Essentially, there have been two reactions over on grad today:
- I didn’t vote, neither of the candidates were going to stop the war in the Gaza Strip, therefore, there could be no good outcome for the US, therefore I can’t be held accountable
- I voted for a third party, which Republicans will have to acknowledge and respect
Had to take some time away, so, sorry about not getting back to you earlier. It may, perhaps, be that I was unintentional “putting words in drag’s mouth”. My interpretation of it had been grief and despair over losing people and at the prospect of losing more, together with the realization that civil rights look to be going backwards about a century.
When it comes to violence/non-violence, non-violence is my way, wherever possible. I feel strongly that every human being is important (yes, a bit anthropocentric). However, I am also privileged as fuck, being a cis/het white guy. I’m not about to tell those facing violent repression that they wrong for returning the favor to their oppressors and those who are collaborating. Historically, non-violence has primarily succeeded where the alternative was violence and stable societal change has generally only occurred where non-violence was also in the picture.
I think a lot of people don’t understand just how bad the situation is. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that literal fascists have been have the reigns to all branches of US government. They have long stated the desire to rollback every positive change since and including the New Deal.
Since they now have majorities on both chambers of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch, they have been granted unfettered power over lifetime judicial appointments. And, since they continually act in bad faith and so much of the system is built upon the assumption of people acting on good faith, there are no barriers to their goals. Unconstitutional? The Roberts Court has continually shown that they don’t care about the Constitution except for where they can leverage it to have power over others.
The BEST case scenario among those that are likely is a rollback of all environmental, civil, and labor protections to the state at the turn of the 20th century, making the positive motion that we have had since then, the outlier in that the country was tending towards more justice. That’s over and no non-violent protest alone will be bringing it back.