I really can’t tell where you fall in any of this, but the 13th amendment is the stated legal justification for the slavery in the United States, right now.

You know what, fuck it. Good point, edited for clarity.

Damn , reading some of these comments is like fanfiction about myself and it’s kind of wild actually. I am everyone until you go and check D:

Yeah, that sounds interesting.

Thank you so much for sharing this . I’ve spoken with apeoplescalendar in the past. they do amazing work.

Look, I’m not contesting the viability of the strategy. I am reframing the available evidence to you know explain why things are getting worse and it’s the Democrats fault. All right funding. The American fascist movement is not a viable long-term strategy. And it is why the Democrats are as an institution, cable, and in the broader terms completely ready and willing to tuck and roll through the transition from the current authoritarian governance that they make up and the fascist one that they expect under the Republicans

IDK man it kind of feels like you’re the one being obtuse, not engaging with the critique of imperialism.

to respond,: Afghanistan. Taliban. Did 911. US invaded over it. …Okay. And then…And uh.then., Lost. Lost, rather badly, as I heard it. Oh and they gave Lockheed Martin and Raytheon 50 trillion dollars.

My issue with Kuwait is like, the US is still there. And it has been the entire time.

I mean,. I didn’t put a lot into communicating the actual point because I anticipated the reception. It’s a bit self-fulfilling, but here we are. It’s a very specific accusation. The main financial driver. Like the main millions of dollars contributing to the absolute worst of the worst the most far right of the far right in American politics,. The American fascists. is the Democratic Party. Because,. So far as I can tell, they genuinely believe their own bullshit about electability.

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This is true. So much of the “assault on the nuclear family” , it’s really just based in it being incredibly impractical and bad for virtually everyone involved.

Idk man. I definitely think it’s a reference to how Calvin views his dad. ‘ go do something you hate being miserable build character’ , and all that.

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Frankly, . Yeah. “War is war” is the phrase i have heard most often. It makes me wonder about what exactly the second invasion of Iraq looked like on the ground.

oh fucks sake i hate it when I do that.

That was the fucking point of all this, right ? Like ‘how dare the poors slip through some material change in conditions through gov power’. ‘We’ll show them’ and then they did all of this

“But but. The brown people were dirty and out”

OK so this is like the central issue. So I think it’s really important that we discuss it and do our best to try and work out some definitions. From my research so far every indication seems to be that the reason why we don’t have solid definitions to go on yet is because you know history isn’t done yet, we’re still working out what exactly words mean and how to use them . And you know consensus is the only arbiter we have there so it needs to be discussed.

Yeah that’s an important thing I have to address. Why do people think that authoritarianism means someone being mean to them?

Edit: I shouldn’t be that sour about it. Definitions are super important part and I’ve seen this coming for months., But there does seem to be like a rather substantive difference between like political science definitions of authoritarianism versus like general use public definitions. Like the general public seems to be really about like on an individual level, and I just don’t think that’s super helpful when you’re talking about governmental structure. there’s a little bit of overlap, but that’s not what the focus of most of the academic writing on the subject is so what pops up on Google when you just google “authoritarian“ is not the definition I’m operating off of, no.

Edit2: But yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah, the US being both a democracy and massively a fan of authoritarian governance is exactly what the memes about and you know trying to talk to anybody about that really seems to be like half of people take it as such a given like your baby for not having gotten over that when you were a kid and the other half like consider it an assault against the soul of America

thats completely fair. its future historians who get to have settled terms and that only comes from us in the present doing our best to hash it out. By my assessments, the etymology and definition of authoritarian does support the idea that the US heavily involves autocratic elements in its governance, and can be described as authoritarian. I specifically avoid calling the US fascist because that’s an argument that mostly makes sense to people outside the US, and my core audience is within the imperial core. At the end of the day, I did just need to pick a term that seemed to fit best and be effective at communicating my argument, and authoritarianism is what ive settled on for the foreseeable future. Though, i would say there’s a lot of overlap in our thoughts on the subject. The core argument this meme is trying to reference is the idea that because segregation and chattel slavery were race based apartheid style systems, and that is a subsection of authoritarianism, then for most of US history the republic has operated as part of an authoritarian system. ==> so why does saying it out loud massively violate american taboos about its own history and relationship as a state to white supremacy? chiefly, that it was founded on it, and operated on it. until like … within living memory. thats the official version of events. bizarre. but its not bizarre. its exactly how language and societies react when states do this.

That is the definition of individual authoritarianism not institutional authoritarianism. Basically just the first half of the definition. Whereas the aspect I focus on is exactly what you were getting to at the end there. That general definition is from The Authoritarian Personality and is not accepted as definitive in any academic studies of authoritarianism in governance. So I suppose what I am doing here is operating off of an academic definition that is not nearly as commonly used as I was assuming. Tho -side note- it is quite interesting to think about how this public?definition has been used to make the argument that the entire moral and psychological basis of conservatism as a whole, is individual authoritarianism.