Red
Well-Known Member
It’s like the stuff Tim Snyder, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have been writing about for the past few years. Complete breakdown of common values and democratic norms. @Red
Exactly. When people say, or think, "it can't happen here", of course they are usually thinking of how a dictatorship would never happen here, but, I think more pertinent is that people often enough simply do not recognize what is happening when it is happening. The things that can happen when people fail to recognize them, are sometimes dangerous enough, and as soon as one says it can't happen here, is when one lets one guard down.
And this is on top of the difficulty of standing outside ones own time and place, the better to see more clearly, understand better, the time in which one lives. It helps to always look ahead and ask "what are future generations going to say?" None of us can completely stand outside our own time and place, but we make things harder by sleepwalking through that portion of history that is ours to live. And you know as well as anyone how an understanding of history informs the present. It helps one recognize what is happening when it is happening. One good thing about everything that is happening, on a personal level, is that I am constantly attempting to be more awake, and not sleepwalk through the times in which I live.