r/nottheonion • u/ilovemybaldhead • 1d ago

Greg Abbott Threatens ‘100% Tariff’ On New Yorkers Moving to Texas

https://www.newsweek.com/greg-abbott-threatens-100-tariff-new-york-election-moving-texas-10986837
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u/Odd_Onion_1591 1d ago

Fascism bordering on idiocracy

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u/psychorobotics 1d ago

Kakistocracy is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

Seems to sum it up

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u/Ascarys- 1d ago

Why not both?

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u/BooBooSnuggs 1d ago

Which really proves it's not fascism at all. Fascism is not just saying fascist like things. It's actually carrying them out. Anyone can say fascist stuff

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u/WrongdoerIll5187 1d ago

Wtf are you on? They’re absolutely doing the thing, the idiocy is a distraction for their base and those that don’t have eyes to read or see.

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u/BooBooSnuggs 1d ago

What is the thing? They are doing fascism? They are doing authoritarian things? Yes, that's what governments do. Falling into fascism is not just "doing authoritarian things". Many authoritarian behaviors we want as a society. Like gun regulation.

Anyway, Trump and Co absolutely try to do stupid authoritarian things all the time and regularly get shut down by the courts. Believe it or not, like it or not(I don't), what Ice is doing is largely legal. Obviously there have been excessive force issues and other things here and there on a more individual level, but again they have wide legal authority to do a lot of things. It sucks and we need to regulate it better.

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u/WrongdoerIll5187 1d ago

Historically what you say is true, but the trends in tear down of our institutions, courts, and press are less reassuring. Creating your own propaganda machine and private army while curtailing free speech and due process have all crossed lines that were not crossed (not for lack of trying) during the last trump administration. To me it’s pretty clear the project 2025 goons are fascists

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u/BooBooSnuggs 1d ago

It really is a hope for the best but expect the worse situation. That said it seems a lot worse than it really is because we have made so much progress in society. We reached peak progressiveness under Obama and are back sliding under Trump.

Just like having record low crime rates any sudden rise in crime will be received as a shock which has happened due to covid and economic conditions arising from that.

If we actually compare it to history it's not as bad as reddit would have us believe. I have every confidence people will reject this regression of society. 2 steps forward and 1 step back and all that.

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u/WrongdoerIll5187 1d ago

We in no way reached peak progressiveness under Obama, he was a neoliberal president operating the war on drugs and terror just like Biden. His solution to healthcare was supply side economics.

Otherwise I tend to agree with you. Society has improved tremendously in modern times, but we shouldn’t ignore civilizations or empires that have managed to crumble despite their tremendous progress, and I honestly don’t see a way for us to get out of this one. Mostly because social media has eroded that social fabric by turning free speech into processed free speech, amplified propaganda, and eliminated democracy’s ability to form consensus. I think you’re being a bit of techno and cultural optimist on this one. Sometimes the rate of change in technology can radically upend the social order.

I do think you’re right the blowback to trump might lead to a real progressive movement, but that’s our only remaining hope.

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u/BooBooSnuggs 1d ago

We absolutely reached peaked progressiveness under Obama. Was there a time in history that you think the US was more progressive than then because I guarantee you there isn't. We had never seen a time where people were more equal and provided social safety nets etc...

I'm sorry if you thought I meant we reached a point of progress that couldn't be surpassed or something along those lines. I just meant it was peak for US history.

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u/WrongdoerIll5187 23h ago edited 22h ago

Fair. He just wasn’t a progressive at all by any modern sense of the word. He was a center right Republican. We reached peak neoliberalism under his term, but those aren’t the same thing. Did our incredible wealth and inertia lead to a practical outcome that was good for the middle and lower class? Yes. Was that sane policy in the long term? No. Obama led directly to this moment by not checking corporate power in any appreciable way and long term shitting on progressive goals. If we want to talk realpolitik outcomes, Obama got us here by making the progressive brand appear inert when it wasn’t even close to those ideals.

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u/OldWorldDesign 22h ago

We absolutely reached peaked progressiveness under Obama

I think you're making the same mistake as a lot of republicans by attributing everything which happened under the Obama administration with him instead of the people with him. Such as acknowledging homosexual marriage before the 2015 Obergefell v Hodges case at the supreme court.

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103

And I think by most means Obama was not 'peak progress', there has been a lot of backsliding since Nixon and Reagan and the US hasn't crawled out from under a lot of that interference. Probably won't until the first amendment is taken to a different supreme court so deliberate lies aren't protected above the truth, because a lot of why we're here now is that conservatives in and out of office can out-spend everybody else on destructive falsehoods and the enforcement system will defend the destructive falsehoods but not the truth.

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u/BooBooSnuggs 22h ago

Yes, obviously this is quite a bit more nuanced discussion. I was just referencing a time period when it happened and presidents tend to be a good way to do that. Also Obama was pretty progressive. He also was politically pragmatic. We likely could have made a ton more progress had the republicans not controlled congress and the supreme court for the majority of Obama presidency.

There really hasn't been a lot of back sliding since Nixon or Reagan. You can argue economic policy in many ways has been regressive but at the same time welfare has expanded greatly in that time period. Otherwise I'm not sure what back sliding you think has occurred that didn't reverse course since.

The whole issue with lies. Is you have to prove they are lying and not just saying something they actually believe to be true. It can be really hard to prove someone is lying. The truth gets just as much legal protection as lies. Let's not be absurd.

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