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What if the media is actually covering the spectacle precisely because the stakes—casual brutality, violence, callousness, lawlessness, and the descent into anarchy—are perfectly visible, legible, and clear? It’s hard to read any other way the current threats by sitting senators who promise to beat up committee witnesses, or former speakers of the House who elbow their political opponents, or congresspeople who say they will impeach everyone who makes them mad while dabbling in the recreational threat to shut down the government. What if the problem isn’t that consumers of media fail to understand the actual stakes of losing democracy? What if the problem is really that watching this MMA smackdown between fascism and representative democracy is, in fact, the 2023 version of good, clean fun? As Bouie puts it in his New York Times piece on the subject this week, “The mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen. And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.”

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[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

What American Democracy? The one where half the presidents in my lifetime lost the Democratic vote? Where the legislature is controlled by gerrymandering? Where journalists like Julian Assange are persecuted by the government? Where we give unlimited support to the Zionist genocide?

[-] AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago

Yep the one where reforms with 93% of the populations support never go to the floor because someone paid a genuinely laughably pathetically small bribe to a couple of octogenarians.

[-] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Democracy in the US is a fantasy, like the American dream

[-] jayrhacker@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

You have to be asleep to believe it…

[-] Psychodelic@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Idk, we legalized cannabis and cops stopped harassing us in CA/OR. It seems like if people literally just tried we could accomplish so much. I mean, I literally don't know one person even half interested in politics as much as I am. I know tons of people that think there's no hope in doing anything worthwhile (besides having kids).

It was created with votes and votes can still change it. For now.

Get involved.

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml -5 points 1 year ago

They threw out my vote in the 2020 Iowa caucus, did you forget?

[-] lemmyman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I don't really get the point of this type of comment. Used in bad faith, it clearly is meant to detail the conversation and sideline the point of the article that was posted. In good faith, maybe venting? What am I missing?

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago

It's meant to mock the idea that there's a "cage match" between democracy and fascism.

There isn't.

It's a cage match between Pinochet and Hitler.

[-] N0body@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

The problem isn't exactly apathy. The problem is that the system has failed everyone but the rich and powerful, and there are zero signs that it will improve. A lot of people don't see a difference between Trump and Biden, because their lives are hopeless either way. The American Empire is collapsing, and the politicians are doing nothing to stop it.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Apathy is exactly the problem. If all the people who could vote did vote, we'd have a much different country.

GOPs vote in every election and get what they want eventually.

[-] Melkath@kbin.social -3 points 1 year ago

Do I support active genocide? Or do I support the guy who has always been pro-genocide but is too incomplete to do it?

Neither. I support neither.

And oh ya, crumbling nation, rampant corruption, richer rich, poorer poor, consistent loss of rights, etc. On both sides.

[-] FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

So you have a lot of complaints about everything, and your solution is to choose to do nothing? Thanks for removing yourself from the decision making process for the rest of us.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

It's funny that you're getting down voted. The same folks who can't be bothered to vote against Trump are enraged that you called them out.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

So, we should cut our nose's off to spite out faces?

[-] Melkath@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

Suppose the people were loudly opposed to an active genocide, and the media and genocide funders just didn't listen.

this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
125 points (97.7% liked)

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