i'm a millennial who graduated from a texas high school in 2008. this is 100% exactly what it was like in the bush years. manufactured consent, omnipresent jingoistic nationalism, abject refusal to question the good vs evil narrative peddled by the government. i remember having conversations with friends about the unconscionable death toll of the iraq war and how we needed to get out, to which the response was often "and just abandon those citizens to the whims of violent dictators? we're there to spread democracy, this is about freedom." you'd tell someone about the unjust murders of Sikh people by riled up USAmericans and they'd be like "well obviously that's wrong, but the victim should've taken better precautions to not be viewed as a terrorist." i mean, this was the era when The Dixie Chicks, one of the most popular country bands in the states, had their entire career nuked from orbit for mildly criticizing Bush at a concert. the hysteria simply cannot be overstated.
and then obama got elected on the back of young people horrified at the war and its supporters. suddenly the critics all went quiet because The Good Guys Are In Charge, even though Obama was pretty much more of the same and in some cases worse. this was an equally impenetrable wall of ideology. any criticism of the Obama administration was met with "he's facing an immense uphill battle and anyway the GOP are putting up roadblocks everywhere." even though they dems had control of the house and senate for Obama's first two years, and wasted it. Obama's team dismantled the national infrastructure that got him elected and then he got a bunch of establishment guys in his cabinet. he increased drone strikes and all but declared war on whistle blowers. ah but it's okay because The Good Guys Are In Charge and they're trying their best despite the opposition, and anyway do you see how crazy the Other Guys are??? would you really rather have THEM in charge?!
then Trump got elected and suddenly everyone was criticizing the policies again. oh the border detention is so bad, the wall is evil, the trade war with China is stupid, he's gutting the USPS, he's given billionaires a tax break, we Have To Stop This Man....... and when Biden replaced him, all those criticisms went quiet despite the fact that he did not reverse any of those policies, and in fact made many of them worse. but you can't criticize him because at least The Good Guys Are In Charge and they're trying their best despite the opposition, and anyway do you see how crazy the Other Guys are??? would you really rather have THEM in charge?!
and here comes Kamala repeating debunked claims about why Palestinians deserve to be genocided, talking about "I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world." Biden ran on stolen Medicare For All valor and has since presided over the largest disenrollment of people from Medicaid in American history. now Medicare For All isn't even on the table. she's riding in on a wave of exhaustion and despair through a system which has over decades eradicated material policy and the needs of constituents from the equation. this cycle has been happening and will continue to happen because the two parties of this country are two sides of the same coin, both representing their primary constituency of Filthy Rich Motherfuckers. and the whole cycle is there to simply maintain the necessity of war and violence and genocide, because it's where all the money is. and it's all the American media talks about. the insanity of the Bush era has seeped into the drinking water and has become a miasma from which we have yet to escape. it's disgusting, maddening, and heartbreaking to witness year after year, as the many lied-to rationalize violence they've been deliberately taught not to understand.
these people will never change what needs changing, no matter their party affiliation, unless forced to under massive social pressure. this is why they're investing so much in cop cities and surveillance and anti-protestor measures. they'll sooner wage war against working people on their own soil than accede the merest sliver of welfare, put even the mildest check on the violence of their allies. we've been living in a fascist dystopia for a long time already, we just don't call it that because our catastrophically rigged democracy has been normalized not as a tool for representational governance, but as a moral battleground of personal expression. idk man, it's pretty fucking bleak!!
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