this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Politics
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nah. i mean, maybe stable authoritarianism is a risk, but its not currently what's happening. we can catastrophize about what will happen decades from now all we want, but the fact that fascists exist right now doesn't mean they're gonna win, or that they will organize an effective surveillance state, or that that surveillance state will last. all it means is that we have bigots screeching about bigotry, which historically is nothing new whatsoever, and even if we're ramping up to nazi 2.0, our response should be the same. fight back.
Have you been paying attention the past 25-50 years? I’m not someone who became a pessimist because of Trump. The problem is largely structural, baked into our social, political, and economic institutions. It’s because I’m a student of history and politics that I think the way I do. The patterns in our political life over the past several decades have many historical analogies, none of them good. I believe in fighting back, but sometimes strategic retreats are necessary to win a war.
i'm not currently in a position where a "strategic retreat" is possible. if fascists take over, i'm fucked, and alot of the people i love are fucked. so forgive me if i don't want to die to win your war. the reality is, no matter what you think you've discerned from historical records, the information landscape, the technology, and the material conditions are different now then they were then, and having such certainty about decades into the future is, to my mind, mostly foolish. analogies are not prophecy, and portents of doom are useless at best. doomers suck, the world has changed, is changing, and will change, and if we don't involve ourselves with that process then your prophecy will come true.
i dunno, this whole attitude just pisses me off, honestly. i don't care for your imagined apocalypse. people need help right now, fascists need bashing right now, not decades from now. maybe you are currently politically engaged, taking the necessary steps to stop this bullshit in its tracks, that would be great, but to be honest that usually isn't the case for people who seem resigned to just let the tide take them. the reality is that we're all going to die, regardless of if fascists take charge or the earth burns or we all live in paradise. everything we build is gonna turn to dust. and we can whine about that all we want, mope about how its hopeless, but living life that way is boring and stupid. the past is just books, and the future is just stories. all we have is now.
i genuinely used to feel the way you do, too. it turned out it wasn't because i really had enough knowledge to be certain the world was ending (fun fact, you don't. nobody does, and every single person throughout history who thought they did died of something that wasn't the end of the world, or is currently living in a conspicuously not-ended world.), but because i have clinical depression. if you already want to die, you can confirmation bias your way into a near infinite quantity of information justifying that belief as it turns out.
The point of my statement was, in part, that people like you are fucked either way. If fascists take the country, you’re fucked, and if they take your state and the states that don’t suck leave, you’re fucked. So I honestly don’t understand why you think I want you to die for, or even be involved in, “my war.” By my estimation, none of it effects you. You’re going to be a hostage whether others can escape or not.
I agree people need help and fascists need bashing right now. However things change, that remains true. And, actually, I used to feel like you. I was politically engaged (studied politics at university, was the Secretary of my college Dems group, volunteered and worked on political campaigns, voted in almost every election) for 20 years, which is why I feel the way I do now. And putting my decades of severe clinical depression into remission only made me believe this more strongly. I want to finally really live, and a fascist takeover of the whole country will really put that in jeopardy. I’ve studied our institutions and historical analogies enough to know how bad things are. If you have to deny that, if you have to believe the electoral system will save us, to get through the day to live somewhere you can’t leave, I can’t begrudge you that. But don’t come for my political knowledge or involvement. I have receipts.