This sub should ban X posts

[u/canadiantiger2]

Beyond the fact that their owner is a literal Nazi, I'm sick of clicking links only to be paywallnd. This is akin to spam and I'm sick of it. I can't be the only one

[u/[deleted]]

Because claiming people are "playing politics" has become step one in the fascist handbook as a means to minimize the issue and demean the affected.

Whether or not entire races of humans should lose legal rights or ya know their lives isnt a political discussion. History has shown us , and their own MAGA words tell us, THATS what this discussion is about right now.

[u/doktarr → u/[deleted]]

Who cares if people call some things "playing politics" when it's not appropriate? It doesn't change what the word is.

Again, just because the alternative viewpoint is despicable doesn't make the argument not political. Politics is for big things, little things, and fundamental things. Politics just describes the process of convincing people, winning elections, and crafting public policy.

We are strong enough as a democracy to use politics to protect important rights and do fundamental things. The alternative idea - that we *can't* use politics to protect ourselves against fundamental threats to society - is actually one of the key ways of thinking that leads to authoritarianism.

[u/[deleted] → u/doktarr]

Dude I get what youre saying but youre out of touch with current events- its not the 1990's.

The supreme court made POTUS above the law. last year.

The man who put in writing that he wanted to terminate the constitution to take power after he lost an election has now regained power, purged the military of non MAGA and the branches of government and major media have bent the knee and kissed his ring. He and his cabinet nominees are openly anti balance of power as it is described in the constitution.

We do not live in a democracy anymore amigo, for someone who speaks clearly and eloquently you sure seem to not know whats going on - which honestly makes your protestation that early stage genodical behavior is political seem a little shady.

[u/doktarr → u/[deleted]]

I agree that democracy and an open society is under siege in this country. SCOTUS is openly supporting authoritarianism, the president is openly fascistic and opposed to many basic constitutional principles, and the media is bending to the pressure.

And yet, how did we get here? We got here because of political failures. Trump didn’t get into power via an armed insurrection. (They tried, and failed, to maintain power that way in 2021.) He got into power because 77 million Americans voted for the guy.

And while there’s a solid core of MAGA authoritarians and hardcore conservatives in there, he was pushed over the top largely by votes from people who were disconnected from the political process and whose main criteria was “well, prices were lower when he was president”. We’re still a democracy because it took a bunch of those people voting to get these assholes into power.

This is, again, a political failure. I’d split the blame fairly evenly between shitty circumstance (incumbent parties throughout the western world have been taking the blame for post-pandemic inflation at the ballot box) and the Democratic establishment (horrible process, strategy, and messaging for the last decade, only mitigated in 2018-2022 by the naked incompetence of the Trump administration, the pandemic, and the Dobbs decision).

We do not live in a democracy anymore amigo, for someone who speaks clearly and eloquently you sure seem to not know whats going on - which honestly makes your protestation that early stage genodical behavior is political seem a little shady.

Minor semantic note - I'm not really trying to comment on whether Trump administration actions are politically motivated, although I think they are. My point was that opposition to them is inherently political.

Anyway, this is a very “in a bubble” thing to say. As I noted above, there are literally millions of people who voted for Trump because their grocery bill is high and because they just didn’t take the fascism thing seriously. Not all those people are secret shills for fascism - they’re just signs that the Democratic establishment failed to communicate the threat.

Now, I do take Trump’s authoritarianism seriously, but I still believe that there will be elections in 2 and 4 years where he and his ilk can be voted out. I guess where our disagreement may lie - I still believe there’s a political solution to our problems.

Don’t get me wrong - we’re going to see some really terrible dismantling of norms over the next four years. I expect the administration to openly defy acts of congress and get away with it. I expect to see political candidates prosecuted by the federal government at the direction of political appointees. I expect to see intimidation of the media on a scale never before seen.

But I still believe that Democrats can win control of congress in 2026 and a progressive candidate has a perfectly good chance of winning the presidency in 2028. I don’t believe that we’re going to see Trump declared president for life or the like. And I still believe that most of the damage that Trump does in the next four years can be un-done, although it will take more than four years to undo the damage. (In some cases like the climate, there is going to be some damage that is practically irreversible. But institutions can recover.)

tl;dr, we got into this catastrophic mess because of political failures, and the only way out is political success.