Thoughts on Donald Trump, America and what this all means
So this is reality. I warned myself not to take anything for granted with Trump, 2016 happened, but still I was starting to feel hopeful for a minute there. But nope, this is what America looks like now. For now.
This sucks for a lot of Americans, some are justifiably devastated. A lot is uncertain and we all have to figure out how to navigate this version of the country for, at least, the next 4 years. That's of course part of the insanity, that there are big questions about what happens when Trump's term is over. We kinda know there's going to be some level of a coup attempt, we just don't know if it will be successful.
But for the moment I want to put aside the myriad fucked up social, economic and geopolitical implications and explore what it means from a more ideology and identity sort of angle.
This means that we don't live in a just world. When my partner was crying last night, I think that's what she was feeling the loss of most of all. The idea that despite the imperfections of the world, somewhere underneath there is some form of justice based in the fundamentally good nature of human beings.
Intellectually it seems obvious that there is no inherent justice. But emotionally it's a different story. Speaking for Americans, it's not the story we're told growing up in the shining beacon of democracy. The concept of what America is, and who Americans are, that we translate to our childen is missing most of the nuance. And many of us keep that with us emotionally as adults, even if we know better.
The grown up version, the story we tell ourselves in American culture, has more nuance but not as much as you'd hope for. As an example, we've been pretending that giant corporations, conglomerates and the ultrawealthy can serve the public interest for an embarrassingly long time. We've made materialism into an art. A little light to medium evil in our foreign policy is just something we need to accept.
Of course the nuance isn't lost on everyone, a lot of us have a clear view of what America is, and western capitalist democracy writ large, but Trump is president, in part, because a lot of people do not. Full stop. We, as a culture, are telling the wrong stories about ourselves.
But Trump is president, in spite of his escalating rhetoric and Jan 6th and the nazis on parade and the election wasn't even close. So we have to come to terms with what that means about what America is, and who Americans are.
That's going to take time and processing and I'm not sure how that might or should look. I just want to add that this isn't new. This is the country we've been living in for some time. The only thing that's really changed is that we can't rationally tell any other story now.
It's heartbreaking but after we grieve I think we'll have an opportunity, collectively, to come to terms with what we are, good and bad. Which is of course a vital early step in the process of change.
One thing I'd like to add to the conversation, that's been said a lot and still not nearly enough, is that the enemies here are not just bigotry, or ignorance, or extremist religion or lack of security. Perhaps the biggest reason, directly and indirectly, for Trump's second term is unchecked capitalism.
I hope that, as a whole, we'll learn from this, and focus our energy on the right demons. The ones we maybe have to deal with before we can handle the others.
And also I want to say: this is sad and it feels bleak at the moment... and this grief is shared by millions. We're not alone in this. We'll get through it.
I've been travelling to America for twenty or so years.
Going by Umberto Eco's definition, I believed that many aspects of American culture were ripe for fascism since my first trip.
I don't think it's possible for outsiders to convey to Americans how jarring the nationalism, militarism, machosimo, and fear running through American society is.
I have been in America when you'd be in danger for saying not only do you not support the wars, but you did not support the volunteer fighting force doing the killing.
I've had my passport stamped by (essentially) a desk clerk who had a shoulder-slung AR-pattern assault rifle in their lap, days after the Las Vegas shooting.
Years later, I went to a baseball game in an ostensibly blue state complete with military demonstrations and people openly weeping at the national anthem and the salute to the troops.
In no other place in the world that I have visited have people - especially men - felt the need to aggressively assert how non-homosexual they are through T-shirts, bumper stickers, military-inspired products, and, of course, trucks. I'm thinking of blue states here, too.
In my last trip - staying in an extremely wealthy enclave, in an extremely wealthy place - it was fear that stuck out to me. Countless signs about how many cameras were watching you. Signs about how if you took a step on somebody's property, you should fear for your life. Signs that were threatening death to people who stole packages. This is in a postcode (full of Harris/Walz signs) where the average house price was well over two million dollars. Still - an obsessive fear of people invading that enclave and taking things.
I'm very interested in American history, and American education places an outsized influence on teaching a version of that history that glosses over genocide, glorifies deeply complicated figures into simple heroes, and places wealthy men at the centre of every major event. Trying to bring nuance to this view doesn't usually end well, because people learn it from the age of 5.
All of that to say, I think America's been trending towards a fascist state for quite a long time. It just seems that many Americans are only just realising it.
Maybe it's because Americans seem less willing or financially able to travel to other countries than most other developed countries, so there is no way to compare.
Maybe it's because the candidate finally felt safe enough to openly espouse fascist policies without masking them.
But this was not some kind of electoral college trickery or the result of voter suppression. The majority of enfranchised Americans who wanted to cast a ballot cast their ballot for fascism. It takes away any pretense of that old American saying - 'this is not who we are'. For the majority, it plainly is.
However, as much as I will condemn people for voting for hate, I find it hard to condemn the circumstances into which they were born. Many, a grinding poverty that the rest of the developed world can't really fathom. A system of government so broken that any optimistic message of change just won't work. I lived in one of the richest states with one of the most 'liberal' governments, and the amount of waste in how taxes were spent may well have driven me to believe that government was fundamentally bloated and wasteful, too, given enough time.
Your system of politics and the media landscape, particularly the unregulated billionaire class, has so divided and destroyed any sense of unity in America that I can understand people voting for Trump purely for better wages. I can understand them being easily lied to, as the electorate does not have critical thinking skills. I can understand them embracing hate as a state policy, as they've been successfully taught that someone else is to blame for everything.
As I think @chocobean said in another thread (edit: great comment), someone's womanhood, their minority status, their faith or their convictions might come into play 70% of the time. But humans need food and shelter 100% of the time. That's how your fascist leader came to power. That's the promise - 'these people ruined it for you, and I will punish them and make your life materially better.' Of course that's not true, but it doesn't matter now. He's a figurehead, and this is simply a successful, modern version of the Business Plot. But no amount of soulful interrogation of what went wrong in Op Ed pages will change the reality of what's about to happen.
I hope the Americans who worked tirelessly to avoid this outcome are able to find some way through - or, hopefully, some way out. I can't imagine a future where more organising, more canvassing, trying to run a 'better' candidate through the current system, or any other non-violent solution can address the core problems of a nation built on so many systemic inequalities.
This has been building for decades. This week, the nation had a choice to choose an off ramp, and they chose fascism. If that doesn't tell people what this means for America, I don't know how to put it in plainer English.
You're right about the fear. It's baked in deep, and wealth inequality, and the insecurity that creates, turns it all the way up to 10.
I don't entirely agree with this though:
It's true that functionally that's what happened, but I think the vast majority of Trump voters were either just voting on party lines or voting for what they believed was the candidate who stood a better chance of improving their financial circumstances. They're likely wrong in that belief. But without a larger understanding of economics, it's easy to see inflation as a Biden thing and therefore something else as maybe better.
There were of course people voting for fascism, in the sense that the loud, insecure power male dynamic appealed to them, but I don't think it was the majority. I think many just aren't paying much attention. Lots of ignorance at play. Lots of misinformation.
