The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.

So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”

  • hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net
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    11 months ago

    There is no saving America, there’s only buying time. Democrats can’t do what’s needed to prevent fascism because actually doing something about the Republican party would risk creating actual democracy. Prepare to fight fascism now because at best you’re buying yourself another 4 years. Vote, don’t vote, vote for a third party out of protest, whatever you do organize with other people and prepare for the worst.

    In the best case, I’m wrong and you’ve made new friends. But if you don’t organize now it will be too late to organize in the worst case.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Democrats can’t do what’s needed to prevent fascism because actually doing something about the Republican party would risk creating actual democracy.

      Hard fucking facts. When you look at places where liberals have carte blanche to do whatever they damned well please - your Californias and Washingtons and NYs and Minnesotas - they still can’t bring themselves to do what needs doing. No public health care. Rampant homelessness thanks to commodified housing. Food deserts. Rich-people-only universities. No new mass transit. Police budgets skyrocketing. Everyone kowtowing to tech executives for no discernible benefit.

      Meanwhile, the fascists in Texas and Florida and the Dakotas and Carolinas are creating the future of the American political system while Schumer, Jeffries, and Biden just kinda sleep through it.

      Vote, don’t vote, vote for a third party out of protest, whatever you do organize with other people and prepare for the worst.

      Voting as a panacea for organizing has really fucked the country as a whole. While movement conservatives raid school boards and throw pipe bombs at abortion clinics and do Brooks Brothers Riots and Jan 6ths any time an election is in doubt, liberals have been totally pacified. They show up ever couple of years, pull a lever, do a thoughts and prayers, and go home.

      They spend far more time gambling on Robinhood or working overtime to earn their bosses a bigger paycheck than they do throwing events for their neighborhood or organizing their offices to bargain for a bigger share of company profits.

      The American future looks increasingly grim.

      • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        When voting isnt enough learn how to grow crops like a farmer not a gardener and then practice shooting. If we’re lucky those will stay hobbies.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          learn how to grow crops like a farmer

          Historically, the smart move it own the land and have other people do the reaping and sowing. Even then, agricultural land has skyrocketed in cost as its been commodified. Idk if I’d consider “sharecropper” a savvy career change under and social conditions.

          practice shooting

          At whom? Or is the plan to just shoot everything that moves and hope for the best?

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              If you don’t have enough money to hire people to do farmwork, you sure as hell don’t have enough money to purchase productive farmland.

              • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                No on said to buy a farm. Use what’s available to you and ammend the soil, there are plenty of organic addatives that are free, low cost, or byproducts. Also make you own compost to continually add neutrients, aka grow food like a farmer not a gardener.

                The point is to know how to do it cyclically, with little if any input other than what you create. Its an investment in divesting from society, and a lesson in sufficience that you may need once the fact that China and Bill Gates own the most farmland in America becomes a more pressing issue.

                The guns are there because for any situation where food become that valuable, productive land anywhere becomes a target. Weather its pests, deers, boars, or humans.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Use what’s available to you and ammend the soil

                  A quarter acre of land in my neighborhood runs for $300k. There is nothing I can do to that soil that’s going to justify a $300k upfront investment in urban agriculture. Nevermind what this prepper nonsense is going to accomplish in the event the End of The World isn’t happening within the next five years.

                  a lesson in sufficience that you may need once the fact that China and Bill Gates own the most farmland in America becomes a more pressing issue.

                  The cool thing about farmland is that its only really useful if its being worked. And the realization that we’re ultimately going to have to come to terms with is that the folks who “own” the land are very far removed from the folks who give the land value.

                  At the same time, subsistence farming isn’t a particularly productive lifestyle in a post-industrial world. So telling everyone to run out to Iowa and become soybean farmers is not good financial advice.

                  • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    I find it funny that you discount learning to grow crops as something that doesn’t help and can only be done on a $300k piece of land but also acknowledge the land alone isn’t what gives it value. Yes that’s why it’s important to know how to grow food. Which is apparently only useful to know if the world ends in the next five years according to you.

                    It seems like you’re deliberately interpreting eveything I say in a way you can argue against it instead of the way I wrote it. Never told people to move, never told them to buy a farm, never told them to buy land but you argue against all those things as if my points hinges on them. What I said was learn to grow crops, not simply a vegetable garden that relies on annual trips to buy more miracle grown. That doesn’t mean you need a farm.

                    Also interestingly enough if we check the CPI food items are rising faster than most other costs. Also sustainable and urban agribusiness demand is growing. Posturing yourself to understand and take advantage of that is the opposite of a financial mistake.

    • butterflyattack@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      True, that. Building mutually supportive communities is really beneficial if shit goes bad. It’s something most of us can do on a local level and it’s something most humans are pretty good at.