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I recently came across this video from the NYT. It is titled: "We're experts in Fascism. We're Leaving the U.S."
Not to boo my outgroup too much here (and that's not the point of this), but holy shit this video is bonkers. The logical jumps these people are making, their inability to understand or recognize that they are explicitly not living in a fascist dictatorship when they work for the largest newspaper in the country publishing content about how the leader of the country is a giant fascist. This video is frightening to me for the following reason:
What does the deprogramming effort for all of this eventually look like? Or does it happen?
These people (not necessarily the ones in the video, but the ones who might watch this type of video earnestly) seem convinced that we are living in a society which is comparable in some way to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.
I guess I have to stop myself here to check my biases: are we? Just to look at the most obvious thing here, the press, the answer is unequivocally: no, or perhaps even "fuck no, lol".
Or the military? It seems like we have the most powerful military on earth, and are essentially not using it at all.
As far as ICE: ice killed two people in situations which were arguably (though not definitely) self defense, and the response was that the Federal Government largely pulled out of the area (Minnesota) where they were deployed. This is while local residents are doing things like stalking federal law enforcement, setting up various checkpoints, and delaying "rapid response forces" to track their movements.
Would Hitler have tolerated this? Was there an equivalent in Nazi Germany of non-Nazis setting up checkpoints for the Nazis and driving them out of town?
Okay I'm talking to myself here: no we are not even remotely close to anything even remotely like a fascist dictatorship. By almost every definition we are likely the farthest we have ever been from living in a fascist dictatorship.
So deprogramming: has there been any serious discussion about what this will look like? It's been on my mind for a little over a year now. Here was the positive realization I had about it: it's not necessary. The people being dispatched by this sort of propaganda don't hold coherent beliefs. This is not part of a larger system of beliefs that all build on top of one another. These ideas are mostly just sitting on their own. They are a collection, not a system.
So this means that deprogramming isn't so much a process of unwinding everything, it's just a matter of installing a new set of ideas. Deprogramming could happen in a few days, for some people it could probably happen in a single episode of John Oliver or Rachel Maddow.
Realistically this was a happy realization to me. Am I wrong to think this?
I haven't seen deprogramming as I think you are suggesting for my entire adult life. The closest I've seen is a pause button that slows down the machine as it negotiates with the crisis producing organs. I don't think they're quite as pliable as you suggest, but I agree the people aren't the main issue.
The problem is we're left with a ruling class made up solely of people who are practiced in little else but our familiar little routines. The last vestiges of the adults in the room generation -- the ones who consciously decided to turn up the heat for worthwhile ends -- are dying off. Because of that, deprogramming is unlikely to come in return to normalcy form. If it does come, I expect it will be in a refreshing, possibly progressive or radical package. A breath of fresh air! I'll believe it when I see it.
The forever crisis has become too useful to too many. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs now benefit from if not rely on the arrangement. More importantly, so do many individual political careers. The end of democracy can't endure forever, yet I see no reason to believe why it can't endure the foreseeable future if we stay on an uncomfortable, but not-killing-each-other trajectory. At least Motte adjacent people somewhere will have a good hearty chuckle at the necessary rehabilitation of Trump, as to better contrast him against the next threat.
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