This article was posted shortly before the election but everything in there is still true and seeing his appointees perhaps worse than predicted.
Carl Sagan wrote in 1995:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
While there were always idiots, they often lacked the capacity to engage or equip themselves with such a sophisticated web of lies to prop up their beliefs. As such, Joe Schmoe from Bumfuck, Alabama had a limited platform and so could go on his blissfully ignorant way without much harm beyond his county line.
These days? They all communicate together and domestic and foreign operatives can reach them all the same to stoke division.
Crazy to watch.
We live in an era where democracies once considered “consolidated” — meaning so secure that they couldn’t collapse into authoritarianism — have started to buckle and even collapse.
Literally everytime a society acts like authoritarianism isn’t a threat…
You’ll never guess what shows up.
It’s a constant fight, it will literally never be over. But over and over, all it takes is 2 or 3 generations for people to think it was really over last time.
A huge part of the issue is writing them all off as evil monsters. The leaders always are. But their supporters are almost always desperate people who think they’re doing the right thing.
To truly keep it at bay, we need a society where everyone has enough to live comfortably so they’re not desperate and looking for scapegoats to blame. It would solve the vast amount of local crime as well. We focus on making prison worse than poverty, but no one would choose prison over a comfortable life.
It would be easier to believe they think they are doing the right thing if they weren’t so excited about all the people they want to hurt.
Because they believe the people they’re going to hurt are hurting others worse…
There is nothing new about what is happening.
I didn’t say there was anything new about it. People are, and always have been, capable of monstrous evil. It is normal human behavior, but that doesn’t make it any less vile.
I’m sorry I can’t explain this in a way you can understand
We going down the downvote pipe together, man. I know what you meant.
MAGAs are bad people.
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
-Terry Pratchett
I agree with the sentiment. But I think one of the perils of Democratic erosion has been “Us” having less and less say in how government functions, particularly at the local level.
The mayor is as alien and removed from me as any CEO or celebrity. City council is dominated by real estate agents and business cronies. Even the school board is inaccessible, as they pay far more attention to their friends in state government than anyone with kids in grade school.
Fearmomgering against the other is a tool leveraged to win high office. But it’s hard to see who isn’t just running a racket when the profession seems to repel activists and draw in shills like a magnet.
Reported as a duplicate from 3 weeks ago:
https://lemmy.world/post/21605389
Allowing this for now as the discussion following a Trump win has a different context than hypotheticals from before a Trump win.
For example:
Before the election Trump was still claiming he knew nothing of Project 2025.
AFTER the election, his nominee to run the FCC is the guy who WROTE the FCC chapter of Project 2025.
I’m very sorry, I tried to use the search function prior to posting to make sure it wasn’t already posted. I don’t know if it was because I made a mistake or if it was because I searched based on the URL instead of the title but for some reason I didn’t receive any results.
Generally, I’d just pick the most unusual word from the headline, search for that, and sort by “New”. In this case “Extinction”.
“Democratic collapse nowadays isn’t a matter of abolishing elections and declaring oneself dictator, but rather stealthily hollowing out a democratic system so it’s harder and harder for the opposition to win. This strategy requires full control over the state and the bureaucracy: That means having the right staff in the right places who can use their power to erode democracy’s core functions.”
The establishment Dems and Reps have been doing this for decades. Trump is just the last straw. He’s walking away with the monster they created and he’s probably going to let it off the leash.
The only question I have is whether the oligarchy wants him to do that. Imo they weren’t ready for it last time. They built the monster for someone controllable like Clinton or Jeb!, and I think they were actually surprised when Trump won the first time. This time they made him a nice little play book, and they’ve had some time to learn how to at least keep him pointed in the right direction, if not controlled. They might be ready to release the monster they created. Everyone will blame Trump too, instead of the oligarchy… Bonus.
The only question I have is whether the oligarchy wants him to do that.
Quite a few have explicitly said they do. That’s a big reason why Trump won with Silicon Valley conservatives this year.
He’s also much more senile this time. And they have plenty of experience with that from Reagan.
