"Something's happening here, what it is, ain't exactly clear..." - Buffalo Springfield
What is that weird feeling I am feeling? You know, like the Earth is shifting under my feet? Or the floor just opened up to reveal the flames of Hell? Or the sun, moon & stars are falling from the skies?
I think I can put my finger on it, it's a paradigm shift: "representing the notion of a major change in a certain thought pattern—a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing."
What has changed for me? From Timothy Snyder, The Logic of Destruction: "The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.
For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions."
That is a new way of thinking for me. We are in the midst of a hostile takeover of our government. It's a strange feeling. A crazy story. A new paradigm. On the one hand, my life is pretty much the same, same air, same ground, same day to day tasks, but on the other hand, all my thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams about my birth-country, and our democratic experiment are up for grabs. Yikes.
There's also this from Paul Krugman: "When democracies die, big business and wealthy individuals often play a crucial role in their demise. They provide a would-be strongman with financial support; their control of or influence over news media ensures that he receives favorable coverage, while his opponents are trashed. They do this because they expect to be rewarded with policies that favor their interests and imagine that they will in effect be shareholders in the new autocracy.
What comes next is familiar to anyone who studies history (which the oligarchs don’t.) Eventually it becomes clear that they don’t own the dictator they’ve helped install; he owns them. Maybe they’ll like some of his policies, maybe they won’t, but in any case they’re not in control — and they soon learn that criticizing the big man isn’t just fruitless, it’s dangerous.
In the past this script has typically taken a few years to play out, but this is the internet age, so right now in America the process seems to be taking only a few weeks."
Mind-blowing shite. We are not in Kansas anymore. Whatever we are lurching towards, it is something very different than the America we have grown up in, and have taken for granted...
