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• @cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca 2026-01-28 16:40

  @theblackpage@mstdn.social @em_swsurrey@mastodonapp.uk Sorry, we've been having quite uncommon weather for here!! I was also enthusiastic finding out about the passport stat - I think the comparatively low cost of air travel also normalized foreign visits for many people. Money is one barrier; oceans another. Obama's presidency didn't promote the same levels of xenophobic rhetoric as the administrations before and after, but I worry part of his legacy was indeed to prolong American exceptionalist narratives among those not too racist to detest the speaker (and he is a brilliant orator) - a lot of our politics has relied on speaking aspiration as fact, a classical habit (e.g. Cartago delenda est) and when he spoke he did make people believe. Ironically, the great recession's impact on prices combined with continued oil subsidies under his leadership probably DID promote foreign travel… not because of friendlier relations, exactly, but because as airline prices fell to hold onto business, and the well-heeled suddenly found tickets trivially cheap, they traveled more at the critical moment of explosions in visual social media and "influencer" culture. Everybody tends to want what the rich have, so as the economy did eventually stabilize (and oil stayed artificially cheap with booming production and foreign - cough - "acquisitions") we saw more travel. In either case, people wanted to go, it just seemed too far-fetched before. Tons of imagery and cheap tickets made it something they could realize. Re: media, and social media, under the regime now: helpfully during my hiatus we've seen more headlines about Tiktok interference (and terms of service copping to tracking users' immigration status, sexual orientation, etc.) The far-right (beyond just Trump) have targeted transgender children as well as immigrants (put more honestly and openly: anyone who is not white, even indigenous people.) The bottlenecking of both voter enfranchisement and multiple k-shaped recoveries after recessions has been one of the steadiest alarms I've sounded. At some point, power is use-or-lose; the ultrarich and authoritarian know this and that they've absolutely lost the numbers, that's why the crackdown now (they'd been floating the idea of staying illegally in power since early in the first administration, iirc? Trump specifically will do anything he's not stopped from doing.) But the public seems to have been inured to the idea of sort of an endless stasis, at least emotionally if not intellectually: things won't get better (hope *hurts*, cynicism feels "safe" and also has been - this one's very international - put forward as "smart" and "critically astute," I see that from the UK often.) But there's also a failure of imagination among many to imagine how it could get *worse* - because day-to-day living is something to be endured. Thriving is a joke (or an ad, or a job application, which are the same thing.) People don't save even who absolutely could. Some people don't vote who absolutely could, though by the numbers it looks a lot more like most eligible nonvoters have faced real barriers. Most of those potential concerns - long lines, tossed ballots, poll taxes - have been in place for much of my adulthood; I once had to stand forty minutes in line out of doors in a thunderstorm because they closed my own polling place in a mostly Black neighborhood. There was bragging about throwing out mailed ballots on part of some of our electeds. Transport to polls isn't free; Election Day isn't a holiday, IDs have always cost money. We've *been* oppressed, things are degrading fast. What I worry we'll see more of is direct, performatively armed, police/ ICE presence at the polls; we've had it before, but usually OUTSIDE the polling places. Feds have been demanding voter rolls from states, as well, I assume for general intimidation purposes, possibly specifically to reprise that "Mr. Trump will be reviewing to ensure you vote!" mailing campaign somebody embarked on previously - sent out to many in Texas (as mentioned, a state ruled by supporters but largely not occupied by them) - this does double duty of intimidating people out of REGISTERING to vote. Trump is a solipsist; he lives in a universe where his not mattering is inconceivable (this is, also, I think, why he suddenly has had some crises around "getting into heaven" and the fixation on the Peace Prize, not just because Obama had one but because he's so saturated in transactionalist bullshiting as a way of life he imagines it as some kind of borderline talisman that will Make Others (Even God?) Do What He Wants. Anyone he can just bully like the abuser he is, he does, but when he meets someone he has no leverage over he tries his reality-show "the people love me, you want to be on the majority side, right?" bargaining. He can't conceive of himself as a pawn, because his universe revolves around him. And so far everyone in power's let him.

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