Seth Cotlar: The part that's most galling to me is how careless so many of my fellow citizens are about democracy. It's not like there's THAT many people who are openly hostile to it, it's just that so many people in positions of authority and influence seem committed to acting like what's happening is normal.

I wrote this thread seven years ago in a moment of despondency over the future of American democracy. I wish I could say I feel differently today.

The only thing I would change is the word "we" to "I" in the third tweet. Obviously there had been many people in the American past who perceived those cracks. The "we" I was speaking for was the generation of people who grew up inside the tenuous, anti-fascist consensus of the post WWII era.

That tenuous consensus (that I took to be far more solid than it actually was) consisted of propositions like: democracy is good, America is a land of immigrants, the US is a multi-racial democracy, the US is a secular nation that values religious pluralism, greater equality is a noble aspiration.

I think this explains why I was so taken by the largely unknown (and memory holed) story of Walter Huss, the fascist who became the chair of the OR GOP in 1978, when I stumbled upon it in 2021. It enabled me to see part of the backstory of how we got here.

The part that's most galling to me is how careless so many of my fellow citizens are about democracy. It's not like there's THAT many people who are openly hostile to it, it's just that so many people in positions of authority and influence seem committed to acting like what's happening is normal.

If Trump rides a wave of Christian Nationalism, rabid anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-trans hysteria, anti-vaxx conspiracy theories, anti-public-education venom, and promises to pardon the J6 prisoners and weaponize the DOJ and FBI against his "enemies," then we're headed to a dark place.

I'm enough of a sap to believe that the vast majority of my fellow Americans do not want to live in such a dark place, but that enough will vote for it because of inflation or Joe-Biden-old or whatever and will then look back upon that vote with regret...after it's too late.

Perhaps that tenuous post-WWII pro-democratic and anti-fascist consensus will be replaced by some new and better consensus in the future...but it's difficult to discern in this present moment the seeds of what that future might be.

Here's a post from last fall where I expanded upon the idea that our profoundly limited national memory of (and knowledge about) the history of American fascism had rendered us particularly vulnerable to its reemergence. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/some-thoug...

Some thoughts on the messed up memory culture of late 20th century America into which I was socializedsethcotlar.substack.com Or, why did so many late 20th C. Americans feel like we had to give a pass to historical figures who committed their lives to undermining the foundational values we claimed the US stood for?

I also think of the policy elites like the Dulles Brothers actively recruiting Nazis in 1946-1950s for their rabid anti-communism and placing them into government jobs in America and across Europe. Operations Paperclip and Bloodstone are known. There were lots of other less known movements of 1000s

I read some good writing about how in any society roughly 1/3rd of people are in 3 distinct groups: people who want democracy, people who are prone to fascism/dictatorship and are sociopaths, and the last group DGAF. I think about it a lot and would love to find it again.

I have some hope in the labor movement, maybe 2028 general strike is what will move the needle

A lot of them won't like the results and then decide it's the Democrats' fault for not giving them someone other than Biden to vote for.

I often think of the Fitzgerald quote, "they were careless people", and how the context fits.

they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made

Oh wow I was just thinking about that ending. Yeah it's a really good descriptor of the American id. Not dogmatically hostile to reform and participatory government, but really selfish and really careless.

One conservative weakness I know from childhood is such a predilection towards individualism that it has to happen to a person before it becomes real. If the legal system is an unfair grinding machine, that doesn't exist until it really affects one of the tribe. It's stupid. But it is very real.

100%. And it's an American thing, really unique. Really hits you when you've been overseas for long and come back.

What's becoming very apparent also is the limitation of virtually unchecked media content - basically half the country is completely divorced from objective reality. This won't change until the propaganda stops.

I think the only solution is regulation of content, unpopular as that is.

Since Reagan, civics education has dropped to essentially nil. Media is complicit. People wave the flag but don't understand- much less give a shit- what it is supposed to represent; If they did they'd be marching on MAGA GOP w/pitchforks. That's voters- the "leadership" is either scared or craven

I really feel this

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