What if the media is actually covering the spectacle precisely because the stakes—casual brutality, violence, callousness, lawlessness, and the descent into anarchy—are perfectly visible, legible, and clear? It’s hard to read any other way the current threats by sitting senators who promise to beat up committee witnesses, or former speakers of the House who elbow their political opponents, or congresspeople who say they will impeach everyone who makes them mad while dabbling in the recreational threat to shut down the government. What if the problem isn’t that consumers of media fail to understand the actual stakes of losing democracy? What if the problem is really that watching this MMA smackdown between fascism and representative democracy is, in fact, the 2023 version of good, clean fun? As Bouie puts it in his New York Times piece on the subject this week, “The mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen. And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.”
The problem isn’t exactly apathy. The problem is that the system has failed everyone but the rich and powerful, and there are zero signs that it will improve. A lot of people don’t see a difference between Trump and Biden, because their lives are hopeless either way. The American Empire is collapsing, and the politicians are doing nothing to stop it.
Do I support active genocide? Or do I support the guy who has always been pro-genocide but is too incomplete to do it?
Neither. I support neither.
And oh ya, crumbling nation, rampant corruption, richer rich, poorer poor, consistent loss of rights, etc. On both sides.
So you have a lot of complaints about everything, and your solution is to choose to do nothing? Thanks for removing yourself from the decision making process for the rest of us.
The correct course of action in a zero sum situation is to do nothing.
You’re welcome. I invite you to do the same and actually help the situation.
Oh I get it, you think it’s a game or a theoretical situation without any nuance. Makes a lot more sense now.
No, I think it’s real life, genocide is bad, and you shouldn’t support it.
You are supporting it.
Wait. What am I supporting? And how?
Because I fancy myself identifying and resisting the social programming I’ve been subjected to as a born and bred American living under The Party (the 2 parties, insisting there absolutely cant be a third, or a sixth, and doing a fucking great job at perpetuating that. Together.).
PLEASE tell me that by not supporting either dystopia I support the one opposite you.
Also, please tell me which one you are supporting.
Back on point. The Party supports the curtailment of human rights, prejudice based on religion, genocide of non-whites for the purpose of enriching military contractors (I’m a blonde haired, blue eyed unrelenting American male, for the record) and the enrichment of the politician and the billionaire.
SHIT. BE. FUCKED.
We can put Bernie or AOC up there. We can stop Trump.
Biden will not and should not be allowed to stop Trump.
In summation, I currently don’t intend to cast a vote in the upcoming presidential election. I hope the deepest of hopes that a change in context will let me change that intention.
Thanks for listening to my TED talk.