These are the times that try men’s souls… Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.~ Thomas Paine, American Crisis, 1776If you’ve watched or attended a town hall meeting recently, you’ve seen unfiltered outrage over Musk and DOGE. Cutting costs to improve government efficiencies is one thing, who...
I am sorry my American friends but it is going to get a lot worse before it returns to the status quo and I doubt that it will even remotely get better ever again. As a nation you have lived off the spoils of victory and sided with despots because you have been happy with the crumbs that rich capitalists throw at you. Only when your conscience got the better of you, have you engaged in altruism and even then it was for the furthering of corporate interests.
You will no longer command the respect of your allies and trust of those that you once claimed to protect. Your friends will now treat you with suspicion and maybe contempt. The oligarchs and religious zealots will eat your organs while you’re distracted by culture wars, racism, fear and entertainment.
Many of you will say “Well, America first!”, without realising that it has been that way for almost a century except it has really been “America’s wealthiest first”. I really feel a great sadness, like losing a parent to dementia in that there are two deaths: one when they are no longer themselves anymore and the other when the vessel fails.
Vale.
I like how you seemingly blame the American leople for the failings of the government. I don’t blame Russians for the failings of the Russian government anymore than I blame my fellow citizens in America.
Are there leople that support this, sure. But it’s a minority of people, 30% is not the majority. And you should always be able to separate a shitty governments actions from the people living there. They are not one and the same.
It’s very interesting to me how citizens of many countries under rule of an oppressive dictator are seen as victims who need help, but Russian and American citizens are seen as evil and deserving their oppression.
This percent is meaningless. People who could have voted but didn’t literally do not matter. Most American voters wanted this .
Undo the last decade of gerrymandering and the math of the last election is subtly different.
Um, what? Even with the rest of the sentence, these people have been manipulated so thoroughly that they hold, in my opinion, very little of the blame, to the point where it’s not at all worth assigning it to the group as a whole. It’s not productive and it doesn’t help anything. Convince individuals to make changes and take action.
Then fucking do it. 1/3rd if eligible voters made an active choice to not vote despite the choices never being more obvious. They chose not to matter. I’m just respecting their choice. Why can’t you?
I am.
Because many of them made the choice under extreme duress; because they are people who deserve at least the chance to learn and become engaged in helping others; because, as I have stated, I believe the manipulation is pervasive and powerful and generations old and I don’t fault people for falling victim to it. I understand you are frustrated. I understand it’s hard to put yourself in others’ shoes. The solution is not to exclude, but to understand what got us here and start doing the work, internally and externally, to create a better system from the ground up that will ultimately give individuals the tools to make better choices that are consistent with what they really believe, when not under threat of starvation/being cut off from or bankrupted by health care/homelessness/imprisonment/violence/etc.
Edited to add: I missed a couple things at the end of my first comment. I said “Convince individuals make better choices and take action.” I meant to convey that what I’m saying is what I recommend one does to make change, by giving others the tools, support, opportunities, and motivation to make better choices and take action, and set the example that such things are possible, quite literally being the change you want to see in the world.
The solution is entirely beyond you. There is no combination of words or actions you can take that will make commited non-voters give a shit. The only way past this now goes through an era of suffering.
It sounds to me like you haven’t actually talked to many of these people, or at least actively listened to them and tried to understand their concerns. Think this through. At what point do things get better if we don’t start changing how we do things now? What do you prefer to do, and/or suggest as a solution, if those two things are not one and the same?
Edit: also idk about you but I’ve already been in an era of suffering, I’ve been disabled and marginalized and mistreated, and so have many others. To me, treating people as complex beings with layers upon layers of motivations and ideas and beliefs and sensitivities and so on is an important part of respect and I see it as necessary if we are ever going to be able to change how things work and end the global perpetuation of harm.