Are you the same PugJesus who got on someone else about how much progress there’s been since Nixon was President? iirc you’re the one who pointed out that women in that era couldn’t get bank accounts.

Avoiding nailing yourself down to any specific timeline because reality is inconvenient, got it.

Yes, no Dem was involved in passing those laws.

Fucking what.

Damn, I wish I wasn’t already boycotting Disney so I could boycott Disney again

They do. I just see it used far too often as a condemnation of ‘moderates’ in general, when MLK Jr. had no problem with working with people who were far more moderate than him… as long as they were willing to go forward, and not backwards or remain in place.

That was when single-income households were a thing and you could pay for college with a summer job, so I’m gonna say “not enough for a fascist takeover.” “Boohoo black people can have rights” is fundamentally different from “I am one missed paycheck away from eviction and homelessness.”

God, I love the modern day, when even our leftists believe in MAGA nostalgia.

Yes I do, duh. This was coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and heading into the Vietnam War protests. The CIA and FBI were off the leash specifically because leftwing movements were a real threat to the government’s interests.

You’re fucking kidding me.

The CIA had been off its leash since the Eisenhower administration, and the 1970s is when a wider perception in government that they might be a problem emerged. The FBI had been developing a much darker edge than intended under Hoover’s entire tenure as FBI head.

Would you like to elaborate how the Civil Rights Movement was against the Federal government’s interests? Or how the Vietnam War protests were a serious threat to government policy, when Nixon’s entire policy was based around extricating the US from Vietnam without looking ‘weak’ to the base?

Compare to the modern day when most of the population’s idea of a radical leftist is Bernie Sanders.

… would you like to cite any major politician in the Nixon era as radical as Sanders? This not being an exhortation of how radical Sanders is, but a condemnation of how conservative the 60s and 70s actually were? The closest you would get is McGovern (who was very liberal, and not even vaguely socialist), and he was crushed in a landslide.

Again, Watergate. None of these factors have to be perfect or even good in an objective sense not to lead to fascism, but the decline is very noticeable.

The only reason Nixon was confronted was because the Republicans felt like they had lost control of the narrative. He wasn’t confronted by the GOP when the news first broke - it took literal years. If Trump is confronted for losing control of the narrative and replaced with Vance, will you think that fascism in the US has been ‘successfully’ curbed?

Well, they’ll cast the people fascism will murder into the fire. Fascism itself they’ll celebrate, because it means the fall of their TRUE enemy - the shitlibs

So, you understand that the wall was a metaphor, but decided that the ‘fifty years’ was literal.

Okay, so would you like to elaborate on how long the Dems have been ‘not working’, or is nailing yourself down to a specific timeline making yourself too vulnerable to being confronted with nasty things like ‘reality’?

Finished Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary In Cold War Africa. A very nuanced look at the man. A real idealist bursting with energy, a brilliant man and a visionary, yet inexperienced in politics and governance and prone to misjudging people by assuming (and demanding) the best of them. By nature an improviser, trying to improvise an entire government, and often with a mindset too military for civilian tastes, but too ‘revolutionary’ for military tastes. It’s made me hungry to read more about the situation ‘on the ground’ during Sankara’s administration.

iterally yes, because while these things are symptoms of fascism they’re not necessarily causes of it. It’s not any easier to be fascist under these circumstances than it is in the modern day; the only change is the specific kind of liberal commie shit the fascists want to do away with. Here’s (a non-exhaustive list of) what does make it easier to engineer a fascist takeover: economic and social uncertainty, weakness of leftwing movements, trust in democracy and institutions, centralization of power and unwillingness or inability to hold leaders accountable. I trust you can plainly tell that today’s America (and even 2024 America) is worse than Nixon’s America on all of these fronts, but if not then for one ask yourself why there’s not a modern Watergate. It’s not like either side of the isle is lacking in material.

… you think the late 60s and early 70s didn’t have massive economic and social uncertainty, weakness of left-wing movements, low trust in democracy and institutions, centralization of power and unwillingness or inability to hold leaders accountable?

Fuck’s sake, a national election was blatantly stolen in the 60s, twice, and no one batted a fucking eye.

Take off the rose-tinted glasses.

Nixon’s admin was up to some pretty authoritarian stuff, but it wasn’t fascist authoritarian stuff.

…

Yes, as we all know, I’m an opponent of Mamdani and not a supporter.

Keep bootlicking, fascist, just like you simp for the genocide of Ukrainians.

In terms of how close American society was to fascism it’s actually worse, so congrats on doing negative work I guess.

You’re absolutely right, in a time when the CIA and FBI were both utterly off their leash, repression of left-wing movements and unions was rampant, domestic assassinations were engineered by the government, and brutalization of minorities and dissidents was much more widespread, back when marital rape was legal and women couldn’t open bank accounts in their own name, there was less fascism. Thank you for your brilliant take on Nixon’s America. What’s next? Perhaps you’d like to proclaim how much more democratic Woodrow Wilson’s America was than the modern day? Or how much less slavery there was in Buchanan’s America?

