The main problem with fascists is that they’re always expanding what they think of as their “homeland”.
“We must annex Northern California to free the MAGAnites from their oppression and victimization!”
Better to deal with them before they have core cleansed area.
clearly, we go to some nice camps built for those of us who don’t conform.
Although I don’t live on an island…
Like they will stop at having the deep south and some of the midwest… And what do people think is gonna happen to blue districts in those states - like ATL or Austin? Are we LITERALLY expendable? Apparently, some believe so.
Right? The Nazis did not stop at “taking” the German speaking lands of Eastern Europe, after all.
Better to deal with them BEFORE they fucking cleanse me and the entire fucking city I fucking live in…
Or… perhaps it is just your own POV which is needlessly pessimistic and riddled with hopeless defeatism.
*shrugz
Nuh-uh. SOME northern parts, sure. Not all of them. And some southern parts, but not all of them. You really think Monroe County is redder than LaGrange County?
And your allies.
We’re not going to leave anybody behind for the fascists to abuse, for expedience or for staying in our comfort zone. Because, ultimately, anybody who thinks they aren’t a target, it’s because they aren’t on the list yet or they are one of the oppressors.
I don’t live in Kansas. Some of the agricultural interests found in Kansas aren’t really all that applicable to Virginia where I live. On a theoretical level, I can understand that the politics in both states will center around different interests.
But…
The Governor of Virginia is an asshole. The local politics in Virginia don’t dictate that trans people shall be persecuted. That’s unfortunately the national politics of Republican assholes-- and unfortunately one of them won the gubernatorial election here.
Louis Brandeis wrote that the states can serve as laboratories of democracy-- maybe the people of one state have the right to take a different path, reflecting local wisdom. (That was in a 1939 dissent, so the concept is completely theoretical)
But instead of this state by state experimentation, conservatives like model bills (cf ALEC), so the dystopia of Texas extends to the dystopia of Florida, even though you might rightly expect Floridians to embrace a different kind of dystopia.
A homeland for Fascists would be monolithic. And it would be expansionist. We owe it to ourselves to resist its creation.
I live in Texas.
Our state attorney general runs away (or flees by car) when approached to be served a subpeona. He has been variously under indictment for 7 years “working” for the people of Texas. As our state AG, he investigated his own office for wrongdoing and concluded that he and they did nothing wrong.
This ostensible list of obligations this guy is supposed to uphold is a mockery, a slap in the face to every honest Texan.
We Texans, who live in a state so determined to sabotage voting and democracy that the SCOTUS then and now has had to get involved just so we can have quasi-fair-ish elections, are familiar with the bonkers shit that seems to presage a violent, intentional, pivot to fascism and lawlessness.
Texans, especially the proud and paranoid ones, are extremely well-armed.
It could go either way.
We are a majority minority state. It could be a bloodbath.
I don’t think ceding to fascists in Texas is going to slow them down much.
People like our state AG are aiming for putting (or keeping) their cronies in the White House.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/10/politics/texas-ken-paxton-election-fraud-lawsuit/index.html
I’d prefer the deep south were given to the descendants of Africans brought there against their will, and the fanatics walled off on a reservation where they can’t hurt anyone. I thought I was reasonably clear about that, but judging by the rest of the comments on here, apparently not.
That is literally my entire premise. Show them the door and invite them to leave instead of giving them an equal say in how we run things.
And that’s the problem.
You know what? Sure- I’ll admit it- Part of me would love to [eliminate] every redneck with a Let’s Go Brandon flag […] every klansman and gay conversion “therapist” and eiðrofi who profanes our sacred symbols by associating them with white supremacy, every blue line holding fascist with a Punisher sticker, and every evangelical Christian who gave them aid and cover. I’d love to burn every word and image from OAN and FOX and make it criminal offense to even speak their names.
Because the world would be a much better place. And because they would gladly do it to us first.
But even if I had the power to do that, I don’t have the moral authority. Nobody does.
Because the reason, or at least the justification they use, is that we are a threat to them. The Great Replacement. The 14 words. Every fucking sermon I grew up hearing about Satan’s plan to turn us towards evil- They honestly believe that we- Every nonbeliever or queer or liberal or person of color, simply by existing unapologetically, are a threat to their existence and way of life.
And yes, we could spend entire days talking about how wrong that is. It is clearly, demonstrably, unambiguously batshit fucking paranoid- But they truly believe it just as surely as you and I believe the Earth revolves around the sun.
