I’ve pointed this out elsewhere, but if I’m going to have something of a megaphone, this needs to be endlessly pointed out. What is happening is not normal, and the more we normalize it, the more they win.
We are in the late Weimar. Some 248 years was a good run, but this is no longer a democracy, and the sooner people realize that, the better.
This is not hyperbole. And fuck off with “we were always a republic.” So was Rome until exactly this inflection point. Learn some fucking history.
My thinking is too many people are comparing us to Germany and not enough people are thinking about the colapse of the USSR. This doesn’t look like consolidation of power to me. This looks like turning off all the pressure values so they can point and say “look how corrupt and broken everything is!” when it all explodes. It’s not Hitler, Its some fusion of Putin tatics. People are going to die. This is the gas for a worldwide crisis.
I think the USSR is good to point out.
Didn’t some rich assholes buy up everything in there for cheap during all that, and become the new lords through Oligarchy?
Thats where we are heading here. With nearly every cut, there’s a remark about how the private sector could do it better. They are normalizing the idea that they, the oligarchs, the billionaires, can run government better than government can, so when the National Weather Service has it’s duties assumed by The Weather Channel(for a nominal fee of course), it will somehow be “better”, when Medicare and Medicaid are failed and private insurance companies shored up, we will be grateful for the “efficiency”. When social security “runs out due to bureaucratic mismanagenent”, the privately held 401k will be the only hope.
I don’t really have the time or inclination for a full treatise. Fascism is by definition the blending of large business owners with the government. Without that, all you have is authoritarianism. Look up IG Farben and then tell me that’s not Meta or Google.
I’m not saying it’s not fascism. I agree with you. But comparing us to Germany isn’t going to get anyone else to pay attention who isn’t already paying attention. Do you know what the oversimplified and stupid response to your comparison will be? “They’re not being antisemitic.”
People hear “Nazi Germany” and just think about the Holocaust in a gross oversimplification. They don’t see that the new “Jew” is just the liberal, the “communist-terrorist,” the “mentally ill.” There is no one “other” this time. There doesn’t really need to be, though.
If you want to engage people, the collapse of the USSR is another historical parallel we are mirroring, not the collapse itself, but the takeover of power by oligarchs and state actors right after. We are quickly heading toward that point.
These fascists are going to crash the world economy. What that means, I don’t know. Maybe just a new digital currency, maybe a new military-industrial complex, but when our economy fails, it will play out like the economic capture of the Russian government after the fall of the USSR.
The fascists want this. This is some Yeltsin shit, man. It’s German-Russian fusion, fascism on the rise.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1629536
We’re already a third-world country. You just don’t see it if you’re not in poverty-stricken areas.
What’s your point? In relation to this conversation what are you trying to say? I don’t disagree with you, but why are you bringing it up now, in this discussion?
Because so many people don’t realize how far we’ve already fallen. I’m going to beat this drum, over and over, for mostly the choir, but when I was in a newsroom, I viewed it as a win if I could make a few people more informed. It’s why I’m here and volunteered to mod.
Data like these are no longer reliably being reported by local outlets, so why not use a platform to do so?
Seems valid enough. The rhyming with USSR is some Putin and Stalin. DOGE is consolidating power under some leader from independent agencies.