this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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It REALLY veered off course in 2016. I was in my 30s. I already had kids. I used to vote split ticket. Now straight blue. A lot of the negative things about Trump came about before the 2016 election.
The 2000 election and Citizens United were terrible. I remember Palin's nonsense might have cost McCain the election. That was an easy choice considering his age. My thought was, if he dies in office miss "I can see Russia from my house" response to foreign policy platform would be POTUS. No thanks. Now the GOP all seem to support Trump and his obvious fascism. Nope. The GOP needs to die and the Democrats need complete control for a cycle and should institute a popular vote using ranked choice for president.
ETA: After the changes, the Democrats would inevitably split into multiple parties, including a conservative party.
I'd say the us began veering off course before I was even born, starting in 1981 with Reagan. 2001 was another point that escalated the decline of the US with the bush years. 2017 was just the icing on the shit cake for this country.
2025 is looking like it's going to be the nail in the coffin :(
I agree. Nixon was simply a bad president, but Reagan was the start of "the government is bad by definition".
Nixon was simply a bad president, yes, but Nixon's election campaign popularized the "Southern strategy". Republicans at the time weren't particularly popular in the South because--as they'll happily tell you--Lincoln was a Republican; so they started flirting with racism and courting Southern voters by openly hating black people. It allowed Nixon and others to win elections in the South and became a mainstay of Republicanism. It was the Republican party's first major foray into fascism which relies on misinformation and manipulation of people through their worst impulses.
Since that worked, they've only gotten worse. The Southern Strategy, which began before I was born, is where I peg the start of the collapse of progressive politics.
BTW, until that time Democrats were doing it. The parties pretty much traded places on their stances toward race over the course of a couple of decades. So you could also argue that things have gotten neither better nor worse. If so, that doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm for our future.
Also, Nixon sabotaged the negotiations to end the Vietnam war so that he could run on ending it. And then, when he won, didn't want to actually end it because he was worried about being known as a president who lost a war.
So first he caused more people to die so he could make a campaign promise. Then even more people died when his ego couldn't handle keeping that promise.
And then Ford was almost as big of a piece of shit for pardoning him.
I was surprised to learn that Nixon carried the electoral college 520 votes to 17. Looking back now, obviously Nixon was a deeply unpopular president, so I was shocked learning that he was elected in one of the biggest landslide victories the US had ever seen.