[hayst4ck]

I went to a Town Hall and many of the people had family members being kept alive by Medicaid. Imagine a mother of toddlers in her 30's is dying of some cancer imagining paying for her cancer meds while her children likely won't get state assistance, while grandma is about to be removed from her state assisted old folks home.

Imagine having a special needs child about to lose assistance...

Right now America is going through the stages of grief. We are between Shock and Denial, many of us are in deep Depression. This is literally traumatizing if you are paying attention and understand what is going on.

People who want to resist this are going to end up dead or in jail and that's a truth that's very hard to accept.

Also there's the greater problem. Leave to where? America isn't exceptional. What can happen here can happen in other places. Canada, France, the UK, and Germany are all struggling with far right movements, none of them have a clear answer for fighting oligarchy, they are only reluctantly taking America's warning for how bad it can be. America is generally a fairly well educated country, and if we can't pull off a return to democracy here, I don't see democracy rising anywhere else, just the opposite, I would expect rampant nationalism and resource protection.

[rahton]

Just to clarify, I am well aware it is a (very) tough decision to make and that is even harder to put in place... and understand the moral challenge involved. But I am very worried about what will come next too. People will die resisting, there is no doubt about it. Europe isn't a safe heaven but having experienced both sides of the pond in the last ten years, I believe the political situation is still far better here. I may be wrong.

[hayst4ck]

Europe is a still far better, but the root cause in America is a low tax rate on the rich and privatized intelligence/social media companies fueling the society splitting narratives that oligarchs prefer. The end state being societies that are easily divided and conquered.

So Europe might have better data protection laws, but I'm not sure that prevents A/B testing algorithmic feeds, and I think France tried to tax the rich and they just moved out.

In terms of position, velocity, and acceleration, Europe has a clearly better position, arguably the same velocity (towards nationalism/right wing), and it's very hard to tell the level of acceleration, but America's blunder definitely gave other countries a momentary reprieve.

So there is nothing structurally preventing Europe from the same fate, if you think so, that's just exceptionalism... Exceptionalism feels good when others are doing poorly, but it doesn't in any way prevent you from the same fate.

People ran away from despotism to America, but those people were unable to fight despotism in their own countries. If everyone runs, then there will be no place left to run.