Polls show an increasing support for political violence. In my opinion, this is because we are living in an oligarchy and there are no other effective modes of change.
Look at the Paramount-Warner merger. The laws we elected lawmakers to enact and the state to enforce are not being enforced. We voted for the laws. We voted for the sherriff. Yet the will of the people is not being enforced.
What options remain?
The reality is that we are being ruled and controlled by a very small number of very rich people.
Many of these billionaires are hoping or trying to dismantle democracy and create some sort of techno feudalism where corporations rule. What’s disturbing is that many of these men have read sci fi where such techno feudalism is the norm and they seemed to have missed that such societies were never portrayed as being ideal or even good, they are always dystopic.
It feels like history is repeating itself. The movie Amsterdam made me aware of the Business Plot of 1933 and I was surprised about how much it mirrors the political landscape in the US today.
I’m terrified by the parallels between today and the rise of fascism in the early 20th century.
That’s because it wasn’t punished severely and decisively at the time. The overgrown toddlers weren’t told “no” when they should have been.
And the underlying causes weren’t fixed.
Fascism rose a hundred years ago for precisely the same reason it does today.
The economy went to shit (Europe was in rags after WW1, with Germany, Austria and Hungary forced to pay restitution that led to reduced industrial and agricultural progress, meanwhile the US managed to jump from market crash to market crash to total global depression), and people felt like no matter what they did, there was no progress. Workers worked their arses off only to barely make ends meet, discontent was brewing, and elected officials were either intentionally blind to the issues or just completely castrated, unable to fix anything.
Which gave way to fascists. In the US, in the UK (which had a knock-on effect of mainland Europe being in the shitter economically, and the British Empire falling apart), in Germany, or Spain, or Italy, even in Russia. Fascists were able to pose as worker-friendly, national spirited solution-finders. Because that is what fascists do - cause complex problems, block any proper solutions, then come up with overly simplistic resolutions that the average people suck up (even if the experts say it’s obviously not going to work), grab onto power, and not let it go.
It’s literally the same shit happening again. All the issues of Europe - ineffective “progressive” leaders (in reality centrist pigs), US interventionism causing the immigrant crisis (not going to put blame on the individual immigrants, but one has to be blind to not see the knock-on effect of an already underperforming European market picking up tons of people who need shelter, food, amenities, and of course the ~30% tack-on economic migration and system abuse), all giving rise to fascism yet again.
Because again the altright is using the simplistic rhetoric of “if we get rid of [insert demonised minority here], all our problems will be gone”. without addressing the underlying core causes of the current economic depression. And people suck it up because it’s a simple answer, it plays into the tribalist spirit and shifts the need of critical thinking onto someone else.
People experience increased violence from policies and lack of oversight. It makes sense they‘re readying to fight back.
Except there’s a decent slice of people who want to inflict further violence. These aren’t the people who are gonna rise up and fight tyranny. These people think raising the government deserves punishment.
That’s crazy. Why don’t they just cut regulations instead? That is the true path to utopia. /s
Strong’s Zuckerberg says in the film that “the debate is over”. If it is, The Social Reckoning portrays a world where Meta is on the wrong side of it.
Hey, this might be good!
Ahh, the 2020s, when Bond villains are glorified.
