People who paid attention in history class watching the US right now
People who paid attention in history class watching the US right now
112 comments
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So anyway, now may be a good time to:
- Reach out to our foreign friends and ask to help lobby their governments to provide refugee programs before we are cut off from the outside world.
- Look into decentralized mesh internet infrastructure.
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Given the general trend of far-right everything, fat chance of 1 happening before it's too late. Better hope Mexico is taking people.
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You're right that its a general trend, but there are exceptions.
Australia presently has a progressive government, with the largest majority in living memory. Our conservative parties have been gutted.
Granted, we have our share of dickheads, and id be happy to swap them for US lefties.
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Better hope Mexico is taking people.
After everything that happened?
Besides, maybe they didn't build the wall to keep Mexicans out but to keep US Americans in.
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I2P
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This is obviously not an expectation on you personally, alone. But have you guys heard of fucking organising a coherent resistance?
Please. You have nukes, and imperium over much of the world.
Could you like, actually reform and not just roll over? We don't want you. (Well, other countries in general. Not that I'd want to prevent people fleeing, personally).
A mass flight from the US is not a viable solution for the world. It'll be Gilead, and we'll all be fucked.
Sincerely, from the provinces.
(P.S. it's not super rosy here either, but at least it's just sparkling capitalism over here, and not full on fascism)
It might be a good time to: fight like hell. Get involved in your local political groups organising to stop the rise of fascism. If you don't, then it's on you (collectively).
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That's me, with a degree in history, and a lifetime of watching it play out. My anxiety level has never been this high. This is not normal life, and we are absolutely careening towards disaster, and NOBODY at the top has the slightest idea how to drive this car. I don't think some of them are even smart enough to know what a car is, or how it works.
I know where this all leads to. I know how many people have said "It will never happen in my beautiful country." Every German said that in 1939. In 5 years, entire cities were bombed to rubble, and millions of their fellow citizens were dead.
In 1984, Sarajevo hosted the Olympics, and showed their beautiful modern city and nation to the world. In 1992, less that 10 years later, they were under siege in the Bosnian War:
Lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days), it was three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad and more than a year longer than the siege of Leningrad, making it the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.[11]
The Huns used to come to a beautiful city, and kill literally every single person. One day, the people are enjoying their lives, and the next day, every single one of them is dead.
The horrors of war happen to normal cities all the time, throughout history. Too many people on both sides don't understand how easily it can happen to them. Nobody is immune.
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I would also call to mind the slow decay of the Western Roman Empire, where many of the elites just thought the death throes to be another crisis that would pass, because they never expected that the empire could even end.
Just because something has stood for a long time, that doesn't mean it can't come crumbling down. Whether slowly or quickly, whether quietly or violently, the world will change, and there is no telling whether the structures we took for granted will endure, or whether whatever change may come will be for the better. We can only guess, and my guesses aren't particularly optimistic.
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I wish we weren't like this
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The worst part is, we don’t have to be, all this is purely design choices
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The US has been clearly moving downhill since 2001. But the acceleration they got this year has been incredible.
And for everybody not there, remember they have the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth.
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Largest conventional military as big as the rest of the world combined plus the nukes. The US is beyond scary.
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2001?
Dude, it started long before that. One could argue that it was Newt Gingrich, and the Contract With America in 1994. Or the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which allowed unregulated propaganda. Or 1986, when Rush Limbaugh's show proliferated around America, quickly becomes the Conservatives most successful recruiter and indoctrinator. Or in 1974, when the Republicans took advantage of the post-Watergate chaos, and passed a new tax code that baked in Trickle Down Economics.
Personally, I maintain that it all started in 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He would have ended the Vietnam War earlier, saving thousands of lives, and taken America in a completely different direction. Instead, Nixon was elected, and took us down the path of evil that has led to us being occupied by treasonous, corrupt, pedophile MAGA Nazis.
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Damn, I just had the conversation with my partner saying this. The patriot act kicked all of this off. The invaded our privacy in the name of protection. We didn't get protection then and now we are being actively attacked.
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Just enjoy the ride until it ends. People are worrying but there is not much anyone can do.
The true test of being here is managing to stay a good person in the middle of a world telling you to become a bad one.
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Long before that. So much of what happened in the 50's and 60's is the same as today. Witch hunts, denouncing education for the wrong people (poors and women), surveillance, illegal wars and actions, detaining people for no reason, no checks and balances.
