Look to history. As much terrorism and violence as the right did over the civil rights era when the US federal government used some level of strong-arm tactics including deploying troops, siccing the FBI on them, etc, etc the people murmured and murmured in rage and then exactly nothing happened. Their politicians raged at the podium, they raged in the papers, they raged on TV and then nothing happened.
That’s exactly what will happen this time. Trump will beat down Democratic opposition while at least half of Democratic voters cry foul for their party not standing up to him and the liberals and ourselves will seethe and rage. And there will be teeth gnashing and fiery speeches in the press and protests. But nothing will happen.
This isn’t going to cause the US to break apart. It’s not going to be civil war 2.0. It won’t cause alliances of states. It won’t result in challenges to federal power. It’ll result in Trump bowling over opposition to implement what he wants and then Dems once back in power refusing to use those levers of power he just used so effectively because of muh norms and need to rebuild civility and blah blah blah. Democratic voter-base rage and anger will simmer but not boil over. Not over this.
But the Civil Rights Act did eventually pass - the rage never quite boiled over because it got channeled into realizing something. Even if it was kinda the bare minimum and did nothing to address all the violent state repression that precipitated it, there was at least a clear legal victory that let people feel some relief.
Where is that relief for this? All I see is the pressure getting ratcheted up for a few years, the circle of people who don’t feel precarity constricts faster. And when the Dems eventually take office, they’ll put the funding back in place[1]. Pretend like ICE is different now. The usual song and dance. Pressure will get notched down, but nothing is done to fully abate it – let alone deal with the stress fractures.
Yes, this isn’t The Thing that kicks off a big decisive Event in the history books. But its also hard not to see it as a threshold of some sort. There is almost certainly not going to be a direct, legal challenge to federal power… but maybe we see a scattered, piecemeal decoupling. Some states start to develop a trajectory that, in time, becomes increasingly unrelated to that of the overall federal government. Not out of a conscious choice, but simply by necessity and circumstance.
though, what this does to Minnesota’s agriculture in the meantime… ↩︎
Eh I doubt it.
Look to history. As much terrorism and violence as the right did over the civil rights era when the US federal government used some level of strong-arm tactics including deploying troops, siccing the FBI on them, etc, etc the people murmured and murmured in rage and then exactly nothing happened. Their politicians raged at the podium, they raged in the papers, they raged on TV and then nothing happened.
That’s exactly what will happen this time. Trump will beat down Democratic opposition while at least half of Democratic voters cry foul for their party not standing up to him and the liberals and ourselves will seethe and rage. And there will be teeth gnashing and fiery speeches in the press and protests. But nothing will happen.
This isn’t going to cause the US to break apart. It’s not going to be civil war 2.0. It won’t cause alliances of states. It won’t result in challenges to federal power. It’ll result in Trump bowling over opposition to implement what he wants and then Dems once back in power refusing to use those levers of power he just used so effectively because of muh norms and need to rebuild civility and blah blah blah. Democratic voter-base rage and anger will simmer but not boil over. Not over this.
But the Civil Rights Act did eventually pass - the rage never quite boiled over because it got channeled into realizing something. Even if it was kinda the bare minimum and did nothing to address all the violent state repression that precipitated it, there was at least a clear legal victory that let people feel some relief.
Where is that relief for this? All I see is the pressure getting ratcheted up for a few years, the circle of people who don’t feel precarity constricts faster. And when the Dems eventually take office, they’ll put the funding back in place[1]. Pretend like ICE is different now. The usual song and dance. Pressure will get notched down, but nothing is done to fully abate it – let alone deal with the stress fractures.
Yes, this isn’t The Thing that kicks off a big decisive Event in the history books. But its also hard not to see it as a threshold of some sort. There is almost certainly not going to be a direct, legal challenge to federal power… but maybe we see a scattered, piecemeal decoupling. Some states start to develop a trajectory that, in time, becomes increasingly unrelated to that of the overall federal government. Not out of a conscious choice, but simply by necessity and circumstance.
though, what this does to Minnesota’s agriculture in the meantime… ↩︎