@usefewersyllables n/a

I’ll wait for you over here.

@Battle of Blair Mountain you aren't one of those who counseled a vote for Biden because Trump is a fascist?

Third Party is the only option besides violence.

@peachcreek for getting ranked-choice voting in your locale?

TPTB have a lock on who is on the ballot and has a chance. What about some form of ranked choice voting as the primary goal? It seems to me that that *might* have some influence to disempower the current system.

@fire with fire In response to the McGovern candidacy, the Democratic Party adopted a voting framework of "superdelegates," unelected party notables who are granted votes in Presidential nominating conventions. Presumably this policy was enacted to make the Democratic Party more difficult to take over from the "outside" -- i.e. by peace candidates.

He ran on the slogan, Come Home America.

Nixon responded to the anti-war movement by Vietnamizing the Vietnam War and bringing an end to the draft. Without the personal crisis of getting drafted into a serious shooting war, white America voted for the "realism" of Tricky Dick and his pet brain, Henry Kissinger. Also contributing to the ugliest landslide in Electoral College history was the white "backlash" on the topic of race as the Solid South turned red and has stayed that way ever since.

Whatever the machinations behind the scenes before, during and after the Nixon years, the politics of "peace" was banished from electoral politics in 1972. A fierce confederacy of power wielding institutions have cemented that political paradigm as the perpetual status quo. Bernie Sanders and The Squad dare not question the wisdom of military force as the principal tool of foreign policy. No discussion necessary or allowed.

Whether it is advanced by a new party, an existing party or by intrepid souls within the major parties, unless it challenges that "realism" head on, it is a waste of time and effort. We, American Citizens, want the wars to end and the military reduced to the role of defending our shores.

Everything else is a trifle compared to this, because this is what prevents anything good from happening. War is applied insanity. And it is no way to live.

@on the cusp Hitler took six weeks to establish dictatorial power over Germany. Trump had four years, and was defeated in an election by a senile old man. Were gangs of brownshrts roaming America terrorizing unionists? Were children right and left forcibly inducted into Trump Youth organizations? If there were "fascists" ruling America, they were too few in number to matter.

Even the Russians and Ukrainians in power today, Putin and Zelenskyy and their cronies, pretend to believe in democracy. They just outlaw the parties which would matter, more or less in the way that Daniel Ortega outlaws the parties that matter as de facto dictator of Nicaragua. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini nor even Francisco Franco bothered with any democratic veneer, claiming outright to be dictators. Fascism was motivated by nostalgia for dictatorship -- Hitler was appointed by old guys who pined for the rule of the Kaiser. The closest America has had to a fascist President was George W. Bush, but even he gave up power after two terms.

If fascism were what ruled us right here and now, we would not be allowed to have this conversation. Someone in a room somewhere in the United States would delete our posts, and JtC would have no say in the matter.

Part of what the historic fascists did was to revive their economies as they killed thousands. Hitler created a lot of desk office and munitions industry jobs at the beginning of his tenure as dictator. Today economies falter and the point of Putin and Zelenskyy is to defend oligarchies of thieves. The problem for these people is that, unlike the historic fascists, they live in an era in which capitalism has maxed out its frontiers and there is nowhere new to grow into. Musk and Bezos, like little boys, pretend that outer space is the place for their capitalism while they prepare to exploit it in a day which will never come.

Now capitalism is a well-defined term. Capitalism is a system which features the exploitation of wage labor for the profit of capitalists, rule by the balance sheet, and appropriation of the world so it can be molded in the image of capital resources. Capitalism, like fascism, is a characteristic of a phase of human history, one which in capitalism's case should end in a few decades. But unlike fascism, it's a stock belief of this era that capitalism is eternal and will last forever. Fascism is an old term people want to revive, today, because people have trouble defining their political enemies. "Assholes" and "kleptocrats" are tried and trusted terms. "Inverted totalitarianism" and "managed democracy" are defined precisely as terms. I recommend their revival into our lexicons.

I'm sure you have cred as far as your knowledge of historic fascism is concerned. How much of a comparison have you done with current events?

10 years of education, that degree in history, that 50 years of being surrounded by family members, WWII vets, who were liberators of Auschwitz, guards at the Nuremberg trials, the neighbor who was captured by Germans and imprisoned in Russia, who walked back to France, or the next door neighbor, born in Germany, who observed Kristallnacht, also ate cats when she was lucky, also got selected to be a member of the Superior Race, mated with some SS elite soldier to produce the ultimate child.
Then, it disappeared.
Other than that, nah. I just fling the word "Fascism" to be cool.
As Sgt Schultz said, "I know nothing."