How is Liberalism to Survive?

What?

I’m pretty depressed and scared, so don’t take this as anything actually hopeful, but I do like to remind myself that this country once had a powerful faction that believed it should be lawful for them to own people, force them to labor, torture them, and take their children from them to sell for profit. There was once a time when we as a country could not push that faction back and had to allow them very much concession and compromise. And then the country changed and we made those people shut up and sit down. And there was a time when that same faction of people forced the country to accept Jim Crow and lynchings and segregation and shit like that. Until the country changed and we made those people shut up, and a lot of those same people kept women from being treated equally and prevented gay people from getting married and again we got tired of it and we made those people shut up.

Yes, this is what they’re mad about, because we got tired of their shit and made them back off. Yes, they still have power because they’re willing to be violent and because they exploit the system or even cheat outright. But the cultural history of the US tells me, our patience is not infinite and there’s more of us. Surely we won’t put up with it. Surely we won’t.

Also, I tell myself that the real “powers” that run the country ($$$) don’t want chaos, they want happy compliant labor, and eventually they will help us slap down the rabble rousers if it begins to threaten their bottom line. And this is small consolation because we get cultural and humanitarian victory at the cost of labor rights and a more equal economy.