right-wing backlash to the fact that a black person was allowed to be president as well as general social progress and cultural movements made within the past few decades (MeToo, BLM, passage of the ACA, Obergefell v. Hodges, etc.)

📌

The overture to the real shitshow--just throw in a terrorist attack, major weather event (like a Hurricane Sandy), a financial disaster, another pandemic (hello bird flu!) and we'll really see a vast expansion of the fascism underway.

A long-simmering combination of racist backlash to social advances, open corruption, economic oligarchism, inward redirection of WOT violence/surveillance, increasing isolationism in most communities, and reality-annihilating social media have produced conditions amiable to fascism.

and don’t forget the outright denial of science and the fantastic dreams of cryptocurrency.

What i haven’t seen mentioned is that fascism is the plutocrats fear-response to the megacrisis rapidly snowballing.They fear being overrun in their fortified mansions and believe fascism will save them.

We're living through the US openly being what it always has been, a racist, sexist, greedy, religiously-insane police state that protects its powerful few at the extreme expense of everyone else.

Everything I do now is for my children and grandchildren, and their generations. It’s okay not to see the fruits of my labor. I have hope that they will.

In a moment of endless violence and terror being inflicted on those who have already suffered too much under these systems, we still have an opportunity to dismantle them and build a better future. Their incompetence and unsustainable expansion offers vulnerabilities for us to target. We will win.

The answers people are coming up with are spot on.

The story of America is a struggle between freedom and white supremacist patriarchy. These two sides have fought, in the civil war, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, the first Black president. We are living through white supremacist patriarchy winning the battle - but not the war.

To be clear, I am not saying that the two sides align with the two major political parties.

The chickens have come home to roost. This is all a result of a 2-tiered system at the founding and a failed reconstruction. Had confederates been prosecuted and punished—had the law REALLY freed enslaved and impounded ppl, we wouldn’t be where we are in this continuous fascist state.

For me personally it is about survival.

Rent and other costs of living—groceries, healthcare, education—are too high, wages and taxes on the rich are too low, our climate's clock is clicking, and the slightest signs of enthusiasm and mobilization of working people for a better world has driven our insulated ruling class mad.

Those who believed that the systemic violence of the state kept them safe and protected are now feeling helpless as they are forced to witness the terror that too many communities have been suffering for so long.

Meanwhile, the people who've been telling me for decades that they need their guns to fight government tyranny have yet to fire a single shot.

Libertarians: We must be armed to prepare for Obama’s overreach Libertarians: (Today) This is fine

So many white people im surrounded by STILL think it is only happening to "other people", "illegal humans", and "criminals." They have no concerns... even now. THEY are scary & this is maddening

We’re now actively dealing with authoritarianism/fascism, climate change, and an ongoing but ignored pandemic. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” — Antonio Gramsci

BORN TO DIE WORLD IS A FUCK 鬼神 Kill Em All 1989 I am trash man 410,757,864,530 DEAD COPS

bsky.app/profile/kill...

Remember when 2020 was a bad year

The system is working exactly the way it was intended to. (No one should be surprised by this)

When historians look back on this period they'll probably conclude climate change forced global migration that challenged the established sclerotic liberal order. The Right in the West was well positioned to use this to implement a new world order

People are stupid. They have always been stupid, but in certain periods in history, it’s hasn’t been a huge problem. Right now is a bad time for people to be stupid.

We are living through a reckoning of Patriarchy and its doomed systems of oppression: capitalism, white supremacy, castes, and borders. It’s a paradigm shift, and we’re in the messy middle.

Things remind me of the late stage of a game of Civilization. It seems like the wealthy have an insurmountable lead, but things took a turn when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since then, they seemingly have entrenched their power, but at the cost of making their position more tenuous.

We have created diversions and distractions so perfect that death can now walk in plain sight across the world without scare or alarm being raised.

I don't know how I would fit it into 50 words to be honest. It would take some clever wording.

The USA has never had the guts to collectively face the aftermath of slavery and the civil war. The old white men are clutching cruelty to retain power, the rest of us are trying to build through and around them.

"The liberals cannot advocate a struggle, because they are afraid of it. They respond to the intensification of reaction by whining about a constitution, thus corrupting people’s minds, and by intensified opportunism." -Vladimir Lenin

Not great, Bob!

A ginormous meteor is not out of the question.

We are all finding out exactly who we are.

Democracy under attack, truth contested, and tech billionaires reshaping power. Fear and division exploited. Solidarity, care, and courage rising. Leadership emerging. The struggle is whether empathy and shared humanity can outweigh greed and control in shaping the world we’ll leave to the children.

