Notes on Politics as a Millennial

[caitri]

 I also have some incomplete thoughts of what it means to be watching this as a millennial. Pretty much every Xer and older I see on my social media has made some kind of remark regarding their shock and disbelief at yesterday's events. Maybe it's because they have a decade and change of ideological padding that I don't, but I honestly wonder where they have been and what they have been watching. The 20 years where I have had an actual role as a voter have all been beset by drama and danger.

2000 was when I first got to vote. That dragged out for months. (I remember in 2008 being astonished at being able to know who the next president would be immediately.
 

I was in undergrad when 9/11 happened. What this meant in real time was that I saw people in my classes disappear as they went to go enlist in the forever wars. The anti-war protests of 2002-4 saw the first kettling and the little "freedom of speech spaces" well away from where speakers of events could actually see them.  After the 2004 election there were a number of people writing sincerely about moving to Canada because they were concerned about the Bush administration's tamping down of dissent. (The first flashes of proto-Trumpism were when Bushies wanted to declare the AARP a "terrorist organization" because....why? I forget. But my newly retired mother was bewildered.)
 

The Obama admin was quickly beset by Tea Partiers and that nonsense. Violent calls to revolution were seen as crackpot but normal. Of course that only gained traction from 2010-2015.  
 

And then we've had the past four years where, you know, we've had "debates" on labeling, because we should call the dudes with the swastikas "alt-right" instead of "Nazis" and call the people in cages... what DID we decide to call that? Because calling them concentration camps was a problem but separating families and denying food and medical care wasn't. Anyway.
 

TL;DR Yesterday was the logical conclusion to twenty years of right-wing bullshit and anyone who "didn't think it could happen here" was not paying attention. We got off light this time--those gallows they built weren't used. How much longer can we say that?

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Word, says this Gen-Xer.

[caitri]

Hee, thank you! <3

An irritating number of Xers (and Boomers) on my FB doth protest though. (If I really wanted to ride myself ragged I could go take screencaps of yesterdays shock! posts, but today they are all Highly Aware and Plugged In!) (I am such a brat!)

[minoanmiss]

rolls eyes at all of them

[caitri]

lol! *squish*

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

A GenX, I'm shocked but not surprised. That is, I'm horrified at the images and yet I've held slides of before and after Stalin's 'photo retouchers' removed people from history.

I'm wondering just where your Xers were hanging out, because for me, I remember the neocons as we slid further into War on This That and The Other (Which presaged The Second Gulf War.)

No, be a brat. It means you'll not let them off the hook and may recall this moment before self-spindling in a future time.

The only reason not to punch a Nazi is because tripping them may let you fight another day.

[caitri]

One of my friends provided a good long comment on the American Exceptionalism we are fed from birth that assists in the cognitive dissonance. (My thinking is also: Perhaps women are less convinced of such exceptionalism on the basis that many of us are aware that our rights extend only so far as the most recent relevant court case.)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I was a history and anthropology double major, so American Exceptionalism, history versus social studies, and yeah, women knowing they aren't always people...

Fandom has brought me more intersectional feminism than I'd have on tap otherwise, so that's good.

One canard that runs about (it's the history equivalent of featherless and coldblooded only dinos) is Progress. It's not a magical thing, it only happens if people will it and if they pick wrong, it's retrograde motion. I fear that textbooks are even more wrong than the ones I had, and mine were sometimes 40 years out of date (because writing them isn't what any sane academic wants to do.)

[emluv]

*Waves from Gen-X land.* Yeah, I can't really account for it. I was out of pocket most of the day on Wednesday, and when I finally came up for air all my friends were so upset and angry and shocked. And I was like... uh... why are you so surprised by this? Upset and angry, sure, but surprised? We've been heading here forever, and they said for weeks they would do this. Trump invited his thug supporters to take back the country; what did they think that would mean to thugs? There have been violent protests and rallies throughout Trump's term.

One of the things that had me most angry early on in this, back after Trump first won, was the attitude that Dems should shut up and put up, because the Republicans had to live through Obama, as if there was any possible way we could compare these two men. I had to keep explaining that I lived through plenty of Republican presidents, and while I didn't like them to varying degrees, or agree with their policies, I did not fear for the lives of entire groups of Americans or the future of our democracy under their watch. But I grew up in the NYC area and saw Trump spouting and dumping wives and going bankrupt and screaming for the heads of the so-called Central Park 5, and I could not see any way it would end well. This was a man who stood up in front of a television audience during the debates and invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, and got away with it. Before even winning the office. He never showed his tax returns. He never handed over his business interests. He was booking people into Trump properties for the inauguration. No one stopped him, no one drew a line in the sand, and so he continued to act like a ruling despot and escalate to his heart's content. Because no one stopped him. And his followers rose to the occasion.

Maybe it's because I'm a pessimist by nature. I'm glad Biden won though he wasn't my first choice, I'm relieved the Dems control the Senate and the House. I suspect there will be a few new Supreme Court Justices in the next two years. But this isn't over. The country is divided and I don't see it healing any time soon. If ever. So my friends who are breathing a sigh of relief? I get that after the last four years it feels good to relax a bit, but I don't think it's safe to do it for long.

[caitri]

I'm really hoping this was a wake-up call to people--it may have been. Here's hoping!!!