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Comment by akmarinov | Hacker News Reader

Just say Trump and move on?

How well has that strategy worked out for the Republican party internally over the last ~9 years?

Rather than enabling them to glide over the brief uncomfortable moment with their backbones and stated principles intact, it seems to have left them congratulating the emperor on his new clothes.

There are additional layers here because "I voted for Dear Leader" both pumps up the narrative of popular inevitability a regime tries to advertise, and it also binds the speaker more tightly to the regime by making it hard for any broad opposition to cohere. ("If they lied once, why not twice?")

Of course. But until enough people feel the pain to actually fight back (and not in the courts, but you know - violently, so there are actual consequences), it’s clearly suicide to do anything else, yes?

> "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait."

> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty." [...]

> "You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."

-- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (published 1955)

The issue is the people having to make the decision can only recognize it in retrospect - it’s why it works.

And there has been so much BS in corporate and academic circles the last 5-10 years, anyone willing to put up a fight for ‘the right thing’ likely got shown the door years ago.

If you’re older and with mortgage yes.

>Just say Trump and move on?

Just wear the yellow sticker and move on.

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