A strawman, you say? How unfair of me. Let me confirm with you first.
If, in 8 years (assuming your grand plans for ranked choice or whatever have yet to take hold), the choice is between a democrat who wants 8 genocides and a republican who wants 10, which would you vote for?
Okay, then enlighten me. Is capitalism an economic system or a cult?
So let me get this straight, you're saying that economic systems are cults? Your characterization of humanity is that we went from hunter gatherer cult, to agrarian society cult, to feudalism cult, to capitalism cult? This is the bizarre type of analysis that shows up when you refuse to do any sort of class-based analysis. You can't just throw the word cult around anytime you speak about systems that large swaths of people take part in - either willingly or unwillingly.
Great. See us in 8 years when you're supporting a dem who wants 8 active genocides above a repub who wants 10 active genocides. This is what your weird version of liberal "pragmatic" utilitarianism will get you.
I'll leave you with some Mike Davis:
In biology, one learns about a certain species of caterpillar that can only cross the threshold of metamorphosis by seeing its future butterfly. Proletarian subjectivity does not evolve by incremental steps but requires nonlinear leaps, especially by way of moral self-recognition through solidarity with the struggle of a distant people. Even when this contradicts short-term self-interest, as in the famous cases of Lancashire cotton workers’ enthusiasm for Lincoln and later for Gandhi, such efforts not only anticipate a world beyond capitalism, they concretely advance the working class’s march toward it.
Socialism, in other words, requires nonutilitarian actors, whose ultimate motivations and values arise from structures of feeling that others would deem spiritual. Marx rightly scourged romantic humanism in the abstract, but his personal pantheon — Prometheus and Spartacus, Homer, Cervantes, and Shakespeare — affirmed a heroic vision of human possibility.
You don't have control over your T levels, so this would still be body shaming. Why are you so hung up on penis size?
Out of Trump's 35,000 hours as president, Booker expertly OBLITERATED 25 of them. Trump is done.
Strawman. Never did I say that the things you mentioned dont play a role in facilitating fascism.
Poor education, MIC, captured media, sure... all of these things facilitate fascism.
My point is that your analysis does not get at the heart of how fascism arises or why america is going full throated fascist in recent years. Why do we have poor education? Why do we have a bloated MIC? Why has our mainstream media been captured? Why is conservatism increasingly in fashion?
You're not going to get to the heart of these questions by ignoring class. You'll especially fail to answer these questions if you just blame some nebulous concept of "conservatism" wholesale. Youve correctly identified the symptoms, but you still need to take the next step w/ class-based, material analysis.
Honestly dog, this is exactly the right question. I get it. Shoutout to you for asking it. Truly.
From the liberal perspective, this is exactly how it goes. "I voted against fascism, yet fascism still festers. What gives?"
The liberal framework pushes the idea that electoralism is the be all end all form of political participation, but leftists refute this. Leftists say that you have a plethora of other tools at your disposal to express yourself politically: buy a gun, do mutual aid, join an organization, read theory, participate in local politics, etc...
If your question is earnest, I'd encourage you to read some Lenin.
Yup.
What we are seeing now is a critical inflection point for liberals: do they do honest introspection and start to apply real criticism to the history of the US, or do they cover their ears and claim Trumpism is an aberration for which they have no reasonable explanation.
To put it simply, liberals now have a choice between
"Damn, this is really the outcome of the american political project, huh? How did we get here?"
And
"Trumpist fascism is un-American, and I am clueless as to how it took hold, but I am going to continue to vote blue no matter who!"
If the amount of liberals on .world bizarrely harkening back to the "good old days" of the founders, Reagan, Obama, and even dubya is any indication, I suspect most of them have gone with the second option.
Liberals will continue to scapegoat voters because it allows them to evade hard-to-swallow truths. It allows them to use political apathy as a means to explain fascism because otherwise, they'd have to start taking hard stances on American capitalism that are not compatible with their liberal framework. I often wonder how these people think fascism arose in Germany, or in general. According to the liberal framework, Nazism arose either because Germans were not adequately "enthusiastic" about Hitler's political adversaries, because of foreign meddling, etc... Never will you hear them take the next step and start to wonder how capitlalism (and specifically capitalist crisis) gives rise to fascist movements because that would be incompatible with one of the foremost pillars of liberalism: freedom of the market. Once you start to talk about German Nazism in terms of results of the great depression, German nationalism as a result of WWI, German industrialization, historical analysis, etc... their eyes will just glaze over. As the devolution continues, we'll see them use increasingly mystical language as they waffle to explain fascism without invoking any semblance of class-based analysis. We'll see them grasp for reasons: is there a nationwide trump cult? Is it russian spies? Is it fox news? Is it Joe rogan podcasts? Is it lead from the gasoline 70 years ago? We will never see them ask what the only logical conclusion is to a settler colonial nation that was founded exclusively by 20-something, white, male, landowning, slavers for the sole reason of doing massive genocide on native Americans.
These people are watching the fascist devolution happen in real time, so they're just digging in to the Hamilton musical vibes of american exceptionalism. Once shit starts getting real bad, I fully expect them to take the scapegoating to the extreme. They'll start selling out and calling ICE on the Muslim and Arab Americans in Dearborn who refused to vote for a candidate who promised to slaughter their brothers and sisters in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond. Since, according to their framework, these Dearborn voters who withheld votes for democrats ultimately helped usher in fascism. They'll start selling out leftists as shit gets bad - exactly as they did in fascist Germany.
All the while, Marxists have perfectly predicted not only this devolution, but they foresaw how liberals would react. Fascism os not some enigmatic, nebulous concept that comes out of nowhere, but a predictable outcome of capitalist crisis; Marxism gives you the tools not only to predict it, but to fight it.
To the liberals still removed about leftists who wouldn't vote for biden or kamala: Constituents wanted an end to genocide. Biden and Kamala ignored constituents. Biden and Kamala lost. That is how democracy works. This outcome is more American than apple pie.