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I want to be more optimistic, but I'm looking for the ingredients we'd need to push back effectively on the creeping fascism any time in the near future, and they don't seem to be here.

Democrats need a massively leftward and populist shift to differentiate themselves from Republicans in the eyes of uninformed voters, and I think there's just too much pushing against it. All the biggest channels of information are controlled by billionaires. They are not going to present any progressive efforts in a positive light, and they've become really effective at setting people who have common interests against each other. That, or inundating us so much that people understandably become numb to it and tune out. Trump was about as blatantly awful as a candidate could ever be, and he still won.

I'm fearing all we have to look forward to is 10 steps back under Republicans then 1 step forward under Democrats before Republicans take control again. Democrat leadership seems to prefer losing to winning with a progressive agenda.

The Democrats gave up so easily and went "I guess we hate transpeople now? Is that why we lost? We didn't hate transpeople enough?" so quickly, that I"m wondering if Trump's election was part of the fucking plan to begin with.

don't know what else I can do really. I've stopped spending money and cancelled all subscriptions. I'm voting with my wallet. Most big tech and big box stores support the repubs. All I can do is not give them any more money than I have to. I'll continue to vote as long as have that option.

This guy experienced what we can only read about. It shames me to say I was born less than a hour from where he was held in a camp. Few around there have learned anything from history. To most of them history began when they did and will end when they do.

A big part of the fight is asking yourself one simple question. How much of this defeatism is real? The bot/troll/fraud problem is massive and leading to the dead internet theory becoming reality. Anywhere there's comments, there's fake bullshit. Figuring out how to stop that is a huge priority.

The people giving up are the ranking officials of the Democratic National Party. What can you realistically expect people to do when the people they thought would lead them through this are rolling over and collapsing at the first sign of pressure? For fucks sake, they're not even defending their own trans colleague!

So sick of inspirational posts from rich celebrities. As if any of this is going to affect them in any meaningful way aside from shifting more of the tax burden onto us.

I love George Takei as much as the next person, and I know what he went through as a child, but what is his part? Tweeting about it?

We need concrete solutions, not rah rah platitudes.

George Takei lived during the Japanese Internment during WWII, so I believe him when he says that he's been through worse and that the fight isn't over, but I'm not convinced we haven't fought a single skirmish yet. We've been on the back foot fighting the rise of fascism for 8 years. This is trench warfare and the enemy is perfectly happy to advance inch by inch. The election win for them was a massive defeat for us. Regaining the ground we've lost to xenophobes and racists will probably take the rest of my lifetime advocating for and voting for progressive candidates just to reach a point where things are kinda okay-ish again. It sucks and it feels bad to be in this situation.

The very same people whose Election Campaign Strategy was "Not voting for us is the same as voting for a guy who will round up Transexuals and put them in concentration camps whilst turning America into the Fourth Reich" rather than, you know, actually having a list of measures to make life better for most people, have continued with the hyperbolic alarmism so as to keep their supporters enraged against the "other" lest they stop, think, and figure out that the Democrat Leaders could have done way more than they did to appeal to voters and hence have a large slice, maybe even most, of the blame for Trump getting elected again.

The reality is that people mostly have to wait and see, since there are a lot of ways to stop or at least undermine the most autocratic Republican tendencies, plus the most intelligent Republicans (i.e. the sociopaths at the top of the party doing it for their own personal upside maximization rather than the "true believer" useful idiots) are well aware that the system only works as well as it does (i.e. from their point of view, only produces maximum wealth for their wealthy patrons and hence they themselves) if people in general think they live in a Democracy and their vote counts.

Also keep in mind that the factions of the real power in American - the Wealthy - will carry on fighting for themselves as they've always been doing, no matter what the façade which is the Theatre of Politics looks like (they're apolitical and buy, bully or swindle people on both sides of the aisle).

America is an experiment in seeing how far the squeezing machine can be made to squeeze the masses without breaking, but none of the real power of the land is interested in it actually breaking and stopping delivering them maximum wealth increases, and as a country which doesn't have enough natural resources for the wealthy to extract maximum wealth without most of the population going along with it, they too are not interested in letting it get to the same kind of situation as for example Russia. Absolutelly, their process doesn't deal well with systemic problems of the Tragedy Of The Commons kind - hence things like Housing Inflation starting to asphixiate the rest of the Economy - but it does work for stopping direct singular actions that would mess with the interests of Wealth, such as the kind of legislation required to establish an Autocratic Regime in the US.

I'm not saying that the Wealthy will save the rest because they care, but as it so happens it's in the best interest of the real power of the land - Money - that the machinery that keeps the rest producing wealth to enrich them does not break, so their interests are aligned which those of common people who don't want Autocracy.

Yeah the ‘great America’ they want to return to, many others have lived through it a few times already

What/who do you think he is referring to as worse?

I wish all of you the best, but I can't care enough about this country to want to fight for it. One reason being it's a shitty place that put George Takei in a camp, among many myriad other crimes. I don't want to save it. I want to leave and not be bothered by the bunch of racists, idiots, and racist idiots who run this country and who elect them.

Normally I would dismiss this as liberal/nationalist nonsense...

But George Takei is kinda cool. I'm with dude.

The funniest part of this is Takei won't be doing shit. Instead he's inciting people to go die to the American military or its proto-militaristic police... Armchair activist.