politics, usa, extremismSo, I’ve been reading about some people and their scary views about how the United States should be run. Here are a couple of examples:
Are these views and opinions so out of the mainstream that we can really just ascribe them to inconsequential extremists or is this something that people should be actively concerned about?
Edit
Josiah made the valid point that we should be doing everything we can “to sideline these people and combat them, individually, every chance we get”. I agree wholeheartedly. What are the valid approaches to this?
It’s far enough out of the mainstream that it’s not something we should necessarily worry about. There will be warning signs if it starts getting bad; I don’t think it is yet. When there’s a constitutional amendment proposed to alter the first amendment, or overwhelming popular support…that’s when we get worried.
I should be clear that I’m not advocating inaction, but it seems that atheism is growing, not shrinking, and it would take a major revival to do anything about that. To be sure, we should be doing everything we can to sideline these people and combat them every chance we get.
A few ways we can (and should) sideline them:
In the light of truth, the shadows of idiocy vanish.
score: 3
With the preceding satire, I hope to show how extreme opinions can contribute to the consensus. By being extremely crazy, these extremists are making other crazy people look more reasonable, and acceptable. I feel the existence and activity of reconstructionists and dominionists is a real and constant problem of US society. I would advise against trivializing or ignoring them.
What to do? Well, at least in the case of the Dominionists, they have clearly announced intentions to “take back government” and replace it with a theocracy, “a kingdom of Christ” and similar crusadery. I think it should be easy enough to make sensible people realize this kind of effort is unconstitutional and seditious. Given this information, hopefully more people will push back.
It doesn’t have to be a mainstream view; as long as voter turnout remains low, a committed minority can have an outsized influence on policy and law. We’ve already taken some baby steps towards an authoritarian police state, and the general public is just going right along with it.
It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but I have to disagree a bit with Josiah; if we don’t worry about it until people start proposing constitutional amendments, then we’ve let it get too far along.
How to combat it? Get involved politically. Find candidates. Vote for them. Get other people to vote for them.
Considering that the US only recently emerged from a regime heavily influenced by Reconstructionism, it’s pretty obvious to me that the answer is yes, we should truly worry about.
But more important are those Reconstructionists who have thoroughly infiltrated the US military, and are now in charge of a number of extremely dangerous weapons. Access to WMD far from being as restricted as most people imagine, and when you have important members of the General Staff who hold Christian Nationalist views, one is definitely justified in feeling a little concerned.
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