this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Democrats too. half the country lost a pretty significant right to their own bodily autonomy that they'd taken foregranted for basically their entire life. and they just... rolled over and took it? that's about the most concrete domestic loss they've taken this century, and more concrete than anything else on the table right now, so i honestly don't know what would have to happen in order for the left to do anything meaningfully violent.
I'm sorry, but what were your expectations towards the Democrats here?
These anti abortion laws were enacted at state level. By Republican state governments whose representatives were elected by the people. What did you want the Democrats to do here? Even if they complained, in the end if they don't have the majority in the state government, they have no power to do anything.
Even at the federal level, the Senate is 48 Democrat members, 49 Republican members and 3 independents. They don't have the majority there either.
And in the house of representatives, the Republicans are the majority with 220 members vs 213 as Democrats. They still don't have the majority there.
And if you look at the supreme court, Trump packed it with Republican judges.
So what are your expectations towards the Democrats??? If people don't elect them, they can't do anything.
The president can't step in and cancel any of these anti abortion laws because it's the will of the people. (In a way)
That's what happens when people are apathetic and don't go out to vote.
what you say is entirely consistent. it's a strong belief in democracy as a process with no bounds/constraints, as an ultimate good in and of itself. and it's sort of my point: in the "civil war" frame, Democrats are super unlikely to instigate violence. your neighbors will vote away all the things you value, out of religious beliefs you disagree with or merely out of spite, but that's okay, so long as they do so democratically.
i meet enough democrats (little d) who say they wouldn't comply with a draft, even if enacted democratically. my thoughts are that there's at least a few things similar to that: decisions where your own interests shouldn't be subservient to the will of an abstract majority. the surprise with abortion for me is that for my whole life, that was de-facto such an example. it wasn't treated as a thing that had been decided democratically, just as a thing which was. then some people far away said "abortion should be decided democratically", and the number of people around me saying "actually no it shouldn't" was way smaller (i.e. zero) than the number of people who say that about things like the draft. i still don't know how to square that, but to answer your "what were your expectations towards the Democrats here" question, well, you asking that is the answer to why i think "civil war" talk is so beyond the pale.
I promise you that even if everyone in my state turned up to vote, we'd still elect fascists. This is clearly a system failure.