You alluded to a lot of what I'd respond with later in your post, so I don't think we really disagree. As you say (or quote):
Indeed. Mix financial insecurity with fear and the situation is ripe for people to irrationally act against their own interests.
I'm with you on this, but I think that's exactly the trick fascism plays - promising good things to the "good people". I think the above-mentioned "majority of enfranchised Americans who wanted to cast a ballot cast their ballot for fascism" doesn't refer to those who the fascist image directly appealed to, but to those who were willing to ignore that clearly fascist image for their own gain.
That was what I was trying to convey, sorry. My wording wasn't very clear, yours is much better.
I love your comment.
One of the most jarring aspects, when I first moved to America, was learning that children start every school day with a pledge of allegiance to the flag. Americans simply don't understand how profoundly disturbing this is to Non Americans. I recently acquired citizenship for my child in my homeland. I was explaining to my sister that in a few months, I feared my child would be old enough where my homeland would require a pledge of allegiance in order to gain citizenship. My sister thought that was incredibly weird. It was weird to her, that her homeland, where she lives, would even think about requiring this of my American child. Who is entitled to a second citizenship by birth right. Americans don't even blink at the idea that anyone might be required to pledge allegiance to the American flag to gain American citizenship. They did it almost every single day since they were old enough to go to school. Folks who went to Universities in larger cities are much more comfortable with the idea that America is not perfect. But there are a lot of small town folks, and also a lot of large town folks, who will spit blood if anyone criticizes America. "If you don't like it, then leave." This lack of critical thinking about your own countries weaknesses leads to poor electoral outcomes.
Another jarring aspect, is the fact that Americans register to vote, as either Republican or Democrat. They self identify as either Republican or Democrat. And once someone commits to a particular label, it is very, very sticky. People might switch allegiances, but that switch is equally sticky. It is such a subtle thing, but it seems so wrong. Everyone who self identifies as Democrat, only want to talk shit about Republicans. People who self identify as Republican, only want to talk shit about Democrats. This self reinforcing echo chamber began long before social media was on the scene. "He is YOUR President!" "He is not MY president!" This lack of critical thinking about your own leaders weaknesses leads to poor electoral outcomes.
It might seem like nit picking, but I think America is more comfortable with an Authoritarian than a true Fascist. And i think Trump is more Authoritarian than a true Fascist. Americans, especially conservative Americans, love a strong authority figure. A strong police force. A strong judicial system. A strong religious leader. A strong president. And Trump is more authoritarian than fascist, in that he is more transactional than an ideologue. If he had to choose between a fascist ideology such as national purity and personal profit, he will choose personal profit 10/10 times. That said, there is a very subtle line between authoritarianism and fascism, and I dont like either, and I am not sure anyone inside America will rightly know when the frog is well and truly boiled. This love for authority figures definitely leads to poor electoral outcomes.
The majority of people are voting simply afraid of criminals entering the country illegally, or angry that the economy is worse for them personally, I think these things are not unique to any country, and people regularly switch leadership when inflation is hurting them, or housing is unaffordable, or all the good jobs are being outsourced, or there are a bunch of people who no longer speak your language with your accent or share your culture. It is simply worse here in America. And sadly, most countries I know are about 20 years behind America. Most countries are increasingly afraid of letting children out. Most countries are increasingly partisan. Most countries are increasingly against immigration and globalization. It is the blind allegiance to a country and a leader that makes America uniquely at risk.
I don't know if this will really be the case, and signs seem to point to him going for full on fascism from the get go. There is no "mass deportation" programme that can happen without putting huge numbers of people in jail or in camps. The process of sending them to other countries will take time. Then there is the cost - eventually it will be too expensive to hold these people and pay to ship them elsewhere. I imagine you can see where this slippery slope is heading...
This is a tale old as time. There are biblical stories of people not wanting to be ruled by a king, overthrowing him, and then assigning another person to in fact act as king. America itself was born out of not wanting to be under monarchy rule but we just can’t help but drift back in that direction in one way or another. People need to have a “king” or something equivalent, it’s baked into the dna at this point.
Also anyone who has not read George Washington’s farewell speech should take a gander. He correctly predicted 200+ years in advance that a 2 party system would lead to an authoritarian rising up and taking power for themselves and never giving it back. We are 95% the way there.
I'm personally trying to figure out when I should jump ship - and to where. I've moved a long distance before and started over socially. I think I could do it again in a new country.
One of my biggest fears is what this says for the internal politics of a lot of previously safe-seeming options. The people know exactly who Trump is at this point, and they asked for this, resoundingly. When the inevitable shockwaves come from his policies and actions, the barest minimum we can ask for is being surrounded by people who'll take a stand rather than cheering him on.
I think @611828750722 makes very good points about America's particular susceptibility, but far right's power has been simmering globally for a decade or more at this point. I have zero faith that the people of the UK - my current home - will do better. Italy, Austria, Belgium, even France and The Netherlands are looking at various levels of meaningful popular support for extremists.
This is who we are, at least a plurality of us - not just Americans but humanity. Weathering the storm will be tough, but the part that's moved me to tears as I sit at my laptop on a random fucking Friday morning is that I don't know where to find a critical mass of people who I trust not to embrace that storm and then savagely mock those who lose everything to it.
This is the really sad thing. In the face of a wave of nationalism in the Twentieth century, the Left was still a force to be reckoned with. There's nothing like that anymore.
History has ended but the wheels still turn with more blood than ever before. Maybe this will be the moment where we have these advanced 21st century technologies and material conditions getting worse and worse, maybe finally the workers will catch up to these advancements and be able to stake their claim again in this world. Before it's too late.
I'm always very bothered by the 'history has ended' statements. (Don't feel attacked by this though, I realise not everyone thinks about it like I do and that's fine)
The statement encapsulates, for me, a mode of thinking in which we consider ourselves 'above' history. A thinking in which our modes of government, our ethics and politics and economy, are all somehow the best they can ever be. There can be no further progress apart from technological progress. The culture is 'done'. Do not attempt to change it. Representative democracy in a globalised neo-liberal framework won and it's the best we can ever get, so any attempt at change is misguided naive idealism at best, regressive foolhardiness at worst.
A dangerous thought. I'd rather think of us as situated firmly within the ever-flowing river of history. Our current system will eventually just be one among the vast tapestry of human societal experiments. Perhaps it will turn out to be the best there is. Or maybe just particularly good at some areas. Or maybe it will be a quaint and strangely backwards system to the people of the future. We don't know, and the humbleness of not knowing and the willingness to keep thinking, pushing and experimenting is, to me, incredibly important.
Apologies for a sudden rant on your choice of words.
...every nation is the center of the world and every moment is the culmination of history...
...cultural relativism recognises and respects this diversity of perspective, and i posit that today's backlash is the inevitable rejection of a dangerous tenor of intolerance cultivated under the progressive rejection of cultural relativism...
This has also become far more real for my household.
Given the geopolitical implications, New Zeland and Australia may just be far enough afield to not be as impacted by what could be coming. The probabilities are myriad creating fear and difficulty predicting where may be safest.
