Ask Yourself if You’ve Earned The Right To Wallow: I’m a middle-aged, comfortable, straight white guy. I’m not going to take the brunt of what happens. I haven’t fucking earned it.
This exact message is a big factor that drove young men to vote Trump.
They kept being told by progressives that their own suffering isn’t valid.Which suffering are we talking about? It’s plenty valid to recognize low wages, inflation, poor healthcare, all of that. But I think here we’re talking about being deported, being physically threatened, raped, imprisoned, killed. As a white guy, I can say in my day to day those aren’t things I’m facing. (yet)
I think it can be said that from around 1953, with the inception of the Warren Court til now, the US has been progressing away from authoritarianism. That exception to the rule is over. We are diving head first back in.
We will never see progress again towards racial, economic, sexual or gender based rights. The fascist right has control of the presidency, house, senate, and judicial. They will gerrymander the whole government and demolish any legal tool meant to check their power. We lost for good. Representative democracy is dead. The Constitution is dead. It’s over.
I hear you that the situation is daunting. It’s frightening to forecast where things will go in the U.S. Still it’s inaccurate and unhelpful to say representative democracy is dead.
First off, even the Nazis lost. If it comes to violence fascists will ultimately lose.
But also, the U.S. was founded in slavery, only land owning white men could vote. We had the civil war, we had Jim Crow. So we have a history of hopeless looking oppressive situations, and made progress away from them.
Most importantly, believing that fascists are unbeatable makes them so. If you don’t believe it’s possible, you won’t try.
I’m still staggering from this election, it sucks. I don’t intend to roll over, and I believe, after much unnecessary suffering and probably death, that we will win.
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite professors (that I’m about to butcher) was
“No one in history thought they were living in history. They were just… living; it’s easy for us to look back in the present and think of two people in history as contemporaries and ask 'why didn’t he learn from the mistakes of this guy? Surely they knew each other, they’re both right here together in this book. Why didn’t he just run over to page 43 and ask if it was a good idea to invade in the winter?”
