The Minnesota governor said that the path to tyranny “is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was testifying before Congress about his state’s handling of immigration when he learned Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference Thursday.
The irony, he told the attendees of the Center for American Progress’ “Listening to Lead” event Friday, was in lawmakers grilling him and his colleagues, Govs. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y. and JB Pritzker, D-Ill., over the “incredible crime of treating people like human beings” as FBI agents tackled a sitting senator to the ground and handcuffed him in Los Angeles.
“I am not prone to hyperbole. I am prone to, like, popping off a little bit. I know that,” Walz said, prefacing his argument that Americans are living in a “dangerous” time. “I believed all along we were marching towards authoritarianism, and people were telling me in December, ‘You know, you’re overreacting.’ And I said, “The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting.”
I struggle to see how proto-fascism now devolving into better-prepared fascism four years later would’ve been better than fascism now. And don’t give me the “it gives us time to resist” spiel because we both know that’s not how that ever worked; time to prepare only benefits the far right.
So what’s your solution? Just keep fucking losing?
No, stop following the neoliberals while they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I still remember the “progressive” reaction to Uncommitted and to calls for Biden to step down. If you’re not willing to coerce the DNC neoliberals into doing what you want, you’ll always be stuck doing what they want. And do you know what they want? Proto-fascism with rainbows and glitter.
Coerce them. Sure. But almost any but the most backward dem would be better then Trump. You are just being asked to fill out a circle people have died to achieve less.
Great, now what kind of coercion do you support if you won’t even threaten to withhold your vote?