You make a good point, and I think America is in the process of burning through large amounts of people who thought fascism would do anything good for them, though I don’t know how advanced that is and it may not be as far as Hungary at this point in time. There are enough similarities between the USA and Hungary’s cases with the gerrymandered electoral process, constitutional 2/3s requirements to revert the skewed rules, appointed cronies to lead many government bureaus, a captured media environment, for me to believe that the path to reverse them through democratic means is possible.
(Personal opinion follows) I’m not advocating for people to vote then wipe their hands of the matter. People should go protest and riot before or after as they like. Though I think that organized non-violent movement building is the most effective tool for this situation, and people are taking action on issues like blocking AI data centres and taking down surveillance dragnet cameras (which sometimes the media portrays as violent but to me that’s non-violent). Once a movement is large enough it can start to bear its teeth, with little bits of threatened or targeted disruptive repercussions against acts of injustice, and not everyone has to be violent to participate. If the vote is not respected, that is the ideal time to riot. Even if a Democrat takes power in 2029, that’s not the time to shut up, protests should continue so that leaders know what people think are injustices that extended beyond Trump’s rise, and would spur government to action to address more than surface-level changes. Legislating away Citizens United, impeaching the Corrupt Supreme Court or expanding it, ending oil and coal handouts, expanding the House, taxing the wealthy, enacting Universal Healthcare and a Universal Basic Income, just to name a few.
That all hinges on them feeling too insecure in their institutional power (particularly military and police, where they have relative popularity) to manipulate the vote without consequence- likely by eroding it through continuing with the same kinds of action and harming yet more people in the meantime.
I am also pretty doubtful of the chances of whomever ends up in power next, upon being handed the machinery of state, actually makes the fundamental changes necessary to get away from the underlying causes that led us here, and honestly your wishlist doesn’t either (the results stem from the particular systems and power structures at work, if we don’t address them at their root then we haven’t done anything, and since this includes the very structures that state political power relies upon…), but those are really only secondary points.
I hope that I didn’t imply that you were advocating for that, I was trying to speak purely to the point being made without any assumptions beyond.
No worries, it’s a good discussion. I share the concern about putting all the eggs in the “vote blue and things will go back to normal” basket, because that is far from guaranteed to work or sufficient. I didn’t get the impression you were painting me in any camp, but I wanted to clarify my position to pre-empt any conclusion jumpers.
You make a good point, and I think America is in the process of burning through large amounts of people who thought fascism would do anything good for them, though I don’t know how advanced that is and it may not be as far as Hungary at this point in time. There are enough similarities between the USA and Hungary’s cases with the gerrymandered electoral process, constitutional 2/3s requirements to revert the skewed rules, appointed cronies to lead many government bureaus, a captured media environment, for me to believe that the path to reverse them through democratic means is possible.
(Personal opinion follows) I’m not advocating for people to vote then wipe their hands of the matter. People should go protest and riot before or after as they like. Though I think that organized non-violent movement building is the most effective tool for this situation, and people are taking action on issues like blocking AI data centres and taking down surveillance dragnet cameras (which sometimes the media portrays as violent but to me that’s non-violent). Once a movement is large enough it can start to bear its teeth, with little bits of threatened or targeted disruptive repercussions against acts of injustice, and not everyone has to be violent to participate. If the vote is not respected, that is the ideal time to riot. Even if a Democrat takes power in 2029, that’s not the time to shut up, protests should continue so that leaders know what people think are injustices that extended beyond Trump’s rise, and would spur government to action to address more than surface-level changes. Legislating away Citizens United, impeaching the Corrupt Supreme Court or expanding it, ending oil and coal handouts, expanding the House, taxing the wealthy, enacting Universal Healthcare and a Universal Basic Income, just to name a few.
That all hinges on them feeling too insecure in their institutional power (particularly military and police, where they have relative popularity) to manipulate the vote without consequence- likely by eroding it through continuing with the same kinds of action and harming yet more people in the meantime.
I am also pretty doubtful of the chances of whomever ends up in power next, upon being handed the machinery of state, actually makes the fundamental changes necessary to get away from the underlying causes that led us here, and honestly your wishlist doesn’t either (the results stem from the particular systems and power structures at work, if we don’t address them at their root then we haven’t done anything, and since this includes the very structures that state political power relies upon…), but those are really only secondary points.
I hope that I didn’t imply that you were advocating for that, I was trying to speak purely to the point being made without any assumptions beyond.
No worries, it’s a good discussion. I share the concern about putting all the eggs in the “vote blue and things will go back to normal” basket, because that is far from guaranteed to work or sufficient. I didn’t get the impression you were painting me in any camp, but I wanted to clarify my position to pre-empt any conclusion jumpers.