[b]Timothy Snyder
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.[/b]
Of course 30% of the American people already have.
The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma.
Not that some really fucked up things aren’t.
What would have happened if Poland, rather than the Soviet Union, had accepted Joachim von Ribbentrop’s proposals in 1939? Would the Soviet Union have withstood an invasion of Germany allied with Poland and, perhaps, Romania and Hungary as well? That Germany and Poland did not make an alliance, and that Germany and the Soviet Union did, is perhaps the single crucial fact about the war.
On the other hand, it may well be one of many other single crucial facts.
Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which it has been.
And now it’s our turn?
Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people.
Or, to put it another way, “Make America Great Again”.
Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.
Here for example. If only in a world of words.