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since the 80s or 90s perhaps
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This isn't the US going downhill, it's the US incarnate. The country is founded on the genocide of Native Americans, Hitler openly expressed admiration and inspiration from the Manifest Destiny. In the early 1900s, the US was already applying so-called big stick ideology and staging coups in Central America. Hell, when was Jim Crow repealed? This isn't the US going downhill, it's the US doing what it's always done, but slightly towards the inside too.
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right now
I mean…
- J6
- QAnon
- Unite the Right
- Back The Blue (et al)
- Chutkan swatting
- Pelosi attack
- Whitmer plot
- Malheur
- Gamergate
- Birtherism
- Tea Party
- Patriot Act
- Snowden
- Abu Ghraib
- George Lincoln Rockwell
- John Birch Society
- Goldwater
- Reagan (and hell, the ways Carter teed him up)
- Nixon
- That whole white nationalist enclave project in the remote Northwest
- …
I think in many ways the people who paid attention are the least surprised.
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World Wide Financial Crisis ✅
World Wide Pandemic ✅
Fascist Take Over of a Super Power ✅
History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure rhymes.
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History is fractal. Self-similarity and infinite repetition with an overall semblance of chaos.
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Me, as a Canadian, irl
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There's no way this shit doesn't spill over into Canada in horrifying ways.
I am seriously considering leaving. Like, going and never coming back. Ever.
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When Spain collapsed into civil war in 1936 it didn't spill over into Portugal. But, Portugal had its own problems then, with a dictatorship starting in 1933 that lasted about 40 years.
During WWII Austria was the first to fall to Germany, but there was at least some popular support for that. There would be virtually none for Canada joining the US at this point. Poland required an invasion, but they collapsed in almost no time. But, then there's Switzerland, which wasn't touched.
Italian fascism never really spread beyond Italy. But, again, much of that was the Great Depression so other countries had unrelated problems of their own.
If a unified US decided to invade Canada, there's nothing the Canadian military could do to stop it. But, if the US descends into a conflict between multiple factions and Canada stays neutral, it could avoid being invaded. IMO, one of the major reasons that Switzerland was never invaded during WWII was that it was useful for both the Axis and the Allies to have a neutral place nearby that was untouched by all the conflict. It's a place to get hard-to-get items when there's a blockade. It's a place where the elite can put their families where they're safe from the conflict, etc.
No matter what happens Canada would be in trouble. The US is a major trade partner and the border has been something Canada hasn't had to worry about defending for a long time. But, there's a chance the worst of the chaos could remain on the other side of the border.
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Too bad these MAGA failed out or peaked in high school. Then lost all that was "learned"
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Not just right now. For more than a year, at least, for the sweating. If they really paid attention, they'd be off packing their things and planning their escape.
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Yeah, no. That was 2015. Then from 2016-2019 it was:
Then from 2020 to 2023 it was:
Then in 2024 it was:
And now in 2025, it’s:
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I barely paid any attention and even I know it's 1936 over there right now.
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I am guessing that Mexico and Canada might be the winners from this in a couple of decades. If they enter a conflict together against the USA during a civil war, they can potentially annex a fair bit of territory. Plus, many world powers would likely support that fight - it is an opportunity to give a black eye and remove the US from the world stage.
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Nobody in North America is going to be a winner from this. It's going to be chaos. A lot of productive capacity that could otherwise have been used to make useful things or provide useful services is instead going to have to be spent on preventing the chaos in the US from spilling over the border.
I also don't think Canada or Mexico would want to annex territory. Annexing requires a strong military to hold the territory, and neither Canada nor Mexico has a strong military. What's more likely IMO is that there's some kind of a civil war and the US is split into multiple smaller sovereign states. After the dust settles, some will be on great relations with Canada and Mexico. Others will be isolated states that are closely tied to Russia or Saudi Arabia or something.
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The US is famous for its advanced weapons but those depend on massive supply chains all over the country.
They can't even supply Ukraine with artillery shells.
All the factories the US had to spin up in their last conventional war are gone and are the people who knew how to run them and work them.
A civil conflict would be pretty short unless an external power started supplying one side with arms.
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For a long time now I have been saying that They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer is probably the most important book anyone can and should read. Now I feel like Cassandra.
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Eh we've been through much worse.