We are living through the white backlash to a moderate Black president, the death throes of capitalism, and maybe most of all a bunch of people used to getting their way being told "no" for the first time. All compounded by an onslaught of targeted disinformation.

💯

Capitalism is always “in its death throes “ - that’s too optimistic- capitalism is gonna go down with the ship I fear

Divine Right Monarchy didn't exactly go quickly or quietly either, but it's still (mostly) gone. We'll get there; we just gotta keep fighting.

We haven't had a functional government in months, it was on life support for years before that, and life is still too normal for too many people to convince them to shut everything down to starve the right-wing parasite sucking the life from our communities.

The Christian Nationalists have WAY too much political power. And are not really that interested in Christ's commandments.

📌

Imagine being dragged into the US by force generations ago, only for your descendants to be told today by rich democrats and warmongers that they must defend it from Nazis.

The man pretending to be our president is a pussy.

If we don't do something soon, I feel it'll be too late even if maga comes around.

It is something that was unfathomable to me. Our education system has failed us. Basic human decency doesn't exist on one side of the political aisle. We are being led by the school bully who is a sexual predator and a felon and his 'friends' are fine because they are racist, sexist, homophobes.

Now is the time of monsters

Fermi Paradox / Great Filter

every accusation is a confession

The surplus population that capitalism requires and produces is becoming harder to manage for the ruling class using existing methods

“We are living through a revolt against the future; the future will prevail” by @anandwrites.bsky.social But only when we show up, stand up, speak out & fight back by 1) protesting 2) not cooperating & 3) building alternatives to topple the pillars of support authoritarians rely on #OneMillionRising

You want it to be one way. But it’s the other way.

A colonizing white supremacist nation-state, dependent on infinite growth on a finite planet, ran out of new lands to colonize. Threatened by watertight scientific evidence the growth it already accomplished is wholly unsustainable, it doubled down on its existing bipartisan fascist tendencies.

Results of funding police/military over K-12 education

I’m honestly surprised we aren’t seeing armed resistance and dead ICE officers yet. All I can figure is most people realize this is exactly what they are hoping for so they can declare martial law and mobilize true large scale military response.

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Hopefully, this fascism is just the dying gasp of capitalism.

No one of note gave a damn about bush v gore and here we are.

It's going to be really weird explaining to my grand kids how we used to be part of a much bigger country called "the United States of America."

i feel like it might be easier than trying to explain the many contradictions of the present order, like why we all accept the authority of a government that most people disapprove of, or how just bc we're free doesn't mean we get to have much control over our lives, or why we cheer death...

Europe & China r mitigating climate change w/ investment in renewables, in contrast the US is all in with authoritarianism to control a population before they realize they've been scammed regarding environmental risk, while Russia & Israel are all in on eliminating human competition for resources.

White men are the least capable to sensing danger yet somehow they are still in charge of sensing danger for the rest of us.

Too much happening at once for the average person to comprehend without reliable news sources, leaders they trust, or existing community to lean on. Lots of work to be done.

This is the least bad moment of the next 10 years. I want nothing more than to be wrong.

'The old world is dying, & the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.' -Antonio Gramsci

Oppression is loud and resistance is quiet, and yet resistance is being effective

Greed is the source of most of our problems and the reason the rest of them are not being solved. The ultra wealthy are addicts who need to be put in rehab.

We are watching the endgame of the rich and the ruling class-to subjugate a few of us and kill the rest. Gaza is just the beginning of what may come, if we stop looking towards the politicians to save us…

Covid traumatized everyone. Institutions’ failure to support people squandered public trust. Our fragmented information sources chase audiences, while individuals can only gauge credibility by what feels right. Meanwhile, we are destroying the planet’s ability to physically sustain civilization.

Nailed it in one.

I may have been giving this some substantive thought for a while.

It's helpful to remember that when you see someone twisting themselves into a pretzel in order to justify hurting other people, it's because people are fundamentally good, and you need to create an alternate reality to do harm.

"It's never too soon to join your local SRA or John Brown Gun Club. But soon, it may be too late."

America was founded by Racists, for Racists, via a Genocide of Natives and occupation of stolen land (and has supported the same scenario overseas for 75 years) These problems didn't come out of thin air in 2016. People only care about them now because they only affect them now.