As an Australian I hope not, it's always felt a LOT better over here (at least near big capitals). But we are being slowly influenced both politically and via both traditional and social media to be more divided and extreme.
We rely on US a lot for protection over the pacific so we may be heavily impacted based on our need to support any potential future conflict that arises
...i nearly made the jump to australia thirty years ago, but (admittedly filtered through the sensationalist lens of overseas reporting) it's seemed since that your political zeitgeist has fallen victim to murdoch machinations nearly as badly as our own...
...is the situation not so dire as i gather?..
Should I not consider Western Europe? There’s the gamble with Russia. But I see them as too weak to make it there. Would a future US, perhaps 10 or 20 years down the road, align with Russia to bully the world? In that case the southern hemisphere is much safer.
Russia does not pose a risk to anyone in Europe beyond Ukraine. The numbers are quite simply not in Russia's favour. Both economically and militarily. The fact that they haven't been able to crack Ukraine in three years should tell you enough.
Russia's military is struggling to get past Ukraine. It won't ever get through to e.g. Belgium, which is why Belgium et al are such laggards in contributing to EU defence.
While Russia will build up their military after the Ukraine war, so will the EU (look at Poland's spending spree lol), which more than balances things.
Aus/NZ have a bad habit of copying the US's policy choices 15 years later, so we're not as perfect a choice as you'd think.
Point is, either choice is fine.
It may not be 20 years. Trump adores Putin.
I consider Europe increasingly at risk. Risky, though? It's difficult to quantify.
Relatively speaking, I'd bank on the more liberal Southern Hemisphere countries. Anywhere else seems literally too much in the line of fire or immediately adjacent.
Do you have other reasons to be looking? I find this a little odd because, while the SF bay area has changed over the years, I don’t think the downsides have much to do with the federal government? Local issues in the current election were things like housing costs, homelessness, and crime. Perhaps new leadership in SF will help a bit?
This is about where I would settle down permanently. I don’t own property, I’m not married, I don’t have kids or even any pets. So this is the time to move.
I want to live somewhere I can be proud of. If I have kids I don’t want to need to constantly remind them that the country they know isn’t how it should be. My taxes can go to another government if I move. Hell, Trump’s even trying to eliminate federal income tax so I might not have to worry about paying that from abroad.
Maybe you’re confused because what I’m facing during a Trump regime is mere economic uncertainty from erratic federal policy. I expect California to keep my water clean and to defy federal attempts to ban abortion. But I want the modern luxury of a government that represents my basic beliefs and I’m willing spend my savings and reset my life to get that.
FYI, American citizens living outside the US have to file annual tax returns, but typically do not pay any US taxes unless they have a very high salary.
I wrote a huge thing here and ended up deleting it because it was too personal. I tried and failed to get to Australia/NZ a couple of years ago. It was a confounding process that seemed designed to make you fail and pay them money. I could probably go into more detail in a DM, but my takeaway is that immigration is very hard unless you have a bunch of money and/or some established people to sponsor you at the destination. Also plan for the process to take a lot longer than expected.
@teaearlgraycold is likely very familiar with this, as they already moved countries once. It is no easier moving into America than it is moving out of America.
I know it is incredibly common for Americans to talk about leaving, when their preferred party is not elected, as if it is a simple process.
I know that a lot of Americans may intellectually acknowledge it isn't quite this easy, but haven't really internalized how incredibly hard it is to move countries. So it might have come as a shock to you how difficult it really is.
But trust me, when you have been through that process once, you truly realize how incredibly hard it really is. And I mean beyond simply applying for a work permit, which itself is a dehumanizing, costly, difficult, fickle and incredibly bureaucratic process anywhere (unless you have a sponsor or lots of money or are unusually comfortable with illegal entry)
You misunderstand. I've moved coast-to-coast, not country-to-country. I know a bit about the work permit process for the US as many of my friends are immigrants from different countries (lots of people come to work in the bay area from other countries). I realize that if I pull this off it could take a few years. I'm currently unemployed so I think the right move is to pick a US company that either has offices in the country I would like to move to or helps develop skills that will make me a more appealing immigrant.
So another thing that probably makes you a more favorable candidate is that you are younger than me (as far as I can deduce :D). I can't speak to other countries, but Australia had some more options for younger people.
One other option is to get into a school. Australia had a couple of tracts where you could get accepted into an undergrad/grad program, and then use that to transition into career (and permanent visa) there.
If you'd like more info on any of these visa types (there are many), I found Australian Immigration Law Services youtube channel very helpful.
Thanks. I have a number of key things going for me that should make immigration to a 1st world nation viable, although certainly still difficult. I’m most heavily considering Australia or New Zealand.
Oh. Then ignore everything I said.
It was a humbling experience for sure. I have friends and coworkers that have gone through the process to get to (and stay in) the states, but it is indeed hard to really appreciate it without going through it yourself. And I didn't even make it all the way through. 🫤
It is like child birth. No one really talks about the shit show until you have been through it. Even then it really isn't discussed in polite society.
btw, sorry you didn't get to move to Aus or NZ.
This is a very insightful comment, thank you for sharing this perspective.
I know so many people living there who fall under this umbrella. I am very worried for them.
...coming from within, i looked upon 2001 as consummating the fall of empire, but over the past decade the younger generation cultivated an unexpected groundswell of hope that regressive politics would dwindle into irrelevance as older generations and their television networks faded away: this election cycle dashed that hope of an inevitable demographic shift...
...i don't have an answer to that loss other than that, as a perenially-marginalised generation X progressive, the world i find myself in today feels familiar...
...well, maybe we'll get some good music out of it...
I think I fully realized in 2016 that I was completely wrong about the country I grew up in. For me, Trump was so obviously bad in every possible way, I though that his supporters were kidding.
Until the most recent election I thought maybe a lot of people were just hypnotized or something, but no, at least a third of people are actually fascists and it's blindingly obvious. "Authoritarian Followers" is not a strong enough term.
Obviously I was just naive, I should have paid more attention in history class to the Trail of Tears, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans during WW2, The Tulsa Massacre. Oh yeah we barely covered most of that stuff. But TV had The Dukes of Hazard having fun adventures with the symbol of slavery on the roof of their car.
For all the damage he's done, and will continue to do, the part that bothers me the most is the blatant injustice. He should be in jail. Now he'll never ever be held accountable. And the horrible evil people around him, like Bannon and Miller and Flynn, all of whom should be in jail for their whole lives, are instead going to tell us all what to do. And we can't even get satisfaction anymore from thinking that if only Moscow Mitch would have convicted him, he wouldn't have been able to run again. BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY FUCKING WON. It isn't Mitch's fault, it isn't Trump's fault, it is 70+million of your stupid fascist countrymen who made this happen, and another 15 million of your checked out dumbass countrymen who couldn't be bothered to take an hour out of their year to do the most minor thing to prevent this.
Mundane comments about the effect of all this on culture in general:
Your part about schooling echoes my thoughts. I was raised with these values, these ideas about how the founding fathers constructed the nation and what we do every day to uphold their ideals.
