Fuck Ralph Nader. If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have had Dubya and the Iraq war. Hell, we might not have even had 9/11 and the Afghan war because the administration would have heeded the intelligence that showed Al Qaida was planning the attack.
You can’t expect sixth graders to push back against fascism.
Guns were a protection from the government in 1800s, not anymore. Arm the unions with missile launchers.
Well yeah. It takes violence to stop violence, and we’ve been brain washed in schools with the “Zero Tolerance Policy” that retaliating is worse than being a bully. Kids who defended themselves from aggressors often were either the only ones punished, or punished far worse than the instigator. That’s been going on for at least 2-3 decades in said schools. It has obviously made a bunch of adults too afraid of doing the right thing.
It’s why we hold parades instead of protests with the threat of escalation. If we really wanted to make changes, Republicans and their minions(ICE) would not have homes to live in, or comfortable lives. Same for their enablers.
We would have taken them off the board and held special elections as populace. Still can, and will still need to when we have finally had enough. That or a foreign power will do it for us, but then they get to make the rules instead of “We The People”.
You’re very much on the right track, but I think it goes much much deeper than violence. It goes to self-reliance.
Go back to the time of the Framers. If you wanted something to happen, literally anything at all, you had to do it yourself. Criminal stealing your shit? By the time you get to town to ask for help he’ll be gone, so either say goodbye to your shit (and maybe your wife too) or grab your rifle and confront him. Government not doing what you want? Grab your pitchfork and head to City Hall, or run for office yourself. Feeling hungry? Better start cooking. Want to have meat this winter? Better start raising a cow today. Bully picking on you? Better learn to fight his ass. Your house is broken? Better grab a hammer and a saw because nobody else’s gonna help fix it.
Over the last 100ish years, that attitude has been slowly changing. Individual self-reliance has given way to a sort of mutualist service society where self-reliance is no longer the norm, it’s no longer the exception, it’s become almost an outlier.
Criminal stealing your shit? Call the police and hide until they arrive. Government not doing what you want? Write a letter or whine about it online. Feeling hungry? Grab your phone because food’s an Uber Eats order away. Your house is broken? Call a repairman or a carpenter.
What’s missing there? Any kind of self-reliance, self-empowerment to solve your own problems. Every problem involves asking or paying someone else to fix it for you.
I argue that the result of this is a society of people who’ve forgotten that they DO have the power to solve their own problems.I don’t blame malice for this, I blame a combination of laziness along with a LOT of well-meaning people and policies that only further disenfranchise the populace from their own agency, usually in the name of safety. You mention zero tolerance for bullying, that’s certainly one as it teaches the victim not to fight back. Police say the same thing though- police always say if confronted with a threat just give the criminal what they want and run away when you can.
There’s pockets of resistance to this sort of attitude, but they are largely isolated and focused on their own agendas without real connection. The most obvious might be gun owners and the concealed carry movement. But there’s plenty of others- the open source community, the right to repair movement, the maker community, the free range parenting movement, and just about any other DIY community. They’re all focused on their own individual niche, but the attitude is the same-- you CAN do ____ yourself, you DON’T need someone else to do it for you.
We need more of that. And I think it starts with school curriculum. If I was in charge, I’d take one academic semester out of high school (or at least a few credit hours) and devote it to purely empowering and constructive practical lessons. Wood shop, auto repair, plumbing/electrical, coding, cooking, industrial design, financial planning, etc. I don’t think this should be optional electives to bypass, I believe these lessons are just as important as reading writing and maths, because if we create kids that are book smart but life stupid, we’re doing them a disservice. And that’s what we’re doing now.
For our society to find our way out of this, we (the population) need to empower ourselves, recognize that we are NOT helpless, and take back agency over our lives.
Unfortunately I think that won’t happen until either a. a real leader comes along who can energize people- think Obama before his first term, but with actual balls to FIGHT rather than watering everything down. Bernie could have been that. But I think we need another MLK type person. Or b, things get a good bit worse, for the population to stop desperately trying to stay afloat in a rigged game and instead doing a table-flip rejection of the rigged system.
Au contraire, a truly “mutualist” society would never fall for the bullshit that is happening.
If everyone had trust and a good working relationship with their neighbors and solidarity with their working class comrades, the US capitalist class and therefore the government in its current form would quickly cease to exist.
