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America is on the verge of something fateful, but it cannot escape history

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-15/us-election-america-cant-escape-its-history/104305618

Of all the schisms that cleave contemporary America, few are more stark than the divide between those who consider themselves to be victims of US history and those who fear they will be casualties of its future.

America is on the verge of something fateful, but it cannot escape history

47 comments

WoahWoah

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Why are white people so worried about being a minority in the US? Are minorities treated poorly or something?

rekabis

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LOL 😂 the irony in that statement is thick enough to stick a spoon vertically in it and have it remain standing.

Regressives fear becoming the subject of the hatreds they spew out against others who are not white, cis, male, and Christian. Which is why conservatism is an evil ideology best left in the dustbin of history.

InverseParallax

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This whole thing seems so easy to solve:

Take away the electoral votes of the south until they finally sort their shit out.

We never should have given it back to them after reconstruction, the VRA was dismantled because a conservative supreme court said 'it's been in place so long it must have fixed things, and you can't prove it hasn't!' followed by waves of voter suppression throughout the south.

Let's go back to reconstruction and try it again, we shouldn't have stopped, that corrupt bargain in 1877 was a mistake, we just let the plantation class slime right back into power.

octopus_ink

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Obligatory -

FUCK YOU ANDREW JOHNSON!

InverseParallax

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Amen, he let the South assassinate Lincoln and get away with it because it made him president.

csm10495

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I'd say get rid of the electoral college. Popular vote to elect the president.

RumorsOfLove

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i fear we will all be casualties of its future

BreadstickNinja

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Superbly written article. The author distills the conflict very accurately.

OccamsRazer

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Well, it's very accurate from one perspective anyway. The author is obviously a Democrat/progressive.

LilB0kChoy

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That’s a convenient way to dismiss something that doesn’t fit your view.

OccamsRazer

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Based on op comment, I thought it was going to be an objective assessment of different views and perspectives, but it obviously isn't. Maybe that was my bad assumption.

TargaryenTKE

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In what way? The article mainly presents historical facts, not ideological theories. And when it does present theories, it does so within the historical context surrounding it. That was the whole point of the article, that one's view of history directly relates to their political leaning. If you want to be fair and balanced but refuse to acknowledge that one side is clearly doing more criminal/immoral acts and/or just straight up lying than the other party, then you're not being fair at all; you're giving false credibility to an obvious conman simply because you don't want to admit you've been played

todd_bonzalez

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Yeah, historical accuracy is implicitly anti-Conservative. Before you know it you'll be asking for such biased things as "evidence" and "accountability".

OccamsRazer

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I don't believe in putting the worst possible spin and interpretation on one person or party and giving the other a complete pass. I was hoping for an objective assessment of conservatives motives and beliefs, but it was pretty much the same old "conservatives are racist". Trying to distill it down to racism is ignorant at best, but is more likely just another opinion piece with an agenda. Is Trump tapping into nationalist tendencies? Well yeah, but that's not what characterizes conservatives in general, and it's not racist in and of itself. Nationalism isn't necessarily racist (though it can be, and to some it is), specifically it's pride in what the nation stands for and what is required to maintain the nation the way it is. Or at least the essence that makes the nation. Again, to some this has racism at its roots, but to most (in my experience), it's about ideals and values that are irrelevant of race. What do you think are the core differences between progressives and conservatives? What is the true, fundamental difference in world view between one who is conservative and one who is progressive?

Asafum

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What is the true, fundamental difference in world view between one who is conservative and one who is progressive?

One believes government can be leveraged to encourage/enact positive change, that a lot of people need to be coerced into doing what's right (read: business owners) and that a population doesn't need to reenforce or retain one race as their majority, that a diverse population breeds creativity and growth is inspired by such.

The other believes that government shouldn't be responsible for anything other than the defense of the country, that the society of that nation is almost entirely decided by the race and culture of a given majority and that it should always remain as such. (Read: there's your racism) and that might makes right (money = power. You gained that money however you did and therefore what you do with it is always morally correct.)

OccamsRazer

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Thanks for actually answering the question! I would distill it down a little further though, and say that the difference between conservative and progressive is that progressives believe that human nature is malleable and that the system can be used to drive humanity in a positive direction. On the other hand, conservatives believe that human nature cannot be fundamentally changed and that attempts to do so will result in dystopia of some kind, or an overall decrease in happiness as humankind strays further from it's nature. Obviously there are people within either of these camps who take things way too far. I don't remember where I read this theory, but it's the only one that has held up over the years and in various contexts.

barsquid

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Regressives are racist, though. They specifically chose to be racist theocrats as part of Southern Strategy. They ran a racist who said Mexicans are rapists and thieves (ironically he is a rapist and a thief). They are currently running a racist who is saying Haitian people are stealing pets and eating them.