It's just not the case any more, so public schools teach that it was all a farce? That corrupt or psychopathic assholes have all but destroyed those institutions with the country cheering behind them or do they skip all that to seem impartial? How do you teach the difference between what a justice, judge, or congressman should do in their position vs what our current ones do in reality? Can they even teach that as an objectively bad thing for the country and not some "difference of opinion"?
America has not been a country of fairness in my 51 years. What is moral and what happens here have long been separate. I've only seen that separation grow over my lifetime.
One third of the country is evangelical "Christian". These are people who don't embrace Trump so much as they seem to see him as a means to bring about the Rapture sooner. I do not mean this to read facetiously.
Certainly, there are the self-identifying MAGA individuals. But there are a great many more who see Trump as satisfying their desire to deconstruct a bloated bureaucracy created by decades of flawed compromises by increasingly co-opted politicians, as a means to address wealth inequality (as flawed as that sounds given he and his greatest supporters seem to share a distinctly strong attachment to all of their wealth), and, yes, someone who speaks their language.
Those who voted for him are not so much fascists as much as they are blithely ignorant or indifferent. They simply want more and better even though America's turn at steering the wheel of world affairs appears to be coming to a close. It is a reactionary instinct to bring back the "good ol' days" rather than facing the truth of the aptly named book, "Who Moved My Cheese?"
The world changed. America has failed as a nation to adapt to it. Our leadership has grown milquetoast and our government gamified in the most cynical ways.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, if alive, while both flawed individuals, would be enraged and disappointed to see what we've become. The nation is so far from either's intended state of affairs (yet, even then, the wealthy tended to protect their own interests—though there seemed a streak of noblesse oblige absent our contemporary leaders). Our leaders, back then, had a reflective and philosophical bent evident in their writings. If Jefferson were here, he'd likely say that it's clearly the beginning of another revolution and Machiavellian enough to be a MAGAt himself to solely to realize that revolution, while likely holding his nose to the ignorance driving it. Yet both men were of an intellect that they doubtlessly would have found Trump absurd and utterly unworthy in the extreme. The sadness is how little that matters now.
Our elections are no longer about qualified and not. They are glorified high school government contests: a measure of popularity and their ability to convince the electorate that they can deliver on their absurd promises. Sadly, this is particularly true of the decreasingly accurately named Republican Party.
And half of the electorate either does not understand this or simply does not care so long as they get their bread and circuses.
Now, at least on one side, we have individuals who believe Brawndo has what plants crave. And an electorate who drink it up willingly. Ow My Balls airs on every channel; we simply call it Reality TV.
The experiment is over. It is a failure. It has been for some time. This election was its epitaph for all the world to see.
We've always been a country for the wealthy, by the wealthy. To give so much credit to Founding Fathers feels a bit disingenuous, given they were writing laws to protect their own rights and damn the little man.
We had the poors fighting a Civil War for the wealthy elites who wanted to maintain their status quo.
The Gilded Age, rhyming with our current where we had wealthy industrialists influencing the direction of popular opinion with their Yellow Journalism.
The New Deal, a victory for Socialism, never extended any of those benefits to Black Americans. Later when it was discovered that Black Americans were benefitting, suddenly social programs were a bad word and they were cut for everyone.
Then wealthy corporate oligarchs flirting with Naziism and taking over the US government and appealing to Hitler.
When people were fighting for rights in the 1960s, they were suppressed, put down and killed by the authorities en masse, which also wasn't a new thing at the time.
Piggybacking on that, we had the FBI telling Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself. Posthumously, the man has been leveraged as a weapon of the state, manipulating his message from also including worker rights and socialism, to being exclusively about Black liberation.
Police killings, without repercussion, have been a thing as far back as we can remember.
My boy, it's fascism all the way down and always has been.
Not fascist but ignorant or indifferent - my thoughts exactly. These are people for whose world is so local and so binary that the world happens to them, the emergency is often and planning for the future is a concept way way to far out of reach.
Sad to think that the functioning, accessible education system that could help these people rise above their base instincts hasn't existed for them in some time in the US
I'm still trying to form my thoughts and it keeps shifting. I keep changing from anger to empathy to sadness to betrayal and back, around and around my brain goes looking for answers because what just happened on Tuesday betrays everything I thought I knew of this world. I typed up a novel of a comment and deleted it and started over, I'm just not sure what to write.
In 2016, I didn't think trump would be that bad. I didn't like him, but I thought he'd just make a fool out of himself and get nothing done. I guess I was right about the first part, but I was very wrong about the second part. Not long after inauguration, I went from being relatively unbothered and thinking this wouldn't be too bad, to full on believing he was bringing fascist ideologies to the table and being applauded for it. It was a radical shift that happened in my world view in part because I just saw something happen that very much betrayed my views and also in part that I was transitioning at the time and learning to accept that I'm now a minority and I'm extremely vulnerable to people like trump. I always got up to bat for minorities before that, but it's a bit different when you then have to bat for yourself.
Trump's first term was hell for me, having to wake up every day wondering if I lost my rights as a woman or as a transgender person. I started to see the cracks that have always been there in America, how we were built on fear and paranoia, how we were built not to love thy neighbor like many parrot, but to ignore thy neighbor and think only of yourself. It's disgusting and it's clear that it started a long time ago, it didn't start in 2016. I started to see how much of a machine politics are. It wasn't usual for someone like Obama to have a somewhat grass roots and hopeful campaign. It was usual for someone like Hillary Clinton to be the nom, someone who was participating in the machine for a long time. I was full on the Bernie train in 2016 and was hurt when he didn't get the nomination. I think many of the trump voters in 2016 felt the same way or felt frustrated at only getting establishment candidates and wanted something new, even if they didn't realize how awful that something new would be.
2020 gave me some hope back that democracy was still there and that most americans are good and well informed people. It was a huge blow to maga and I thought for sure that maga doing a coup would be the nail in the coffin and that the American people would wake up from the brain fog and realize how close we were to ruining ourselves. Boy was I wrong.
I didn't expect people to go back to establishment voting in the long term, but I at least expected the average person to recognize a fascist. Many americans lived through the cold war or know someone who lived through WW2. It's ingrained in us to hate anything remotely approaching fascism, but half our voters are now actively voting for it, many of them being the same people that despise Nazi Germany or Russia for what they are.
I think this week showed me a lot of things. Firstly, it showed me how poor our civics education is becoming in the US. 30% of our eligible voters didn't vote or didn't even register this time. While there are barriers that are designed to make voting harder in certain states, voting is for the most part incredibly simple. It's also incredibly simple to look up a candidate's platform and get a good idea on what their stances are. For me to find out how I'm voting down the entire card, it takes maybe 3-5 hours of research online, and that's for the entire card, including school board and local races, researching a presidential race only takes like 20 minutes if you just want the bullet points. It's very easy to find what people's platforms are. However, between the 30% of the country that didn't vote and then all the ones that voted to trump, it's clear that I'm abnormal. Spending time paying attention to politics, spending time researching platforms, and spending time to cast informed votes is clearly not the norm. People don't realize the power they have in voting, it's one of the few times we the people have direct power to make change. 30% of the country stayed home because they thought their vote didn't matter or they didn't want to vote for Harris over one or two issues, even though she's better for everyone on every issue compared to trump. And if that 30% didn't want to vote for either, they would have had the power to get multiple third parties over the 5% line to get federal campaign funding for next election, but they stayed home instead.