Nations rise and fall. Its fine. Eventually dictatorships fall. The climate, however…
Theres no time…
Maybe we’ll get lucky and the economy will collapse.
Seems likely
Meh, it died long ago for marginalized people, it’s just catching up to white people now.
posted under : no shit
So we should stage an insurrection to prevent him from taking power right?
Right?!
Oh, no, we’re gonna just act like this isn’t an existential threat like you’re saying.
So why should I believe you when you say something is a threat?
Preach. If everyone who wrote about the end of democracy actually believed what they were saying, this wouldn’t be getting downvoted. If anyone who wrote articles like this actually believed it, these would be calls to action, not liberal hand wringing.
If people actually do believe this, and in response sit there doing nothing, they are cowards. Plain and simple. If you think this is the end of democracy, what are gonna do… vote democracy back? Ya’ll don’t, you know how I know ya’ll don’t? You aren’t doing anything about it, and you won’t.
Like fuck off with this ridiculous, inflammatory shit. It already lost the election and both houses, maybe focus on figuring out how to win a fucking election once everyone realizes these idiots can’t actually govern in 2 years, again!
Not even going to act like this isn’t a good idea.
Rationalizing it to be a BETTER insurrection than what he already tried won’t work. That would trigger another civil war and set the country back a hundred years.
Fair game though: he’s going to absolutely ruin the economy and the country anyway, so…🤷
All the organizing bullshit people are running hopium for won’t work for these people. We are LITERALLY living the same politics of the Nazi and fascist rise in Europe. You won’t turn it around until other people step in to start a world war and declare these people insane. Unfortunately the world powers right now that would step in are most interested in elimination of the US. Bad spot to be in.
This is written as if the election were still in the future. We’re going in, and it’s going to be hell. This is the loadout selection screen before the match starts. We need to be thinking of ways we can bolster our communities and defend ourselves.
This is written as if the election were still in the future
Because it was at the time
That headline though. My inner pedant just cannot leave it alone. Democracy is like Nature. It does not care about you or me or Trump. It will continue to exist as an idea no matter what he does. Other countries will even continue to use it.
Same as anarchism.
Lots of people valuing self reliance and care for others without regard for our existing leaders and systems. There just happens to also be systems of governments around.
excuse my ignorance, but ive always wondered this about anarchism: Seems to me that people gather and organize themselves to reach common goals. How can these organizations not become governments? is that actually possible?
I think like any other political or philosophical view, this is one of those things where you will get one unique answer per each anarchist you ask.
Speaking personally, I think philosophies should be used as tools, and as the best tool for a job.
To me, anarchism means disregarding established authority and working together to achieve whatever a goal is. Ideally cooperatively. Some groups will perform well at this and some will not. Some will perform better under a more traditional organized structure.
I don’t want to subjugate people with anarchist dogma. I want to help people learn to trust themselves and to cooperate. And I want to get better at it myself.
I see, so you see it not an actual state we may achieve, but rather the negation of present authorities and systems.
That is my take.
The delusion of grandeur I might suffer would be something like people foster such a strong culture of cooperation and mutual aid that state government operations and programs become obsolete.
That’s a north star. Something to aim for as a concept. But of course we won’t ever land a rocket ship on the actual North Star.
By avoiding hierarchy. So it’s like how a poker game has a bunch of players, but nobody is the boss of poker. And if somebody starts cheating, you either expel them or form a new group.
The hard part is scaling this up to billions of people.
So as long as an organization is truly democratic, it can be considered anarchist?
For example, if one person likes to make coca cola but as a side effect he pollutes a river that the rest of the group wants to keep clean. The group may decide democratically to force him to not make coca cola. I would call this a goverment-like organization, even though it does not need to have a leader to fulfill its goal.
I would consider that anarchist iff it’s not hierarchical, yes.
A lot of what is commonly called anarchism isn’t a complete lack of government. It’s more like removing the capitalist system and wealthy elite. Then not having large governments, make stuff like the town council the highest form of government.
I’m not 100% sure how that translates to modern mass infrastructure and global trade but those are the basic ideas as best as I can see.
Oh ok cool, let’s get right on that then.
