The problem is that we aren’t. At least not yet. Maybe I’m living in a bubble, but I see very little personal suffering that the average person I know is experiencing due to Trump. COVID is a poor example given that the bulk of the pandemic, including the worst of it in the summer and fall of ‘21 (at least where I live that was the worst of it) occurred under Biden’s watch. By the time vaccine denialism really kicked in and became a MAGA thing, COVIDs peak had long passed. Inflation? It’s there, but it’s not anywhere close to skyrocketing. People aren’t carrying around wheelbarrows of $100 bills just to buy a loaf of bread. The truly dreadful stuff hasn’t started yet, and saying it has runs the risk of making the same mistake we did in the 2000s when we were saying the same things about George Bush Jr.
Agree we are not living in a non-functioning dystopia at the moment. But I remember in the late 90s the drumbeat of the Newt Gingrich Republicans that the country was in dire shape and the economy was in tatters thanks to Clinton/Gore (even tho I think they handed Bush Sr a solid economy). It’s the propaganda I am referring to.
I don’t know the answer. Trump is going to die of old age at some point and I think that’s going to be a moment in this country. A moment for what, I don’t know. But I think it’s one of the major unknowns in trying to predict the future.
The other unknown is how people will react when the economy gets really bad, because I’ve been observing voters for a long time and that’s all they seem to care about. I’m confident in saying many voters care more about the economy than democracy. Right now it’s definitely an Emperor Has No Clothes situation with regard to the stock market. But at some point it’s gonna be impossible to ignore.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m more of a respond to the moment person and I don’t even know how to do that right now. I’m not even effectively managing my family much less the current constitutional crisis. I suspect that’s the real reason you don’t see more people out on the streets, it’s not that we’re too fat and happy it’s that a lot of us are barely holding it together domestically. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, and a child care crisis at a time when community and family support is at an all time low. People are plagued with mental health difficulties including a dramatic uptick in anxiety disorders and depression. A lot of us have long COVID and associated illnesses that were probably exacerbated or triggered by COVID. A lot of us are not well. A lot of people are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet who would get canned for taking a Saturday off for a protest.
People who are out there doing what they feel they need to do, that’s great. I wish more of us could.
we have a saying in Argentina “Billetera mata relato” “The wallet kills the narrative”, you can tell all the stories you want, until there’s not enough money for food and necesities, THAT’s the moment of truth.
Argentina has been through multiple military regimes and periods of restricted democracy. I don’t know if any of it is quite comparable to what is happening in the US. Of all the regular posters here, I am particularly interested in your take on it all.
My bold.
By “at some point,” I don’t mean now. I mean a couple of generations from now. Twenty to 40 years from now. Some of you, maybe many of you, will still be around. Your children and grandchildren will, too.
I truly have no idea. I’m frightened. Not for myself, I’m old and lonely and tired, but for my family, especially my young grandkids.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I have this urge to just stop showing up to work. I want to go get a large poster and make a sign and just sit in traffic. I want to sit in a yoga position and just quietly hold my sign. But I can’t do that to the people I work for. They’ve been kind to me. I also need the money. I just turned 69 and only work because I have to.
But it’s getting more and more difficult to force myself to work.
I can’t imagine what these Billionaires think the new society they are trying to form will look like.
A society of masters and slaves; they get to be the masters.
I truly have no idea whether the US will pull its head out of its ass - but I have been surprised, even shocked, at how few people I have seen agreeing with the idea that the FCC should pull broadcast licenses of stations that say things Trump doesn’t like. Facebook friends who defended DOGE and ICE and tariffs and firing everyone - not defending this. Tucker Carlson saying that attacks on free speech would justify civil disobedience - I didn’t think there could ever be a time when I would agree with him. Haven’t seen anyone who agrees with Pam Bondi that people who refuse to print posters should be prosecuted, either. It seems that it’s only those who actually work for him who might agree. It’s in some ways a less urgent issue than dissappearing people but it gives me a little hope.
