After I wrote the thread, I listened to this video about Putin's lies about Ukraine. It basically reinforced everything I just wrote, so I'm including this @ForeignAffairs & @TimothyDSnyder podcast as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfnza5YmRrE

I was inspired to write this little thread, after watching this video about the destabilization of Russia, so sharing it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKrv30RKoyk

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For the first time in my life, I am worried that unjust & unconstitutional laws won't be overturned by the Supreme Court, or even by lower judgements, because of the weaponization of hate & fear politics that has placed a lot of religious & ideological people into the Judiciary.

In the USA, we have this funny document called the Constitution, which is peppered with many Amendments, the 1st few giving us certain "freedoms" or "inalienable rights," which we are finding are not so free or inalienable, if a politician in power can make a law against it.

We see attempts at limiting freedoms happening all over the USA right now - rights over one's body (especially if you have a viable womb), rights over what one can think, teach, learn, & say outloud, & even rights of free assembly to redress the government over grievances.

One by one, freedoms are stripped away, until your only freedom is in fact to get up & go to your state-subscribed job, take your pay, buy the food available to you, & stay out of everyone else's way. Especially stay out of the way of anyone in power, unless you want to fight.

Even in America, there is a percentage of the population who would love to let politicians run things however they want, as long as they leave them personally alone. Unfortunately fascist & dictatorship regimes rarely actually leave people alone.

I would say the 2020 election's results of electing Joe Biden & Kamala Harris was many people in the Middle & on the Left FINALLY waking up to the minority politicians using this Hate & Fear (thanks Faux Gnus!) tactics to drive elections their way.

For more than 4 years actually, because we are STILL recovering from that hate & fear based White House & Congress. And many of the politicians in power today, including in the Supreme Court, are there because of Hate & Fear politics.

Unfortunately, at the same time, some Republicans & RW news were weaponizing politics in a tried & true way, by using hatreds & fears to drive voters to the polls. The defeated former guy used this tactic very well, bringing out record numbers, unfortunately for us for 4 years.

Until 2015-16, most Americans had spent the better part of 2 decades just voting out of habit, if they even voted at all. Like a dictatorship, as long as the "status quo" of most Americans survivability was being maintained, politics was something most people didn't care about.

Meanwhile, democratic & rules based government is a HUGE threat to dictatorships, because it rests power away from a few & gives it in a larger part to the politically engaged many. Unfortunately, in the USA, political disengagement has been rather successful.

Follow my arbitrary rules created from my whim & my bias, & you can do whatever you want within those constraints, as long as I don't catch you doing it, because if I do, I might decide to make that something that can be punished as well. And stay out of my political business.