u/TryingToBeTolerant

I’m not talking about our leaders. There’s been much worse, maybe even here. I’m talking about how the median Americans today, taking the average of 340 million people, are worse than any other rank-and-file population in the history of the world. There’s a few reasons why, but the big reason is that historically, most evil things are done either due to general ignorance (social or scientific) or in compliance with evil leaders out of fear.

In many cases, actions taken by our leaders today are actually compromises. Despite an infinite amount of information and a prolonged movement of pointing out all the mistakes we’ve historically made, a mass of the country is actively encouraging worse. While actions taken to this point are far from the worst ever (even in America), I truly believe that the average American today would be capable of and willing to accept much worse than any prior collective national population in history. Put simply: If today’s Americans lived in the time and context of Nazi Germany, Jews would be extinct. 

There’s an important point that can potentially make America in the immediate future way worse than 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow, or even any comparable authoritarian regime. The first time around, the world completely lacked equality, and most racism and discrimination was born out of genuine ignorance. Now, for the first time in history that I can find, people who grew up with basic equality have turned against it, and are attempting to purposely reject it at the ballot box. All previous Civil Rights movements have been about appealing to ignorant people to accept something they may not understand. Future Civil Rights movements will be about appealing to people who fully understand the implications of various types of equality, and are prepared to reject them. Not only can I not find an instance of where that was ever successful, I can’t find an instance where it’s been necessary, because no populace has ever purposely regressed to the extent that America has. There is a long held theory that social progress occurs because people in the anti-progress camp will switch to progress, while those in the progress camp almost never switch back. America in 2026 has obliterated this theory.

A large chunk of Americans would rather actively support illiberalism than accept a temporary government they ideologically disagree with. They speak highly of Francoist Spain and Pinochet’s Chile, ignoring the fact that neither exists anymore. They look fondly on Russia and Hungary, ignoring how much better off we are than both of them in pretty much all categories. America was the world’s lone superpower for 30 years and the richest country in history, yet people want to blow up the entire thing out of boredom and paranoia. If there was a national referendum to sunset democracy, I’m not sure if it would fail.

And speaking of paranoia: in what other country would a large portion of the population support making it less convenient for themselves to register to vote for a problem that’s basically negligible? In what other country would voters electorally punish those who stand up against anti-democratic behavior, as happened in Indiana? There’s of course been numerous attempts at various voter suppression methods, but I think this is the first time it’s happened at the behest of the wider electorate itself.

Let’s be real: a black guy was elected President, Gay people got to marry, Trans people simply were recognized as existing, and a podcaster was killed, and for these events that were generally inconsequential to most (myself included), over half of America snapped. And you know that if the Kirk killer gets anything less than the death penalty, he will in some way be victim of the first publicly endorsed lynching in almost 100 years.

In the Civil War, the North fought to free an entire race of people from enslavement, while the South sought to protect the economic interests of half the country. A lot was at stake. Now, there’s people who think it’s worth taking up arms over the abortion of children they’ll never meet, or people using the wrong bathroom, which they will probably never encounter. I can’t find a single dumber reason a country has ever collapsed on itself.

And that’s why I have no faith in the future of America: if everyone was removed from our government and we started from scratch, we would end up with something exponentially worse than what we have now.

The main reason for this is because there is an infinite supply of people to “otherize”. One reason fascism has failed in the past is because there’s only so many people you can cause conflict with before having to turn on your own. In Nazi Germany, for example, there were only half a million Jews out of 65 million people. Over 95% of residents of Germany proper already qualified as a member of the “Master Race”.

America is in a unique position where the designated “Majority” (White Christian) makes up less than 60% of the population. Roughly 40% of the population is Non-White and 40% does not identify as Christian. In addition, there’s over 10 million illegal immigrants, 4 million Muslims, and nearly 10% of the population now identifies as LGBT. There’s literally 140 million people to cycle through and marginalize. And because it’s way too many to reasonably get rid of, fascism would never have to turn on itself, and can constantly perpetuate conflict.

There’s other reasons too, mostly due to the general personality defects of Americans (tolerance of violence, general paranoia, demonization of basic empathy, self-determination to a self-destructive degree), but mostly because unlike anywhere else, there is, metaphorically, enough to sustainably feed and nourish it.