I think you’re assigning a lot more cohesion and directed agency to them than they’ve really got. More likely, they’re just fantastically rich, and driven by either extreme competitiveness or insecurity to be more and more successful. So they’re doing what gets that.
Thinking that they’re actually sitting back and planning anything beyond what makes them or their companies money in the short to medium term is IMO, absurd.
Hmmm… 
This is interesting. And encouraging. I wonder if a wholesale attack by TPTB* on free speech will become a turning point among the teeming masses on both sides. That IS something that flaming socialist trans Black queer liberals AND red-hatted gun-toting camo-garbed MAGAts can agree on: we want free speech. The constitution guarantees us free speech. (We’re pretty sure it does anyway.)
We want to be able to say stuff on TV and march around with signs that say stuff and wear t-shirts that say stuff no matter who doesn’t like it or whom it offends. Maybe even pee-brained [sic] trumpers in the trenches will grok that free speech has to apply to all sides.
This might be more immediate and grass-roots than even pocketbook issues.
ETA: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” -Voltaire
While Voltaire is often credited for this quote, it was actually said by Elizabeth Beatrice Hall (under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre) in her book ‘The Friends of Voltaire’.
*The Powers That Be
I think that everything will come out to the wire at that point, people will overlook a thousand idiocies and outrages until the fridge is empty, and even then for a bit more but when that moment arrives it’s just a matter of time and the regime falls as a Hemingway bankruptcy “Gradually, then suddenly”.
It seems to be happening right now here.
I know you’ve had a recent victory in your country. Can you give some insight into what triggered the turning of the tide back to sanity and reason?
Two things:
First: The fridges are empty, the admin managed to get inflation down to 2% monthly, yay! at the cost of practically killing all economic activity, since there’s no money to buy anything prices cannot go up… so much.
This has been happening since Milei got to power (and things weren’t rosy before either or he wouldn’t be there) but there’s a point when the population loses it’s patience and we seem to have reached it.
And second: this malaise needed some event to crystallize it, like supercooled water, and last month recordings reached the press of a very close friend/collaborator of Milei saying basically that Karina, the president’s sister and guru, was asking for 3% of each government contract as a bribe. This blew Milei narrative of fighting a corrupt political caste out of the water, and acted as a catalyzer for the anger about the economic situation, there were jokes immediately to the tune of “Let’s get to work, that 3% percent for Karina will not pay itself!”
Then came the Buenos Aires provincial (state) legislative election, with his usual instinct for politics the president had the great idea of nationalizing the election, personally campaigning in the poorest parts of the province (where he’s always been widely hated) and insulting people on their faces (there’s a disgusting video of him screaming nasty insults at a mother with her infant daughter ), and having to be evacuated when they started to pelt him with rotten vegetables and rocks.
The election was a disaster for Milei’s party and things started to unravel even more.
Yesterday congress overrode his vetoes to laws providing adequate funding for universities and pediatric hospitals, and today they took from him a lot of the discretionary power he had to send money to the provinces (which traditionally has been used as a pork-barrel analogue to buy votes from senators and representatives ) leaving him even weaker.
The peso is falling quickly and the Trading Exchange is down down down.
If he doesn’t get a good result in the upcoming national midterms he will become a political cadaver, and while that’s not guaranteed, if things continue on this vein is a very real probability.
He will. Same as Putin.
Milei? what makes you think that?
Who is Milei?
You have to read my post with more attention, I was answering Spice_Weasel question about the situation in Argentina, Milei is our version of Trump.
@Frodo started a big long-running thread about the situation in Argentina:
One factor I should’ve mentioned, protests helped, even in the darkest moments when it seemed that nothing could make Milei lose power the very fact of hundred of thousands of people marching against him in the streets helped a lot, if only to remind ourselves that not everyone was ok with all the outrages.