Corporate and regulatory capture.
The Republicans since Reagan and the Democrats since Clinton, have been accepting bribes from corporations to ignore the will of their constituents, open up the law books, and hand the corporations a pen.
Meanwhile, the corporations flood the media with their money and influence until you can’t hear a piece of news in this country without it first passing through a pro-corporate filter.
Add all that together and let it stew, completely uncontested, for about 4 or 5 decades and this is what you get.
Places like The Philippines were test runs where they perfected the formula, now they’re putting their final plan into action.
Anyone still giving money to US corporations is supporting the worldwide rise in fascism.
What’s happening is the results of decades of short sighted greed having consequences. America people have been doubling down on stupidity and greed decade after decade and are still doing it and they LOVE it.
We started de-invested in american life in the 70s, and accelerated in the 80s and 90s, and now here we are. And a lot of politcal energy is being fueled by nitwits who have no grasp that things can be better than they are… so they just want them to get worse to capitalize on the rage dividend.
Rage is profitable. Reasonable discourse and complex problems are not. I used to be able to talk to people of various faiths, politics, and backgrounds. Now I can’t because they refuse to acknowledge any commonality at all and everyone simple shouts louder that everyone else is the problem and wonders why nobody is fixing anything.
As for Stewart, he’s pretty good, but oftentimes he is often a stereotypical coastal elitist and condescends towards anyone who isn’t. His assumptions are the typical educated rich liberal assumptions… which erase large swathes of the USA population from the discussion, who are not educated, rich, or liberal. He himself very much preaches to the choir of his own audience, he isn’t really a unifying figure in anyway. I wish he was but often when I’m laughing at his show I wonder realize it would piss off someone who isn’t like me.
Nazism, next question
Continuation of long standing American imperialism and oppression of minorities at home.
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Legitimately crazy that he’s acting surprised. No one knows any history.
It’s been this way for decades, and a shocking number of white supremacist criminals have gotten off scot-free.
You can point directly to the Fort Smith sedition trial in 1988. White supremacists planned to overthrow the government and some of them assassinated a Jewish talk show host. The assassins were put in jail, but the other 14 members of the seditionist group were acquitted because the entire jury was insanely biased. Two of the jurors dated the suspects after the trial, and one of them got married.
Same thing happened in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1979. White supremacists showed up to a “death to the klan” rally with guns to kill “communists.” All nine defendants were acquitted after killing five people.
That’s not even getting into Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, etc.
Gosh, in this country?? No way…
This is a nation built on slavery and genocide, ofcourse this has been happening for a long time. But if you haven’t noticed that the brutality has been rapidly increasing during the last two years, then you’re either delusional or intentionally not paying attention.
No one said it hasn’t gotten worse.
What is wrong with you?
Did you see how I said they got off “scot-free”? Why do you think it’s gotten worse?
Rage away though, dingbat
I don’t know. You sure sounded like you thought this was just business as usual, and nothing has changed in decades.
For a while, it looked like the latter at least might be slowly improving. I thought I’d heard more sentiments about the former as well. Things looked like they could get better. Not good, not for a long way still, but better at least. And that’s the way mentalities and cultures tend to shift: not suddenly, but creeping over the decades, centuries maybe, generational differences accumulating into an evolution.
In particular, if the powerful need to wrap their transgressions into some glamour of civility, if they need to at least pretend to follow some rules, that’s an indicator that these rules are valued in some way and might provide some leverage for improvement.
Rainbow capitalism makes for a good example: Companies co-opting queer symbols for marketing is distasteful, but it implies that inclusion is valued enough to make it worth pouring money into signaling.This rapid pivot from faint hope to an escalation of ever more overt regressions, their crude bluntness tearing them free from all social restraints that might reign them in: That is the madness, the novelty.
Fascism’s what’s happening.
Every time I see a link to something about Jon stewart, it reminds me of the the Daily Show episode where he interviewed President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
Musharraf led a military coup that brought him to power in 2001. His government was well known for its civil rights violations (not that many of his predecessors or successors were much better).
Stewart’s interview was so obsequious, and his questions so softball, it was like watching a Fox News host interview Trump.
Have you seen anything he’s done since? Like grilling the head of the VA or Oil Execs?
They agree on the questions beforehand
Uh… I don’t know mate. Right now what’s happening is not anymore an allarm bell. You got allarm bells ringing for more than a year now, what’s happening now is that you willfully ignored every single allarm bell until the fire was so huge that is eating the whole country.
What’s happening now is the Amerikan Reich.
As a German, I’m disgusted by what’s happening right now. But on top, I’m happy I can tell the simpler Americans to eat shit if they bring up the “Germans are Nazis” argument ever again. I mean I was able to do so before, but their bad education made it impossible to communicate it to them.
I mean… you still CAN call Germans nazis, if’n they’re nazis. Just like I call Magats nazi wannabes. The turd Reich, if you will.
Yes, but they don’t make that distinction.
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Wow, what an idiotic comment
I keep on talking to people over here in the us saying. Is this what is was like for germans pre ww2?! I don’t see how people cannot seem the similarities. We have taken over a soverign country now!
Is he using the “f-word” yet? Or does this still not “count”?
Yeah that was definitely one of the most disappointing things out of him but he’s been pretty on point with most other things at least
The guy crafted an entire segment patronizingly rebuking the people actually calling this shit out. That’s more than disappointing. He lost any credibility in being a meaningful voice on US politics with that, imo.
I can’t stand this smarmy jobber.
Don’t watch his videos then
It’s okay. You can sit.
Why don’t you tell him then?
