I agree with most of the things you say I just disagree with your outlook. In the short view, conservatives are winning. In the longer view, equality is winning. As you say, women fought for their rights, gays fought for their rights, people of color fought for their rights, and because they are winning, society is winning. And yes, because there is pushback and because there is complacency, the fight continues. But the people who have gained those rights are not going to willingly give them up. And the longer they have those rights the more the centrists and even, eventually, the conservatives accept it as the status quo.
Let’s take gay marriage as an easy example. In the 70s gay marriage wouldn’t have even be considered practical enough to be used as a wacky plot point in a sitcom. By the 90s people were considering that civil unions might be okay for gays, but not marriage. Now, according to Pew Research, 61% of people approve of gay marriage. That doesn’t mean gay marriage is safe, but we’re not going to go back to the time when it was unthinkable. The window of normality is moving towards ever greater equality and that is a win.
Roe vs. Wade led to the creation of the Moral Majority and the Christian Right movement. The election of Barack Obama led to the growth of the Tea Party movement. I think the Republican’s attacks on voting rights, immigrants and women’s freedom is causing an explosion of growth amongst the progressive groups. The fact that the Democrats took back the House last fall was not a big omen - the out-of-power party tends to make a surge in the non-presidential elections. What I do think was an omen was who was elected: women, people of color, gays, Muslims. Many were inspired to run because of the pushback on their rights. That is a win.
Bad laws can be repealed. Executive orders can be overridden by new executives. But, you’re right - the courts are going to be a problem for a while. Trump’s international policies are going to be a problem for a while. Pain is nature’s way of saying don’t do that. The political and economic pain that the United States is feeling and will continue to feel, is the international community’s way of saying, don’t do that again.
So, you’re right, complacency is a problem; we have to roll up our sleeves and continue to fight. But, as we’re rolling up our sleeves, we should consider how far we’ve come and use that as motivation to say, yes we can do this.
“Walmart Inc said on Thursday that prices for shoppers will go up due to higher tariffs on goods from China as the world’s largest retailer reported its best comparable sales growth for the first quarter in nine years.”
Hey, waitaminute! Trump, Republican Hero, business genius, Wharton grad has assured us that this isn’t how tariffs work!
Well SOMEONE is getting a slice of this under the table. There are lots of American farmers raising clean, sustainable, grass-fed beef and lamb (and non-factory pork) who could really use some of that cash.
Individual 1’s latest federal court nominee was approved by the Republicans in the Senate, with only Susan Collins voting no. She is the general counsel to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and the wife of former Republican Senator David Vitter. She claims that Planned Parenthood kills over 150,000 females a year. She believes abortion causes cancer, and birth control leads to “violent death”.
I was watching Trump’s Rose Garden address rolling out his immigration plan (and stifling my gag reflex)…tougher border controls, bigger walls, fewer asylum seekers, green cards only given on “merit” (based on skills and education).
It seems to me that if his vision were to come to pass, all low-skilled jobs would be done by Americans, and all the doctors would be Chinese - probably not what he has in mind (I think he has a vision of the only immigrants coming in being the Swedish bikini team.)
…of course the people who gained those rights are not going to willingly give them up. That’s why I mentioned them.
But do you know who isn’t going to fight as hard?
The people who didn’t. 98% of black women who voted voted for Hillary. 62% of white men who voted voted for Trump. 47% of white women.
Do you understand what those figures mean? It means that the people who had the most to loose at the last election voted as if their lives depended on it. And those that didn’t have much to loose at all voted for Trump. I have no reason to think that at in 2020 that is going to change very much. If Trump looses at the next election it won’t be because the people that supported Trump are going to change their minds. It will be because the people that have been fighting since their forebears were bought to this country in chains will continue to fight. They won’t give up. But they are fucking tired. And they really need everybody else to step up. And that includes people like you who seem to think progressive ideals came about because they “trended” that way and not because of blood, sweat and tears.
This story popped up yesterday. The intent of the administration is pretty fucking crystal clear. And they have the power to do so and the support of millions of people.
This “window of normality” isn’t something cast in stone. You are being **complacent ** if you think that this “window” is simply a trend. It doesn’t matter if 61% of people approve of gay marriage if half of that 61% are indifferent about gay marriage were it to be taken away.
Lets assume what you said is true. Do the Moral Majority and the Christian Right and the Tea Party still exist? Do they have power? They aren’t going anywhere.
And centrists are fighting that growth. And that’s a big fucking problem. They should be embracing that growth: instead they want to shout them down.
But look at how Ilhan Omar has been treated by her very own party. They got elected, sure. But they literally have to fight their own party leadership to get their voices heard.
They were inspired to run because the people that were running weren’t doing enough to protect them. They ran because the people who held power didn’t give a fuck about them. They ran because the American people elected the world’s stupidest man to the most powerful position in the world. Nobody would willingly throw themselves into the firing line like AOC or Omar have done. The harassment, the slander, the death threats. So no this wasn’t a fucking win. It was a fucking failure of the Democratic leadership and a failure of the American people. They stood up because they had too because nobody else was. They are fucking heroes and you are taking them for granted.
Bad laws are on the books now. People are suffering and dying now. You only feel pain if you are getting hurt. And the majority of Americans are not getting hurt.
Do you realize how condescending this sounds to a woman who lives in a state that has just instituted the new abortion laws? Or to a married gay couple who can’t get citizenship for their child? Or to the thousands of parents who have been separated from their children at the border? Or to the thousands of Americans who have to beg for money on crowdfunding websites in order to pay for their medical bills? You are just “rolling up your sleeves” now? Guess what: you’ve been fucking complacent.
Published in late 2016. Things are much fucking worse now. People have been warning you. Pleading with you. Begging you to “roll your fucking sleeves up” a long time ago.
If you want to live in an America where you get to “repeal the laws” and you get to have “new executives” then you need to recognize exactly where America is at at the moment. The Trump regime at the moment is literally ignoring congressional oversight. They are just saying no. It isn’t going to stop there. Trump firstly purged the White House of anyone who wasn’t loyal to him. Then there was a second round of purges to get rid of anyone who was loyal to him **but **would still uphold the constitution and the law. This third group of people don’t give a fuck. They are making decisions in secret with no oversight and we really don’t know the full extent of what the fuck they are doing.
Jerry Nadler called it a constitutional crisis a week and a bit ago and he is absolutely right. But nobody really gives a fuck. It was a blip on the news cycle. Didn’t even prompt a new thread in GD. The abortion law changes didn’t even prompt a pit thread. Too busy patting yourselves on the back on “how far you’ve come” that you can’t see what is going on around you. Its people like you that can actually make a difference. But you need to get a handle on what is actually happening.
I’ve done my bit to help see to it that this will work out about as well for them as their effort to have “victims of illegal alien crime” contact them:
This one could be an even bigger fisaco – the “report” form has a provision for uploading an image (intended to be a screenshot of the nastygram from the jackbooted InstaFaceTube censors, but could be anything from a cat macro to goatse).
As my sister asked today on FB, had these proposed rules been in place the year before whatever year Victor and Amalija Knavs immigrated to the U.S. (it’s AMAZING how impossible it is to find out what year that was. Wonder what’s up with that?), where would they be living today?