These might be the good old days. Go outside, feel the grass, say wassup to your neighbors,… whatever you do that means community, because sh*t might get bad for a while.
These might be the good old days. Go outside, feel the grass, say wassup to your neighbors,… whatever you do that means community, because sh*t might get bad for a while.
I’m someone smack in the middle of a liberal city in an always blue state, I don’t know what else there is for me to do. I’ve attempted helping educate and getting people to vote in other states who normally choose not to, I’ve voted in every election down to local boards and try to know who I’m voting for. Locally, we had a lot of successes so far this election in our state…but that won’t help much if, y’know, fascism.
People turn fascist when they’re desperate and angry, same as always. So when people experience economic hardship they look for somone to blame, often immigrants. So we call them racists, and I guess that’s true, but it comes from something else; economic inequality.
In Europe we do the same thing, in the French elections the rural population voted overwhelmingly for the fascists - here in brown.
In the German elections, the poorer former East-German provinces also supported the fascist AfD, here shown in the darker colours.
Even in Denmark, where I live, the more right-wing and extremist parties are popular in the southern, western, and northern parst of the country - the poorer rural areas, who’s seen their jobs disappear, their shops close, and their income stall even as the country as a whole gets richer.
So the challenge of liberal democracy is clear; show the population outside the cities that they, too, can get their piece of the pie. If we cannot solve that, then we’ll see more countries turn fascist in the next decade.
Yes, thank you for putting it in plain language. People are not in a good place all over the world and telling people the economy (markets and stats people no longer have faith in) is great has the opposite effect then what the Dems intended.
This mess stems from a combo of a two party system (you know that thing the US founders warned you about) and a fundamental failure (real or perceived) of society’s ability to reward people fairly. Now you don’t have a middle class to pander to, you just have levels of poor and a few ultra wealthy (both demographics that tend to vote more right then left).
The real telling stat here is women voters. At what point would a woman vote contrary to her own body autonomy, safety and general rights? Like anyone else, when she is poor, hungry and angry.
Not sure what to tell you, I am in another nation but a similar situation. The state of things is now to the point media is untrusted, nationalism is both here and missing, while people are angry but happy to blame the “other guys”.
My ultimate fear is we’re too late and this is a global trend, but hopefully we can break through it. (We as in humanity, my team kinda dropped the ball on this one it’s looking) We need to get people educated and working towards change instead of casting blame on the “other guys” like you said. Right now though it’s hard not to feel lost knowing my loved ones and my rights and safety is at stake. I hope things look up for you and your loved ones.
Both of our nations really need to have some electoral reform.
Best we can do it seems is an “I voted” sticker.