Jacob Levy, Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University, cautioned in a Blue Sky thread that the case involving a Maryland man the U.S. government acknowledges was "wrongfully deported" has reached a "crisis moment."In March, Kilmar Ábrego García was accused of being an MS-13 gang m...
Will things ever go back to normal?
No.
I’m speaking as a fairly moderate, average American who’s been around almost a half century.
I am telling you and anyone who reads this, that this is NOT going back to normal. This is going to get worse. I promise you, you all need to understand this thing I’m about to shout here:
NOBODY IS COMING.
If we want to fix this, we have to do it ourselves. And I have very little allusion that liberal, comfy America and the military is going to dream of upsetting their careful balance and privilege, and they will keep their head down and keep working even as their rights are stripped away and nobody can afford food or water anymore without realizing they’re boiled toads.
Buy beans and rice. Save money. Quit expensive habits and get healthy. Update your passport and put some cash and gold aside in case you need to leave and the banks won’t give you money. Maintain contact with people outside the USA in case you need contacts somewhere. I am dead-fucking-serious.
Societies change, as often for the worse as they do for the better. It also depends what you consider “normal”. For many boomers growing up in the 50’s and 60’s this is fairly normal. We’ve used to shoot students protesting an actual invasion against Vietnam.
And then there are still a lot of immigrants here who fled really bad dictatorial shit holes. They look at headlines going “ICE deported 300 people this week” and go “It’s not even a thousand and they were not gunned down in the streets and their families exterminated, what are you complaining about?”. Perspective.
Fight it however you can, or don’t.
What normal? The only thing that’s really changed is that the U.S. isn’t masking their crimes in flowery language. It wasn’t that long ago that we were shooting student protestors in campus and segregating our population based on race. We have plenty of experience in illegally removing migrants and have already used concentration camps.
The U.S. might put the mask back on someday, but they’ve been an evil empire for basically their entire existence. It’s unlikely it will change in our lifetimes.
No. “Normal” for the US was the result of you being the only major industrial power that wasn’t flattened during World War II. You maintained your power since then by using the leverage you’d acquired during the postwar years. Now that that leverage is gone, it’s staying gone, since the rest of the world has rebuilt itself.
No. Even if he’s gone, the world is irrevocably changed. We’re all going together on this dark ride. The sooner people realize that, the better. Then maybe something can be done.
Your comment reads as “no, but yes if we fix it” to me. It’s that what you were trying to convey? If not, could you explain a bit please?
By “maybe something can be done,” I just mean something to stabilize us. Something to give us a new normal. But, there’s no going back to where we were at in 2024. The US as a whole is finished and something else will take its place