mine isn’t a brain fog but COVID and a trump presidency made me not trust humans at all.
i no longer trust friends, family, neighbors, governments, leaders, police, doctors, businesses. none of them maintained trust during the Trump presidency and the pandemic.
but i still vote straight ticket democrat. because their platform doesn’t include NAZI-ism
The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.
Because populism is always dangerous. If Democrats go all in on populism, I will stop voting. I am not going to play this game where we just volley lies back and forth like a tennis ball until someone trips and the other person scores a point.
I will always support sober technocracy. If American politics actually turns into populist tennis then all is lost.
Populism isn’t necessarily bad, business antitrust regulations and the 8 hour workday were historically populist policies. Dems shouldn’t go all out on populism, but they should do something to become popular. Elections are a popularity contest after all.
mine isn’t a brain fog but COVID and a trump presidency made me not trust humans at all.
i no longer trust friends, family, neighbors, governments, leaders, police, doctors, businesses. none of them maintained trust during the Trump presidency and the pandemic.
but i still vote straight ticket democrat. because their platform doesn’t include NAZI-ism
The NYTimes wrote it out for me:
I think a big part of this might be the Democrats not wanting to take the populist pro-worker anti-rich stances due to campaign donations.
Because populism is always dangerous. If Democrats go all in on populism, I will stop voting. I am not going to play this game where we just volley lies back and forth like a tennis ball until someone trips and the other person scores a point.
I will always support sober technocracy. If American politics actually turns into populist tennis then all is lost.
Populism isn’t necessarily bad, business antitrust regulations and the 8 hour workday were historically populist policies. Dems shouldn’t go all out on populism, but they should do something to become popular. Elections are a popularity contest after all.