The problem is specifically that the US capitalists inserted themselves as unavoidable middlemen into every aspect of US life. Notice how you’re not getting food from your community kitchen, you’re getting food from Uber Eats. You’re not usually calling a repairman from your local community, you’re calling a company that sends one out to you. You’re not getting help from your community militia, you’re getting it from an armed wing of the bourgeois government.
(ironically, this was possible to do through years or “rugged individualism” propaganda, that you are repeating here; other things like car dependency also made things worse)
This lack of local community is a big part of why there is so little organized protest. It’s very difficult to rile up your neighbors to take up arms and meaningfully protest when you barely even know them. This would apply even more in your imagined scenario of everyone becoming individualists who raise their own cows - people wouldn’t even have time to protest because they would spend all of it on their own survival, and those who stick their head up are easily arrested and thrown into jail, with noone to protect them.
Everything you have written here, I agree with. I think the self-reliance or even community reliance is what’s missing here. That service reliance is a big factor in our learned helplessness.
It truly is just a giant mess, with many confounding factors. I hope others take the time to read what you wrote.
To assume that humans en masse are weak is quite foolish, but I suspect their intent is more prodding for people to ‘do something’.
We’re aware of the issue most of us didn’t cause. Just as other countries are currently dealing with their own artificially placed authoritarians (à la epstein and bannon).
To attempt change in the public eye immediately puts you in danger and as such is unwise. Furthermore, many people are not made for such things.
Eventually there will come a time for most of us where a normal life cannot exist, but it’s a slow burn, not an explosion.
We need to put this into perspective and compare it to how Hitler turned an entire country into dumbly complacent followers & murderers & enablers. We look back at that and ask, “Why didn’t somebody stop him? Why was everybody following his orders?”
“Why didn’t Feudal Peasants rise up against theie Feudal Lords? Were they stupid?”
-asks the modern day corporate indentured serf from his company-provided cubicle residence.
My point is that it’s literally happening again right now. Why can’t it be stopped? Someone please tell me.
The problem I fear is always a spiritual one.
Materialism and spiritualism are polar opposities with the latter being the one that one incentivises someone to act in the face of death.
For the former, armies could be carpet bombing their house into the dirt and if they still feel more attached to what little wealth he has, he may very well fight for that wealth on the side of tyrants.
For the latter, they could lose everything down to their very bones, but if there’s so long as a single breath that remains, they would use it against the injustice set upon them.
It’s difficult to unify people to even achieve something in an hour, let alone divorce them of their belongings for a higher cause.
For a country with so many guns, they’re not very good shots.
France isn’t willing to bankrupt themselves again for the colonies.
The American Civil war never ended, did it?
There’s been multiple assassination attempts in his first year of this administration
Last I checked all of those people were right wing chuds. Make of that what you will.
The WHCD guy was a weapons grade shitlib.
He was complaining about Hasan Piker on the train to DC.
Sounds like the problem may inevitably take care of itself.
No? Two were Ukraine guys, pretty much centrist liberals. One was all over the place
I didn’t know “Ukraine guy” was a political position.
Support of US support of the Ukrainians in the Russo-Ukraine War. Both Routh and now Allen had documented public statements of that - https://thepostmillennial.com/exclusive-whcd-shooters-bluesky-posts-revealed-aggressively-anti-trump-jd-vance-pro-ukraine
They had better aim when JFK was president.
Well, if we count half-sentient lunatics walking around Florida as an assassination attempt that is. But even if we do, in a country that has more guns then people, he was shot at once, and even then it was in that part of the ear that completely heals leaving no traces of a scar, so really, it doesn’t count.
He’s had so many he’s smiling at other people and being pretty unsafe about his own safety.
Piss off a bunch of french and you got a mob hunting you down.
Piss off a bunch of americans and they will still go solo at you, like minions in a movie, because grouping together is considering an evil socialism there.
That’s not fair, they can be duped by a senile conman to storm the capital and shit on a desk as a group.
Probably worried it would make them look gay.
Lindsay Graham is always worried he’ll be outed as gay- wait we arent talking about Lindsay? Oh
… Ill wait over here.
brb, off to make an educational video on the merits of announcing “no homo” and how the simple declaration can restore order and civility.
I don’t understand why people are acting like half the country didn’t want him. Present them with any other option and they will still choose him even today.
