Five years ago civil society was in general agreement that racism was bad and that we should respect the democratic process instead of seeking to violently overthrow it. Of course there were people who disagreed but they were at the margins and their voices were isolated to a few forums most people never heard of.
A demagogue came along and used mass media platforms to destabilize the norms of civil society and give a large platform to previously marginalized views. Being able to air those views on mainstream outlets perpetuates the problem and shifts norms.
We need to at least try to put this genie back in the bottle. Most people will revert back to previous mainstream views. The significant segment needs to go back to an insignificant segment. That insignificant segment will be angry that they didn't win, and likely some of them will be violent. But they've always been that way anyway.
You have a rosier view of five years ago than I do.
Anyway, demagogues are products of their respective times. To focus on them and their personalities and their rhetoric is to completely miss the forest.
Edit: In fact, that approach is part of what gives them their power. And it certainly makes avoiding their ascent nearly impossible.
I agree with you about demagogues being products of their times. In this case it seems the forest being missed is social media platforms allowing intolerant content and the organization of domestic terrorism.
If that is your point, then I agree. Social media companies need to do more to fight against the pressures that allow demagogues rise to power. Deplatforming them seems like a good place to start.
I think the parent poster means that if you focus on the proclivities of a leader, then you’re missing the point that they won a democratic election and that you might have bigger problems on your hands than a blowhard.
Republicans will take back both houses of Congress in two years. So, the overblown rhetoric that Democrats have to stage in order to hide the fact that they are basically Republican by most policy measures ("why don't we have affordable healthcare like other nations have, especially in a pandemic?" "Because fasciststs!1!") only has to last until then.
Rather than fixating on the mailed ballots, which are used in many places and by which Republicans have been elected in the most recent election and before, concentrate on designing an end-to-end system which could safely incorporated mailed ballots.
Two years of lots of shouting and no accomplishments by Democrats, with more covid deaths in 2021 than in 2020, is going to powerfully depress their turnout in 2022. Also there is a new thing called "Movement for a People's Party" [0] that will take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans. Don't be discouraged about Republican political prospects!
Agreed on mail ballots. Thanks for sticking to the facts too. But are you rooting for more people to die to further your political agenda? Thats morbid. Thats what Republicans did when Obama was in office BTW, which arguably caused a slower, more painful and incomplete recovery from the great recession than was necessary. I was disgusted voters rewarded that behavior by giving Trump the win in 2016. Republicans legit STOLE 2 supreme court seats too and voters almost rewarded them again in 2020. That's put me firmly in the anti-Republican independent camp, if such a camp exists
That would be morbid, but ISTM I'm not rooting for it so much as observing its near inevitability.
Americans have not worn masks, for ten months during which it was clear wearing masks would save many lives and shorten the economic downturn as well. Now the anti-liberal and anti-vax and anti-thought camps have joined forces (some would say the latter two camps have been at least associated for some time) to decline vaccines. Millions of doses are expiring in their very-cold freezers. Morons like Gov Cuomo are scheming to make it more rather than less difficult to receive vaccines. Also people still aren't wearing masks, which (when pressed) experts will admit are and have been actually more effective at preventing infection than vaccines. High-quality masks are still more difficult to obtain than they should be.
All of that is to say that the "effective reproduction number" (R) still far exceeds one, and will for the foreseeable future. Since that hasn't changed, the salient difference between 2020 and 2021 is that on 2020-1-1 there were very few infected and contagious Americans. On 2021-1-1 there were millions. My prediction is simple arithmetic, though it's not allowed on all-wishful-thinking-all-the-time TV news.
Of course R could be changed dramatically by dramatic action. Other nations such as Taiwan opted for that early last year. I really do hope we do that. We could make masks mandatory for all public interaction. We could pay people enough money ($1000 a week might do it?) to stay home. We could make covid vaccination mandatory in the same way that e.g. measles vaccination is. We could actually make enough high-quality masks (currently, massive government/corporate/whosever failure to do so is hidden behind the fact that lots of easily duped people have been persuaded not to wear masks). We could actually make enough vaccines (ditto).
Surely I don't have to finish the argument? No currently-conceivable USA government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to take one of the eminently reasonable steps I've suggested above, while invalidating my prediction will require several of them.
Also, you're completely wrong about 2009. Allowing firms to die is "capitalism" as it's always inaccurately presented. Allowing humans to die is inhumane.
You can say "the wrong side of history" because your ideas happen to be in alignment with the current zeitgeist, but there's no guarantee this will hold true.
In other words, it's a poor argument for anything and only interesting when used ironically.
A demagogue came along and used mass media platforms to destabilize the norms of civil society and give a large platform to previously marginalized views. Being able to air those views on mainstream outlets perpetuates the problem and shifts norms.
We need to at least try to put this genie back in the bottle. Most people will revert back to previous mainstream views. The significant segment needs to go back to an insignificant segment. That insignificant segment will be angry that they didn't win, and likely some of them will be violent. But they've always been that way anyway.