Outrage mounts over report Russia offered bounties to Afghanistan militants for killing US soldiers

Pastelnudes said:

Ah, I'm so sorry you think that's a possibility.

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I'm 56. I'd bet a fair sum of money on it.

And here's one reason I'm carping on it: too many people give up when the "obvious" doesn't happen. When the protests don't turn into huge changes. When politicians make nice speeches or enact tiny bits of legislation and then appear to put their feet up and call it done. When the media stops covering what's really happening.

It hurts to believe so strongly in something, to be surrounded by people who also believe strongly in something, and see so little of the world around you change. I've watched the US be hauled rightward for 40 years, and it wasn't exactly a progressive paradise before that. My generation is fighting, the generations after us are fighting, and all we've done is slow the shift toward fascism. We haven't stopped any of it.

That we're now at a tipping point with actual, genuine dictatorship doesn't make me think "this time it'll work."

We may yet head the worst off at the pass, but changing the underlying issues that led us to this point? That's the work of decades, and it's slow and unglamorous and wearing and depressing, and you have to accept you may never have a win, not ever. Hoping for the generations after you has to be enough, or we've absolutely lost the fight.

I'm not much younger than you. And I really understand how painful it is, especially as we get older, to cope with those crushing disappointments.

In the UK, we've had a right-wing govt for most of my adulthood. In the last decade, they've given us - amongst many other things - agonising 'austerity' and humiiating (and racist) Brexit.

We're now out the EU, one of the richest markets in the world. Recession will no doubt follow. And then more austerity!

During the Brexit nightmare, I coped by practising how to switch my worry on and off. So, as soon as Boris Johnson got in last year, I dropped the subject like a hot stone (in my own mind). During Brexit, I took every action I reasonably could (nothing huge, just petitions, and online things).

So, that's how I've come out of these awful times in reasonable spirits.

I realised that, if I didn't drop the subject, and allowed myself to be consumed by the rage I felt, then Boris would have won for a second time.

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mccardey said:

Nah....

Nice thought, though.

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Sadly, I agree. If the GOP were capable of organized resistance against him, they've already had plenty of opportunities. They're worthless.

If he goes down in November, it will likely be mostly because of the economy, because (sadly) that's all most people really seem to care about, at least in the US with respect to incumbent presidents.