't "forming a militia" a thing? It is as simple as a bully trying to steal your country for himself. Will you let him?
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