Then the trump voters... the fucking trump voters... I accept there are some who legitimately are filled with hate and like how hateful trump is. However, many (most?) of his voters are ordinary average people who want the promise of a better future. Based on the fact trump won the popular vote, it's clear that the average american is hurting right now and knows something is wrong with the country. However, instead of spending even 10 minutes researching candidates, they let social media and cable news tell them who to vote for and seemingly would prefer to hear buzzwords and slogans instead of an actual stable platform and policy that will help them. It's insane to me that Harris openly talked about her economic plans and how she would directly be helping lower income earners vs trump's "concept of a plan" and it just didn't fucking matter because nothing she could come up with competes with "make america great again" even if her platform, not trump's, might have actually made america great again.
My world view was pretty okay up until this week. I already recognized some massive issues we already had, like wealth inequality, us poisoning our own planet, unjustness existing nearly everywhere, but it felt like we were relatively stable. When RvW was repealed, there was massive outcry and it was and still is and extremely unpopular move. But then this week, 70 million people voted for someone who compares himself to hitler. Many of them did it despite how he acts, because they know something is wrong, don't know how to articulate it, and vote against the establishment even if it's against everyone's best interest.
Here's where I'm starting to run out of steam after all this typing. I'm just tired. I'm angry that people can be so uninformed, yet so confident about politics. I'm angry that I might lose all of my rights now as both a woman and a transgender person. I'm angry at those who stayed home because their vote didn't matter or because they didn't want to vote for Harris over Gaza even though Trump will let it turn into a crater. I'm angry at the trump voters who should take 20 minutes of their time to realize Harris likely would have improved their lives more. I'm angry at the republican party for being so full of hate, I just cannot relate with having a complete lack of empathy. I'm just angry at everything. I think I would feel better if this were a uniquely US issue, but the UK, France, Germany, and Canada are all just a few years behind the US and are having problems of their own with extremists starting to gain popularity. Looking back in history, this sort of thing has happened many times, but I thought we could break the cycle. The people welcome in the rich, powerful, and evil on empty promises, because their current leaders aren't doing enough for them in their minds. The rich, powerful, and evil take over and cause massive suffering. The people revolt and then rebuild. Progress is made, then progress slows down, then the establishment becomes boring and slow, then the rich, powerful, and evil are welcomed in again... I think I thought we could escape from that cycle, that modern civilization with all of our information and technology could avoid it. I think I'm pretty wrong on that.
In the US, we have a chance to right the ship in 2026 and 2028 if Trump isn't able to take away voting like he wants to. I do think a position like that is too extreme for even many republicans (I don't think someone like Romney would go for it, for example). I think unless swiftly handled before anybody gets to cast another vote, anything like that might piss off a fuckton of voters. So I think the next few years really depends on how stupid and ineffective the Trump admin is. I can only hope for ineptness and infighting so that the rest of us get another chance to end this... But based on history, I could also see us falling into full on fascism and having untold suffering for a very long time.
I am angry and sad and jaded and disappointed in my fellow americans. I'm scared and don't know what will happen to my friends, family, or myself in the next four years. I don't know how many rights I might lose, and I don't know if we'll wake up from this in time to stop it or not.
there was never any justice (or injustice), nor fundamental human nature. these are abstractions. but the state of the world is much, much worse than i thought it was, and it is heading in a direction that is much worse than the one i thought it would go (which was already quite bad), with material implications for many, many people, including me. at least, that's what had me crying
If it's any consolation, humans are more tribal than they are selfish, in general. Societies since the dawn of human history were formed on the basis of collaboration. Mutual defense, mutual care and nurturing, mutual trust. We're wired to want to help our group on average. The selfish and antisocial were shunned or killed until we started stockpiling and giving authority to resources.
Even the worst of us now seek community. They want validation, social support, "wise" figures to look up to, collaboration. That entire system is rotten but it is built on a fundamental positive inclination.
The way I've come to the conclusion of how we got here over the past 20 years is the dynamic of Social Policies vs Economic Policies.
The DNC and RNC will never allow someone who will enact meaningful economic policies to benefit the poor and/or working class. It goes in direct conflict with their interests of maintaining their corporate and billionaire donors. The public will never be allowed to choose a D or R candidate that will benefit them significantly economically, the only option is a third party not beholden to the "dark money."
Hypothetically if we managed to get that far, by having a third party candidate who was willing to up-end the economic status quo for the benefit of the people, every living and non-living entity will attempt to bi-partisanly smite them out of existence. No media in any form will ever acknowledge their existence, as they are all ran by (very few) corporations and their billionaire CEOs colluding with both the DNC and RNC (this is put very bluntly for brevity and reads heavily conspiracy theorist, but the real-life gist is there).
For decades now politicians have it all figured out: wage campaigns about social policies and give empty platitudes about economic policy to the public all the while reassuring donors you don't have any plans to enact them, after all it would hurt their profits and anger their investors. The people want to vote for economic policies, it's what affects the largest percentile of people; whereas most social policies only affect a smaller subset of the population.
"I will fix the economy" "Free ice cream for everybody" "9/11 is bad", doesn't matter since it's all a popularity contest when it comes to economic policies. The more desperate the populace is, the more they latch on to the empty promises. Whoever panders the most to economic policies during economic struggles wins, but at the end of the day, behind the curtain, they'll never (be allowed to) help the working class. And the people will lap it all up, even shooting themselves in the foot or saying the leopards (social policies) won't eat me in the process.
The game is rigged and the oligarchy is here it to stay.
A common theme of the average American voter, especially in response to this election, is to stick your head in the sand. Hide from it all, it's so tempting and easy to. The amount of social privilege you must have to be able to must be so great; the moment you're a target to their social policies it's only a matter of time before they yank your head out of the sand when your time is up. "—and there was no one left to speak for me." —Martin Niemöller
But only one side is stripping rights, the other is trying to add and help. For social policies, both sides were never the same. When you vote with your heart or emotions by voting R or abstaining, at best you're unknowingly voting from a stance of social privilege. "—but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." —Lord Farquaad
Whereas if you vote for D, you're reinforcing the DNC's status quo that there's no pressure for them to change anything. They've won again and get to continue enriching the rich as they pat themselves on back once more while the public cheer on or bicker at the incremental changes to social issues.
With the intent to improve economic policies: voting means nothing anymore. Maybe we need to start embracing the French in all of us? Yet alas, the apathy we wallow in and the uncertainty of the future with our fleeting hope makes us complacent enough to not risk our living hood, at least not quite yet.
And then climate change will hit; suddenly none of this means anything anymore. Enjoy each year of relatively blissful peace while it's here regardless of social or political policies or issues, because it won't mean **** compared to the reckoning that's at our doorstep.
I had this very conversation with a person last night on this very point. Head in the sand, until I showed them how it is going to affect them. He was like a deer staring at incoming headlights. In past elections I've ignored a lot of this nonsense, I just couldn't anymore. Unfortunately I seem to be in the minority and the old saying of never arguing with Stupid! You will never win, given the vast amount of experience they have on the subject.
