Will we ever fight back? When will that line be drawn?

[FlikTheBlue]

@Banquet_Bear

…America is in the middle of an asymmetric war between the Republicans, who have strategically taken control of the courts, have the Police Unions in their pocket, and are churning out bills and legislation through operations like Project Blitz, they are taking over school boards and local government…and the Democrats, who for the most part don’t have a clue what is going on.

One side has been planning this for decades. One side has learnt how to weaponise propaganda in the digital age using tactics learnt from the likes of g#mergate and Alex J$nes. One side is fundamentally corrupt, seeking money and power. One side seeks white, male supremacy. One side would be happy if trans people no longer existed.

And the other side thinks that the reason why they are going to lose the midterm elections is because a few people once said “defund the police”.

That other side is outgunned. They are out-flanked. There is no real leadership. They are trying to fight a conventional war in the face of a blitzkrieg.

We really can’t, at this stage, make the assumption that the Democrats will “get another chance at this.” Which is why it is more important than ever to fight back on absolutely everything.

I said this in Feb last year:

@Banquet_Bear

But I mean, yeah. The Democrats have to hold onto power. If Democrats don’t hold power then America is fucked. MAGA isn’t going away. If you oppose MAGA then you need to be acting now to keep them out of power in every conceivable possible way . Governorships. The Mayor. The Sheriff. City Council. School boards. I mean: holding at the State level should just be a given . But you’ve got to win every else as well. This isn’t a battle between two rational actors any more. Its going to be a fight and they are never ever going to let up. You’ve got to push back and always keep pushing back.

My position hasn’t changed.

@Senegoid

But first top-most priority must be to enact protections for voting rights: We must utterly overcome all the things Republicans are doing to suppress voting, commandeer election administration, intimidate voters, gerrymanders, etc.

That simply isn’t good enough.

There isn’t a “single priority right now.” This should absolutely be a priority for legislators. But you aren’t going to overcome all the things Republicans are doing by pretending that getting this one thing done is all that needs to be done.

The OP asks “when will enough be enough?”

That time happened long ago. The time to fight back is now. If you aren’t sure what to do: then think local. School boards. Governorships. The Mayor. The Sheriff. City Council. Talk to your local activist groups and find out where you can help. Hold the line. Don’t give them anything.

Excellent post. I agree. My question is what is the best way of doing so, and why won’t / haven’t the strategies that worked in the past work now? The closest comparison I can think of is the 1960s Civil Rights movement, which had significant, though obviously not complete, success. Yes, there was legislation that passed after LBJ strong armed congress, but there was also change in the way a lot of ordinary people think as well. I wasn’t around back than, so I have no direct experience as to how that change was made, but one way or another it was. The response from the right wasn’t the current Trump style MAGA actions. Yes, Nixon and Reagan were in some ways a step back compared to Kennedy and LBJ, but they weren’t fascists and they didn’t take us back to the days of Hoover, Wilson, or even worse, and while they may have been worse personally than LBJ, the country itself kept making progress in spite of them. Then we had the era of the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, where we continued to make progress here and there, all the while with ordinary people seemingly becoming more progressive as a whole. Now Trump and the MAGAs have shattered my previous conception about how things were supposed to go. What I don’t get is why this happened now, and what people from earlier times did to prevent it from happening then. Is it simply a matter of MLK, LBJ, Malcolm X, etc. being smarter than today’s leaders? Have the ordinary people become softer in some sense compared to people in the 1960s? I honestly don’t understand exactly what happened.

Given that I don’t know why we ended up here, I don’t know what, if anything I can personally do differently. Yes, I’m going to vote straight ticked D this fall. No, I’m not going to run for office because I’d suck at it and would likely just make things worse. What else is there? Obviously there are other things that could be done, and if MLK and LBJ were around today they might have some sage advice that could help defeat the MAGAs or get them to change their minds. But they aren’t around, and I’m not smart enough to figure out what they would do if they were.