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Because so many people seem to think that a Trump victory will bring a terrible authoritarian doom on the US I want to start a new hashtag, #TwasEverThus. It won't catch on because people like to think that they live in uniquely bad times. For my first offering, I give you Phil Ochs singing 'Love me, I'm a liberal.' He was hounded by the FBI for such a terrible crime of being a pretty good protest singer.
Here is an extraordinary singer, Paul Robeson, who was more actively persecuted than Ochs for his political beliefs singing about Joe Hill who was fitted up and killed by the state for singing and organizing
Here is Stokey Carmichael. He was a Black revolutionary leader. He was persecuted by the FBI and pushed out of the US for his political views and leadership.
Here is CLR James. He was expelled from the United Status for believing that every cook can govern.
Here is the Democratic National Convention 1968 where the state unleased terrifying violence to prevent people peacefully protesting the establishment's war
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention
Here is the state bombing its own citizens because a small group of anarch-primativists were preaching black power and animal rights
And here is the Patriot Act which authorised warentless surveillance, indefinite detention of non citizens and a host of other horrors. It finally ceased to be law under Trump.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act
Here is Medgar Evers, a Black liberal, who was murdered by white supremacists with the active collaboration of the police and FBI.
Here is Yaser Emer Hamdi, a US citizen and Islamist. He was held without trial for three years, initially at Guantanamo Bay.
@RobertoArchimboldi Um, elements of the #PatriotAct are still "enshrined" in the system. Also, have you heard about #ProjectEsther? I appreciate your mentioning all the times that the US government has gone after folks, but Trump and crew are planning to go after #EnvironmentalActivists, #ProPalestinian activists, and a whole lot of other folks who don't agree with the #Oiligarchy.
@DoomsdaysCW I did not know that some of the patriot act was still in force. It doesn't surprise me. I don't know about project Ester. I imagine that I will be terrified when I look it up, but thank you.
All of the above was posted in the run up to the election. I was grumpy about the apologetics for genocide going on. Trump will no doubt go after environmental protestors and Palestine solidarity activists. My thought was, and to a large extent still is, this what the US state has always done to anyone who vaguely threatens its interest.
I do think that the major objection to Trump is that he is going to destroy, and not in a good way, the administrative state. This is going to make a lot of the people in the top 40% of the US a whole lot more precarious and miserable. In other words some of the wealth holders, the property owners, are going to find themselves in the class of the have nots, already a majority of the population.
That is bad but people should be honest about it. Either you want the revolutionary overthrow of the system or you want to mitigate the status quo for you own security. From the former point of view, Trump is terrifying but so was Harris. From the latter, be honest, you simply want to regulate capitalism, never mind the fact that the wealth in the US is held by a minority and requires the exploitation of the vast majority of people on this planet as well as the destruction of most of the biosphere.
That is probably a bit black and white, but a reasonable first approximation
@RobertoArchimboldi Oh hey, you made some excellent points. Thanks for responding.
@DoomsdaysCW thank you. I like to find out more, so I am grateful for the correction re the Patriot Act.
Project Esther is indeed terrifying now that I have looked it up. It seems really telling how much bipartisan support there is for this new power grab by the executive. They know who is about to take office but they are still quite happy to give Trump the power to strip non profits of their status. Trump's authoritarianism and the crack down on dissent is not what bothers the Democratic party bigwigs
@RobertoArchimboldi Crooks hate competition (referring to all the Dems who receive campaign funding from weapons manufacturers).
@DoomsdaysCW a pithy way of putting it