Perhaps it is time to return to actual Christianity. I don’t mean the farce behind project 2025, or the toothless mainline denominations. I mean real, actual Christianity, that first worships an actual, existing, beneficient creator first, and focuses on taking care of everyone second, and there is no third because nothing else matters but those two.
As to the extent of my knowledge, this is the first tradition to promote socialism, to enshrine caring for the vulnerable, and to promote temperate living. First or not, it promotes mercy and reintegration rather than punishment and ostracism. Ancient texts troublesome language notwithstanding, it is foundationally inclusive. And, in its truest form, it offers a profound way through times of authoritarian oppression.
Most “good” christians have substituted neoliberalism for actual Godly goodness in the last 50 years or so. America today is a predictable result. Perhaps it’s time to get back (Loretta!).
It's not even close to being the first. Zoroastrianism has Christianity beat by about 1000-1500 years. Humata, Hūxta, Huvarshta (good thoughts, good words, good deeds) are a central tenet of the religion, amongst other things. And I'm sure there are plenty of other religions that have similar tenets regarding charity, communal responsibility, and temperance which predate Christianity as well.
And heck, even Christianity in its purest form is not the best at actually getting good work done, IMO, since it still cares way too much about proselytizing, which Jesus himself heavily promoted. Whereas Sikhism takes most of the best aspects of Christian charitable beliefs but without that aspect, since they actually expressly forbid proselytization and forced conversions. And have you ever seen the communal kitchens at a Sikh temple in operation, and the amount of food they cook then freely give out to any person in need, of any faith, gender, or ethnicity, on a daily basis? It's genuinely incredible.
p.s. I'm not saying a return to core Christian tenets as actually taught by Jesus would necessarily be a bad thing. It would certainly be an improvement over the awful bastardizations of his teachings that are so prevalent in the US. But if we're talking pipe dreams, I can certainly think of better religions and moral philosophies to point people towards.
Regarding socialism, I was speaking more about Deuteronomic code, the tradition whence Christianity sprang.
in any event, I think that a revitalization of Real Christianity is much more likely in the US, then adopting an eastern religion
I don't see how the Deuteronomic code has much of anything to do with socialism, but it's admittedly been a long time since I last read Deuteronomy in full. I do remember it talking about some seriously backwards shit though, like the correct way to treat your slaves, and how to prove your daughter is a virgin if her husband accuses her of not being one when they were married, fining the husband for doing so (payment of which, of course, goes to her father), but then still commanding her to remain with the husband as his wife for the rest of her life anyways.
But that aside, if we're talking about Christian denominations that more Americans might potentially be convinced to adopt, Liberal Quakerism is about as close as I think you can realistically hope to get to the "Real Christianity" as taught by Jesus, and it has relatively strong American roots already.
In the good old days of Christian love before neoliberalism, they burned people for being gay and hunted people down for being black. Good American Christians owned slaves for hundreds of years. Weakening of religious faith is definitely not the reason for what's happening in US.
Edit: If you look at exit polls of NBC, you'll see that among the people who voted, 71% of non-believers voted for Harris, the highest "religion" demographic along with Jewish people.
Those aren’t the “Christians” I am referring to. I’m talking about actual followers of Christ. Every religion, and lack of religion, and philosophy , falls victim to base desires more often than not. But sometimes the true fath comes through, which is what I am calling for. I am NOT suggesting a theocracy, rather that the people revitalize this institution.
I don’t think the institution you are talking about ever existed. From remnants of the Dead Sea scroll, we can see how there was an early split in Christendom after Christ’s death where the apostles grabbed power, and established a patriarchal hierarchy within the budding church with power concentrated on themselves.
Christianity as we know it has always been a hierarchical organization focused on enriching and empowering a small number of elite men.
If you want to read more, the Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is a good source on information found in Nag Hammadi and other archeological sites about early Christianity, although it is somewhat dry being entirely an academic book
Look more closely at qumran and nag hammadi findings, and you may find an institution not so monolithic or power focused. Hierarchical perhaps in some regards, but hierarchy is not necessarily bad so long as principle is followed. The quakers are really good at this.
Nevertheless the roots of this go back far further than Christ. Ever read Deuteronomy closely? The treatments of women are problematic, but if we amend that part and some anachronistic ritual, it’s a pretty amazing society it lays down.
Only that it was so thoroughly crushed by orthodox Christianity that we only have scattered remains of it. Additionally, beware filling in the vast gaps in our knowledge of early Christian sects with wishful thinking. It’s very possible that they were even more vile and inhuman than orthodox Christianity, we just don’t know.
Yeah if you just ignore the parts that are problematic, you may as well just start anew. It’s not even Christianity at that point - even less so than the no true Scotsman claim you made.
Religion belongs in history and no more.
This is a textbook example of "No true Scotsman" logical fallacy.
I get what they're saying, though. There is an interpretation of Christianity that, if spread, could theoretically be a force for good in the world. To say other versions aren't ehat they're talking about isn't saying they aren't real, it's saying those aren't the ones they want to spread.
I have other issues with their point, specifically that I think the virulent strains of Christianity are the most dangerous right now and I don't think those people can be convinced of the more benevolent variety. I also think calling the good kind "real" and "actual" is overstating their case quite a bit. Still, the way they're describing separate factions is valid.
I agree that religion can lead to positive things, but I don't think that's what they are saying. They've made it clear that the people in question are not true Christians.
I'm hoping that's more of their personal perspective and sort of beside their larger point, but I don't want to speak for them.
Please elaborate.
I don't agree, or at least I don't think it's realistic to imagine that the good sort of christianity has any hope of taking over and inspiring meaningful change. If christianity, or any supernatural faith, was going to save humanity it seems like it would have managed it already.
That said, I appreciate your perspective and I enthusiastically support love and compassion as core values regardless of what belief system they arise from.
Thanks for the reply. To your last point I can only quote Dr. King, a practicing and confessing Christian pastor: “The arc of history may be long, but it bends toward justice.”
Interestingly enough, in the area where I live, which is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, there are plenty of churches, and the youth are becoming more religious — however, they are definitively not turning towards Christianity, but rather converting to Islam. This has only recently started, though, so we’ll see how long it lasts.
But, in a way, if you look at social media and some of our more prevailing political alignments, this makes sense.
Is this in the US? There is a lot to appreciate in Islam.
Yea, it’s in the US in what is still considered a more Christian-inclined area. I think it’s just more evidence to how alienating ‘pulpit politics’ have become.
That's a fair point about pulpit politics, and young people are less invested in status quo and existing political power structures. They are also less likely to understand spiritual hunger, but we may be at a point where there is a growing understanding that "painted cakes do not satisfy hunger." I wouldn't have expected Islam, but why not? I know many wonderful Muslims and a couple astounding Imams. I know many wonderful individuals of a wide variety of religions, and if we get down to my personal practices, they are as much Thich Nhat Hahn as Jesus.
Do you think that's actually possible?
You know I actually do. I’m not certain how big a movement it could be, but I think that there are a number of people who now that they have seen constitutionalism fail, might be ready to adopt a spiritual dimension and in their life. And Christian virtue, true Christian virtue, as actually fairly well aligned with the good parts of the constitution. But allows humans to live in imperfect world more easily.
