A ray of hope - Paul Krugman: "The Minneapolis Crucible"

[Pluvious]

I believe part of the reason this "impatience" we have witnessed is driving the counterproductive violent actions has been motivated by the failing health of The Abomination, and his minions. They are concerned that time is short and the opportunity must be seized while it's still within their power.

The Minneapolis Crucible
Will we forge democracy anew?

When Trump won the 2024 election, I feared — rightly — that our democracy would soon be in great peril. Between gerrymandering, a corrupt Supreme Court, a compliant Republican Party, and a tsunami of political donations from the tech broligarchy, I thought American democracy might soon perish.

But I thought the process of losing our democracy would be a slow, ineluctable descent as institutions and people resigned themselves to the seemingly inevitable. I expected the process to be akin to what happened in Hungary, where ordinary people’s lives remained mostly normal amid Viktor Orban’s authoritarian takeover. There, independent media have been suppressed, business has been co-opted by crony capitalism, the judicial and electoral systems have been rigged. But Orban didn’t employ armed thugs to brutalize, maim and murder people in the streets. Rather, Hungary’s democracy fell to a quiet, creeping coup.

My early fears weren’t completely off base. Everything that transpired in the first few months of Trump 47 suggests that if our own home-grown fascists had been as patient as Orban, a de facto dictatorship would have been established here with relative ease. Our vaunted institutions, our system of checks and balances, either capitulated quickly or were overrun by Trump’s onslaught. Big business quickly bent the knee, immediately directing its focus to how to make money through Trump trades. The Supreme Court and the Republican Congress abetted and even encouraged every fascist move.

Yet the US has not replicated Hungary’s measured slide into authoritarianism. For Trump and his minions aren’t patient. They want retribution and subjugation. Threats and dominance displays are how they operate. They burn with racism, misogyny, and performative cruelty.

So now we have Minneapolis, America’s laboratory of...

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-minneapolis-crucible

[calimary]

1. I'm counting on that ray of hope!

Sometimes that’s the main thing that keeps me going.

[Mme. Defarge]

2. Instead of doomscrolling,

I prefer to think of it as hopescrolling.

[calimary]

6. Hopescrolling! I like it!

[vapor2]

7. YES

so read dr's think he likely had a stroke months ago so they are moving fast due to this failing health

[talking-liberally]

3. "Beginning of the beginning"

Mark Elias, the attorney doing most of the election protection legal work said that we are at the "beginning of the beginning".

I agree.

Sadly.

[maxsolomon]

4. Whats the "Ray of Hope"?

So what’s happening now is both horrifying and inspiring. How will it all end? I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe, our democracy isn’t being destroyed — it’s being forged anew in the hands of the American people.

The "Maybe, Just Maybe"?

[talking-liberally]

5. I hope Paul is right. It's a question of how bad will it need to get before we really act.

I believe it will take a stock market crash of at least 30% before the monied interests, the ones with the real power in our distorted society, act.

But, I hope Paul is right.