Thread by @gwensnyderPHL

I think a lot about how early in my career as an organizer, I took a lot of pride in being "realistic" about what change could and couldn't happen.

Looking back, it wasn't me being more grown-up or sophisticated. It was me limiting my own imagination to fit in.

If this past decade has taught me anything, it's that the status quo is far more delicate than most of us let ourselves think.

 It's a cliche, but change really is the only constant.

Cynicism about the possibility of change isn't just small-minded. It's simply wrong.

Change is going to happen, sometimes unpredictably, sometimes very suddenly.

We're being forced to confront that reality in so many ways right now.

At least in the US, we have a tendency to lock onto the status quo of a particular era and imagine that as some eternal "normal."

There is no such thing.

What we think of "normal" is a historical moment that has passed.

There is no returning to it.

We can build something better, we can create something worse.

But there's no return to normal.

That's nostalgia.

We can try and pretend all we like, but that's the reality.

We get suckered into this idea that our institutions (government, economy, etc) are so stable that, barring a meteor, they'll pull us back into "normal" orbit.

And, that is the purpose of institutions.

They're fundamentally conservative in the most literal sense of the word.

They exist to conserve stuff, materially and culturally.

That's their purpose, but we overestimate their strength.

They exist to resist and slow change, but we are at a time where change has so much momentum that they don't offer much resistance.

We're in a moment of very clearly accelerating change.

I think we always are, but our institutions right now are visibly weakened against it.

The way we approach the current crisis and the future has to be about directing change, not trying to resist our way back to "normal."

I know all of this sounds a bit vague, but it boils down to: we're in a moment of profound crisis, and the desire to return to an imaginary past can become profound during such times.

That's literally what fascism is: a promise of a return to an imagined past moment of national glory.

We counter fascism by presenting an alternate vision of the future, not an alternate fantasy about the past.

As long as Dems try and run on a return to a past "normal," they will lose.

It's a tempting fantasy, but it's a game fascists will always win at.

They feel no obligation to tell the truth about history.

Their fantasy of the past will always be more tempting.