Oh, sorry, no, I don't mean converting people who aren't already Christian. That's actually a bit of a terrifying movement for me to think about. I mean fixing the Christianity that currently exists -taking Trump supporting, immigrant hating, "man is the head of the household and women should be silent childbearers", "abortion is murder" "god hates f*gs" Christians and getting them to reverse course and do for the least of these as they would do for Him. Do you think that is possible?
Seems unlikely in the near term, at least for most of the adults. But the kids might have enough flexibility to feel authentic love and follow it.
I think that's the far more important and useful aspect. People who are currently non-religious aren't really the problem right now.
How do you get to the kids when the parents are steeped in the hateful version?
I actually have some nieces that I've been really concerned about for this exact reason. My sister actually said that she "doesn't want [her daughter] to grow up and think she doesn't need a man", that's an exact quote aside from removing my niece's name. I will of course be there for my nieces and let them know I'm safe to talk to if they have different ideas that they want to explore, but introducing them to new ideas that their parents will frown upon is a completely different story.
I disagree with this, and also include mainline Christians. They have all been too lax in speaking from moral truth, too lassaiz faire, and far too comfortable in their affluence. It’s time to risk something, and genuine faith is very good at enabling that.
To your other question, for readers the narnia and wrinkle in time books are a good start. The city of ember is good too from a more gnostic perspective.
I happen tk believe that spiritual practice is a genuine human need, just like food, shelter, etc. it doesn’t require any particular belief, but I think right now in America, Christ is really the most practical, accessible, and viable option ti meet that need. The hyper patriarchy nationalist brand, however, offers no true sustenance. Just as rage masks pain and fear, self righteousness masks spiritual bankruptcy.
Well this is the same attitude that got us all sorts of wonderful things. Converting the non-believers is not the solution to hateful Christian rhetoric. I don't believe in a deity, but you're saying it doesn't matter how much love I have if I don't believe in specifically the Trinity.
You're referring to Deuteronomy as the heart of this faith you want to inspire but are ignoring Judaism as the authors of the text.
I think your view is very culturally and religiously Christian centric. Treating hateful Christians (aka not real ones) and kind non-Christians as equally the problem is basically proof of why its not the solution.
But hell it's been a while since we have had a crusade, so why not
I'm not sure how you could take that from what I said, but let me clarify some.
I haven't said that love requires belief in the Trinity. I am asserting that the best hope for the Western world is a return to "true" Christian values of temperance, reverence, and generosity to the whole community of humanity. And that the best way to get there from here, in the western world is through Christian faith.
If you read Deuternonomy closely, and yes, ignore some of the inexcusable parts, you'll find a society that understands that people don't own anything. Their labors are meant for the benefit of whole community, everything ultimately belongs to God. Early, and also, in smaller quieter ways, always, Christian life was about the same approach and drew on that wisdom. See, for example, Catholic Worker Houses. Or the Haywood Street Congregation in Asheville. Or that one guy in Houston whose name I forget who runs a church/christian family center out of a strip mall.
I am definitely Christian centric, and so are many of America's institutions and myths for better or worse. Like a Taoist, I suggest we move with that instead of against it.
The former is generally considered a fundamental requirement of the latter. Sure you didn't say it's required but that's the implication of leveraging Christianity outside of the Christian community.
Once again I'm going to point out this is the Hebrew (and thus Jewish) predominantly nomadic society.
But also, I find irony in your accusing others of not being true Christians while explicitly acknowledging and then actively ignoring parts of the doctrine. Now from a historical/theological perspective it can be quite interesting to me as a former Christian.
Yeah the same faith can bring the Inquisition alongside liberation theology, care for the poor alongside justifications for slavery and subjugation of women, institutions of higher education alongside colonization and genocidal behavior in the name of faith. But they're all part of the same faith.
You're welcome to move with it. I'm not anti-theist. But there's a long history of pressing one particular form of Christianity or another on others - particularly on non-Christians but Ireland can tell you that it isn't great among Christians either.
I think you can absolutely appeal to Christians with a theology of kindness and love, and I find those who have twisted the "love they neighbor" to mean "only people like me" disgusting. But those folks are still Christians. And the rest of us don't really want anything to do with the entire category, because we don't believe in it.
Just a point of clarification, at the time Deuteronomy was developed Jews were a settled people and later in Babylonian exile. They began nomadically, sure.
To your larger point, I am not seeking to press but call, and doing so in light of the apparent failure of secular approaches to provide for a compassionate and sane society. And this is a call to individuals to organize outside of government. If there is a better extra-governmental approach for America here and now, I’d love to hear it. I say extra-governmental because it appears now that no amount of effort is sufficient to turn the US government to this end.
I don't believe there has been a failure of secular approaches, except in that they have been outcompeted by cruel flavors of Christianity, and there is no reason to believe that kind Christianity wouldn't meet the same fate.
Noted, I lost track of my timeline. Still, Hebrews, not Christians.
You cannot call people to organize within a faith they don't belong to because they just don't believe in it. Christians do have, IMO, an obligation to address the issues within our community. And I've volunteered for groups that are faith based but doing non-religious work.
I don't believe there's one organization that can address all of this, and if there were, that could not be a theistic/doctrinal religious faith. Community has to be formed in smaller chunks than that.
I think mainline Christians are the biggest danger and including them in the group of people who are non-religious muddies the waters too much to make clear discussion possible. Edit: Even if you don't consider them true "Christians", they're clearly following a religion of some variety
Stoking any flames of Christianity without first removing the corruption in Christianity will only spread the toxic variety that endangers us all.
We may have a different understanding of "mainline Christian." I mean groups like the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Alliance of Baptists, Congreational, etc. These are distinct from groups such as the Southern Baptists, Presbyterian Church of America, various pentecostals, Joel Osteen's church, etc. Those Churches are all very popular, mind you, just Mainline Churches mean more middle to left leaning Churches that have been around a long time and were once very establishment.
My argument is that being altogether non-religious or sleepily religious is the same, and trying to create a truly secular society (society-not government. I am NOT advocating a theocracy, or any diminishment of the establishment cause), is a failure, a conclusion reach from data acquired from the "American Experiment."
I think in a time where the worst of humanity is on display, in America, our best hope lies a return to Christian virtues of temperance, inclusion, and taking care of our community, understood as the whole community of humans on the planet. I also believe that the best way to live Christian virtue is to have a Christian faith.
In that case we just deeply, fundamentally disagree.
Disillusionment carries the bittersweet smell of wonderful destruction, burning away the rot and making way for something better. I'd say embrace it.
I think it's the moral imperative of every person to betray their nation-state. They are built on blood, genocide, and betrayal of justice. This is not only their past but also their present. There is no nation-state that doesn't privilege some ethnicity or race while some oppressing some others. There is no nation-state that doesn't undermine other nation-states. They are forces of evil, things that should be overcome.
