I think that people freaking out about current events need to have some perspective.
Assaults on the USA's freeness have happened time and time again, be it Jackson, Nixon, Wilson, the Bushes etc and have been carried out by people much, much smarter and much, much more politically capable than 45. Nixon had a personal crony appointed to the FBI and for an election sabatoged peace talks while actively spying on US citizens. He also was much much more popular than Trump ever war, winning a landslide in 1972 and filling half the supreme court with very right wing appointees. Yet despite that, Roe V Wade happened under his watch and despite having so much time to rid of Roe, the right never was able to even as Roe had not nearly as much precedent as it does now. It is not even clear if Gorsuch would dare overturn it. Or if the politicos even want to overturn it.
In the 1990's, a time of suppossed nostalgia and american greatness which is claimed to be more stable than today Yeltsin nearly caused WW3 while Drunk, we nearly got into a war with China over Taiwan and a genocide happened in Europe. The 2000's weren't much better.
I think it is safe to say that political instability is the NORM, not stability. A caligula with nukes is scary, yes, but they have existed before be it when fucking Mao (who believed nukes could be used tactically) had nukes and nearly started a war with the USSR or when we let a aging man with dementia have nukes for five years straight.
Nuclear war is viewed as a inevitable apocalypse, I question this since they said this about bombers and chemical weapons back before the world wars and Saddam was suppossed to cause a global famine when he destroyed the oil wells. Seeing as there are far, far less nukes now (even if more nations have them) is it really a given that a missile war between nation states means the end of technological civilization or just be a collapse of the current system much like how the world wars destroyed Europe's hold on the world and gave the vacuum that allowed for American dominance? The mongols wiped out nearly 20% of the world population yet civilization around the world survived even if Islam was forever ruined by the mongols.
How many more decades (or years, if you believe the NK hype) we have until such war, who knows, and who knows what factors may develop that may make such wars not nearly the end of the species as a chomsky would claim. Climate change is horrifying, but biotechnology can abett it to a strong degree and that tech already is being used to make more resiliant crops. The structures that existed 70 years ago lack the resiliance structures made post-9/11 have and many US citizens live in Suburbs, not in the cities.
Assaults on the USA's freeness have happened time and time again, be it Jackson, Nixon, Wilson, the Bushes etc and have been carried out by people much, much smarter and much, much more politically capable than 45. Nixon had a personal crony appointed to the FBI and for an election sabatoged peace talks while actively spying on US citizens. He also was much much more popular than Trump ever war, winning a landslide in 1972 and filling half the supreme court with very right wing appointees. Yet despite that, Roe V Wade happened under his watch and despite having so much time to rid of Roe, the right never was able to even as Roe had not nearly as much precedent as it does now. It is not even clear if Gorsuch would dare overturn it. Or if the politicos even want to overturn it.
In the 1990's, a time of suppossed nostalgia and american greatness which is claimed to be more stable than today Yeltsin nearly caused WW3 while Drunk, we nearly got into a war with China over Taiwan and a genocide happened in Europe. The 2000's weren't much better.
I think it is safe to say that political instability is the NORM, not stability. A caligula with nukes is scary, yes, but they have existed before be it when fucking Mao (who believed nukes could be used tactically) had nukes and nearly started a war with the USSR or when we let a aging man with dementia have nukes for five years straight.
Nuclear war is viewed as a inevitable apocalypse, I question this since they said this about bombers and chemical weapons back before the world wars and Saddam was suppossed to cause a global famine when he destroyed the oil wells. Seeing as there are far, far less nukes now (even if more nations have them) is it really a given that a missile war between nation states means the end of technological civilization or just be a collapse of the current system much like how the world wars destroyed Europe's hold on the world and gave the vacuum that allowed for American dominance? The mongols wiped out nearly 20% of the world population yet civilization around the world survived even if Islam was forever ruined by the mongols.
How many more decades (or years, if you believe the NK hype) we have until such war, who knows, and who knows what factors may develop that may make such wars not nearly the end of the species as a chomsky would claim. Climate change is horrifying, but biotechnology can abett it to a strong degree and that tech already is being used to make more resiliant crops. The structures that existed 70 years ago lack the resiliance structures made post-9/11 have and many US citizens live in Suburbs, not in the cities.