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Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

8 Jan

Maybe it’s an ongoing and larger problem that a president who threatened for years that certain supporters would “get tough” directed an attempted coup that included members of law enforcement and the military and was aided by officers in charge of protecting Congress.

And maybe it deserves more attention that Secret Service had to shake up its ranks for fear that people loyal to Trump couldn’t be trusted protecting the next administration.

Or that foreign governments are seeing all of this as an inside job.

People are already minimizing what happened Wednesday and relying on classist lenses to diminish what was an attempted coup inspired by a president, involved military and law enforcement, the refusal of internal structures to do their jobs, and a general stand down from defense.

Read 5 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

5 Jan

All right.

We need to talk about how Trump and the GOP are marketing themselves as the Southern Fire-Eaters who spurred secession and the Civil War and how that time bizarrely mirrors our own.

Here's a taste of what I write about in AMERICAN RULE.

1/

penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

This ad that's making the rounds by Lauren Boebert, in which she brags about taking her gun to Congress, is not just empty posturing. It reflects a growing tension in our government that seems to be trending toward the societal discord and violence of the Civil War.

2/

The way our history is taught, the Civil War just...kind of happened. Out of nowhere. But there were many forces involved and they reflect what we're going through now.

To understand, we need to look at those forces and the people who benefited and cultivated them.

3/

Read 25 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

4 Jan

There likely won’t be a schism in the Republican Party. Romney might eventually give a tearful speech and declare himself an independent, but the Right is going to dive deep into the muck and eagerly and violently compete over who can swallow the most filth.

All economic and political incentive on the Right is on embracing anti-democratic fascism and slamming down the pedal. Even being ambivalent or lukewarmly supporting a blatant coup is enough to get thrown in the gulag. It’s going to be a horror show.

A lot of people have made a lot of assumptions that the GOP fever would break, that all this posing with semi-automatics and trafficking in conspiracy theories would slip away when the right person got elected. It was a fantasy. The Right is terminally lost in fascism.

Read 5 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

29 Dec 20

The wealthy and powerful spent decades and billions destroying government as a public good and eradicating trust between Americans.

It’s no accident we have bought-off representatives, a violently divided citizenry, and a hapless infrastructure incapable of fighting a pandemic.

Reckless, thoughtless, humanless greed got us here. A society cannot function like this and America is sprinting headlong into decline and fascism because the wealthy have coopted everything. This always, always, always leads to disaster.

The wealthy undermined experts until we were lost in fascistic conspiracies, hollowed out our infrastructure and industry, imprisoned us for profit and kept us dependent using debt and insecurity, and captured our government and turned it into a wealth redistribution center.

Read 4 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

28 Dec 20

To reckon with the fact that white people carry out terrorism is to begin unraveling the entire fragile mythology of white supremacy and the narratives that legitimize oppression.

That our media is incapable or unwilling to do this should tell you everything you need to know.

White supremacy isn’t just carried on by avowed white supremacists. It’s also served by people who are disgusted by those groups and yet continue to cultivate, protect, and maintain the stories and ideology of white supremacy in their journalism, art, and politics.

The difference between “disturbed, lone wolf” white terrorism and “organized, cultural” terrorism carried out by people of color is an unwillingness by white supremacist America to reckon with itself or disturb the brittle mythologies that lie under our facade.

Read 5 tweets

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

27 Dec 20

This government is not designed to help people but to serve as an organ to redistribute the people's wealth from the bottom up.

Any gesture otherwise is only intended to keep people from understanding this and realizing how angry they should be.

It does not have to be this way. We can have an actual government for and by the people that serves public good rather than a system that plunders our wealth and sells out our well-being.

It can be different.

It has to be different.

For decades now there has been an economic consensus that wealth is best served being handed over to the wealthy and allowing the powerful to operate based on their own interests.

That consensus has to be broken. If it isn't, fascism and economic collapse are inevitable.

Read 5 tweets

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