Part of the gut punch of this is the grassroots efforts to stop it that were basically ignored. Don’t let anyone tell you the US is anything remotely resembling a system “by/for the people.” One of the fakest slogans in modern history. The US is “by/for white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism,” and they have clung to that general makeup through the will of a violent and organized power elite—along with the weaponization of a racist class of “white people” under that—throughout the entire country’s history. On paper, being post woman’s suffrage movement, post civil rights movement, it is perhaps as democratic a system as it has ever been in the country’s history, which in practice is saying… almost nothing, considering outcomes like this. The US seems clearly to be a country that runs on the aesthetics of democracy over any actual democratic process. I find it’s the same way liberals tend to think about fascism in the US, as some kind of aesthetic that you will “know when you see it.” But the substance of fascism is already there (IIRC, George Jackson talks about this in Blood in My Eye, though I don’t remember the specifics atm).
What is a vote worth if it ignores the will of the people? This is the reality liberal “democracy” shows over and over (another notable example recently, what happened with the French “elections”). “What can we do to give the illusion of choice without actual people power that could challenge the hegemonic goal of imperial expansion, and global domination and humiliation of entire peoples?” The answers to that question brought into being by the organized colonizers is what we’re dealing with in places like the US. Honestly, even using words like “domination” doesn’t feel strong enough. The degree of systematic violence that colonialism does is obsessed with torture, maiming, and inflicting terror, not just in control alone. It is not enough for them to kill a person; they want the victim and anyone who supports them to feel helpless and dispirited too. To be broken by it, until you are numb.
Under any other circumstance, I might say I’m being dramatic, but this is a graphically violent system of power we’re talking about, colonialism, with a hundreds of years legacy to it. It can shock the system to internalize how grotesque and systematized it is, in its violence.
Part of the gut punch of this is the grassroots efforts to stop it that were basically ignored. Don’t let anyone tell you the US is anything remotely resembling a system “by/for the people.” One of the fakest slogans in modern history. The US is “by/for white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism,” and they have clung to that general makeup through the will of a violent and organized power elite—along with the weaponization of a racist class of “white people” under that—throughout the entire country’s history. On paper, being post woman’s suffrage movement, post civil rights movement, it is perhaps as democratic a system as it has ever been in the country’s history, which in practice is saying… almost nothing, considering outcomes like this. The US seems clearly to be a country that runs on the aesthetics of democracy over any actual democratic process. I find it’s the same way liberals tend to think about fascism in the US, as some kind of aesthetic that you will “know when you see it.” But the substance of fascism is already there (IIRC, George Jackson talks about this in Blood in My Eye, though I don’t remember the specifics atm).
What is a vote worth if it ignores the will of the people? This is the reality liberal “democracy” shows over and over (another notable example recently, what happened with the French “elections”). “What can we do to give the illusion of choice without actual people power that could challenge the hegemonic goal of imperial expansion, and global domination and humiliation of entire peoples?” The answers to that question brought into being by the organized colonizers is what we’re dealing with in places like the US. Honestly, even using words like “domination” doesn’t feel strong enough. The degree of systematic violence that colonialism does is obsessed with torture, maiming, and inflicting terror, not just in control alone. It is not enough for them to kill a person; they want the victim and anyone who supports them to feel helpless and dispirited too. To be broken by it, until you are numb.
Under any other circumstance, I might say I’m being dramatic, but this is a graphically violent system of power we’re talking about, colonialism, with a hundreds of years legacy to it. It can shock the system to internalize how grotesque and systematized it is, in its violence.