Edit: To those who keep discussing how people didn’t vote, please realize that is still a choice. If you didn’t vote then you may as well have voted for him regardless.
If you didn’t vote then you may as well have voted for him regardless.
You can’t convince those people of this. Similarly, it’s damn near impossible to get people to understand that you can vote your conscience in primaries but you need to be strategic in the general.
Im still trying to figure out how people like you think half the population voted for him. He won a plurality, which means more than his opponent. A majority is over 50%.
Only <65% people of voting age even voted (including 3rd party candidates). He didnt even win a majority amongst only those who voted. And who of the remaining 35%+ is fascist or anti-fascist? They’re pretty vocal, now.
Any other option lmao. Dude, he’s the least popular president in history. What are you huffing?
Regardless of supporting someone who attempted to overthrow our government, he is surrounded by convicted rapists and pedophiles. Why would he do that?
Regardless of his fascination with dictators and his love of rapists and pedophiles, his Iran war BS is being used explicitly for stock market manipulation. Presidents are not allowed to manipulate the stock market for profit. They actually have some pretty specific rules about what kind of money they can gain, use, and their possession of property is typically very scrutinized for a variety of reasons.
A rapist and pedophile loving, dictator admiring, stock market manipulating, genocide supporting and threatening, wonderful president.
Let me ask: Who won in 2020?
Not to mention, during Trump’s first two races, him and his cronies did everything they could to meddle with the results. Do we all think they just gave up on that the third time around?
him did everything …
Almost half of the voting population clearly saw the possibility of him becoming a president again, and decided that preventing that is not worth an afternoon of their time. That’s a choice. That’s a direct, active action that those people did.
Most of americans were either in favour or a pedo becoming their king, or didn’t see anything wrong with it.“Didnt have time because they were working to avoid homelessness” is also an option. That isnt a direct, active decision. Voting and getting your ballot thrown out isnt your fault, either.
A lot of ancient people who dont need to work are the ones voting against their, and our, best interests. Voter suppression, throwing out millions of valid democratic ballots, extra ballots with only Trump on them, a lot of interesting things happened in 2024.
Most people didnt vote for Trump. Most people who didnt vote who would have, actually abstained due to the success of the anti-Kamala Palestinian propoganda. It was a whole ultra-liberal BS thing that I saw a ton of. Some people certainly didnt care, but your phrasing makes it sound like you believe a majority of people wanted Trump in power. That is simply untrue.
Our country did what it usually does when it gets too comfortable: Get extremely angsty and shoot ourselves in the foot because we think one candidate is so obviously evil they cant win. We are (and this is true) as smart as a headless ostrich. Overconfidence and a lot of moral grandstanding got us where we are.
Hope you’re happy, idiots. Thats not directed at you, just annoyed the comparison between eating gross tasting food vs trying to eat shards of glass resulted in people choosing shards of glass. George Carlin had a piece on something very similar, I just cant remember the exact quote.
I wouldn’t say that. There’s a lot of disenfranchisement going on with many people across the country. They could still be able to vote but for a myriad of reasons simply be unable to.
I guess so, but I don’t think even with those people included, the statistics will change a lot. Unless there is way more people who were barred from voting, like, millions more. Which means there is so much deeper issue underlying all that, and nobody really talks and knows about it. Which will be so much worse.
Only <65% people of voting age even voted
That’s because democrat voters couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a woman.
They said her problem was that she smiled too much… Then the country chose the rapist who’s destroying them as we speak.
American voters from both sides are responsible for all the death and suffering caused by their president.
And somehow it’s never their fault.
he’s the least popular president in history
Still he was elected by the american people, after being a convicted rapist and trying to overthrow democracy in the USA.
Americans should be ashamed that he even was a candidate.
Don’t try to make excuses, americans did this.
Trillions being spent on a curated entertainment system (and protecting it) really does that. Fox Entertainment News (the real name of the show) is just allowed to misrepresent themselves as a non-satirical platform, though thats what they argued they were in court to try to get around lying constantly. They got sued due to election lies propogated by them on behalf of Trump. We know why now, its the threat of public humiliation (not even prison time) for wealthy people. If people find out Bezos eats babies, that wont stop Amazon from being profitable. People will just be repulsed by him to a further degree.
There needs to be a genuine mechanism for punishing media outlets for spreading malicious lies that literally resulted in a terrorist attack on the capital of the country. Like, what?
