American conservatives can’t be voted out by voting extra hard, each vote is a vote and there are limits on canvassing and trying to bring over conservatives. America is declining, there is constant fearmingering about immigrants, and people long for “the good old days” while very little progressive movement happens. These conditions are ripe for fascism to take hold, horrifyingly enough.
Even if that’s all true, we owe it to our forebears to still try. And I don’t mean literal ancestors, but the American left throughout history. They fought against slavery, for equal civil rights, for the right to vote, and for the dignity to be seen as a full person. Workers rights advocates fought to give us safer working conditions and better work life balance. And all of these people were beaten and some even killed in the process.
Things don’t look great right now, but I don’t know if things have ever looked good in the US. It’s always been pretty terrible in some regard if you weren’t a rich white straight man.
Maybe the struggle will be futile in the end. But I don’t want to give up, because the people before us didn’t give up, and honestly faced harder odds.
