Everyone Who Was Supposed to Protect You From This Failed Miserably

The establishment has failed us and I think that is why we are were we are now. "Everyone Who Was Supposed to Protect You From This Failed Miserably" so sure they failed but we failed as well. Democracy is supposed to be driven from the bottom up, but instead we the people collectively do not pay attention and take responsibility for our our system.

Part of the problem is the will of the people has been superseded by decades of corporate and politicial interests (e.g. Citizens United, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bush v Gore, etc etc).
Perhaps we should have been fighting back, but this is decades in the making.
- Limbaugh gave my dad permanent brain damage. to this day I can't really tell if he's still in there.
- Saying that's part of the problem is akin to saying the asteroid was part of the problem for dinosaurs. All you're really missing is the gutting of critical thinking in public education under Reagan.
- Some of us never even had a chance to fight back. This battle was lost before I was born. Bush v Gore was more than 24 years ago, I was barely a child. I wasn't even alive for Reagan. What can I do now, 40 years too late?
The system was designed from the ground up to make sure only the right kind of people had an actual say in it. The people at the top make damn sure that the people at the bottom have as little freedom to act on their right to vote as possible.
- That is always tradition.
  The people at the top will never have your best interests at heart. It’s just not how it works. There is no system where the people in government make sure to include you, and make sure everything is set up fairly, and you can just chill, secure with your voice being un-kept out of it and your inclusion assured. You can either stay engaged and take an active part in forcing the government to be a decent government, or else you can mostly ignore it as we have been doing, and you will get the unfolding horror we are about to experience.

Rolling Stone is pissed today.
I like it. We need more of that.

They really are. I chose this one because the writing was sharp, and I didn't really want to spam y'all on what was already a rough day.
But for anyone who doesn't regularly read Rolling Stone (I didn't until the Post shat the bed), the political coverage is incisive and pushing the left edge of the Overton window, which is precisely where you want your journalism.

This fucking paywall is part of what failed me. Money grubbing capitalist horse shit.

"The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free."
https://archive.ph/8lE69
Use the Bypass Paywall Clean plug-in if you're using Firefox.
Journalism costs money. Unless we enjoy being fed propaganda by billionaires who can afford to dump money into news organisations we should get used to paying for journalism.
- You say that, but I remember the internet before all this shit. Print media once used to actually produce a product, which it sold in an actual physical store and through subscription services. Meanwhile, some outlets had internet editions, but the vast majority of what was posted online was being posted by people. You'd see a lot of excerpts, a lot of people's takes on things that were informed by articles they'd read, and a lot of websites and forums dedicated to particular subjects.
  Then print media moved in and started begging us for their views, paying for them with ad revenue. They wanted our eyeballs. Then social media blew up and they got the visibility they wanted while contributing to the birth of the current terrible environment that is the internet today. Eventually, once they had the attention they'd sought from us, attention that we used to give each other, they started walling everything off.
  Paywalls are part of enshittification. They're part of the degradation of the internet. And, surprise surprise, look where the degradation of the internet has led us.
  This is absolutely part of what's failed us. It's the commodification of information. They literally started this subscription model clickbait bullshit.

None of those ever existed to protect you.

In 2024 I felt that I was safe being a transwoman in America, that the GOP could rage all they wanted but it was impotent bluster, as dumb as the American people were even they realized that transpeople were no threat and that this was just "Gay Panic V2"

I was wrong

I'm sorry to hear that. Which is so often said vapidly, but I mean it. I also thought we were past this bullshit, but people love a strongman who can point ANYWHERE else to blame their problems on other people in their class or below instead of their keepers.