Yes, the laziness and assumed victory due to volume of people who were anti-Trump, and people who felt safe being anti-Kamala while voting for moral grandstanding reasons, thinking they wouldnt get punished by Trump winning because it seemed impossible, definitely fucked us over immensely. Propoganda is just better when you have a system that exerts absolute control over everything you see, hear, and read.
I live in a small republican town. They literally have no idea whats happening in the world around them. I spread the knowledge of what ICE is doing, and a tiny bit of change has happened. There are a LOT less redcaps and more people half-joking about ICE. Someone literally made a joke about calling them for a mexican standoff. I live around some racist people who dont care about deportations, until you describe and prove the conditions those poor people are forced to live in. Everyone they know watches fox. Everywhere has it playing on a tv in the corner, even a lot of stores do. Its hard to crack that egg because they’re just SO FREAKIN INSULATED FROM REALITY. These are people who vote, but only hear about politics and the world outside their lives through their kids, when they listen to them.
These cudgel wielding, clay tablet carving asspickers are why we’re here. Rupert Murdoch is a large part of why we’re here. Poor education is 100% at fault for this. Im just around average intelligence and the people in this town think Im a genius. Great for my ego, terrifying for our future. Im not smart enough to make decisions about our future, or to completely understand what we’re living through. If thats smart, we’re fucked.
Yes, the people are definitely to blame. I fully agree. Anti-Kamala moral grandstanding and refusing to vote ruined us. I hope everyone who didnt vote for moral reasons sleeps well, knowing they incited and supported multiple genocides, including the one they were a widdle angwy about. We couldve fixed that with public opinion. We cant fix a dictator who has a psychotic koolaid following of people who genuinely think he’s never done anything wrong. Some people here think 1/6 was a hoax or a protest, if they even know about it. Im not saying it isnt the fault of the people, but there was definitely a lot of money and cheating (as per usual) put into that election.
If you honestly thought that was true, aren’t you saying it was irresponsible of the Dems to run a woman when the election was supposed to be an existential matter?
Maybe you’re right, maybe it was irresponsible of them to trust the intelligence of americans.
They obviously don’t, which is why they didn’t run a primary.
But let’s pretend that it was sexism that kade Harris lose. Isn’t failing to anticipate that a huge error by Democratic leadership, who anointed Harris?
Correction, voters couldn’t bring themselves to vote for an incompetent candidate. The Democrats had years to find someone electable and failed. Biden was a self-stated bridge candidate. Orange Julius was elected because the Democrats failed.
She was and still is objectively the most competent candidate, saying otherwise is exactly what enables trump. His propaganda works with you.
If she was competent she would have won the election. Just look at what she was running against. A clearly deteriorating Joe Biden was able to beat him in 2020 and buy the DNC some time to get their shit together. Why are some unable to see that the Democrats own a big chunk of where we are today?
Are you aware that the Biden administration, as a condition of Joe stepping aside, insisted that Kamala not deviate from the administrations policy positions at all? She was hamstrung from the beginning.
You may be unaware that when Joe stepped aside the only person who could legally replace him on the ticket was Kamala Harris.
But Kamala wanted to eat babies (Palestinian babies at that!) she wanted to grab every single Palestinian by the neck and personally strangle them. I couldn’t be bothered to vote for her because nothing would be different right now! Biden was senile and I insisted they changed the candidate. When they did, I just knew Kamala would start a war with Iran! I am just glad I stayed home and let things spiral out of control. Any day now things will get better thanks to me staying home!
— some idiots here who I am more and more convinced are bots or paid trolls.
What an apt description. Im still leaning towards (hoping, really) that its just more republican social outcasts.
When can you ever push back on the DNC for being unable to put forward a good candidate?
You can primary whoever you want. Go for it. Progressive policies are always popular with the youth, but those fuckers don’t vote.
Mandami kinda gives me hope, but I’m not going to hold my breath. If you can’t get the votes with progressive policies, don’t be surprised you end up with Pelosi, Clintons, etc. That’s politics. Or you can pretend your way is the only way and do whatever you want. Not like there haven’t been progressive candidates. They just don’t get votes.
Carter tried to treat the US like adults and run progressive policies, and we decided to boot him and go with Trump lite.
When someone is offering you fascism, you go with the non-fascist every time. Or not, I guess.
