I think they're less excusing current wrongs and more attempting to point out that Trump and the nature of the current regime aren't anomalous. Believing such means getting rid of Trump alone is sufficient. Rather the attempt here is to illustrate that Trump is a manifestation of deep and systemic problems with American culture and that simply waiting for the "pendulum to swing the other way" or "Democrats to clean up the mess" isn't going to help.
We need to have a much more complex and nuanced conversation than "Orange man bad," even given that orange man is very much bad. Otherwise he won't be the last, much less the worst.
The house is burning down, we should put it out!!.
“it burned down before this is more of the same hurrrummmph.”
Democracy cannot rest or it is eroded, so yes bad things happened. American is flawed but over time has worked towards improving itself and going towards its ideals of equality. But every inch forward is hard fought against the likes of the current administration. Suffrage, voting rights, environmental regulations, abolition were all won as huge battles against those clinging to and abusing power.
The way these “but America has always been…” post are toned, if we listened to the likes of them then none of those victories would have occurred.
Listening to them, we backslide. Dwelling on past imperfections instead of fighting today’s fire? Thats Self sabotage.
These posts are never framed in a constructive way, like how do we right the wrongs of the past, how can we make reparations for them. No, they’re framed like “we’ve always been bad, so this current bad is not so bad”
They seem to be insidiously on the side of injustice, trying to diminish current ills so that they may continue.
The better metaphor is: the house has been on fire for decades, and hyper-focusing on throwing water on a single part of the fire that's only been around for a few years isn't going to fix the gas pipe leak that's the actual reason for it going on for decades. People say words like "fascism" as dog whistle for "Trump" which is exhausting because of reasons other posters have been made clear: he's a symptom, not the root cause. It's boring partisan politics and very naive to the real systemic issues that people are blind to due to many reasons, and at least in part because of group think and tribal mentalities and a lack of class consciousness. And it's a perspective/dog whistle ignorant to nearly any establishment politician being at least, in part, complicit for the gas leak not getting fixed. And it's exhausting that the same accountability and frustration isn't being held when it's someone they voted for who's in office despite them still being an enabler of a broken system.
I strongly disagree that it’s pointing out the gas leak, it’s posting the way a foreign dictator would gleefully like his minions to post. “See that democracy has always been just like us”
If I were a totalitarian leader of any sort, I’d definitely be having my propagandists go after any country more liberal and try to paint them as also authoritarian and bad, and always that way.
Are you denying America has not improved itself? Slavery was horrible but slavery was ended even though it took a massive bloody war. Thats an extreme example but there are plenty.
No no, to the Debbie downers we are and always have been the equivalent of mao, Stalin, mussolini, and polpot
Yeah, I believe there is a difference between "hey, welcome to the party, isn't this horrible" and "what are yall complaining about, this is totally normal".
The latter is "normalizing", the former is attempting to get folks to understand a broader context.
We need to have a much more complex and nuanced conversation than "Orange man bad," even given that orange man is very much bad. Otherwise he won't be the last, much less the worst.