I’ve definitely been thinking about this. I wrote a paper about radicalization and misconceptions of Islam during high school. This was like, 2005 or 2006? So a time where there was a lot of “well we WOULD be nice to Muslims if they would just decry the extremists in their midst more!!!1!” And I can’t help but draw the comparison when domestic terrorists are being tolerated within the conservative movement. Just like. Most Muslims, especially domestically, were doing SO SO MUCH to decry extremism and it still wasn’t enough in people’s eyes. And now here we are. With what Twitter has branded the #CoupKluxKlan
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Wow even Umbridge (DeVos) is jumping ship.
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I’ve also been thinking about how we got here. How we fix things is less clear. Trends I’ve seen over my lifetime that I think matter:
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The loss of civility in politics. Things were different in say the Reagan and Clinton eras. Some credit Newt Gingrich with single-handedly changing the culture. I first really noticed it with George Bush with his “You’re either for us or against us” rhetoric. It’s just gotten worse and worse.
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Economic factors. Almost all of my friends in grade school had stay at home moms because it was possible to support a family on one income. Globalization, the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs, the transition to a knowledge-based economy, rising health and education costs. It’s changed dramatically since I graduated high school.
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The rise of minority rights and groups which is a threat to white supremacists. I was born just before the last civil rights movement, when laws against interracial marriage and homosexuality were still on the books. Women marched and demanded equality in the 70’s. I think the backlash against all of these movements is part of Trump’s appeal.
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The internet. When I was a kid everyone got their news from Walter Cronkite. Now you can find someone saying anything you want on the internet. I feel like as a society we are still in our adolescence in terms of how to use the shiny new thing and especially differentiating fact from fiction. Trump spouts lies, lies and more lies and some people believe him.
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The assualt on the media. This is huge, and we need to address this if we have a hope of fixing things in this counry. Much of this is Trump’s doing, and it’s not clear to me if it’s part of an intentional plan or if he just lives in denial. More on that below.
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Loss of trust in government. So many promises broken, especially in the name of war. Loss of trust in other institutions follows.
Another thought percolating in my mind these last few days is that people resort to violence when they see no other options. I bring that up when people complain about other protests turning violent, but I think it relates to what happened yesterday. There are people in this country who believe the election was rigged and unfair because Trump has said it so many times. I don’t know if they don’t know about all of the judicial challenges or think those are rigged too. Trump has done an amazing job at playing the victim and listing all of his grievances and not letting anyone forget about the Russia investigation, impeachment, and so on. I think at least some of the people who became violent yesterday believe there is no other way for their voice to be heard and to address their issues.
How do we find a way to restore trust in the press and the media, so we at least have the common ground of understanding what the facts are? I don’t know how to crack that nut. Shutting down voices fuels conspiracy theories. Transparency at some point conflicts with privacy. There are people willfully and knowingly spreading misinformation, including foreign governments, and then there are the mis-informed who believe what they are seeing. How do we return to a time when we could agree on objective facts like who won an election that ended two months ago?
TL;DR lots of thoughts and few answers.
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I recommend this series by NPR, a look into the evangelical religious right and its connection to American political violent extremism
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Yeah, not the resignations earlier, or the ones who are trying to be a moderating force (like Fauci). But everyone resigning this week – come on. You knew.
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So, when I heard that people were resigning, my Pollyanna self thought “great, finally you are doing a good thing, standing up against Trumps actions”, blah blah blah. Then I heard someone say on tv “well, you know they are only leaving so they don’t have to vote on the 25th amendment” Oh. Right. So really still just saving their own butts. Damn. That just popped my Pollyanna bubble.
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Alas, it is a reminder that capitalism does not care about democracy.
We think about them as going together, but they do not.
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I mean, the US still has one of the best military forces in the world. I am not worried about invasion. The capitol situation wasn’t our best (intentional or negligent, who knows). If we had taken it more seriously no one would have been getting into that building. Also, we will presumably feel better about shooting invaders than “nice white people.” 
I really think what is most likely is what Smacky said - a nonrepresentative oligarchy, whiiiiich, I mean, basically we’ve been setting our shit up for that for a while.
ETA: I am really interested in that NPR series, thanks Lily! I think we’ve got a lot of problems as a country, but radicalization is one of the most dangerous.
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Oh, yeah, I don’t think we’re at risk physical invasion. I think ramped up acquisition of industry and ramped up acquisition of land. Things that create more US dependence on foreign goods.
I was speculating more that opportunist terrorist chatter that’s happening right now is probably super interesting. Kind of the 9/11 stuff gets missed in the chaos type of thing.
I’m not worried about it; a lot of Biden’s appointees have been previously vetted so the process shouldn’t be as delayed as it was in 2000-01. And I’m sure there are plenty of people doing overtime around security issues. But the voyeuristic part of me would totally listen to that scanner channel for curiosity’s sake 
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By Canada surely
Aka everyone should go and listen to 3 Dead Trolls in a Baggie sing ‘the war of 1812’
(Yes, I know it is more complex)
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Every Canadian child is gleefully taught in history class that we burned down the white house in the war of 1812. I have come to understand that no American children are taught this. We don’t have a lot of military accomplishments to crow about but this one is very sweet.
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I was taught this, but I had a dirty liberal education so 
My states edu requirements included a year of American history. My cheeky program made that “history of the americas” and taught us primarily about other countries 
I remember there being a LOT about Argentina…
And my parents are shocked I broke from the family conservativism 
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I learned that in elementary school, it was definitely taught in Texas.
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My college professor did this with “State Government”. Instead of teaching Texas Government, we did a comparative analysis of all the states.
Texas requires SO MUCH Texas social studies… two years in elementary, one in middle school, one in high school have to be specifically “Texas History”. In college you have to have Texas History and State Government. It’s a bit overkill.
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Y’all are taking away the joy I feel when I get to educate Americans about this historical tidbit. 
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Sorry.
But if you want to continue to spread the word of the metric system, you could.
(Though, technically, we do learn that too.)
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I honestly don’t remember if we ever did Florida social studies aside from “Have you heard about St. Augustine??” with an implied “suck it Plymouth Rock!”
I think I might’ve heard about the White House burning in high school? But mostly I remember my history education being an excruciating rehash of where/when battles happened in the Revolutionary War andthensomeotherstuffhappened then an excruciating rehash of where/when battles happened in the Civil War. Historical YA novels were much more enlightening than my actual classes, at least for my interests.
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How does Florida approach the civil war?
In Texas, it was very much taught as if we were bystanders, and it was just something that happened around us, and we were in the south by default due to geography.
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The war of 1812 is what I wrote my US History AP exam essay on.
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Exactly this, although I was educated in south Florida. Now I live where there are/were Confederate statues and places in town used to have troops camped out so I’m curious how my son’s education will differ. He’s in Kindergarten now, the current unit is actually about teaching what a symbol is (“a flag is a symbol to represent the United States of America which is the country you live in.”) The next lesson is about who/what the president is so I’m putting that one off for right now for my own mental health.
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