This is the kind of article that piques my suspicion. It tends towards sensationalism, e.g.:
'For over two decades now, Americans have been battered by non-stop crises at home and abroad...'
Have we been 'battered' ? Have the crisis really been non-stop? Fox news/cable outlets tell us we have, but what's driving their agenda.
And what is the source of this article? Some partisan conservative think-tank guy who isn't particularly insightful, even as far as this type of writing goes.
This moment may be fraught, but imagine living through the period from JFK's assassination to Watergate. That period must have felt like it was all crumbling.
I mean, we had 9/11, the War on Terror, the 2008 financial crisis, the entire Trump presidency, various natural disasters, COVID-19, an incessant housing crisis, and the economic problems that followed the pandemic (such as inflation). I don't think it's hyperbole to say that the United States has been battered by a full barrage of crises and disasters since the start of the century, with the exception of a few years of relative stability in between. The kind of privilege it would require to have been able to live through the past twenty years without feeling battered is hard for me to fathom.
Respectfully, I will disagree. 2009 was a tough year and 2020/21 was pretty apocalyptic but day to day life didn't feel as described in this opinion piece (to me at least). I spent much of that period installing irrigation systems and getting by on temp jobs, it wasn't cake, but it wasn't tumbleweeds adrift in a hellish nightmare-scape either.
I guess what compels me to bother disagreeing is the author is such a fraud, telling us how the last twenty years he spent at 'think-tanks' with catered lunch, and in academia (which is about as far removed from reality as can be) have been just oh-so-awful.
The last twenty years in Russia, Venezuela, etc., the argument is compelling, but in the U.S., I just don't agree.
That's fair. Comparing the United States to third-world countries to invalidate the argument that we have experienced a series of crises is fallacious, however ("fallacy of relative privation", a form of red herring fallacy).
I don’t see how we don’t split. The lines aren’t geographic this time though, they’re largely urban vs rural, so IDK how land would get split up.
I don’t think there’s reconciliation to be had, it’s either war or whichever side decides to declare the other “enemies of the state” and lock em all up. How can you bring people back to society and democracy when their entire belief system begins and ends with “My identifying group is intrinsically superior and should have ultimate dominion?” and they refuse to budge?
I think it's less of a government thing and more of a personal thing. People who live in cities need to dig deep and try to understand why their countrymen in the rural areas believe the way they do, and vice versa. For example, the gun control debate: Someone living in a rural area who is thirty minutes or more from a police response sees advocacy for gun control as a direct threat on their ability to protect themselves, their family, and their property. On the other hand, a city dweller sees advocacy for gun rights as a threat to their safety, because in their experience only those wishing to do them harm, and the police, have access to firearms. (Full disclosure: I have an opinion on this topic but I'm merely using it to illustrate my point here)
If people can somehow learn to respect and understand each other, more compromise may be had and we might be able to turn around this slow-motion trainwreck. Nobody seems interested in compromise anymore; the only acceptable politics is some form of tyranny, whether its the tyranny of dense urban center over rural farmland (California being a fantastic example of this, but it is far from the only state) or the tyranny of one party over the other. Compromise is the name of the game, and without it, democracy fails.
EDIT: Lol, the comments are proving my point much better than my examples did!
Oh, okay, we'll just hurt minorities a little bit. Compromise!
I live in a rural area. The old "I sat down in a diner with some conservative rural folks and they were really nice to me can't we all get along 🥺" style of thinking ignores the much deeper and very real divide in basic values.
Agreed. I grew up in a rural area and lived in another for years. I miss it conceptually but I can’t live around those types anymore. Sure, there are some that don’t care who you are or what you’re up to even if they’re conservative, but between your house and theirs is a buffet of every symbol in the book clearly signifying that the people there do NOT agree.
Like you said, alot of it isn’t political anymore, it’s moral. For alot of people, now it’s “religious” which inherently makes them immovable. I fell out with my Dad when I turned 18, but I blocked him from my life for good after he commented recently “Those protestors wouldn’t be a problem if we gunned them down.” My aunt scolded me for blocking him over “politics,” nah it’s moral I don’t want that person in my life.
People always talk about compromise, and I’d LOVE to be able to see compromise, but it seems to me that the only “compromise” that happens is giving the right yet another good faith inch so they can yank another bad faith mile (and the fact that if you call them out for acting in bad faith that makes you worse than them somehow.)
Yeah, the right is trying to soothe their conscious by labeling what is clearly a moral decision as politics. No, saying that it'd be better to kill your fellow citizens than allow them to express themselves is not political, it is clearly a lack of morality. Hope you told your aunt to pound sand and take a hard look at what morality she believes in that allows for people to wish death on others.
There’s a quote from the movie Vengeance that I think sums it up well.
It’s not necessarily that people in rural areas are dumb. It’s that they’re creative people who don’t have any outlets, so they get so caught up in the conspiracies because they’re better than the alternative (nothing).
Which of course itself is a byproduct of anti-intellectualism, I think it is something that could be solved with support for education and extracurriculars, but it’s very much a cultural issue that needs to be addressed by propping up citizens intellectual interests instead of tearing them away.
I think it is simply that they don't have a lot of contact with people who are different, which most humans need to see others as people, and the main broadcasters in rural areas are conservatives that use the right terminology to convey their message. It became a feedback loop, where the few people they interact with share the same fears that they are all bombarded with, so their fears of the unknown are reinforced.
Then shit like Facebook allowed them to dial the whole thing up even further.
