"I sincerely used to believe you guys were the most immune folks to this sort of devilry."
That was your first mistake. The American people have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through every major advance in civil rights. There's a reason Ruby Bridges' school attendance had to be enforced with the barrel of a Federal gun. We lag behind every other developed nation in so many metrics, especially in terms of the way we approach health-care - hell, any form of "care" for anyone not already wealthy enough not to need help obtaining it. We defeated slavery in a brutal war, and only ten years later decided to let the slavers have their way again, for temporal political gain, and we allowed them to rule undisputed in their territories for another hundred years. We have a man with the ear of the President (who might as well BE the President, to be honest) who threw an obvious Nazi salute in front of millions, and half of our pundit class is arguing we didn't see what we all obviously saw, and the other half is arguing over whether it's worth worrying about all that much.
This is who we are, and who we have always been. While some of us think we can be better, and continue to fight to try to make that so, we are not surprised to be reminded that too many of us are more than happy to live down to our worst expectations. Those of us wishing for (and fighting for) a better America are in a very low place right now, and honestly I'm not sure whether we, as a nation, are going to survive the next four years.
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Date: 24/1/25 19:23 (UTC)That was your first mistake. The American people have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through every major advance in civil rights. There's a reason Ruby Bridges' school attendance had to be enforced with the barrel of a Federal gun. We lag behind every other developed nation in so many metrics, especially in terms of the way we approach health-care - hell, any form of "care" for anyone not already wealthy enough not to need help obtaining it. We defeated slavery in a brutal war, and only ten years later decided to let the slavers have their way again, for temporal political gain, and we allowed them to rule undisputed in their territories for another hundred years. We have a man with the ear of the President (who might as well BE the President, to be honest) who threw an obvious Nazi salute in front of millions, and half of our pundit class is arguing we didn't see what we all obviously saw, and the other half is arguing over whether it's worth worrying about all that much.
This is who we are, and who we have always been. While some of us think we can be better, and continue to fight to try to make that so, we are not surprised to be reminded that too many of us are more than happy to live down to our worst expectations. Those of us wishing for (and fighting for) a better America are in a very low place right now, and honestly I'm not sure whether we, as a nation, are going to survive the next four years.