If only there were a way the opposition party could have done something about this like, I don’t know, campaigning on a platform of better living conditions for the working class, more jobs and better pay instead of doubling down again and again and again on identity politics.
The owners of this country don’t want that.
And the Democratic Neoliberal Committee serves them extremely well
Like what, helping people buy houses to live in?
What kind of help - loans so housing gets more expensive?
It’s an extension level threat.
that’s in four years when he tries to stay in office.
It is alarmists. Ill repost this in 4 years when he peacefully leaves office to laugh at u all. Btw does lemmy have a remindme bot or has it been banned like all the other usefull bots.
Ah yes peacefully leaves office, just like the first time.
Lemmy won’t be allowed in the new Republic, comrade.
? Trump literally runs his own mastodon. There will definitely be a place for Lemmy in the future. It’ll be an instance called TruthNews run by the
Ministry of Not Fake News
They think they can stop it. Just like they can stop monero, piracy, and encryption?
Plus i dont live in the worlds richest 3rd world nation like u so ill be fine over here in australia with my socialised healthcare and gun free schools.
And your nanny state. Don’t think the rest of the world doesn’t know Aussies clutch pearls hard enough to crush them. Y’all are a stones throw away from Fascism, mates.
Reasonable regulation is much further from fascism than what the diaper wearing clown who’s been elected president is gonna bring to bear.
Y’all don’t need any tariffs to make your electronics prices inflated beyond insanity, your backwards ass government already did it lmao.
Get fucking rekt. Like an Aussie has any right to say they’re better than the USA. Go find a Norwegian and you got a deal.
We do have heigher taxes yes. But we also rate heigher on almost all the metrics. Statisticly im smarter than u, more educated than u, heather than u, taller than u, bigger dick than u, will live longer than u, will be happier than you, will be richer than you, have a hotter wife than u, have more sex than u will. Look man not all these are a result of our heigher taxes but it sure as shit helped. And at the end of the day i can become an immigrant and pay my way into ur corrupt system if ever im feeling like im missing out.
Man, that must have been one wild study…
You’re not wrong (well except about most of the actual things you asserted) but while retreating to some zany upside-down nationalism to defend your precariously teetering democracy might preserve your sense of superiority over the US, it’s pretty clearly blinding you to the realities of the situation you’re living in.
Just took that. Guess if it is from Australia or Scandinavia?
“Get rekt.”
Yeah, that invalidates your shit government, 🤣
Get rekt
Twice. Kek. Hey, insult all you want. I have a no-blocking policy. Mama raised me with a spine.
deleted by creator
Still doing better than the US.
… Are you really, though? Meaningfully? It’s looking pretty damn bad for ya’ll, and you seem to have even less political will to fix it than we do. Not saying we’re not worse, but you guys are catching up fast.
Definatly is a nanny state. They are coming for free speach and digital anonymity at the moment. But still isnt fascism yet.
I guess I forgot to block you. What a surprise to read your nonsense this morning.
U having fun building ur little echo chamber. Dont let anyone challenge ur beliefs. It might shatter ur world view.
Pot, kettle.
I dont block anyone not even hexbear spouting their shit.
I’m talking about your echo chamber of maga nonsense, refusing to let anyone challenge your views.
Who’s “you all”? The people with whom you’ve been arguing will probably all have new user names by then.
Im sure they will. But when they read it they will be forced to admit that im right and thats gonna give them all sorts of self value issues.
They’ll defend their egos by finding some way in which they’re still right.
Yeah but i enjoy whatching them suffer though that proccess.
Hush, you’re embarrassing yourself.
Is that good faith engagement or thinly veiled insult?
I’m not sure if it counts as good faith, but it’s sincere - you’re putting way too much energy into a debate about which failing state is failing with more grace. Yeah, Australia is doing better than the US, we’re speedrunning the fall of rome over here, but it’s important not to be so blinded by the spectacle of the US imploding that you lose sight of your own country being eroded out from under you.
Peacefully leave after appointing the next president.
You can put a date in your calendar to remember
I think that is beyond their capabilities
+1 for remind me bot
-1 for weimar republic level misinformation