People who voted for Biden in 2020, but refrained from voting Harris in 2024, overwhelmingly named left-purist reasons, and numbered in the millions

Founding a new religion around the goddess Libertas, She demands immediate and temporal punishment for all fascists 🙏

Who else wants to sacrifice a goat with me to pray for the imminent punishment of the wicked?

There’s no grand conspiracy involved in people being fucking morons.

I don’t have a plan yet. No one seems to be interested in asking what I’d want to see to vote for them, only that I’m wrong for the vote that I might or might not cast in 3.5 years time, which I find very interesting on an intellectual level.

It’s almost like I’m expected to uncritically serve up my vote to them for not being the other party.

It’s almost like the other party are literal fucking fascists who are intent on murdering people, yet you think that the lives of the murdered is ‘not enough’ entertainment for you to oppose literal fucking fascism.

“I MIGHT vote against the Nazis, I don’t know yet! It depends on how entertaining the SDP is!”

And then you wonder why potential Aktion T4 victims spit in your food.

This tracks for the first year of a fascist regime.

God fucking dammit.

I’m sorry that clearly fucking stating my issues and outlining the logic that leads to the invariable conclusion is ‘reading into things’, and I’m sorry that being fucking pissed that, even after it’s been pointed out numerous times, that you’re treating the lives of marginalized groups in the US, including my fucking life, as a ‘prize’ that needs to be ‘won’ by the Blue fucking Circus before your holy hand will deign to vote against our murder on your fucking ballot. I understand that my tone is making you uncomfortable, when you would prefer asspats for endorsing my death. Agree to disagree, right? It’s nothing major. Just another game to play and then go home safe and snug every night.

Have the day you plan to vote for.

Difference between true Liberals and leftists. Despite not agreeing with everything on the far left, we know that voting progressives if they are serious is the better option than maga.

Not always, considering that fighting with moderate liberals to vote for Mamdani in NYC is shaping up to be a struggle.

People are often stupid regardless of ideology. The point is to ensure that it’s understood that purity-testing in the face of literal fascism is both immoral and socially unacceptable. It’s something that has to be pushed in the broader civic culture, not just where on a political axis you align.

It’s not something that’s ‘inherent’ to leftism or not inherent to liberalism.

Why do you keep reducing my argument down to things like the above?

What I want is for this to stop happening:

And why the fuck do you think that handing victory to the GOP will stop that from happening?

Why do you think it will do anything except accelerate that, assuming that graph is true (it is, quite demonstrably, not).

Great! Can we agree that it’s the fault of Democratic leadership and their strategies that the Fascists got the Presidency

They bear a good deal of the blame.

Who is talking about sinking a Dem presidency? Other people can make whatever decision they like. My vote belongs to no one by default anymore.

You are. You are literally talking about the prospect of not voting for a Dem against literal fucking Nazis.

Why? Because when R went full on Hitler what did D do at the very next presidential election? Did Kamala pull to the left in her campaign? No.

…

… why would the GOP going full fascist turn the Dems left?

There’s not some magic balance or pendulum in politics. The Dems aim for what demographics they think will give them a winning coalition. The country, not having moved dramatically left in the past 4 years, was not going to result in a dramatically more left Dem platform since 2020.

It was the same tired shit that they used to justify working against Bernie, the same tired shit Pelosi uses to justify working against any progressive at all

What.

And, it’s not YOUR job to convince me I’ve got them all wrong. It’s THEIRS.

Oh, you’re absolutely right, it’s not my job as a citizen to convince anyone not to endorse my death. After all. Blue Circus didn’t earn my life.

Treating this like some kind of fucking sports team is exactly why politics in this country is so fucked. You embrace the same idiotic bullshit of politics as spectacle that’s core to fascism, because, apparently, you don’t make the connections between what happens in government and what happens here in the real fucking world.

My vote is mine. It’s not yours or anyone else’s. If they don’t want it, that’s OK. But if they do, they need to act like it.

Your vote is your’s. And all the consequences of what you vote for, or fail to vote against, is also your’s.

If the lives of your loved ones aren’t worth a Blue Circus that doesn’t entertain you enough, I can’t stop you from endorsing fascism and genocide.

But I will absolutely condemn you for it, with what time I have left.

If you choose to allow fascism next election because the ‘shitlibs’ haven’t been entertaining enough, every ounce of blood that results that could’ve been prevented is on your fucking hands.

If you spend fifty years pushing a wall and the wall hasn’t moved, you can’t say you’ve done anything.

This you?

MLK Jr. is speaking about people who claim to be allies but insist on doing nothing and rebuking the Civil Rights movement at every turn.