The America I grew up in was never supposed to happen.
The human race emerged from the mists of pre-history worshiping genocidal psychopaths as gods. Only gradually, grudgingly, did human societies evolve into limiting the “divine right of kings” and acknowledging the rights of (some, landowning) men (but not women). The Confederacy’s defeat in the American Civil War began to normalize the idea that human rights are not subject to whitedude feelings at the state and local level. But even thereafter, America was still highly stratified in ways that dated back to ancient times, with royalty, nobility, serfs, and paupers just going by different names, only now defined less by blood and titles than by race, gender, and most of all, material wealth. It worked out well if you happened to be on the top, but could be cruel and brutal if you were born at the bottom of a caste system in which you existed to serve your betters.
But this, so it was said, was the way it was supposed to be. “Natural law,” you see. The weak, the unfit, the inferior, and the immoral are too degenerate and stupid to govern themselves. They need “natural elites” and religious authority to give them their place, and in some cases, masters to serve. “Hey, I don’t make the rules. This is what GOD said.”
Then, an historical fluke happened.
The national mobilization for World War II together with FDR's New Deal proved that government works just fine at solving problems and mitigating inequality when it's allowed to. Women were integrated into the American workforce at a level previously unheard-of. Poverty in America was cut in half, and the following decades saw the United States rise to a position of global leadership. Strong unions kept the Good Ol' Boys in check, while marginal tax rates gave big business incentive to invest their wealth rather than hoard it. While communism was delivering dystopian blight and starvation overseas, regulated free enterprise brought the "World of Tomorrow" into the homes of everyday folks. What were once considered luxuries for the elites became necessities for all. And not just the material kind. The kind that make the difference as to whether or not you're really free... Civil Rights.
For a certain kind of person, this was the worst catastrophe possible. Not because it "didn't work," but because it DID.
Just as for another kind of person, the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War was the worst catastrophe possible.
And for yet another kind of person, the Enlightenment from which the principles of inalienable rights arose - at the expense of the political power of unquestioned religious authority - was the worst catastrophe possible.
What do the New Deal, the Civil War, and the Enlightenment have in common?
All three were events that in their own ways brought about the kind of progress we now take for granted, and overwhelmingly consider to be self-evident goods, to the extent we ever learned about them in school and remember a little about them. All three to some extent mitigated social inequality along one axis of hierarchy or another: wealth, race, and religious authority in reverse historical order. And in so doing, they brought us a little closer to the ideal of equality under the law whereby voters choose their leadership, rather than micro-cliques of Good Ol’ Boy elites choosing their voters… Or worse, some asshole wearing a Burger King hat passing it on to his grubby little shithead son, forever.
What too many of us seem to have overlooked - or missed altogether - is how long and how deeply certain kinds of people have nursed visceral disgruntlement and resentment over the repercussions of the New Deal, the Civil War, and the Enlightenment... and by extension, of Western multiracial democracy. Not because they suffer from them in any real way, but because it OFFENDS their sense of the what the rightful, "natural," "God-ordained" hierarchy of human society should look like. This takes many forms, and the focus will vary between clusters of the aggrieved. On paper, they may seem to be at odds with one another, but taken together, their various clouds of motives begin to suggest a common set of "enemies":
"Government exists to enforce the Bible and to keep the bad people in their place. Nothing else."
"Government exists to protect natural elite job creators from the looters and moochers. Nothing else."
"Government shouldn’t exist, because fuck everybody."
"Representative democracy was a mistake, because not-white-dudes are unfit to have a say in anything. We need to go back to the good ol’ days of the divine right of kings and elite men telling the riff-raff how it’s gonna be, who aren't afraid to launch a good old fashioned race war when Christendom is on the line."
"We doomed our culture by allowing women to vote, own property, work, and have lifestyle choices besides being married homemakers, or being otherwise under the dominion of their fathers or religious authority. White, uh I mean 'Western' civilization will drown in brown unless we put women back in their place by involuntary coercion, shame, and force whether they like it or not. Has to be done, you see..."
The progress of the last three centuries has been a series of victories - always against resistance - expanding the inalienable rights of landowning white men to apply to all people. These are the best stories America has to tell. But for both the anti-freedom and anti-equity wings of the anti-democracy insurgency, these are catastrophes to be undone at all costs.
We're now in a moment in which multiple varieties of bad actors are laying aside their differences, pooling their resources, coordinating their narratives, and focusing fire on one globally-scaled goal: denying the legitimacy of Western representative democracy to justify tearing it down.
The America I grew up in was never supposed to happen.
We were never supposed to be this free. It was an historical fluke, far beyond any of our lifetimes, a fluke in the greater arc of the history of the human race, fully against the wishes of the little men who see themselves as this world's rightful rulers. The freedom won in the Twentieth Century had never happened before, anywhere, and now, the world's worst people are now set upon ensuring that fire is trampled out and can never be lit again. If they get their way, we're going back to the divine right of kings and worshiping genocidal psychopaths as gods.
This is the year the fash make their move.
janainaart
stormborns
blakekathryn
annaxmalina
