• nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    What do you think “America” is? Its a societal mindset and ideology which are held by various subsets of the population. Ultimately, we can’t rely on half the country to do shit if we want to enact change, they need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a free society with a strong middle class. Its not enough that we can convince them to join because egg prices are high, or their pet government project was cut because we’re just going to end up back in the same place in 10-15 years when they forget. We need durable change enacted by principled leaders who we need to raise into seats of power and continue to hold accountable.

    It also isn’t one man. Its a large swath of people afraid of perceived change, along with opportunists who want to be the future king’s puppeteers that are happily playing into old prejudicial narratives to drum up support. He’s not some mastermind who can do this without think tanks to come up with concrete plans like project 2025. Remember, he got 77 million votes. That’s not a radical subset, and we can’t plead ignorance or assumed he would have fallen into line once elected, we already had 4 years of this dictator wannabe.

    I don’t think we should be petty, I think we should be very specific in our critiques and what is and is not acceptable in a free society. You’re allowed to be an asshole, you’re allowed to not like mexican food, you can even support stronger border controls, be against federally backed student loans or think USAID should be defunded or be opposed to abortion. You can’t be willing to throw out the entire system of government in order to achieve those goals and have me willing to consider you a fellow American. The basic rules of engagement need to be something that is held sacred and it needs to be built around the empowerment of individuals with strong controls against undue influence.

    Someone with a billion dollars should not have a louder voice than a collection of tens of millions of US citizens with a combined net worth of 1 billion dollars. Neither party’s leadership believes our country should run on these fundamentals, so who else is going to fight for this?

    We do not stand together, a subset of the population is standing in support for a free and equal society, while others are just trying to get one up on their neighbors and yet more are just standing around willfully ignorant to this conflict with their fingers in their ears afraid of being uncomfortable until they are eventually forced to care.