I work with internet addiction and I would like people not to discount the material reality of most of us centering all things interpersonal in a virtual space. corporate america fell in love with operant conditioning a century ago and has strived to build a Skinner box for the public ever since

Wait, would you say more about this actually? This is, like, just at the edges of what I've never been able to articulate. No, technology itself is not bad but being unable to be separated from your device is...

marshall mcluhan's theories are kind of the origin of this kind of analysis, but basically the question we have to ask ourselves is how much of human behavior is in active response to an active environment and how much is conscientious development of understandings that then influence behavior

as a therapist, I also know that language at its core is our best attempt to articulate our sensory reality, which is largely pre-conscious and heavily biased towards survival instincts, which involve ego defense as well as physical survival and are vulnerable to being affected by vague vibes

the internet is basically a massive data collection tool that has allowed big tech an exact measurement of how much online action is affected by these vague biases and how much by deliberate conscientiousness. it seems to be exponentially the former, so they've been targeting ways to exploit them

how we eat, how we raise our kids, how we treat our sicknesses, how we contemplate the unknown, these are core questions of humanity. we will never answer them, but we can very easily be convinced someone else is out to answer them for us. that's a very profitable insecurity

Thank you, that is good food for further thought.

anytime!

clown world

Both my cynicism and my optimism are shot. Each day is a surprise I have no idea what to do with.

This authoritarian shitshow isn't an aberration: it's the only possible outcome of systems built to prioritize economic power and violence. "Reform" won't fix this: people want it because they're afraid of change. But the only thing that fixes a system built corrupt is revolution.

The Great American Nightmare.

50 words? That's some libshit nonsense.

i appreciate your continued leadership every damn day

Capitalism has failed

It's not great: it's too hot, it's too loud, there are too few marshalls trying to point out the exits, and every five feet or so, sits some asshole who says it's no big deal.

The death of the bipolar world order due to the collapse of the United States into a fascist kleptocracy.

The time for incremental change and politicians offering slightly bigger crumbs needs to end. We need big reforms and a government that looks out for the people and puts checks on corporate power, not the other way around.

feels like the collision of extreme capitalist forces, old guard anti-reconstruction white supremacists, and dumb/bitter gutter racists preying on a broken government with broken people running it.

socialism or barbarism.

what the hell

📌

This is the full scale authoritarian enshitification of every aspect of human life. Venture capitalists are engaging in genocide, sexual assault, pedophilia, nazism, racism, environmental suicide, and gilded age levels of corruption. It's not a swamp. It's a brothel. youtu.be/e8HRcYG3Ftg?...

Mafia State.

Religion and racism are why we can’t have good things. They never really cared about government tyranny, 2A for them was about keeping the right people afraid. American exceptionalism was its fastest highway to fascism. And none of this needs to be happening.

Neoliberalism not only swung open the barn door for fascism, now they're joined at the hip.

Hey. It’s a bit optimistic but it carries me through. They wouldn’t be fighting so hard to crush so many if our power and our capacity to be build a better world wasn’t so immediately and obviously possible. IT IS. bsky.app/profile/ecmc...

Going to post.

Fight fascism like your life depends on it — it probably does.

Jim Crow 2.0 meets Adolf Hitler, resulting in Great Depression 2.0.

And soon we’ll be feeling the effects of what I’ll refer to as Dust Bowl 2.0.

So sick of sequels

And sick of derivative stuff, too.

The violence that US Corporations & the US Government normally reserve for poor people in other countries, and Black & Indigenous people at home, finally comes back at the average US citizen... And the majority can't fully see it because it's starting with an attack on the most vulnerable first.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good.”

A shitshow🤮🤮

We gave em an inch and they took everything. Hopefully, except our spirit.

heartening in the communities i have found via shared struggle and cause. disheartening watching everything i was primed in childhood to expect vanish before my eyes. something different must be possible because this system will inevitably grind itself to dust

Western european psychosis. A loop of shopping, wage slavery, empty hellos, and irrational arguments.

We're able to see the world in ever more granular detail in real time and our brains aren't built to cope.

We are transitioning to fascism, a lot of Americans don’t seem to notice or care, most of our Democratic leaders seem too afraid to point it out, and the media thinks it would be biased to notice.

Imperialism, patriarchy, white supremacy/racism, late-stage capitalism brought us here (misogynoir, transphobia, homophobia included). Only we can pull ourselves out of this situation. We must do it together by building community & trusting each other, not institutions.

“One way or another, this darkness gotta give.”

It looks bad and I see no way out, but the future is unwritten.

The second Nadir.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was insisting he was just asking questions.

An age of liars and thieves, an infectious Rot made by not healing our nation for over a century. We'll get through this. We might even learn from this.

