2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision for America.
My point is that looking back on it, in the end the only real difference I made was at the ballet box. This year I’m going for the Head-in-the-Sand approach. I’m done with the political memes. Done with the Twitter screenshots. It just riles me up and this year I’m gonna do my best to fight that.
Flee where? Canada is no safer, they have QAnon nuts too. Europe’s not looking amazing. Are you thinking Asia? That’s a bad pick if/when the battle for Taiwan kicks off. Africa is not very developed. And Oceania (Australia included) is just too close to the South China Sea to be safe. Unfortunately, we can’t just flee. We have to make a stand, or we’re all lost to this growing global tide of authoritarianism and outright fascism, the way we had to make a global stand in the 1940’s. Thankfully a world war hasn’t broken out, and we still have the hope of influencing our political systems at home before it’s too late.
Equating voting in a ballot booth to fighting Nazis in the forties is a bit grandiose…
But I got family overseas, so I’ll probably start there.
I’d say preventing the rise of another web of right-wing leaders is just as important as fighting a war after they’ve claimed their power. We see ourselves in quite a similar position to the post-Great War, with many governments swinging hard right, media turning to support that, and the base for those future right wing leaders in the Americas and Europe being solidified. I’d say if anything, the way you’ve brushed this off is quite flippant.
But best of luck if the need flee arises! Hopefully if it’s Europe, it’s nowhere the Balkans. You wouldn’t to hop from a frying pan into the fire of a Russian invasion without NATO at full power with US backing (and odds are if Trump wins he pulls out of NATO).
The fight against Fascism won’t be won in the ballot box, especially with America’s backwards election systems. But, at least in that field, unless you live in a swing state, one’s participation in that system is largely irrelevant.
It’s been won in the ballot box already, as recently as 2020. Each fight repeats (here we are looking at the next round in 2024), but the ballot can be won and the overt fascist candidate prevented from succeeding and rolling out Project 2025. Swing states matter most, but as we’ve seen since 2016 unexpected states can still swing their vote. And I’d much rather we handle it civilly through voting rather than go for the Huey Long fix, like happened in 1935.