So, one should embrace and spread anti-government propaganda and wildly anti-nationalist rhetoric. But nationalism is not just about fringe cases or MAGA people or anything like that. Competent people, people with "good standing", people who are genuinely patriotic government members—they can do just as much damage. US has always been a war hawk in the world, a force of destruction, no matter who was on the helm. For example, Harris was still going to support the Gaza genocide. Supporting genocide, no matter the reason, is fucking batshit evil. And in this case the reason seems to be "something something US interests".
Think about this for a moment. The so-called force of good, the "better" option, was going to support a genocide due to USA's imperialist interests in the region. It's absolutely insane that this came to pass, that it's been normalized so much in US. As a middle-eastern, democrats don't seem that different to me.
This is not to say both sides are equal in every way. Obviously, Trump is an especially vile manifestation of all this, but it's always been there. US was already rotten and putrid. It's the single biggest military force in the world, how could it not be?
But don't mistake this for saying US is the only case in this sense. Every nation-state is sociopathic, and all nationalists willingly participate in this evil. Not just them either, just by being member of a nation-state, a person benefits from its privileges and violence. If you aren't actively resisting its evil, trying to correct it, then you're in support of it. And this applies to all the so-called developed countries of Europe, too, as they are built on imperialism and exploitation. Their comfort comes from plundering of the rest of the world. Their humanism is a facade. They, along with US, were the ones who invaded and tore apart Iraq just 20 years ago. Their incessant meddling and aggression in ME is one of the major reasons for the rise of ISIS. They're paying a dictator blackmail money to keep the "icky brown people" out of Europe while calling the minority that sought refuge in Europe invaders. Just look at their wildly contrasting reactions to war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. As much as European nationalists love to jump on US and its problems, in order to pretend to have the moral highground, they don't care about non-Europeans, or at the very least people outside of Anglosphere. They are just as vile. After all, Europe is the birthplace of fascism, imperialism, and genocide. US, in a way, simply carries on the flag.
Again, don't mistake this criticism for me saying only developed nations are vile. Certainly not. Other nations, the so-called developing ones, shoulder the blame, too. They aren't against the violence of the colonizers—they only regret that they aren't the ones to have come up with it themselves. Their victimhood doesn't absolve them of this. To see this, just look at how minorities are treated in developing countries, and how these nations try to fuck up each other.
This, of course, doesn't mean people are monolithic. There are plenty of people all around the world that are against this, and every culture has them. But nationalism, patriotism, whatever you call it, inherently dehumanizes minorities and outsiders, thus creating a system of perpetual violence. A system of racism, xenophobia, and other kinds of violent hierarchies. One can't be pro-nation-state and claim to be a moral person.
Circling back to my initial comment, I'd say embrace this disillusionment, and realize that the whole system was like this from the start. It's not a bug, it's a feature, and the whole thing should be dismantled.
Do you believe that the people perpetrating all these horrors, historically and in the present, were really only doing so because of the systems around them? That if you gave the same people a clean slate, they wouldn’t gravitate to the exact same tribalism under some other banner?
That’s where I’m flailing here: “the system” might be broken, but there are too many examples to count throughout history of large numbers of people willingly and enthusiastically choosing to uphold it. This election, and COVID before it, have put a severe hole in whatever ability I was clinging onto to believe we’ve become any more enlightened now.
I don't subscribe to classical (modernist, capitalist, or progressive) notions about the Enlightenment, so we could agree that the so-called Enlightenment isn't what it's cracked up to be. What I do like, though, is anthropology. There are plenty of examples from various societies throughout tens of thousands of years of human history that show, "historically", plenty of societies didn't have these extremely rigid hierarchies or attacks on freedom. And despite both "the noble savage" and the plain old "savage" narratives about pre-state societies, this freedom and egalitarian attitude didn't only apply to hunter-gatherers. There were also societies with farming and societies with hierarchies, and even political authorities, that weren't nearly as constrictive or hierarchical as the current ones.
If you're interested in this sort of "historical" knowledge, The Dawn of Everything is a game-changer book. It's one of the best books I've read in my life, and it demolished a lot of misconceptions I had about humanity. It's a meticulously crafted work of anthropology and political philosophy, written from a brilliant perspective. It does away with a lot of ideological assumptions that are passed down as Truth in current societies.
In another point, even clinical psychopaths, people who are genetically extremely predisposed to be heavily anti-social to the point where most people would call them "pure evil", can turn into functional people with correct upbringing or psychological help. So, I do not believe in some sort of essentialism. If even in the most extreme circumstances, like in psychopathy, people can turn out to be functional, then there is no truth in assuming ordinary people are unchangeable due to their nature. Human brain is incredibly plastic. This is another point The Dawn of Everything explains in rigour, but learning about psychological science and other social sciences helps as well.
This does not mean, however, I believe that people or systems as they currently exist are open to any change. I follow the path dependence theory in social sciences—the idea that past events and choices constrain, or at the very least extremely influence, the later ones. The current paths we are on are limiting, and that's why they seem eternal, but they were created by human influence all the same.
Once people thought the divine kings and the god-kings owned the world, their rule a manifestation of human nature and divine design, devouring the horizons of both the past and the present—then they were killed and their reign decimated. Their rule was laid bare for all to see that it was created and ended by human hands.
Only looking at narratives of reigning ideologies, knowingly or unknowingly, suffocates a person; leads someone to think nothing can change. And this is exactly what the people in power and their supporters want—for their opponents to despair. But the actual history of humanity is much grander than that. There is no "inherent human nature" that leads people act a certain way, irrespective of conditions. As perplexing as it may seem, the dominating conditions are not everlasting, and nobody knows what the world will look like in a couple of centuries.
This is not to say "we can, right now, live in a utopia, if only people chose so!" Again, I do not believe in that. But if one gives into despair and assumes this is part of nature or whatever, then they lost the battle already.
I'm part of the developing world, and I've been living under a dictatorship for a very, very long time. Sure, there are moments of despair, but vast majority of the time I keep moving forward. Try to do what I can. I'm too important to myself to be distorted according to my enemies' wishes. Their evil, for me, is secondary to what I think. They can yap all they want, and they can create unimaginable evil, but one day they too shall fall and be embraced by the cold hands of history and the gaping cosmos. It's bizarre to see a developed nation's residents give up so easily.
I'm on board, but I'm not sure what to actually do that won't get me arrested or deported. Building community is basically the only thing I can think of.
I think this would be a good place to start.
The tactics range from very low risk to high risk. I recommend giving it a read through.
Thank you, I will!
You strike at the heart of the leftist predicament—criticism is on point, but what should we do?
I don't have a definitive answer. And as much as I'd like to use colorful language, I don't think extremely risky behaviors that would just result in people getting heavily punished would help. This is not only true from an empathetic point of view for the individual involved, but also from a strategic one, as we are already too few in numbers.
There is no way to live outside the system without making unreasonable sacrifices that would cripple one's life, and this is without considering special circumstances, like health problems, that would outright make this suicide.
So, for me, I've been reaching out people and trying to change their mind about these topics and more. I'm realistic, and I don't expect to make a big impact, but if I can even decrease the effect nationalist propaganda for a few people, it's a net benefit.
I'm also trying to vote while keeping these things in mind. Minority voices are worth amplifying.