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Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
Not my country, so not really my place to say, but I've noticed something disappointing going on with US elections: plenty of moderates get angry with the government, but then stay at home on polling day, leaving the field open for more motivated minority voices to score big, by which I mean Trumpists, evangelicals, etc. How else explain the fact that a blue gun-control tsunami has never materialized to sweep away the NRA-funded Republicans? Some observers have been waiting for that since Sandy Hook, so I'm sorry to say that today's Pro-Choice tsunami might be the same, washing up as a barely noticible dribble on polling day- like one of those waves on a flat beach that don't even get your shoes wet. "But if I'm wrong you can just say it's the first time I was happy to be confused."
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rubber soul
I wouldn't count on it.
You're not wrong, Lisna. We Americans are a pretty apathetic bunch.
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Sigh. Alright let's try to get through to you centrists one more time.
If liberals in America are apathetic and have no drive it's because there is no liberal project or movement their politicians are behind. There were ideas of reform and whatnot back in the days of the early progressives in the early 1900s but there's a reason they largely got behind eugenics. They were wealthy folk who weren't actual leftists who needed a reason why poverty and bad things existed and they settled on a reason that didn't deal with wealth inequality that might call into question their own positions in society.
Eventually you had FDR and the New Deal but that wasn't really the grand step forward it's remembered as so much as it was a way to preserve capitalism and forestall socialism and/or fascism, and liberals ever since have held this up as a high point in egalitarianism even though it was simply a kinder and gentler form of capitalist caretaking. To this day this is all liberalism in America is which is why they have no vision and no drive, because anything more would require actual socialism which has always been a project they are at odds with no matter what they tell themselves.
Conservatives on the other hand stand for the old hierarchies of the wealthy, white supremacist, settler colonial project and everything they've ever done and still do is in service to that. The New Deal provided grievances to the wealthy, civil rights provided grievances to white supremacy, and fundamentalist Protestantism has provided a glue to keep their coalitions on point and on message to this day. And they are not apathetic. They have a vision, energy, and coordination that the liberals will never have because they can not commit to the self interest of the right or the egalitarianism of the left.