There’s some really amazing responses here from people way smarter and tougher than me. Gives me hope

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely a revelation is at hand.

The center cannot hold.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Something's gotta give

Feels more like the only thing that's giving is people giving up. They don't want to act, they don't want to think, they don't want to believe in anything better; they're resigned to work their 40-60 hours per week until they die. I want hope for the future, but I feel like I'm in the minority.

this is it

We are failing to prevent the cycle. Things get better, the ruling class wipes the map to preserve their entitlement. I don't have hope that humanity will learn.

Trump’s peaked, him and his followers don’t know it yet, there is going to be a lot of damage before he inevitably is removed from power, we will spend the rest of our lives cleaning it up, the coming generation or two of leaders will more left-wing than anything since Reagan. Long term, optimist.

50? I can do it in 14

A heavily funded and highly coordinated fascist movement was allowed to grow unchecked for almost fifty years and, seeing the collapse both of the post-war liberal order and political machinery, was able to take power unopposed.

…

Yes I feel this one, esp given their immediate closure of USAID and subsequent mass mortality abroad. It’s met with official statements about “not giving f***s” about the deaths USAID closure has caused.

Having read through the thread this morning -- I was thinking that it would be great to be able to weave it together into an essay of some sort - but I guess people would need to give permission for their words to be quoted and acknowledged. If you think it's a good idea I would undertake it.

📌

the fascism era dedicated to the proposition that all are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Celebrities are not gonna save us. The wealthy are not gonna save us. Every action has a reaction. What rises out of these ashes will be fascinating. And btw this is america folks.

I will just share the same quote again, but when reading, replace "the party" with Trump

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” remains undefeated.

Gramsci?

💯

no one trusts literally anything anymore and the people who caused that are using it to take control

Our capital city is under martial law. The fact that this is not the top headline of every elite media outlet means US democracy will not be salvaged for a long time to come.

scared, terrified people click more on media headlines.....

Change who is the elite media outlet.

oh

bsky.app/profile/disc...

Don't wait on other people to make a protopia. Leave the assholes behind

The image that haunts me is being surrounded by hundreds of people on a beach bent over with their heads in the sand and therefore blind to what’s happening while I watch in horror

Putin's global right-wing fascist project hit the unexamined racism and sexism of 21st-c America like a firestorm and between media failing and the pandemic, it's still uncontained.

3 recessions in my lifetime, housing crisis, student debt crisis, genocide abroad, plus rising fascism and the Democrats doing nothing about it, and what is "the resistance" upset about? Sydney Sweetney in a stupid jeans commercial.

This is another one of those things that I haven't seen anyone actually upset about, just people talking about people being upset about. The amplification and dissection of the supposed latest outrage (outrage about outrage double drives the algorithm, right?) is its own issue.

Fracturing empire throwing up in mouth

We live in a time of extraordinary cruelty. Where people who believe in nothing are empowered. The people who believe in nothing then become kissing cousins with the kind of people who would have been SS officers in Berlin ‘45.

When I was seven we landed on the moon. Everything was interesting in every direction. Now I'm watching the collapse of a golden age.

Decide what you are willing to give up for justice and make peace with it, then go out and live your life accordingly. Stand up for others, especially for marginalized kids, speak out and protest. Create a circle of love and positivity around you wherever you are and do the most good you can.

📌

If we replicate every atrocity of the Nazis except for one, all criticism of the Trump regime will be written off as hysteria.

we are simply exhausted of the ways of the world.

The night is darkest before the dawn. Fascism always destroys itself and Trump is speed running that. Shit is getting rapidly worse since the fash are flat out ignoring the will of the masses, but that also happens to be their Achilles heel.

The Game of Thrones guys launched their cancelled ‘what if the confederacy had won’ HBO series as a massive ARG instead

We're living through a counterrevolution, without having had the actual revolution in the first place. The BLM movement & org labor resurgence was building toward something but the business class wasn't having it.

Rule of unstable, demented plutocrats, grifters, and psychopaths.

We should be switching all our systems to renewables. Instead, warlords are arranging a Mad Max future so they can stay warlords. Tech bros are helping so they can be war boys, and mainstream politicians are bloodbags.

God I wish I was stupider, then it wouldn't bother me so much

The violent last gasps of the old order, amidst the violent first gasps of our new and radically worsening ecological instability. How we take care of one another amidst all this will determine whether we will (or should) survive.

If everything you see and hear seems backwards and upside down, lean into it. It is. Now is a time to reject norms and everyone and everything that tell us that "this is how it has always been." It hasn't. Learn to live and do things differently, to live and thrive. People > profits and property!

