It seems like we are watching the (slow) de-legitimization of American liberal democracy unfold. At least from my perspective. For example, the other day, my normally progressive-liberal parents were talking about how they would prefer to live in China at this point. It put me off guard ngl. People are losing faith, even if Biden's win has given many a brief dose of copeium. What do y'all think?
If you think it's bad now, just wait 8 months into Biden's presidency when the death toll will have tripled and people realizing that just having a president from Team Blue isn't making things any better. Liberalism is truly dying. We're going to be seeing a new wave of anti-government sentiment counterculture real soon.
I doubt this heavily, and if we do get any new anti government sentiment it's going to come from the fash, not the libs
We aren't exactly movers and shakers imo, but we'll see if something catches on in the next couple of years
just wait 8 months into Biden’s presidency when the death toll will have tripled and people realizing that just having a president from Team Blue isn’t making things any better.
That really depends on if they do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I doubt the senile coot will be as bad as the :cheeto-man: , because I do think he'll put some boots in the asses of the states. Namely, the Dakotas to actually get things under control. That might just be a little too optimistic of pessimistic ol' me, but I do think come January there will be something done.
Well he doesn't support lockdowns. So it will probably just be him demanding everyone wear masks while doing nothing
It's so much worse. Chernobyl killed somewhere between a few dozen and a few thousand, so right there we're maybe 1000x worse. Also, in spite of the initial fuckups, the bureaucrats eventually listened to the scientists, developed a plan, mobilized society's collective resources, and solved the problem. They even ultimately learned something from it and took steps to prevent similar problems in the future. In our case, the official debate within government is complete denial vs individual responsibility. There has been no interest in learning from SARS, no interest in learning from the countries that contained covid successfully, no ability to plan or coordinate within the government, and no interest or ability to mobilize any actual resources. Instead we had states bidding against each other at auctions, the federal government literally stealing essential life-saving supplies from states, and fraud and profiteering at every opportunity.
I know you were talking about the political impact, which we probably won't know for some time, but just comparing them directly is fucking bleak.
In our case, the official debate within government is complete denial vs individual responsibility.
The US response to climate change in slow motion
This happened to me. People who were pretty anti-China and thought the CPC was lying through their teeth suddenly want America to be China. LMAO
They have passed through denial and have entered acceptance
It straight up is just like Chernobyl, down to that HBO show's portrayal even. I know some people who work at a nursing home, when COVID hit visitors were not allowed in, but staff of course could come in and out. A nurse worked 2 part time shifts in different hospitals, one of which had a policy where masks were not allowed to be worn by the nurses in order to "not incite panic among patients". Lo and behold that nursing home gets the rona and it's believed that the part timer brought it over.
I think the creator of the show wanted to draw a parallel with the Chernobyl disaster and climate change, but COVID is the perfect analog of how neoliberal capitalism can inflate any disaster to a total one.
There is gonna be a whole big attempt to try and lay this at the feet of Trump
Which we shall not let them
We could have solved all this shit by now by just paying everyone to stay at home for two-three months and having paid professionals deliver food and supplies rather than the ramshackle nonsense state-by-state response we had
We can still solve it that way, but Biden won't even consider it because line go up
Oh yeah, they'll do that. They were already blaming everything on Trump before the election with Biden's staff saying they would need to balance the budget and cut deficit spending.
Problem is, nearly half the country voted for Trump. Over 70 million people, more than he got in 2016. When he's a memory to the oval office, people aren't going to sit there and want to hear all the blame deflected.
Dems are expected to actually do something this time around and Biden lacks the charisma of Obama when it comes to selling bullshit. Given how they squandered the senate and lost key seats in the house in this past election, everything is shaping up for them to get destroyed in midterms and run another wet fart of a presidential campaign for 2024. We're really just counting down the days at this point for when we get full blown fascism in the US, and it's coming.
Just to let you know 70 million is only about 20-25% of the US population. It's a lot but nowhere near a majority.
The voting populace is the best sample size we can get for the country.
It's fair to say almost half the country wants Trump if almost half the people who voted, voted for him.
It's gonna be a second AIDS moment and nobody will give a shit that the US abandoned "undesirable" people once again.
they had a lot easier time just saying AIDS was a curse for having sex, can't say that when your own grandma died of it
Death by COVID-19 is a punishment by The Line for not contributing enough to our great free market economy. Now get back to the assembly line, Worker #628.
I was getting ready to write a paragraph response about Trump's 2016 win being the moment, but despite all the bullshit people still believed in America or whatever notion of it existed in their heads. I also had a very similar discussion with my proudly liberal parents after the 1st Trump-Biden debate, my dad actually said "I can't believe this is the best we've got." I made sure not to make a snarky comment that time.
I wonder how many other libs had a similar thought that night, and despite the later win aren't happy. The people who would aren't the type to post and I don't see a lot of people these days, so its hard to know, but I reckon its probably a sizeable block. If Biden actually follows through on his COVID plan of "mask mandate but no lockdown" then I think that block will grow. If a new political party doesn't fill the void left by the Dems then American Liberal "Democracy" will probably be stuck on a flat foot, waiting for something to knock it over.
You aren't wrong there about 2016. The energy Trump has put out there is not going away. We started seeing cracks in the trust of our liberal democracy around that time.
Biden isn't going to be able to fix this pandemic. He don't support lockdowns and he has flipflopped so far on mask mandates. The big thing he is going to screw up will be the COVID relief bill, which will likely just be tax credits and come at the expense of him getting to finally defund social security or medicaid after working his whole life to it. Biden will be the austerity president and the backlash to this is going to some serious anti-government sentiment unlike anything we have ever seen before. Biden very well might just destroy the Democratic party all together. There's no way they're going to win midterms and 2024 is shaping up to be the year we get a competent fascist to arise from the GOP.
Many more people have died than Chernobyl, yes, but I really am starting to doubt that it's going to cause people to start shifting their opinion of the government; mostly because Americans are stubborn fucks
If China beats America to a vaccine, it'll be like experiencing a Chernobyl Moment and a Sputnik Moment at the same time.
Then shit gets real.
I think an equally good metaphor is that it'll be America's Suez Crisis moment- revealing the decline of one superpower and the ascendance of another.
