As authoritarianism accelerates — as government-sanctioned violence becomes more overt in immigration enforcement, in policing, in the open deployment of federal force against civilians, and in the steady erosion of civil rights — people are scrambling for reference points.
But instead of reckoning with the long and violent architecture of U.S. history, much of this searching collapses into racialized tropes and xenophobic reassurance: This isn’t Afghanistan. This isn’t Iran or China. This is America. We have rights. This is a democracy. This isn’t who we are.
These statements are meant to comfort. They are meant to regulate fear, to calm the nervous system with the promise that no matter how bad things get, this country is somehow exempt from the logic of repression. Instead, they reveal how deeply many people still misunderstand both this country and the nature of authoritarian power.
They rest on a dangerous fiction: that large-scale state violence, political terror, and repression belong somewhere else — to “failed states,” to the Global South, to places imagined as perpetually unstable. This is not only historically false; it is how people in the U.S. have been trained not to recognize what is being built in front of them.
A Tale of Two Resolutions: 75 Dems Join GOP in Resolution Praising Trump’s Mass Deportation Regime
We have two Democratic Parties - the party aligned with the general public and the party aligned with the national government. If you’re voting for Henry Cuellar in the next election cycle, who are you supporting exactly?
This article?
I didn’t get that at all. This isn’t both sidesing any issue. I don’t think they even mention Republicans or Democrats/Left or Right even once. It’s just holding up a mirror to say this is us.
If anything it should remind people that if you want your America, you need to be ready to shape it by being more aware of the narratives being created. You can still make the America and the future you want by demanding your rights, especially the right to vote.
If my opponent is the government and Republicans are really good at getting things done while Democrats are terrible at it, then it makes sense for me to vote for Democrats as they’ll be a weaker opponent.
Both sides are absolutely not the same. One is feckless and spineless so I’d rather fight them.
Biden’s Democrats were actually amazing at reversing Trump’s policies and bringing in new progressive ones.
You could argue that he got more done then Obama did on his first term.
And even with all that done it still feels like nothing changed, and the next president undid all of that and more.
Trump has the SCOTUS running defense for him.
Trump’s been planned out for a long time while they stacked all the courts.
Which just reinforces my position that the Dems are bad at governing and therefore a better opponent for someone who hates government.
I can’t argue with that although it was mostly Mitch McConnell that engineered that I’m not sure if the rest of the republicans add up to his level of political savvy.
They don’t have to be good at it. Just better than their opponents.