this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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The number of people who do not know that the America in the Golden Era (50-60s), for white people especially men, was fairly socialist, is extremely high.
Funny how it coincides with the highest union density, none of the new deal being rolled back and the rest of the world basically still being rubble from WWII.
I was going to mention some of that... but then I remembered that facts don't actually matter to them in the slightest so...
And that's the rub. One side is sending death threats and attempting kidnapping of the other, plus the whole storm the capitol thing, plus actively rooting to support not only Russia but Israel (tbf the other side is doing that too, at least the politicians even if not the voters) and even somehow North Fucking Korea, oh yeah and wanting to become fascist, while the other side... doesn't do most of those, at least to the same degree.
In WWII we fought fascism, but it went underground (cough Fox News cough) and now it's back all over again, and this time it looks to be winning. Both globally, and almost if not quite at home (it may not have "won" yet, but at best things seem to be tied, and remember that SCOTUS ruling that nobody seems to be talking about anymore...? yeah that's not exactly a resounding defeat of fascism or at least authoritarianism there, when you can kill your political opponents at will).
We are boiled frogs in regards to fascism in the US.
Look at the facts:
We have the largest prison population in the world, which is mostly black. Slavery is still legal as punishment for crime.
We have a surveillance state that watches all of us all the time.
Dissent and protest results in brutal militarized police response.
We have militarized police. With tanks.
We scapegoat immigrants (Biden hardly changed any trump policies.)
Criticism of US policy and actions is instinctively seen as unpatriotic by a large number of citizens.
The existence of our country is largely due to the genocide of native Americans, but that really triggers the national cognitive dissonance.
The wealth of our country was in large part built on the backs of slaves, and continues today in prison labor, but also in regular workers who get a tiny fraction of the wealth they generate for corporations and billionaires.
We do not have a democracy. Corporations and billionaires have captured our government and control 80%+ of the media we consume, easily drowning us in the propaganda they want to push. Nobody is immune, not me, not you. The largest consent manufacturer in history is operating in front of our eyes, but we can't see it because it's the sea we swim in.
Corporations and billionaires control who even gets to run in national elections by promoting those that will toe the line. Why bother fixing the actual elections when you can just control who is allowed to get the job in the first place.
The fascism people are worried about came in quietly and made itself at home. It isn't a Hitler. It isn't a Mussolini. Hell, it isn't even a Trump (although he would make things much worse.) The fascists are who they've always been. Pick your name - corps and billionaires, the 1%, the bourgeois.
It's already here.
And on top of all of that, one person wants to actively make it worse, just bc he gets to skim a bit from the top. We deserve our fate I suppose, when we refuse to see something even after it is painstakingly pointed out to us, but damned if I'm not still sad about it.:-(