People in more densely populated areas are more likely to catch on that different people are just people, which is why they end up more liberal. Just like college education tends to correlate with being liberal.
Liberals could counter this with tailoring some messaging to the rural context, but they have a huge hurdle with the conservative promoted anti-intellectualism. So I kind of agree with you, but personally think the targeted messaging of conservatives is a far bigger influence than just the reception of conspiracies.
Not even a majority of Republicans want a civil war. It's just a bunch of wonks looking for views and loud idiots who don't get what it would actually take for it to happen or what the fallout would be. This has also been a narrative that Russia has been pushing for decades.
I live in Texas. The rural and urban Republicans here do not all see eye to eye. When they've actually worked at passing non-performative legislation the two groups have fought each other on many occasions. There is no monolithic GOP here. And if there's no monolithic GOP in Texas, then it likely doesn't exist elsewhere. They only succeed here because of the stigma attached to voting Democrat. If the Dems had run someone other than Beto and who had good charisma, there might have been a fair chance at unseating Abbott. As it stands, Beto still gave him a run for his money and his smallest win yet. Hell, it was the smallest GOP win since W beat Ann Richards in 1994, so almost 30 years. This is against a man who the GOP here absolutely hates with a burning passion. There were plenty Republicans interviewed who said they didn't want Abbott, but Beto was a non-starter for them to vote Democrat. All that and he still got the biggest vote percent for a Dem in 28 years.
All this talk of civil war is just bunk that has no basis in reality whatsoever. It is all just foreign propaganda that people on both sides are eating up without using their critical thinking skills.
Edit: Allow me to put forth a more timely statistic. Recently the Texit movement tried to get a resolution to discuss Texas leaving the Union. Out of the 103k signatures they gathered, less than 9k were actual Texas citizens. So, in a state with 30 million people, this group could not even muster the 0.3% of the population of this state to want to leave the union. They didn't even get 0.03%. So, do you think Texas really supports leaving the Union or joining a Civil War? No, they don't. Neither do the politicians because they know the absolute nightmare it would be to try to support all the people who would lose their federal support. Every military veteran getting support from the government, every retiree, every child in a poor household. Texas makes a fair bit of coin, yeah, but they don't make enough to be able to replace the payment for all those without significantly raising their taxes and people here are already pissed about taxes, especially their skyrocketing property taxes. There's zero chance any politician who supports any increase in the way the government generates funds, whether you call them taxes or fees or whatever, will get re-elected. Abbott, Patrick, etc, are not so stupid as to not be aware of this. Nor are other conservative political leaders across the country that stupid or unaware, either.
I thought all the right wing fucks were boycotting target over their pride collection, the black Santa, and the wheel chair Santa, and trans nutcracker, or some other reason they need to clutch their pearls.
“Let’s consider the possibility that Teri Blair’s pattern of shoplifting is an indication that she could be dealing with an undiagnosed mental health disorder or biochemical abnormalities, so we should respond with compassion and treatment” is something an educated liberal might say, had not their books been burned and their schools loaded with hate.
So much for upholding the constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment. What good is it if not applied to insurrectionists?
The Michigan Court of Claims judge who first got the case said state law doesn’t give election officials any leeway to police the eligibility of presidential primary candidates. He also said the case raised a political question that shouldn’t be decided in the courts.
His decision was upheld by the Michigan Court of Appeals, which said: “At the moment, the only event about to occur is the presidential primary election. But as explained, whether Trump is disqualified is irrelevant to his placement on that particular ballot.”
The order from the Michigan Supreme Court was unsigned, and the court did not release a vote count.
Unlike in Colorado, the Michigan courts rejected the case wholly on procedural grounds. They never reached the questions of whether January 6 was an insurrection and whether Trump engaged in it.
Cowards, tacitly supporting anti-democratic fascism and not even signing their names to it.
The problem with section 3 is that it says nothing of running for a position, just that someone who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion may not hold an office, elected or appointed. If we go with the strictest interpretation, Trump absolutely can run for president. He can even win. However, can he hold the office? That's another question. It could be sidestepped if the Republicans gain 2/3rds majority in both Houses of Congress as they can "remove such disability." If they don't, it will go to the Supreme Court most likely. And, well, barring several of them dropping dead or retiring, we all know how that is gonna play out(2000 all over again, basically).
What we really need to see in 2024 are states amending their constitutions to bar those who engage in insurrection and rebellion from being on the ballot or, better yet, from being certified or whatever it is in each state when deciding electors for the electorate college vote. This is something that should have happened after Jan 6th, but, well, here we are.
Regardless of what happens, any outcome other then Trump being made sitting president again is going to harm the Republicans going forward as it will further alienate Republican voters from the voting process. The likely violent backlash from a Trump loss will also likely alienate more levelheaded independents from voting for Republicans, as well. If he is refused to be seated, shit is going to be insane. This election is a hail Mary for the Republicans - if it goes any other way than in their favor they have likely hamstrung themselves for the foreseeable future. It could even blow up in their faces if it goes to them if Trump actually goes through with trying to make his senile self a dictator.
Impressive that a small terrorist group who’s main occupation is launching handheld rockets across town has the resources, capability, and desire to fund a bunch of student groups in the US. Not to lobby the government directly, or foucus on anything with a reasonable expectation of actually helping them, but for PR among college students that if successful would hamper their own retirement efforts and operations.
Besides, I thought that this party just had a major stage vote that it shouldn’t turn down funding from the literal Nazi party, so this is surely just Hamas exercising their free speech.
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