And they believe this gives them the moral authority to strike first.
I refuse to claim that authority for myself because I deny it to them. Face to face, on the street, a Nazi marching to intimidate people? Sure. But not preemptively. Not in retaliation. I will not strike first, I will not silence them, because I will not legitimize their persecution narrative. I will not make them right. That is a line I will not cross. It is what makes us better.
What I can do is to tell them they aren’t welcome in my home, in my city, in my country. I can show them the door, and if they don’t like it, they can leave. But they have to have somewhere to go- Somewhere where they can live according to their deranged conscience, away from civilized people. Otherwise, we are proving ourselves to be the threat they perceive us as- However justified we believe we may be, I can not cross that line.
That is the moment we become the darkness we fear, and I will not be a part of it.
That, I will grant you. I have absolutely given up any and all hope for this world. I truly, honestly wish it weren’t the case, because we had so much potential, and so much beauty.
But we literally spent two years arguing over whether germs cause disease. We had a president admit to repeated sexual assaults, and a third of the country was okay with that. And the best response we can manage to come up with is Joe fucking Biden. I’m done. I don’t have it in me to keep fighting this pyrrhic and sisyphisian war against stupidity and ignorance any longer. I’m gonna spend a couple years seeing what’s left of this country, and then I’m bowing out as gracefully as I can. I seriously and genuinely wish you all the best of luck.
I’m gonna go get drunk now.
So you aren’t even pretending to be proposing feasible solutions anymore.
Even if you were given unlimited legal authority to remake the country any way you imagine (always a great recipe for human rights!) you can’t divide the country up that way. There are countless Americans who are descendants of both enslaved Africans and the people who enslaved them. Even within individual families you will find people spanning the cultural and political spectrum.
Throughout all of human history, the people who round up subsets of the population and forcibly relocate them to new, walled-off places where they won’t cause any more trouble are always the baddies.
I don’t know if it would be much more to your liking, but I would welcome you to Japan. Another country might be just what you need right now. As someone from the States now 17 years in Japan, I can understand where you’re coming from at least.
They’re just just going to move in a take over your farcical shiny new state anyway with climate change.
“Premise” is too dignified a term to apply to a completely impractical and now eliminationist appeals inspired mainly by your personal angst. “Tantrum” might be the better word to use.
So YOU want to make concentration camps. You know it’s not good when ANYONE does it right? For any reason? You don’t NEED to do that. You make a floor rights and ensure that that floor can’t be voted away by fascists, then you HOLD people responsible for their actions when they commit over acts of violence. This isn’t rocket surgery, and you don’t need to build a dystopia to fix our problems.
Rounding up the people who acted on Jan. 6th, breaking up the violent racist gangs that they are part of, ensuring that certain basic rights are enshrined in law - that’s what we NEED to be doing. Not building a dystopia.
Yeah, because that’s fucking helpful. /s
And you don’t have to do that. At all.
And that’s when you put them in jail for breaking the law, FFS.
Well YOU don’t get to impose YOUR dystopia on the rest of us. YOU don’t get to give away MY land to appease YOUR bloodlust.
You think you’re the ONLY ONE feeling despair? Stop acting like the only way to solve this is by letting the assholes have what they want or creating some other kind of dystopia, or get involved and do the hard work here.
Then I genuinely pity you; I don’t have even 1/10th of your unearned privilege, and I still refuse to quit striving and fighting for a better society.
Maybe it’s time for you to emigrate elsewhere. Though I wouldn’t let them know about your fantasies of eliminating people. It makes you look undesirable.
The problem is that we’ve actively left fascists alone in this country for its entire existence but they demand not simply to have their own enclaves but to rather to reshape society where those they despise are destroyed at best or at worse enslaved into their hierarchy. They won’t stop at “just give them Oklahoma” as they’ll demand more and more. We’ve tried appeasement with Hitler and it didn’t work. To imagine that it’ll work now is foolish in my opinion.
The idea of partition is alluring because A) it eliminates the problem. Just put those bad people over there and we don’t have to deal with them, and B) it puts all of the blame on those bad people. You never have to examine your own tendencies towards bad behavior or prejudice.
When the Jews were freed from Egypt, the angels wanted to rejoice, but god said “even though they did wicked deeds, the Egyptians were also my creation and now they have been destroyed. Why would I rejoice at this destruction?”
(Sorry, it was Yom Kippur yesterday and it’s still knocking around my head)
That’s about enough.
