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Steward Beckham's avatar

This is one of the main reasons why teaching history is crucial. We are living in a larger period of expanding human rights but that is not always the natural cycle in all of human history. We have to make people aware of this, so that they will be urges to protect this time. With so much destruction being done to educational culture and institutions, it becomes harder to incentivize people to protect what was given to them by prior generations.

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Jon Notabot's avatar

Hammer sinks the nail on this one...

Tearing down our democratically organized institutions is synonymous with the building up of a fascist Goliath. MAGA-Putin folk aren't reinventing the wheel here - they're simply heisting and repurposing it to their exclusive benefit (and their inhuman, criminally wealthy financiers).

The idea of "government" in democracy is simple: To provide for the general welfare of the people, represent the will of the people fairly and equally, and to act as a stedfast check against outsized personal/ private power encroaching on the welfare and will of the people. That last part is what the sociopathetic (not a typo) faction of the GOP and all other fascist-infested groups hate most: A thing standing between them and their nihilistic impulses. They loath a thing strong enough to block their shortsighted, ill-conceived, self-serving, rapacious existence. They are the rapists, the serial killers, and the kleptocratic losers of civilization itself. They are the inferno that is "Wetiko".

Our most promising defense against these contemporary global Jim Jones's is to renounce their legitimacy and their ambitions - resoundingly - as one people united and committed to building a stronger democracy through a more representative and functional government.

If we are to share in this planet of life, we must share the resources and opportunities it provides. When we share things, rules need to be applied - otherwise, sharing becomes stealing and/ or hoarding. Rules are the difference between a functioning society that serves all, and a dystopian blackhole that serves few. Governments are formed and utilized to create and manage such rules. Government is not inherently "bad". Nor is it inherently "good". It is, simply, whatever we chose it to be - through our involvement.

As a suggestion, one way to involve ourselves is to demand that representatives of hostile foreign adversaries not be allowed to simultaneously pretend to be US Senators - like Tommy Tuberville, for example.

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