10th May 2023, 11:51 AM
(This post was last modified: 10th May 2023, 11:52 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
(10th May 2023, 4:56 AM)Weltall Wrote: Let us not drop our guard, then.
But, I still am very skeptical of the ability of conservatives to actually achieve much of anything they really want on this subject. It's something that even a lot of conservatives don't care much about one way or another and a lot of them inclined to resistance just aren't that motivated to spend their energy on a fight they probably won't win. Especially after getting Roe overturned, yeah, that got them what they thought they wanted, and then it cost them an election they couldn't afford to lose (after all, 1,500 baby boomers die every day on average, they stopped making new boomers 60 years ago, and the kids being brought up now generally seem to hate conservatism as a concept.
So, let us not despair, either.
I'm certainly not advocating despair so much as realism. It's better we're aware that every gain we've made CAN be reversed, so that we don't become complacent. The long arc of history only bends towards justice because of people loudly and sometimes violently doing everything they can to bend it that way by force. It's not something that happens automatically.
Indeed, the big attempt conservatives are making right now is the biggest weakness of that bend. They're directly targeting education itself. If they succeed there, then we'll have generations of badly taught kids who just keep the status quo. I LIVED with a bad education. ABF himself had to TELL me what the "enlightenment" even was, and my first reaction back then was to say it sounded... what was the word I used? Oh yes, "arrogant". I'm better now I think, but only because those educational resources still exist. It's very important those books don't get burned, because that physical record is the only proof we have that we didn't literally create all those facts yesterday.
You know how flat earthers these days say all those photographs of the earth as seen from space are "CG" and if you point out those photos are from the 50's and 60's, they claim they're actually way more recent than that and that there's no proof they're that old? Well, good news is there IS proof they're that old, and in many cases the proof is our grandparents who witnesses the photos themselves, but we can't count on our grandparents to live forever. Sorry five year old me... I honestly see the battle over education to be the absolute most important political fight we're having right now, because literally everything else hinges on it. If kids don't know that it used to snow more right here in this state, they won't take the hellscape we're turning into right now seriously. It's only a reality in the face of history.
Anyway, I don't say all this to promote despair, but to light a fire under the collective arse of everyone who reads this (the Tendarse) so that people don't just stand by and wait for history to bend towards justice again on it's own.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)