[mindslight]

I'd say someone did flip a switch in 2025 - the rejection of the standard norms of good faith execution of all three branches of government. The government has always been authoritarian. But it had been predominately bureaucratic authoritarianism, while now it's driven by autocratic authoritarianism.

I say this as a libertarian who's right there with you on the "piling up wood".

There are many angles from which to analyze how we got here. Yes, the "centrists" supporting lazy authoritarian laws and agencies because they couldn't bother thinking one step ahead to how they'd be abused. The sprawling surveillance industry pointed out by a sibling comment. Narrower issues of destruction of the fairness doctrine and campaign finance limits. Even many of the refrains of the Trumpists point to problems that were slowly allowed to fester until they reached a breaking point (although as usual for Republicans, the answer they've been stage-managed into is completely self-defeating).

For all of these things it's understandable to want to say "I told you so" - for catharsis, and trying to establish some authority of having a larger context of what direction we need to head in.

But none of that justifies downplaying the situation we're currently staring down, which is what I take issue with.

(also re being pepper sprayed: what's left of your country thanks you for your service)

[scarecrowbob]

"But none of that justifies downplaying the situation we're currently staring down, which is what I take issue with."

Maybe we read things differently- I don't see folks who say "this is nothing new, the US has always been ethically questionable" as "downplaying" anything.

As I've written here before, there is a difference between "hey, welcome to the party" (radicalization) and "hey shut up, this is a thing we've always done" (normalization).

I take issue with (and find very frustrating) the idea that somehow things have just now reached a breaking point.

I find that incorrect-to-me idea worrisome on two levels.

First of all, if Clinton or Harris had been elected we'd still be walking down this same road but liberals would be at brunch and telling us that nothing is wrong. But Ferguson and Standing Rock both happened while Obama was in office. And we don't need to run another experiment to see how it would have run under Harris, as she explicitly was moving to the right from Biden.

The flip side of your suspicion that folks in my position are just perversely enjoying some kind of schadenfreude might be that folks who believe this situation to be new and unique is to note that while this violent empire has been violent-empire-ing for far longer than any of us have been alive, the violence hasn't been overtly staged within the spectacle confronting the "middle class" folks until very recently.

The distinction between "bureaucratic authoritarianism" and "autocratic authoritarianism" only matters if you show up the bureaucracy in a legible way, and the fact that this is a distinction you draw places you in a very specific relationship to the power which "it's always been violent" seeks to critique.

Or to say the same thing in a different way, for the same reasons you might point to some perverse enjoyment by hipsters, you might look at your own psyche here:

to admit that the US has always been violent is to admit that you didn't care because it wasn't happening to people about whom you care.

However, that possible reading of your position is -wholly immaterial- to the folks who are pointing out "it's been bad for a long time".

The catharsis you seem to be projecting isn't really there for the people who could see there was a problem before it became visible even to middle class liberals. So an aside, nobody cares that folks ignored the problem until we are where we are, so feel your feelings about your blindness and then get to work, and stop projecting.

Do, however, consider that the lines of thought which lead people to directly and painfully confront power in a physical way can only come from the idea that the power being confronted is not and has not been legitimate.

I only dive into the phrenology of your position because it seems funny to me, but I do think that position is an active and harmful impediment to actually doing anything- if we could just vote our way home, why bother walking?

That is, if it really was okay a while ago, why not just do the blue version of making America great again?

And that leads to a second level at why I find the idea that "things have just gotten worse this year" to be almost dangerous:

the situation can and likely will get more authoritarian.

The reality to me is that these systems have been violent in the past- I live on land next to the Southern Ute folks' reservation, and I have had Navajo roommates, and I can see a former residential school every time I drive to town.

There is no amount of being white or tall or "well-educated" that would save me if the ancestors of the folks who built those things decide I am no longer a "citizen" because "reasons" and burn my corpse so it ascends to some gulag in the sky.

But if these systems haven't been incredibly harmful, abandoning them seems foolish and dumb. Any action to undermine their authority takes on the same character of a "rejection of the standard norms of good faith execution of [the] government".

I wholly understand why anarchists and communists seem stupid and dangerous to the folks who have historically been able to ignore the harms of these systems.

For that reason, though, folks are going to have to give up some of their ideological attachments to those systems if they are going to work against them.

So from my position, actively being unwilling to admit the past harms cause by those systems is a very easy way to prevent oneself from coming to a position where you actually have to do anything material.

Sorry for writing a novel (as an aside I dislike AI because writing things like this is how I think through things and I think the adoption of AI writing says a lot about the willingness of folks to think). But as a person incredibly worried about the very real shift in character of the current political spectacle, I think that "it's new and improved" is a harmful idea that you should reconsider.

[mindslight]

There is a lot to chew on here and while I generally appreciate that, you completely missed where I am coming from. I had tried to acknowledge enough in my previous comment that you'd see I wasn't fresh to the larger topic, but I guess that didn't work.

I had never voted for either major party in a national election until 2020, when I consider myself having voted for the conservative option of Biden. In 2016, I completely understood why people voted for Trump - I was the one telling my aghast blue tribe friends that he was speaking to people's longstanding frustrations and had a good chance of winning.

I do constantly examine whether I've reverted to my latent tribe or have become caught in a filter bubble, but I still do not think so. I've always been allergic to groupthink, and the Trumpist groupthink is still overwhelming at this point, whereas the opposition groupthink is much more narrowly-scoped. (and I hate it as well, as it makes for poor opposition)

So back to the main argument -

I don't see folks who say "this is nothing new, the US has always been ethically questionable" as "downplaying" anything.

To me, it often does comes across this way. Note how the comment I initially responded to put "madness" in square quotes, as if we're supposed to believe the concerns are just all in our heads.

It's adjacent to the Trumpist talking point that everything being done isn't any worse than what "the left" already did, which is clearly coming from a place of wanting to downplay. And there is a long pattern of Trumpists abusing appeals to lofty ideals and liberty in general to get people to support the openly fascist agenda [0]. It's not a matter of being "unwilling to admit the past harms", rather it's about bringing them up in the appropriate context - Trumpism revolves around a long litany of real grievances and hypocrisies, but then channels that anger into highly destructive "solutions".

And as far as the caricature of "middle-class liberals" that you were addressing? If people are just now waking up, I do not see this as something to condemn! To me the actual concern is preventing them from falling back asleep (eg that "just vote Democrat" fallacy)

> The distinction between "bureaucratic authoritarianism" and "autocratic authoritarianism" only matters if you show up the bureaucracy in a legible way, and the fact that this is a distinction you draw places you in a very specific relationship to the power which "it's always been violent" seeks to critique.

Care to elaborate on this? My initial reaction is that we should take such legibility as a universal goal, in the sense that we should aim for everyone to have this legibility. We often shit on the idea of bureaucracy, but if it's the best way we've found to neuter autocratic power, then maybe we need to stop taking it for granted? (FWIW me of 15 years ago is screaming at current me for having written that)

[0] actually I just glanced at the poster's comment history and this is exactly what they're doing.