Yeah everyone's reckoning needs to go back to bush and sept 11 2001 frankly. The consolidation of executive power, the labeling of "enemies" and "terrorists" as inherently applying to some groups which therefore do not have the same rights of due process, the torture prisons it didn't quite all start there but it was a massive turning point.
The way the wars fed back into american policing, the justifications for the drone assassination program (but not here! not quite yet). A lot of what we're seeing now is the natural endpoint of processes that were started under bush "in reaction" to sept 11 and expanded under obama and later biden.
The main stream of the republican party has been, first quietly but then openly, fantasizing about authoritarian control for 25 years. And through that whole time the democrats have made it one of their biggest priorities to help them construct the apparatus needed to accomplish it. And our allies have been eager to get their hands on these same powers & systems to apply to their own citizens.
Honestly looking back the biggest mistake I made was that I thought the things that are happening now would happen in bush's second term. When they didn't I took seriously the possibility that I was wrong about the bloodlust of the american right, sincerely spent many years convincing myself they were in working in good faith towards what they understood was best for the world. I had it right the first time. For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves.
I think we were almost all lulled into a sense of "huh, I guess I slightly misread them..." fueled by the failures to capitalize, the little losses of momentum that almost gave the hopeful impression that maybe people had finally gotten over the bloodlust and the worst of the power grabs.
By the way, the ending of what you wrote is beautiful.
That's because it was written by the author of Psalms. haha.
It's from psalms. We're not the first to go through this.
The danger of this both-sides approach is that Trump used it as cover and painted himself as anti-war (despite his recorded comments at the time) compared to both Democrats and Republicans before pivoting to talking about invading Canada and turning Gaza into a Trump Hotel resort.
Agreed, both side-ism is ridiculous. One party has pursued their personal wealth and power, concentrations of wealth for the elite class, and globalism and the other side has done the same, but also embraces fascism and theocracy as core tenants.
The former is the only choice, because democracy is still able to maintain a slight pulse under their "leadership".
I was trying to avoid both-sidesing here, sorry I failed. I only briefly mentioned democrats to point out that while the republicans were openly planning all along to implement an authoritarian regime, the democrats broadly supported building out the means to do it. The democrats have always considered their right flank colleagues and their left flank adversaries, have put a lot of energy into ignoring the fascist dreams of the republicans: this was the predicted outcome.