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I think the government is like IT. The people assume they don’t need it or as much of it because everything is fine. We’re about to see what it’s like when they fire half of the IT staff and slash the budget to ribbons.
That’s a pretty good analogy IMO.
The guard rails held last time. Barely. But the thing with guard rails, is that when someone smashes into them, you have to fix them or else they won’t hold the next time they get smashed into. And we did fuck all to fix the government after the last trainwreck so there’s no guard rails this time. There might not even be a chance to vote in a fix in a year and a half, things may be too fucked by then.
The guard rails last time where the democrats having a majority in one half of congress. That guard rail is gone.
I was born in a war, in the third world. I often say that Americans wouldn’t be so gung ho about war if the war was fought on their soil for once. They’ve had it nice and cozy, using other people’s homes as battlefields and policing what everyone else is doing globally.
I don’t think it’s a war thing at all. America was THE world power, and there were a lot of people working against American ideals because it was the largest economy/country that could fight back, but if you look around, even countries that have seen war are struggling with the rise of the right. Brexit, the AfD, and Poland/turkey in general, not to mention Russia have all shown that what’s happening in America isn’t America specific. There’s a collection of bad actors everywhere and it’s happening regardless of if a place had seen war or not. Governments everywhere are being corrupted by the wealthy and/or being dismantled in favor of religious authoritarianism/nationalism.
If anything, you’re seeing Trump pull back from war, and soft and hard power that would prevent war, and it’s in an effort to lessen Americas impact on the world stage.
The myth of checks and balances.
The myth of checks and balances.
The myth of (checks notes) every single admirable or positive aspect I was raised to believe was true about our system of government and our values as a nation.
I’m in my 50s. Somewhere WAY down the list of shit that I’m absolutely furious about is that I can no longer pretend that a single thing about US values or the resilient and balanced design of our government has turned out to be true.
Every single thing that has ever benefitted non-wealthy non-white non-male non-straight or non-cis people in the US has been hard won with blood over decades or centuries. And we’re well on the way to undoing nearly all of those after not even two months of a despot in office.
Every thing I have ever been taught about what made the US great or special or even good has been a lie. It’s very plain to see now. It turns out we had some elected people superficially following the rules, and that was really the only thing keeping it all together.