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[…]

Trump’s reëlection, his victory over Kamala Harris, can no longer be ascribed to a failure of the collective imagination. He is the least mysterious public figure alive; he has been announcing his every disquieting tendency, relentlessly, publicly, for decades. Who is left, supporter or detractor, who does not acknowledge, at least to some degree, his cynicism and divisiveness, his disrespect for selfless sacrifice? To him, fallen American soldiers are “suckers.” Many of his former closest advisers—Vice-President Mike Pence; his chief of staff John Kelly; Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—have described him as unfit, unstable, and, in the case of Kelly and Milley, a fascist. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Trump went out of his way to dismiss his consultants’ blandishments to moderate his tone. Instead, he pretended to fellate a microphone and threatened to direct the military against the “enemy from within.” He emphasized every rotten thing about himself, as if to say, “Forget the scripted stuff on the teleprompter. Listen to me when I go off-the-cuff. The conspiracy theories. The fury. The vengeance. The race-baiting. The embrace of Putin and Orbán and Xi. The wild stories. This is me, the real me. I’m a genius. I’m weaving!”

[…]

An American retreat from liberal democracy—a precious yet vulnerable inheritance—would be a calamity. Indifference is a form of surrender. Indifference to mass deportations would signal an abnegation of one of the nation’s guiding promises. Vladimir Putin welcomes Trump’s return not only because it makes his life immeasurably easier in his determination to subjugate a free and sovereign Ukraine but because it validates his assertion that American democracy is a sham—that there is no democracy. All that matters is power and self-interest. The rest is sanctimony and hypocrisy. Putin reminds us that liberal democracy is not a permanence; it can turn out to be an episode.

One of the great spirits of modern times, the Czech playwright and dissident Václav Havel, wrote in “Summer Meditations,” “There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.” During the long Soviet domination of his country, Havel fought valiantly for liberal democracy, inspiring in others acts of resilience and protest. He was imprisoned for that. Then came a time when things changed, when Havel was elected President and, in a Kafka tale turned on its head, inhabited the Castle, in Prague. Together with a people challenged by years of autocracy, he helped lead his country out of a long, dark time. Our time is now dark, but that, too, can change. It happened elsewhere. It can happen here.

  • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    Who is this article targeting?

    The wake up call was during trumps first administration, 10 million more american voters voted for donald trump this time than did the last time. minority constituencies know the threat trump poses.

    After trump called every stripe of latino, rapists and murderers, and threatened mass deportations, out loud, and often, more latinos voted for donald trump in this election than have ever voted for any republican candidate in any american election before.

    Who does the author think it listening, and who is the author beseeching to “think”?

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      10 million more american voters voted for donald trump this time than did the last time

      This absolutely untrue. He got less votes than he did last time.

      2020 - 74,223,975

      2024 - 74,120,203

    • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, unfortunately I think we’re at a point where people are going to need to get burned first hand to have their minds changed.

      • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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        1 month ago

        If at least one million American COVID deaths (plus countless millions worldwide) that he directly caused weren’t enough of a wake up call, then I don’t know what is.

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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          30 days ago

          It’s too abstract. The virus has a life of its own. Blaming Trump for those deaths is kind of like blaming Biden for hurricane that hit North Carolina.

          Yeah, Trump could’ve implemented policies that he didn’t that the experts have told us could’ve saved lives. However, that’s all hypothetical savings.

          That’s very different than “Trump deported my friend” or “Trump’s FDA let heavy metals into my Little Debbie’s” or “Trump’s economic policy resulted in me losing my home because I couldn’t afford to live.”

          • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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            30 days ago

            This couldn’t be further from the truth. Trump dismantled the team in China that monitored the exact market where the virus originated from. He then ignored the handbook for combating the pandemic that the Obama administration had created for precisely this kind of virus, deliberately stalled the federal response, because he erroneously believed that the virus would kill more Democrats than Republicans, knowingly spread lies about masks and vaccines and on top of all of that, enriched himself and his cronies when he did finally respond. Crucially however, the world is organized in such a way that without an adult at the helm in the US, the global response to the virus was disjointed and disorganized, since so many systems depend on a competent American government in charge.

            • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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              29 days ago

              It’s not about logic it’s about feeling.

              Yeah all that is true (at least I’m fairly sure), but because it’s a virus the “feeling” of responsibility just isn’t there.

    • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.org
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      1 month ago

      Who is this article targeting?

      Liberals who sat at home during Trump’s first presidency while children were being separated from their families and locked up in cages.

      • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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        1 month ago

        you mean all those millions of african american, latino, and arab ones that voted for trump this time. are those the liberals you’re talking about?

        • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.org
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          1 month ago

          well no, actually. I was referring to the liberals who sat at home during Trump’s first presidency while children were being separated from their families and locked up in cages.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    “because it validates his assertion that American democracy is a sham—that there is no democracy. All that matters is power and self-interest. The rest is sanctimony and hypocrisy.”

    …I mean… Is he that wrong? We vote for who the donor/ownership class allow us to vote for. Anyone else doesn’t even show up on the radar. There was an actual socialist candidate, literally the only place they ever showed up in “the news” was here on Lemmy. People are only exposed to those that will play ball with the ownership class.

    Once someone like Bernie Sanders showed to be gaining in popularity during the primaries leading up to 2016 so-called “liberal left wing” MSNBC started running “Bernie loves Castro, Bernie loves communism!” stories to scare people into choosing someone else. One chucklefuck on MSNBC went as far as to say if Bernie was elected people “like him” (the wealthy news propagandist) would be put up against the wall, invoking the idea of authoritarian regimes and firing squads…

    • Visikde@beehaw.org
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      1 month ago

      There is only Corporate media

      Very early we started allowing the parties to administer the the primaries to avoid having to raise taxes to pay for elections
      We outsourced elections to the Fan(atic)s because they cost less, They still get paid in proximity to power
      Having the occasional binary popularity contest to decide who should be in charge may not be the best method

    • shoulderoforion@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      Bernie Sanders is a piece of shit who just came out in defense of Joe Rogan, if you think Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump in 2020 or in 2024, you are delusional, just like Bernie Sanders is. Do you think roaming bands of Leftists, marching on main streets in ever major city in the US, and taking over university commons from coast to coast, in defense of Islamic Jihadi terrorists seeing to kill half the Jewish population in the world in Israel, while screaming “From The River To The Sea” scared the bejeesus out of just Middle America, or all of it?

      Bernie Sanders, jfc

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        Do you think roaming bands of Leftists, marching on main streets in ever major city in the US, and taking over university commons from coast to coast, in defense of Islamic Jihadi terrorists seeing to kill half the Jewish population in the world in Israel, while screaming “From The River To The Sea” scared the bejeesus out of just Middle America, or all of it?

        Well I can see where you get your news from, jeez… That’s an interesting reality.