And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system – basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures, not “just” pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them – I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn’t even recognize.
Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I’m really hoping that 2024 isn’t a repetition of the same fascist takeover that’s enabled by it, because now we’re much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall, they’re all legal now.
I think something we often forget is that people can have spot on analysis and very intellectual takes in the past, but it doesn’t necessarily mean their modern takes are also good. Sometimes that’s an inherent thing too because of changing times. People who criticized US actions in the cold war were likely right – but a lot of them have adopted the imperialist position today that Ukraine belongs to Russia and it should be a pawn between NATO and Russia, instead of a self sovereign country that makes its own decisions.
Makes you wonder a bit how things will develop in the future, but I digress.
Yeah. It’s a big shame. I read Lawrence O’Donnell’s book about 1968. It’s so fucking sad. I couldn’t finish.
And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system – basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures, not “just” pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them – I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn’t even recognize.
Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I’m really hoping that 2024 isn’t a repetition of the same fascist takeover that’s enabled by it, because now we’re much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall, they’re all legal now.
I think something we often forget is that people can have spot on analysis and very intellectual takes in the past, but it doesn’t necessarily mean their modern takes are also good. Sometimes that’s an inherent thing too because of changing times. People who criticized US actions in the cold war were likely right – but a lot of them have adopted the imperialist position today that Ukraine belongs to Russia and it should be a pawn between NATO and Russia, instead of a self sovereign country that makes its own decisions.
Makes you wonder a bit how things will develop in the future, but I digress.