Okay

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@MelissaBearTrix I chose "USA creature" because despite arriving on this plane of existence here, and living here permanently for double digit number of years, my formative years and most of my education were over there.

This dramatically, *this* quickly? No, but I did see where everything was headed (like all the racist rhetoric being thrown around during Obama's campaign without much pushback from the media or politicians on both sides), which was a big reason behind me moving here.

[carl_gylling@mastodon.nu]

@MelissaBearTrix I've had some ideas for sci fi and fantasy comics/novels (lacking the patience to finish them), and in several of those, I "predicted" things that later happened. Such as Britain leaving the EU. And the downfall of the US. They didn't happen the way I imagined them, and I didn't deliberately try to predict the future. I don't believe future can be predicted - rather, that it tends to surprise us. So I find it a little ironic that I was partly right.

[superflippy@mastodon.xyz]

@Carl_Gylling Same. I write little stories and I get a couple things right and a few things completely wrong. I think those of us with good imaginations can look at the present and extrapolate forward, but not perfectly.

[venya@musicians.today]

@MelissaBearTrix

I thought it would more deliberate and less dumb.

[bweller@mstdn.social]

@MelissaBearTrix i was saying explicitly that it would happen very fast ‍️

like tectonic plates slipping

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@MelissaBearTrix It definitely helped that something like 99% of dystopian scifi for the past 65 years have included authoritarian regimes as primary antagonists. Priming me to see how reductions in privacy inherently means increases in government involvement in people's daily lives. How increases in othering leads to more distrust, more hatred, more violence, more suffering, and *more* othering. How a broad educational base is an enemy to authoritarianism, making education the first target.

[crcollins@writing.exchange]

@MelissaBearTrix

I'm not surprised it's happening, when you think about the history of this place & how things were heading, but I admit to being surprised at the pace. I never expected ALL our elites & institutions (our "checks & balances") to fold at once with nary a whimper of protest. So much for the "home of the brave."

[mees@sunny.garden]

@MelissaBearTrix I was hoping I was wrong, but 🫠

[roknrol@beige.party]

@MelissaBearTrix Yes, US creature. Honestly I expected all of this shit during his first term and then watched everyone laugh while they told me I had been overreacting.

I don't hear them laughing now.

Mainly because I purged those short sighted fucks the first time they laughed.

[tuban_muzuru@beige.party]

@MelissaBearTrix

We were warned. The annotated Federalist Papers should be required reading in high school.

[tuban_muzuru@beige.party]

@superflippy @Carl_Gylling

I had a writing teacher explain how to Get Things Right in either the future and the past:

Find the distance between today and then. Look at what has remained the same, what might have changed is just incidental.

[rachelthornsub@famichiki.jp]

@MelissaBearTrix I wish I could say I saw it coming, but it's shocking how quickly Trump 2.0 trashed every institution. I cannot imagine the amount of work it will take to undo the damage. Maybe it can't be undone.

[grootinside@troet.cafe]

@MelissaBearTrix

The blunt disregard of *everything* honorable declared for more than a century definitely surprised me.
As if a fassade fell down.
Up to the oh so well praised troops everything is a peak, evil "parody" of even "Idiocracy" now.

Hollywood is doomed, because reality can't be beaten when it comes to insane, unlogical scriptwriting now.

[fellmoon@bsd.network]

@MelissaBearTrix tbh, with idiot orange 2.0 coming to power again I mentally marked the US as "lost country"... what surprises me a lot more is how reluctant the rest of the (western)world is to actually figure out what it does mean to not be lead by the US.

[200ok@mastodon.social]

@MelissaBearTrix yes, because they literally published the plan to destroy everything... Although to be honest they have been a bit faster than I imagined.

[wendinoakland@beige.party]

@MelissaBearTrix @JeremyMallin Impressive.

[ainsleylowbeer@mastodon.social]

@MelissaBearTrix

This is too complicated for someone from the USA.

[shiitaketoast@beige.party]

@MelissaBearTrix I am an eternal optimist and keep hoping things will get better, but I feel like I saw this coming in the 1990s.

[trademark@fosstodon.org]

@MelissaBearTrix Yes, this matches what I thought would happen in 2016. Truly the only good thing about the orange man is how incompetent he is.