Speaking of what Americans “forget”, I find it disturbing that this comment section seems to agree when it comes down to racism and white washing, but not a word is spoken about Native Americans.

Just imagine how devastating it is to see groups of immigrants fighting among eachother about equal rights. And your group, the only actual non-immigrants, get completely ignored. Not a word is spoken about them. Even by those supporting equal rights.

Speaking of what Americans “forget”, I find it disturbing that this comment section seems to agree it comes down to racism and white washing, but not a word is spoken about Native Americans.

Just imagine how devastating it is to see groups of immigrants fighting among eachother about equal rights. And your group, the only non-immigrants, get completely ignored. Even by those supporting equal rights.

After the civil war in the United States, President Lincoln was shot and his election opponent Andrew Johnson who was from the party of the south took over. At that time the candidate with the second highest number of votes became the Vice President.

Once Andrew Johnson took over he proceeded to pardon nearly every confederate. Not just the poor soldiers on the ground, but the land holding slave owners who instigated the war.

Those people regained power in the south after the compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and the military occupation of the south.

Their legacy is a cancer that has rotted the US democracy from the inside out.

Our failure to root out the use of racism to cling to power has been a consistent theme in the failures of our democracy.

Edit: it goes even farther back to Bacon’s rebellion as well. Back prior to he revolution when the ruling landowners began dividing indentured servants by race and treating them with different levels of privilege so they wouldn’t unite against them again.

Lifelong education based bias and whitewashing. History in this country kinda glosses over the “bad parts” that don’t follow the narrative.

It all comes down to racism really. The civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s made some people pathologically angry. Alot of organization like the Council for National Policy, which is the parent foundation of the Heritage Foundation and many others were started as a result.

Those organizations have been working hard for decades to put their people into government, acedamia, media, and industry. Their approach is very authoritarian and fascist, buts its driving force is racism.

So fastforward to now, and we have an awful lot of hatefull propaganda being spread, we have politicians cutting school budgets to keep people dumb, we have non-existant labor unions to remove all resistance, we have universities putting out anti-vax studies, and we have “journalists” who no longer push back.

If you follow the money, it always leads back to one of these CNP think tanks and its always racist.

Jane Mayer wrote Dark Money almost a decade ago and it even more true today. At minimum, go read over some of the reviews or a summary.

Because those people are not the smartest cookies in the knife drawer.

Because we made nation that onlys purpose is buying and consuming. Not actually living. We marked distraction on purpose make people easier to control. And then play the people and direct them as needed for the purpose of American business and Not for American humanity.

On a whole we are very uneducated and extremely propagandized.

One man started it all in the 20th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Fifield_Jr

Extreme right wing political cult indoctrination via mass propaganda masquerading as journalism pushed for around 50-60 years that mirrors religious indoctrination. They use similar language, authoritarian hierarchy, preaching instead of questioning discussion, and undermining education to make it inaccessible and underfunded.

There were serious problems before that too with Jim crow laws, slavery, genocide of the indigenous peoples, etc. This is the current US form of that egocentric, unempathetic politic. A fox news demagogue like Jesse Waters talking about gassing vs bombing major US cities is both a dog whistle to racists because pluralism & diversity are strengths of major metropolitan areas, and Christian nationalists who lose power in big diverse communities when people can see for themselves the people they were told are evil demonic scapegoats are just like them.

There is similar extreme political cult behavior everywhere, but they are a minority and the systems of government that haven’t been updated since the filibuster reforms forces constitutional amendments to require a 2/3 majority instead of over 50%, the electoral college and gerrymandering preventing democracy, and higher religiosity in the US allowed this minority of the country to win elections.

This all started since before the inception of the US. Slavery was an easy source of labor for the colonies and was used as a major economic engine in plantations everywhere. Since pretty much all slaves were black and owned by white wealthy men, the theory of white supremacy began to be forged. White supremacy was used to justify owning other non-white human beings and treating all non-whites like shit was seen as a moral and just thing to do. White supremacy had the side effect of convincing the poorest of white men that even if they were in the bottom rung of society, at least they were better off than being black.

The idea festered throughout the time of the colonies and well after the US gained independence. Since the North was beginning to industrialize, there was a greater need for free people who were capable of working factory floors while the South remained staunchly agricultural with its slave field hands. While the country was still awfully racist, one could see things were gradually shifting for more racial equality in the North, where slavery was being abolished. This all came to a head with the Civil War where the South fought tooth and nail to keep its racist system going.

Soon after the war though, the Union didn’t bother to go far enough with reconstruction of the South and left a lot of the social norms and attitudes of white supremacy alone. Think tanks realizing the dividing power of white supremacy then slowly began to legitimize it in the eyes of conservatives everywhere in the country. With the South a firm stronghold of such beliefs, the Republican party had a way to slowly grow racial resentment into policy. Means checking welfare recipients, banning guns when minorities tried to protect themselves in California like with the Black Panthers, granting qualified immunity to cops, invading non-white countries for their natural resources, and more conditioned conservatives into thinking racism in all but name was acceptable.

Enter Donald Trump. The man starts spewing hate from day one. Mexicans are rapists and criminals, Puerto Ricans are trash people, African immigrants come from “shithole countries”, questioned the citizenship of Obama, and even refuses to condemn out and open acts of white supremacy. All this obviously evil shit no longer even registers with conservatives. The most appalling thing of all this is that even non-white and LGBTQ conservatives embraced his messages or disregarded any attacks on who they are as not applicable to them, because surely they’re one of “the good ones”.

Now finally here we are, being attacked by an enemy within. ICE is rounding up non-white people regardless of citizenship and even executing citizens in the streets. Cubans, Venezuelans, and Vietnamese immigrants, supporters of Republicans for their anti communist propaganda are being ruthlessly targeted by the very people who promised to hurt them but voted for them regardless. An alarming amount of Trump’s supporters are still happy with what’s going on and want more of it. I don’t see how we’ll get out of this situation, especially if elections somehow get canceled by our burgeoning dictator.

Your mistake is accepting that the American war for independence was a revolution. It was more like an “under new management”.

Conservatives, at their core, are and have always been monarchists.

Because he said he would make things better for people, and many believed him. Now that they’ve hitched their wagon to him, it’s easier to believe that they did the right thing and that the world is lying to them, than to admit to themselves that they fell for a scam.

Sturmabteilung, aka SA, not Gestapo. Get your metaphors right. The Gestapo and the Stasi were secret and worked behind the scenes. The SA was so bad that it eventually had to be nipped in the bud by the government it supported.

America has always been an evil empire