In Reply to: At one time half the country believed in slavery posted by amadbruin on June 20, 2025 at 12:56:33
Over the years, we began to sublimate the war to a legal battle. Every court case won, every supreme court decision that came out in favor or progress was treated as the ultimate victory. The enemy is vanquished, the righteousness of our cause now established, we can move on to taking it all for granted while pockets of resistance slowly dissolve into obscurity.
Well, how did they play out? We can't keep thinking there are no rematches, that there is never a decisive action and stuff you think you left behind will eventually catch up with you if you start sleeping at the wheel.
We did that with civil rights, with abortion, with gay marriage, with birth control (all stranded out there with no overt legislative support) ... heck we've been doing it with birthright citizenship, and yes, slavery. The fact is, when you capture land from your adversary, the task is to keep it. That means developing social and cultural infrastructure around these ideas that we hold to be fundamental morality of who we are as a nation.
It was not that long ago that our values around the military shifted and it became the culturally mandatory thing to do to thank people for their service if you find out that they were/are part of the military. I remember the days when that was not a thing. Then it became a thing, Now we can't even bring ourselves to question the concept of military service or say anything negative about the military in public spaces. How did that happen? It happened because the right asserted their control of the narrative around the military.
Two years ago, corporations were faling over each other to support LGBTQ rights, and the liberal thinking was that the times were changing and momentum towards freedom and equality was unstoppable. You know, the "long arc of history" bullsh*t. (If there is any long arc to history it bends in the opposite direction, towards consolidation of power in the hands of the already powerful, which is why fighting against that tendency is crucial.)
The larger point here is, obviously, you not only catch and hold, but any victory won without its cultural scaffolding is bound to fail eventually in the next counter-revolution. Being decent and supporting freedom and equality is a 24/7/365 struggle. You can't just decide you win the war because you won some "decisive" battle. That, by the way, is what Biden and the Democratic Party thought after the 2020 election. It was not in the realm of possibilties in their minds that we can end up where we are now.
We f*cking told them Did they listen? They kept telling us to be quiet and support their "all is well because we're back to normal" agenda.