I just read this comment from JoyceH, and it makes the perfect introduction to the post I was already putting together!
For those who are thinking of moving to a different country because of what’s happening here, here’s my take. Authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. If it’s going to be turned back, it will be turned back here. And if we don’t do it here, no place is safe.
I read this great article over the weekend. I have no idea who linked to it! (h/t EmanG)
Biden’s Philly Speech Will Be a Turning Point for America — And the World
Some Speeches Change History. This Was One of Them.
by umair haque
Last night, Joe Biden gave a speech that’s going to change America — and the world. Yes, really. You’re used to hearing me full of doom and gloom — but that’s not for effect. I call it like it is. And this speech? It was a pivotal moment in the history of the 21st century. History will remember it in a certain way: as a turning point, that altered the grim political trajectory the world was — until this moment — helplessly on.
Yes, it’s that big. Doubt me? Good. Let me make my case, beginning with the Big Picture, the world, and then we’ll come back to America.
For the last decade or so, the world has been in a strange, eerie place. For economists and observers of social collapse like me — it’s been the 1930s, redux. Across every corner of the globe, nationalist movements arose — and then quickly metastasized into worse. In some places, like India, they became hyper-religious movements. In some, like Britain, they became xenophobic movements of self-destruction, culminating in the utter jaw-dropping folly of Brexit. Across Europe, the worst ills returned — Neo-Nazis in the Bundestag, fascists with a polite smile making stunning gains in Italy and France.
And these movements of hate and spite and violence all looked up to one country as a leader: America. Because there, things had gone so far that full blown neo-fascism now occupied the Oval Office. Back in those days — now the mid to late 2010s — seasoned observers warned that we were beginning to see the growth of genuine fascism, from the scapegoating to the crimes against humanity. Nobody much listened in America. It couldn’t happen here. Meanwhile, the nationalist-populist movements of the world were now taking cues from Trumpist America. If America could fall to fascism — well, anything was possible, the supremacists of the world reasoned.
Until Joe Biden got on a stage in Philadelphia and let it rip. He didn’t mince words. He told the story exactly — exactly — the way that it needed to be told, in the terms that people needed to hear, and in the form that respected history.
What did he have to say? He made basically four points.
Number one, the rise of this form of politics — violence, intimidation, hate, scapegoating, Big Lies, rage, a vitriolic rage at the values of democracy itself — was not normal. Not in a democracy.
Because, two, it was inimical to democracy — this was how modern societies plunged backwards into chaos and ruin.
That meant, three, that fighting this form of politics, rejecting it, wasn’t a partisan issue of left and right at all — but about coming together to defend democracy itself.
And four, that was every sane and thoughtful person’s not just choice, but responsibility. Their duty. To whom? To history. To futurity. And to each other.
Beautiful. Elegant. Powerful. True.
Read the whole thing. I agree that this speech – and Biden taking taking this threat head on – can be a game changer.
What say the rest of you?
Open thread.
Game Changer: Another Long Read That Is Totally Worth Your TimePost + Comments (208)