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B.See

(4,423 posts)
Thu Nov 7, 2024, 11:07 PM Nov 2024

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do

Imo, a rather EXCELLENT, spot-on analysis. Puts the BLAME WHERE IT LIES:

Our Mistake Was to Think We Lived in a Better Country Than We Do - The Guardian Americans will be stuck cleaning up after Maga’s destructive streak because men like this never clean up after themselves

(that's if America ever can...)

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.

We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the mainstream news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem.

When people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis might profoundly devastate the biosphere and much of life on it, human and otherwise, for the next 10,000 years, the media has failed. When people worry about crime when it is low, an economy when it is thriving and immigrants when they do much of the hard work that sustains that economy and commit fewer crimes than the native-born, the media has failed.

When it came to Donald Trump, they went easy on him, and they again and again let him and the far right set the agenda. They constantly treated asymmetrical issues as symmetrical ones – if the Democrats resisted Republican outrages, both sides were “polarized”. In the media everything had two sides, even if one side was the truth and the other was the lie, one side was the human rights or the law and the other side was their violation.
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niyad

(122,093 posts)
1. Thank you for posting Rebecca Solnit's most excellent article. It is well
Thu Nov 7, 2024, 11:27 PM
Nov 2024

worth the read.

Ocelot II

(122,949 posts)
2. We were bamboozled by the incessant claims of American exceptionalism.
Thu Nov 7, 2024, 11:32 PM
Nov 2024

When we older folks were kids in the '50s and '60s we were taught about Manifest Destiny, the notion that we were entitled to take the Natives' land for our own as white European settlers moved westward. We heard about the "savages" who tried to fight off the nice white settlers who just wanted the land they were entitled to. We still hear both Dem and GOP politicians constantly talk about how this is the best, strongest, most free, etc. country in the world (except for Trump, who says it's a terrible place but for all the wrong reasons). But it isn't. We are just people, not special, no better than the people of any other country - and, as it turns out, just as susceptible to the lies of a demagogue as were the citizens of Germany in the 1930s. And we conveniently forget that we became a great and prosperous nation because white Europeans stole the labor of captured and enslaved people from Africa and stole the land of the people who already lived here.

And so, believing as an article of faith that we are an exceptional nation full of good, honorable and noble people, it was a terrible shock when half of our fellow citizens were suckered into believing Trump's lies and being persuaded that he would "fix" everything for them. And by fixing he meant, among other things, getting rid of the immigrants who were stealing and raping and murdering and getting government welfare. He meant making sure women didn't have agency over their own reproductive choices. He meant keeping trans people from playing on sports teams or using the "wrong" bathroom. He identified enough groups of Untermenschen, to use the Nazis' term, to give the disgruntled and bigoted and angry folks among us plenty of other people to feel superior to.

And this election, in which about half of the voters told us that they approve of how Trump others people, shows us once and for all that we are not a special nation. We, as a nation, are no less hateful and degraded and stupid than the people of any other nation. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about American exceptionalism. I don't want to hear one more politician announce that "This is not what we are." Because it's exactly what we are.

B.See

(4,423 posts)
3. THIS: I don't want to hear any more bullshit about American exceptionalism. I don't want to hear one more politician...
Fri Nov 8, 2024, 02:14 PM
Nov 2024

... announce that "This is not what we are." Because it's exactly what we are."

Their's is a willful ignorance, founded upon hate, victimhood, and malice.

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