If you’re from another country just being exposed to American media and not familiar with why that media is the way it is, it may seem like this hate and racism thing wasn’t around as much before and is around more now. Unfortunately, if you are familiar with American history or have spent any time in a predominately conservative area, none of what you mentioned is anything new or even at higher levels than it has ever been. Almost all these hateful bigots have been that way for their entire lives. Politicians are just directly pandering to them now since Trump proved it wouldn’t destroy your political career when you are totally open about demagoguery rather than dogwhistling like right wingers used to think they had to do.
I know that America has been built on the blood of the natives. I know that the country’s been racist for a very long time.
But I also see the good. I balance this pessimistic vision with all the creatives, nice folks from America.
It’s not just the consumerism, the racism & the guns. It’s the diversity, the craziness, and the exploration of a big country full of nature.
My country is a lot of things, for good and bad.
I just watched a video where a woman from Tennessee explained that every resident was required to get a new license plate that year, and that they had the choice between 2 standard options, the only difference being that one said “In God We Trust” and one didn’t. Oh, and the ones that had “In God We Trust” had the numbers come first. So for example, every “Christian” license plate reads 123 ABC, and every “atheist” plate reads ABC 123.
What the fuck?
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I mean, yeah America’s rightward spiral is depressing, especially if you live there. But it’s not exactly an American-exclusive phenomenon. Italy elected a far-right party, France might in their next Presidential election, and even Germany’s far-right party is surging in the polls. Honestly, I’m struggling to think of a country that hasn’t seen a massive rightward surge over the last few years.
In Australia we recently had a considerable shift towards progressive politics after a long ass run of conservative government. The centre right (moderate conservatives) were absolutely demolished in our last election in favour of progressive minor party candidates. Our centre ‘left’ party has certainly moved further to the right (this has been happening for a while now though) but they are having their asses handed to them by our progressive left party who is growing in popularity, especially with younger voters.
We are historically a very conservative country and I have no doubt we’ll eventually trend back towards this tradition. But for now I’m enjoying being the exception to the rest of the world.
I think our country is going to be openly and unashamedly fascist in less than ten years, personally. The PR people will come up with a better name for it (kind of like how they swapped out ‘white nationalism’ for Nazism) but it’ll be functionally the same.
Biden is supposedly a progressive, but he’s done too little as most of the country contends with a 30% to 50% increase in their cost of living. People aren’t going to care that Trump/DeSantis are fascists if they’re the candidate of change in the next election.
Sadly the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” is still relevant when it comes to voting.
There is only so much POTUS can do without the support of the Congress, and the House is currently controlled by people who would rather watch America fail than a Democrat succeed.
He had Congress for two years.
Obama had a supermajority for part of his presidency.
The problem isn’t congressional control. It’s that we have bipartisanship only for things that are absolutely shitty. That’s why they can make 100+ billion appear out of thin air for another country’s war, but won’t spend a dime trying to help Americans affected by massive inflation.
Trump is a poopee cacca. The GOP is a cacca poopee.
This is unironically the level of discourse modern Conservatives deserve.
For me it is weirdly entertaining and frightening at the same time.
Seeing the humor in things is an amazing coping mechanism. Otherwise, I think I’d just go insane myself.
That was my take on Brexit (American here)
What happened was, for the GOP, all their propaganda was made for the plebs. They knew it was all bullshit.
However after a generation you get a bunch of true believers whom were raised on Fox News and AM radio, and this is what happens.
Trump for example was never “in on” the propaganda, he was just a boring asshole that only watched Fox News and underage beauty pageants. So of course he’s a true believer. It’s also the reason why he resonates with his “base” because he literally talks like them on Facebook. Word for word sounded like some of my distant “kinfolk” and one of the reasons why I ditched Facebook. It’s literally “he’s like me frfr” except everything that matters ie rich, coastal elite.
The only way to get his cult to back off would be if he said he was a Democrat now.
Trump doesn’t believe in anything except himself. He threw out the ‘Mexico will pay for the Wall’ in a speech and when the crowd reacted, he repeated it.
Or trump has perfectly mastered the art of « dumbing down »
