The fantasy is the competent opposition to all of those things.

It’s because he maintained plausible deniability, no bribes or kompromat necessary. Fact checkers couldn’t definitively say he supported project 25 because he feigned ignorance.

The reality is even worse. They’re going to “learn” all the wrong lessons. They will shift further to the right, like they always do.

They also make the mistake of thinking that in order to appeal to conservative voters they have to be conservative. I have more often gotten through to conservatives with socialist economics and anarchist political philosophy than I ever could when I was a liberal trying to sway them on cultural issues and basic welfare.

And after getting through to them they started to come around on the cultural issues too.

Just want to clarify I was referring to the comments and not your post. I will be right there with you.

Kentucky amendment 2, which would have redirected public funds to private schools, failed miserably. Of all the red states, Kentucky seems to be somewhat unique in its’ strong resistance to Republican attacks on public education. It is, after all, why we have a Democratic governor. I only hope that continues to hold true.

Maybe they’ll self-reflect and take responsibility for the consequences of their actions when they see the harms that they contributed to but, I’m not holding my breath as it hasn’t happened in my lifetime despite Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Rojava, not to mention the impending Project 2025.

Allow me to restore your hope a little bit:

Not all of them will, and those that do might take quite a while to get there, but it happens. Those who see others express such regrets will be inoculated against making the same error.

Everyone here missing the point…

The neolib captured Democratic party refusing to move left at all didn’t help but, lack of participation is what allowed it to happen in the first place.

Bit of a chicken or the egg situation, don’t you think? I recently watched a documentary about union coal miners in Harlan County, KY, and while watching it felt like I was watching a culture of resistance transition to a culture of defeat as a result of compounding traumas coinciding with minor improvements to material conditions that made it tempting to settle.

The left has had a culture of defeat for some time, and I believe we are now witnessing the early developmental stages of a new culture of resistance. It is young and naive, and chose too early to abandon electoralism entirely, but it will either mature or be stamped out by the fascism they thought they were ready to face. If we are to survive fascism we can’t hold grudges against one another for their errors in judgment.

Edit: Here is the documentary I mentioned, and here is a video that explains what I mean by culture of resistance.

Leftist fascism is called fascism, because the term leftist doesn’t actually mean anything but fascism and communism do.