"This article is too biased because it correctly presents the racist nationalism party as participating in racist nationalism."

OccamsRazer

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You literally made no effort to understand my comment.

stoned_ape

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The current GOP is still entrenched in their Southern Strategy. To quote Lee Atwater:

Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "removed, removed, removed." By 1968 you can't say "removed"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "removed, removed."

This plus fundamentalist Christianity is the basis of the modern GOP playbook, only now it's Latinos that are the target, at least moreso than blacks

Sure we can't distill it down to just racism since the GOP has become so entrenched with the religious right, so let's just call it Christofascist Racism, but let's not ignore 60 years of Republican racism and bullshit

Edit: Lemmy blocks the n-word even when it's a direct quote, but Atwater was using that derogatory term for blacks in the above quote

OccamsRazer

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That's just demagoguery. There's a guy I know who thinks progressives hate America and everything they do is for the sole purpose of destroying it. It's like that. I get that it's far simpler to reduce your (political) enemies that way, but it's lazy and uninteresting to me.

Bakkoda

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Defending nationalism. Great stance.

OccamsRazer

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If you have no interest in a discussion, you can just say that.

pat_otter

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Except he is not American.

OccamsRazer

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No need to be pedantic. My point is that the author clearly likes Harris and doesn't like Trump. The author does a good job illustrating the perspective of people who like Harris and don't like Trump. But someone who likes Trump and doesn't like Harris would say that the author doesn't know what he is talking about.

grue

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But someone who likes Trump and doesn’t like Harris would say that the author doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Gee, it's almost as if -- how's it go again? -- "facts don't care about your feelings."

OccamsRazer

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Are you saying that there is no opinion in that article? That it's all facts?

Big_Boss_77

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OccamsRazer

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No it's just that it's written for a much smaller audience than I thought it was going to be. The article is fine and seems to accurately depict the position and perspective of people who don't like Trump or conservatives.

lolcatnip

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My point is that the author clearly likes Harris and doesn’t like Trump.

Nobody who likes Trump is worth listening to. Nobody.

OccamsRazer

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Not even to try to understand them so that you can address the root cause of why they like him? Or is the fact that they like him evidence of them being irredeemable and flawed humans? In that case, how should they be dealt with?

knightly

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The root cause is immaterial, because those people don't like Trump. They like an idea of who Trump is, an idea that is informed almost exclusively by PR teams and marketing campaigns.

The appropriate way to "deal with" people who are trapped in a media filter bubble is to ignore them. They are of no consequence until they try to leave their bubble and interact with those outside it, at which point they are forced to either come to terms with their deception or else double-down and retreat even deeper into it.

OccamsRazer

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I mostly agree with you about the bubbles. Getting outside your bubble is extremely important. It's important that they get outside, but additionally it's important for each of us to step outside our own bubble to make sure it isn't happening to us. None of us is above that affect, and it's instinctive to seek validation of our own preconceived notions. Trump has a propaganda machine working for him, but his opposition has an equally powerful machine working as well. Would you recognize it? Can you tell when it's the machine and when it's the truth? It's pretty tough to separate out the noise, especially in a place like this that has an overwhelming sameness of opinion.

lolcatnip

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Journalists have been talking about how we need to understand them for 8 years now. What more is there to understand beyond what's common knowledge already? They're extremely gullible and most of them are extremely racist and uneducated. Some of them think they'll benefit from Trump's tax policies.

TargaryenTKE

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Did you even read the rest of the article? Or did you just Ctrl+F "Trump" and "Harris"?

OccamsRazer

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It's just that I thought it was supposed to be objective and a fair representation of different perspectives, and it clearly isn't.

TargaryenTKE

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Seleni

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It’s that gosh-darn problem with facts having a liberal bias again.

barsquid

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"Objective" and "fair" is when reading facts doesn't hurt their feelings by correctly stating that the entire Republican party is rotten with bigotry and is actively working on dismantling the government so the wealthy can rule without nasty obstructions like environmental laws.

Wiz

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Fantastic and interesting article.

corsicanguppy

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I fear the vengeance from someone else's crime.

MediaBiasFactChecker

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