Unfortunately, I have to agree.
However, when a significant proportion of the population comprises “them” (per the quote above), how is MAGA and its destruction prevented from surfacing again?
The First Amendment protects the right to speak repugnantly. However, there’s the famous ‘You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theatre’ exception, because safety trumps ‘free speech’. Given that fascism is a direct threat to society, can we not ban fascist speech? (I know the ACLU has supported the right of the KKK to spew hatred; but shouldn’t there be reasonable limits?)
Yep.
Like you say, few of the Trump-enablers actually did anything illegal. Millions of people voted Trump/MAGA/Conservative for various reasons- not all were mustache-twirling racists and authoritarians. A lot are just… confused about what voting Democrat actually means, and what voting Republican actually means. They may be super-Catholic and voting for the pro-life party. They may be rural and voting for the party that’s speaking to them. They may be suburban and voting against big-city stuff. They may have philosophical problems with certain kinds of public assistance.
By their lights, they’re doing the right thing, because that’s what they’ve been indoctrinated to think. These are people who are largely afraid of their own shadows- they’re inordinately afraid of crime/criminals, and change in general. That’s why they have so much weird nostalgia for the 1950s, as if it was some kind of golden age of low crime, etc…
I don’t know how you get around that, other than maybe educate the younger people about how to skeptically evaluate a news source, and how to use many to triangulate the truth, not merely pick the one that aligns with your worldview and treat it like it’s the Word of God.
But anyway, that segment of the population isn’t going anywhere, and we can’t disenfranchise them, so we’re going to have to learn how to live with them. Personally, I don’t choose to live in a weird liberal bubble and be hostile to a huge portion of my fellow citizens, so I’m working on it.
Define it without merely categorizing anything politically opposite to the Democratic party or that’s very conservative as “fascist”. That’s going to be a lot harder than we would suspect.
The sad truth is this kind of thing really can happen just about anywhere. It’s going to have to come by educating the population and working to regain trust in both our institutions and with one another.
I think most of us agree there should be reasonable limits. Figuring out where to draw that line is the difficult task.
I get where you’re coming from, but I simply cannot accept a significant number of them where hapless voters. If any of them didn’t know who Trump was or what MAGA stood for it’s because they buried their heads in the sand and pretended otherwise.
That’s about it. I imagine there were plenty of Germans in the 1970s who didn’t think the Nazis were so bad for Germany. Those MAGA people are going to be with us for decades to come.
That was from 1919, but in 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio overruled that. Now, you can.
So, no, you cant.
Yeah, there are some Neo-nazi orgs, and such, but afaik, there are no actual fascists in Federal office in the US. Some could be called “Fascist wannabes”.
Well, since trump is trying to get several stations FTC licenses pulled, we certainly could try to pull Fox’s broadcast license. But do we want to set that precedent? Well, IMHO, if trump actually succeeds- then go for it.
There are a significant number of voters that vote straight Dem or GOP, no matter who is running- they have done that for decades and see no reason to stop.
I was not aware of that. Nevertheless, fascist speech would seem to fall under the category of ‘Sedition’.
No longer a crime, due to the 1st Ad. Instead-
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
What happens after Trump is that the fascists keep trying again and again until they finally succeed in a total permanent takeover. The only contribution the Democrats will have is shielding the Republicans from any consequences in the name of “normalcy” and “bipartisanship”.
They’ve been here since before the Civil War; they are a permanent part of US culture. When the US allowed the slave states in, it built that bigotry and malice into its cultural foundations, and it can’t be fixed or removed short of that culture outright collapsing and being replaced with something else entirely.
Yup! That’s the kind of crazy stuff they’ll use. That’s the point I’m making. They don’t make boring accusations often, if ever.
Very true, but that would be heavily obstructed by half of the population, who would see that as some sort of woke social engineering.
The bigger problem as I see it isn’t one of education, but rather competing sources of truth and people’s tendency on both sides to consume the sources that reinforce their world views and make them feel good about them.
If you’re conservative, Fox News is going to be telling you that yes, there is a huge problem with immigrant criminals and something must be done! If you’re a liberal, you’ve got your own sources telling you what you want to hear as well
The difference is that the conservative news media has set themselves up as alternative sources of truth and sets about discrediting the mainstream media as hopelessly liberal, while the liberal sources aren’t engaging in the same kind of substitution of themselves for mainstream sources.
So conservative people end up in their own bubble of reality where the “truth” is often very different from reality, but there aren’t any actual laws concerning fact checking or impartiality, so it forces pe to effectively choose which truth ecosystem they want to be part of, and most people aren’t equipped to actually make informed decisions on that kind of thing.
To witness, just last week I was regaled by Trumper relatives of the need for schools to keep litter boxes for the students who identify as furries. We inhabit different realities.
Last week? That was what they were arguing years ago; back at the start of the Biden administration. I thought they’d moved on. I guess some people are still talking about it.
Trying to be hopeful: Any chance whatsoever that talk was “let’s yank the liberal’s chain”?
Afraid not. That would require a level of intelligence and self-awareness that has never been evident. With but a few exceptions, my extended family is, uh, of modest education.
FWIW, I’ve heard it from someone who incorrectly assumed I was, shall we say, on their side. You know: the conspiratorial tone, the idea that it’s us against them, and all with a side order of also incorrectly figuring that I happen to share their religion.
The earnest sincerity had, AFAICT, no chain-yanking.