politics

Every fuckin Confederate should have been hanged in the square. Every fucking Nazi that came over here after WWII should have been hanged in the square. This fucking clownshow country has had the opportunity to play hardball with fascists numerous times but instead of playing hardball they just give them handjobs. This country isn't "backsliding", it's maintaining the status quo of rich getting richer and the poor being systemically oppressed to create an underclass designed to terrify the average person into being chattel for the rich fucks. America is not "becoming fascist", it's always been a fascist genocidal empire.

I agree

I'm cautiously optimistic it could backfire. Gerrymandering inherently creates weaker districts and Democrats have been over performing since 2024, some places as high as 20 or 30 points.

To be clear: there is also real racism in the north, but it's expressed differently.

no see the old maps were gerrymandered against the underrepresented white people, we're just fixing that

/s because I have trust issues

You know the best part about dictatorships?

I've gotten downvoted before but I'll say it again. I think it's going to take A LOT more to push enough people to that point. The problem with fascism is that every step is just a little bit worse than before, so everyone gets used to it and only sees that the next step is just a little worse to complain about, but it's never enough to throw up the bat signal and wake people up to significantly push back. There's a whole quote about this somewhere I don't quite remember.

Most people are too comfortable to take such extreme measures right now, which is actually good in many ways, but bad in the sense that doing nothing or peaceful protests won't magically start working now. We're going to see more onsey twosy stochastic violence events, then slowly it'll grow, and the regime will push back even more strongly to gain more control (e.g. Enabling Act).

It's a real fucking bad spot to be in, and 30% of the electorate still cheers it on.

edit: here's the specific subpassage I was thinking of, from a part of Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free:

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

Do you think they care what people in the future think? They have the power for the foreseeable future

You’re probably right but I don’t want that “long term” - let’s fix “short term”.