this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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I don't think anybody expected Biden to be that good and, no, that's not the point of the criticisms at all. The point is that the establishment is guaranteed to wheel out another Biden in 3 years and it's critical that we shut that down.
You are far from the only person operating on that theory of gradual change, but it's dead wrong and exactly what brought us to where we are today. In fact, it's exactly what leads to fascism every single time it ascends. Weak neoliberals fail to take care of people, and the people turn against them.
Look at how much gradual change the fascists are able to tear down in the span of a few months. What are they afraid to tear down? Social Security and Medicare. It's the big changes that rapidly gain the popularity needed to survive right wing onslaught. Everything else dies.
I think that positive change takes time, patience and planning. Destruction and plundering next to none.
Even if a messiah would force through single payer universal healthcare working through all the hurdles, teething problems and upheaval to get something in place. It doesn't take more than a Musk-Trump to tear it down in a month.
The Republicans have been tearing stuff down for a long while and for decades not building anything worthwhile. But apparently that's the way the country wants it
The general principle that building takes more time than destroying is pretty solid - in general. However, applying it to politics is absolutely insane.
You ever hear that war is politics by other means? That's a good principle too, and the reverse is what applies here. Politics is war by other means. Republicans know that. They are fighting a war and Democrats are dutifully putting up villages they can't defend. The clever villagers are defecting before the tanks roll in.
As I already pointed out, what you "think" stands in absolute contrast with everything that's happened in politics in this country and globally for at least the last 100 years. If you and people like you don't wake up, we are all fucked. (Assuming we aren't already).
Reasserting what you think, instead of addressing my arguments, puts you at the same level of rationality as MAGA. The country didn't get the way it is by magic. Democrats hollowed out voters skulls, then Republicans filled them. Remember that when you complain about what the country wants.
Your argument was that fascists can destroy a lot of incremental change in a short while. I'm agreeing with you.
Although your assertion that it doesn't apply to politics is tenuous. I would say there's plenty of evidence against it from the dawn of civilisation: Ur, the Aztecs, Babylon, Ancient Greece, Persia, the Nordic countries, China, Enlightenment France, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Japan, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All rode to ages of political dominance on the backs of stability, even the ones who resorted to genocide or purging opposition.
Cuba, Poland, Iraq, the EU and Australia have all also had immense growth and development in the last century in tandem with stability. In contrast to Afghanistan, ISIS, Palestine or the African warlord regions who haven't had as much.
So my point still stands, in the US, at least one party has spent decades tearing down, and from the looks of it one of them never tried to build anything up.
Yet, the population continues to vote this way. It's hard not to see it as voluntary; In that much time, accessing as much free information and thought as the US has, you can't really claim to be ignorant of differing information, other than willfully.
If both ruling parties are that obviously corrupt, why is there no action? It's been done in the country before, as well as in many other places, including in the last decade (Arab spring, South Korean president, BLM).
The argument points toward willfull acceptance if not outright choice.
If you disagree, give me evidence, not just your feelings.
If you don't, but don't accept the consequence - get out there and do something about it.