2
" As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere - education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave, vacations - Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future. "
― Timothy Snyder , The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
3
" To proclaim 'America First' was to deny any need to fight fascism either at home or abroad. When American Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville in August 2017, Trump said that some of them were 'very fine people.' He defended the Confederate and Nazi cause of preserving monuments to the Confederacy. Such monuments in the American South were raised in the 1920s and 1930s, at a time when fascism in the United States was a real possibility; they memorialized the racial purification of Southern cities that was contemporary with the rise of fascism in Europe. Contemporary observers had no difficulty seeing the connection. Will Rogers, the great American entertainer and social commentator of his time, saw Adolf Hitler in 1933 as a familiar figure: 'Papers all state that Hitler is trying to copy Mussolini. Looks to me it's the KKK he's copying.' The great American social thinker and historian W.E.B. Du Bois could see how the temptations of fascism worked together with American myths of the past. He rightly feared that American whites would prefer a story about enmity with blacks to a reforming state that would improve prospects for all Americans. Whites distracted by racism could become, as he wrote in 1935, 'the instrument by which democracy in the nation was done to death, race provincialism deified, and the world delivered to plutocracy,' what we call oligarchy. "
― Timothy Snyder , The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
4
" In 1976, Stephen King published a short story, “I Know What You Need,” about the courting of a young woman. Her suitor was a young man who could read her mind but did not tell her so. He simply appeared with what she wanted at the moment, beginning with strawberry ice cream for a study break. Step by step he changed her life, making her dependent upon him by giving her what she thought she wanted at a certain moment, before she herself had a chance to reflect. Her best friend realized that something disconcerting was happening, investigated, and learned the truth: “That is not love,” she warned. “That’s rape.” The internet is a bit like this. It knows much about us, but interacts with us without revealing that this is so. It makes us unfree by arousing our worst tribal impulses and placing them at the service of unseen others. "
― Timothy Snyder , The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
7
" Демокрациите умират, когато хората престават да вярват, че гласуването има значение. Въпросът не е в това дали се организират избори, а дали те са свободни и честни. Ако е така, демокрацията поражда усещане за време и очаквания за бъдещето, които успокояват настоящето. Смисълът на всеки демократичен избирателен процес е обещанието за следващия. Ако очакваме, че ще се състоят други пълноценни избори, ние знаем, че следващия път ще можем да коригираме грешките си, които междувременно стоварваме върху хората, които сме избрали. По този начин демокрацията преобразува човешката погрешимост в политическа предвидимост и ни помага да преживяваме времето като движение напред към едно бъдеще, върху което имаме някакво влияние. Ако смятаме, че изборите са просто един повтарящ ритуал на подкрепа, демокрацията губи своя смисъл. "
― Timothy Snyder , The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