Just kick back, grab a pint, and wait for enough women, minorites, and leftists to get fed through the tree chipper for this whole thing to finally blow over and improve marginally, as is our tradition.
Edit: /s because apparently this is not obvious holy shit
The joke here (if you follow US history) is that those are the groups who are actually going to stand up and frequently end up sacrificing themselves for a better future, but are never acknowledged.
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I want to believe the same thing, but that's little comfort to the ones who get fed into the wood chipper.
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The leopards surely won't eat your face.....
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I'd say this is the worst domestic crisis the US has been through since the Civil War, if that. It might "blow over" in the sense that the world won't literally end, but in that sense Nazi Germany "blew over" too.
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Poe's law
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How could anyone see this coming when until 2016 we were just minding our own business invading small countries in the east.
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Not great in history but normal higher education in Europe...
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Nah this is all unique. This has definitely never happened anywhere else and they're are absolutely no parallels that can be drawn.
The US is such an exceptional democracy, land of the free and all that.
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That's right, Citizen, good correct-think. We can always bomb our way to peace and invade our way to diplomacy.
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If only it were that. This is an evolution of what happened then, and even though the descent is less drastic it has far more downward momentum because of what's involved. Given the most likely global victors this time around, the narrative shift that Europe is going to experience this time around is not going to look good.
People think this is going to be World War III when the reality might be closer to the silence following the height of extinct civilizations, except involving the whole world and with a pending environmental catastrophe to displace humanity to boot.
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Like living in a live documentary with shitty actors who are happy to portray their historical characters by committing acts of violence against other humans.
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Has Trump announced the 1000 Year Republic yet?
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He will, when Stephen "PeeWee Himmler" Miller writes it into a speech. They're not there yet. It will probably be in the upcoming speech where he explains what a wonderful thing he's done by suspending elections.
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Maybe you shouldn't just be sitting, and actually do something
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i think younger generation that are school right now, or like close to the youngest gen z arnt learning history like they did in the 2000s. history channel in 2000s was much better quality than the alien crap later on.
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Arrow only go up?
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I paid attention and I'm not sweating.
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Then our didn't learn the lessons well.
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Sweating is not the proper reaction.
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112 comments
Yall the history majors have been freaking the fuck out for over a decade
Source: am history major and have been freaking the fuck out for over a decade as have several classmates and other historians
I am not a history major, but I got a 5 on AP US History... and have degrees in Econ and Poli Sci.
Basically, the last 10 years for me has been everyone I know thinking I am literally insane.
And then roughly 90% of what I was saying would happen, has now happened, within +/- 2 years of when I said it probably would.
None of them have bothered to apologize for being wrong, emphatically, derisivesly wrong, about basicsally everything, so, fuck em, and fuck this country honestly.
Not only do they never apologize for being wrong, they never apologize for accusing you of wearing tinfoil when what you said would happen, happens.
Then they continue telling you you're over-reacting about the current thing you're telling them.
Its like consistently predicting the lottery numbers, and then arguing with you when they keep losing even though you tell them the winning number the day before every time.
I feel for you, none of us are getting apologies of any kind, nor are we likely to get any accolades for being right. Shit sucks
I have had friends start to freak out this term. I told them that most of this same stuff happened last term, you just didn't hear about it (or listen to what I was saying) for some reason. Granted, he's become much, much worse since our conversations in February because of SCOTUS backing him, but he had concentration camps last time as well.
Two books you might want to check out are The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols and "The Tyranny of Merit" by Michael Sandel. Here is a link to his TED profile and talks. Both talk about why this is happening and how we got here. While somewhat depressing, I found both books very validating(? can't put a word to it) of all the frustration with family/friends these last years. Education has been gutted and imho real history is no longer taught. Add the internet and social media to the culture and suddenly everyone is an expert. In less than a year, he has destroyed the integrity, reputation and effectiveness of every federal agency made to keep us safe and let us sleep at night. The UN has been effectively neutralized by our vote on the security council. It's maddening beyond words and I'm scared shitless of what's to come.
You literally described my experience of the past decade. I'm an undereducated nitwit who happened to have grown up in one of the old nazi occupied countries and remembers the stories my grandparents used to tell.
I also had an unfortunate amount of exposure to narcissists (yay generational trauma) and the narcissist's playbook is nearly identical to the fascist's playbook.
In Trump's case, they're one and the same. They're laughably easy to predict.