Every morning I read twitter. Every morning I am absolutely aghast at what is happening in and with america. In a year and a half america went from implementing Obamacare to putting children in cages. It is a disgrace and I have no idea what I could do to help this. I feel horrified and powerless, ashamed of this conduct for humanity, and fear this is irreparable
I’ve been engaging in various arguments with people I know who support it, and invariably their rationale comes down to three things:
Criminals are subhumans who do not deserve dignity or rights.
Immigrants are undesirable and should not be allowed in.
Because some people are sometimes bad, we must treat everyone in their group as being just as bad, for safety.
They don’t seem to understand the fundamental principles of due process or prosecutorial discretion, or at least don’t care enough about them to actually apply them. It’s an extreme form of isolationism - they want everyone who annoys them out of their life by any means possible, regardless of far-reaching consequences.
They are, in essence, not part of any civilized society.
Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have a good answer either. I can cut them off, but that’s what they want anyway. I can try outvoting them, and I suppose with enough organization that’s probably the way to go.
But what I really want is to literally cut them off. I would love for my state to just stop sending our tax dollars to the federal government and instead redirect that money to establishing programs in New York. Let’s see how long these states can manage without the necessary influx of cash to keep them afloat.
And yes, I know that’s a form of the very isolationism against which I rail.
Fundamentally, we are not a unified country, nor do we seem to be interested in being one. I think the actual vision of “United States” is dead and gone, and we need to go about actually finishing what began a long time ago.
That’s a thought process I’ve seen floating around recently. That this whole, united states experiment we tried 300 or so years ago seems to not be working out, due to this underlying problem of hate. If countrymen aren’t willing or interested in working with each other, best to just not be countrymen anymore.
I’ve been thinking back to the Civil War, and the failure of Reconstruction. If you think about it, the Confederacy was basically trying to break up with us, and we wouldn’t let them. Well, now our relationship is toxic and nobody’s happy but we have kids and now we feel like we can’t get divorced.
We distilled our politics down to two sides that literally tried to kill each other, and we never actually healed that rift.
See, that makes sense but look at what I said earlier and what @thewhaleshark said after that. No mention of partisan politics in it anywhere, just stuff about the country ripping itself in two.
This is most definitely not a Trump-specific issue. Trump is nobody and nothing. He’s an empty suit devoid of ideas simply spouting populist rhetoric. He is an accurate representation of his voting base.
All of the horror here is being perpetrated by a voting segment who doesn’t care for the particulars of governance, and is happy as long as nobody they deem a nuisance bothers them. So corrupt lawmakers run amok and turn us into a nation of serfs so their donors can get rich, and those voters don’t care because it means everyone will suffer and maybe they’ll finally shut up.
Something that only really struck me in the last few months: the reality of the “snowflake” epithet.
When I say “snowflake” about some jackass, I mean someone who us fragile and melts at the slightest heat.
When conservative shitbags I know call me a “snowflake,” they mean “special snowflake” - as in, I want special consideration, but too bad.
And that second one has a really nasty undercurrent. It’s very “bucket of crabs.” These people have it hard, so you should have it hard too. You don’t want it to be hard? What makes you so special?
It’s a position based on spite and resentment of success. I almost think that they enshrine the ability of a handful to become billionaires not because they dream of one day becoming one, but because they know it will lead to effective subjugation, and then everyone will be at their level and their existence is justified.
It also serves to explain the aforementioned position on immigration: criminals are criminals and all criminals have to be treated the same way. No room for nuance. Enforce the law as harshly and dispassionately as possible.
I see parallels to ‘all lives matter’, flat tax rates, anti-welfare, and bootstraps. The mentality seems to be either that everyone is basically working with the same tools and therefore deserves the same treatment, or that it is the responsibility of individuals to cope with their differences rather than ask their community to adapt.
Is it one, the other, both, or something else? Why do you think these mentalities develop?
At least some of it, I think, is desperation and despair. I grew up in a place mired in rural poverty, with one major source of employment - it’s the kind of place with one of Trump’s major demographics. With no way to succeed, you find yourself fighting off depression. You normalize it so that you don’t have to be reminded of it.
And when all of your neighbors are in your same circumstances, you feel a sort of camaraderie. You perpetuate the myth of hard work leading to success, because hard work is your entire life and you can’t admit that you’re failing or you’ll give up.
That’s not all of it. It doesn’t explain the suburban whites, but it’s at least a chunk of the equation.
Too bad it isn’t a North-South thing. If it were, it’d be a lot easier. Instead, it’s that white supremacist infection we never completely wiped out, back even stronger and resistant to the old remedies.
Because history & culture as taught to the majority of the population via school, media, and society is white-washed and white supremacist, self-perpetuating, and self-validating. Because compassion, empathy, and collectivism are luxuries when you feel under pressure of survival, a situation created by exploitative economic infrastructure.
But when talking about the Confederacy, one draws a geographic border around white citizens that completely ignores the black slaves trapped within.
And the modern equivalent of “let’s bust up the US” similarly ignores the descendants of those slaves, the cause of the problem, and other associated problems (incarceration, law enforcement).