Dr. Thrasher, jouRNAlistVerified account

A good chunk of voters in many countries on multiple continents know full well that they are voting for authoritarians who will crack skulls, build walls, subjugate women/queers, and persecute minorities. They've had years to see what such strongmen say they'll do & actually do.

Usually, as a media maker, I think about the media's role in this & in politicians' roles. As an educator, I think about our role, too (though that's on a longer trajectory). But the reality is many electorates understand & desire debasement & authoritarianism. What to do?

I think I have been dealing with this reality myself, as @themattmager pointed out to me, by doing work that tries to go beyond the passing football of electoral politics. The things I work on exist regardless of the party in power (US empire, colonialism, HIV/AIDS).

I still think at some level, as @_Ash_Clark once told me, that we have to keep thinking & we have to keep others thinking & asking critical questions. But I also believe lots of people have thought, and this is the violent, racist, sexist reality they want. What to do, then?

The blessing & curse of having been trained by historians (3/5 members of my PhD committee) is that you learn how to see across time. So, I learned that hope can take generations— but also that none of reading this now may live to see what we dream of become real.

And I feel I have to sit with—really SIT with—that the blood thirst to crack skulls of migrants, Muslims, Jews, Black ppl, the poor, ppl living with HIV is NOT just the desire of political leaders or the press leading the masses astray... It's the desire of (m)(b)illions of ppl.

Woke up thinking about voters who are NOT uneducated or ill-informed yet who long for authoritarianism. Men like Andrew Sullivan—a gay, immigrant, Harvard PhD who thinks the Democrats (whose last POTUS deported more ppl than any!) want “mass immigration”https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1205256001714376704?s=21 …