The worst is yet to come.

We are a nation with an historical aversion to accountability for the powerful. Off the top of my head: Civil War traitors weren’t hung. The Bankers that caused the financial collapse in 2008 weren’t held accountable. The architects of J6 weren’t jailed. These are our chickens- roosting.

It is long past time for women to be running things because 10,000 years of men in charge has gotten us here. Misogyny is a key ingredient in fascism.

As a woman, I'd prefer people who have compassion run things. Don't care what gender they are.

bsky.app/profile/left...

bsky.app/profile/rich...

More people in the US are realizing how little democracy we really ever had, that the politicians and institutions that were supposed to protect us are structurally impotent, and that we have to save ourselves.

A scramble to save, hoard, or burn through remaining natural resources. The richest collaborate to create an easily exploited, quietly killable labor force, while stocking bunkers. But there are no climate havens and they don't understand no one can escape this. We have to work together to fix it.

Not mine, but @sorayachemaly.bsky.social did a beautiful job summing up my much larger takes in the foreword to forthcoming Uncovering Possible. “In the face of repression, we build. In the face of backlash, we care. In the face of despair, we teach. In the face of violence, we love each other.“

Not sure what this refers to but TY, Cara :)

I was thinking: "shoot back"

Child abuse reigns. A world that isn't centered on children is doomed.

A moment that’s been 35 years in the planning. A moment that started with a set of wishes, never daring to hope for a successful outcome. A moment seized when a useful fool and the perfect storm happened. A moment that can (and must) be stopped.

Punch more Nazis.

The cognitive dissonance of it all. Like it's perfectly obvious what's happening the moment in history we're living in...but yet we still have to live our lives as if everything is normal. I watch the local news and it blows my mind to see stories of the creeping fascism next to feel good stories.

I don't recall Walter Cronkite closing with schmaltzy hits.

I feel sorry for my children and grandchildren having to experience this America. It saddens me.

Fuck.

We do not want to prepare for a world in which we don't know how to live, and actively deny any impetus to do so

Love your neighbor, GO VOTE in EVERY ELECTION from dog catcher to President, and run for office!

Psychopathic sadists have taken the reigns of power globally. It is our duty as members of a global community to fight it all, while protecting our mental health and of those we love. Do the most you can to tip the balance towards justice and humanity. Thiel is ☠️.

We are living in a time of massive change globally. Fear of "the other" pushes authoritarian ideas to the front. No one knows what will happen.

bsky.app/profile/beag...

It’s gutwrenching to have been “right” for over 3 decades of warning against the fascism creeping back into power, and STILL have the Mainstream Press act *shocked* 🙄 while they CONTINUE building both platforms & spotlights for said fascism 😔

The American empire is dying, many knew this for a long time, but this moment is the very tipping point, the catalyst. The system that we have will not recover not ever be the same.

It is our duty to slow the collapse of the federal government AND to organize our communities against the deregulation and takeover of our local resources. Communities supporting communities against corporate land grabs. bsky.app/profile/node...

Elites believe that the American public will eventually outlive their usefulness as producers and consumers, thus democracy will be unsustainable. They expected that the system ending crisis was still decades away, but Trump hastened its arrival. They then decided that he was the only way through.

as always, they will find out that they weren't needed at all.

The billionaires already had almost unlimited power but now they want it all

Reconstruction ended to soon and the compromise of 1877 has proven a disaster.

Planters and Confederate leaders should have been hanged.

I heard the tree of liberty grows better from billionaire blood

We are living through a revolting blend of end stage hypercapitalism alongside a post Obama slide into Antebellem level open white supremacy alongside a backside into fascism. It's toxic. Is the American experiment done? No. But there will be a reckoning.

*Backslide not backside.

The hierarchies that controlled us are shattering under the strain of their golden grip; now is our chance for true freedom, if we dare make something new together.

I kind of wish I'd died before it got this bad. I have a lot of vulnerable friends. It's horrible seeing them die or suddenly vanish one by on. (For context, I've almost died so many times I lost count years ago. My survival to this point was VERY unlikely.)

People wanted to keep whiteness more than their lives and their humanity.

Prosperity gospel is going to kill us all.

(Whether we personally subscribe to it or not)

That we never properly addressed the southern Confederate traitors after the Civil War. If we had then most of the problems since that time would never have occurred. You have to root out racism and sexism and anti-LGBTQ bigotry at its core.

We shall overcome because God is on our side and we are not afraid, but “someday” is too undefined for my liking.