If you talk about primarying any DNC candidate they kick you out of the party
Big if true. Like, enormous if true.
David Hogg?
because 2/3 of voters did not vote against him, therefore they are either okay with it or were unable to vote
my assumption is that the size of the latter group, while significant, is not 15% of voters
By that token, more people didnt vote for Trump. That means he lost because 2/3 of people didnt vote for him.
Not half. Only 65% of the population who was eligible to vote, did so.
That means a majority of Americans rejected Trump.
When you’re right you’re right
Just like you don’t get termites without dry rot, you don’t get fascists without a rotten polity.
Yup, this presidency has killed my faith in our supposed system in record time. Congress’s inaction and complicity were the final nails. I have no faith in this country or its people. Hard to not come to the conclusion that we’re entirely motivated by greed and schadenfreude. We the people have the government we deserve.
Congressional Democrats shut the government down for a record length of time in refusal to fund ICE.
There are a million other things they didn’t do, but they did do this one thing.
What you are seeing is the end result of a fifty year long class war against the middle and working Americans that the rich have waged, and won.
Warren Buffet was making this known two decades ago and no one listened.
The business plot never died it just mutated
Unless you rewrite the constitution this will keep happening
There must be a separation of corporate influence from government, billionaires should not be allowed to involve themselves with politics in any way, no funding, no support, you choose to become a billionaire you lose your vote, same for religions
Of course citizens united turned political corruption into a big business and opened a gaping national security hole
It’s all fucked and a new constitution is needed
The military becomes the last line of defence, gun rights have to go
There is a movie with Jeremy Irons and I can’t recall which one. But he discussed how the rich are always the same for a milenia and we are just observing their control change forms over and over and over again.
And what has buffet done to address the issue?
Pushed for a change to the tax code - this is just one old man remember - and the government made some noises about it, but ultimately failed to go anywhere on the issue, esp. so since Trumplestiltskin took office.
Thank you for the link. I was genuinely curious and uneducated about it.
Glad to help!
I guess, as a rich capitalist, he helped to escalate the issue.
Longer than that, I’d say. The rich have been screwing with the lower classes since the country was founded.
This is not the first time though. The reason the 50s were considered a golden age for the middle class is because after the great depression we showed them who is the boss and taxed the shit out of them. We need to do it again, and frankly we need to go beyond posting on Facebook, Instagram, tiktok and other crap.
Those sites exist to keep us in disengaged.
The rich have been screwing with the lower classes since the advent of money. Point me to a time in world history where those with money and power didn’t abuse the rest of us. The problem with hierarchical systems is the worst people always end up rising.
You can also say
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
I claim that the bugs living in your stomach would consider you a compassionate and wise ruler if they could think. You eat food, they convert the food into shit and usable nutrients, and then you dispose of the shit. It’s a win-win relationship for both parties.
They control our thoughts way more than you’re considering.
Ever get “hangry?”
Democracy at work.
Here is the demand: eating a meal. A succulent Chinese meal. This is democracy manifest.
Sure the government has been corrupted and hollowed out, but the people deserve some credit.
From Minneapolis Minnesota standing firm, building barricades in the streets, and bringing food to families to afraid to leave to folks in Portland directly engaging with frozen water cops, common citizens have shown they won’t roll over so easy.
I also just saw on Threads this morning (ick, I know) there’s a “warehouse fire tracker” that’s up to 90 now (!).
I think there are a lot of people and individual communities who are resisting Trump and deserve incredible credit, but it’s accurate to say that this has shown the weakness in American society.
Right now, our social fabric as a country is really frayed. We have terrible safety nets. Our ability to get healthcare is tied to our jobs (some states now are trying to implement or have implemented work requirements for Medicaid, making even that now depend on employment). Many Americans are a missed paycheck away from losing housing. Our stagnating minimum wages are making it hard for a lot of people in fields with a lower barrier to entry to build up savings, and people in traditionally high paying tech fields are seeing the encroaching threat of AI. It’s incredibly easy for employers to fire people in most places, with only a few protected categories that you can’t be fired for, and those you’d have to prove in court against an employer in a lawsuit, needing either to find a lawyer who’ll work on commission or pay up front in hopes of winning the wrongful dismissal suit, assuming you have the money for it in the first place.
Our housing supply has been badly outpaced by the demand for housing, and also large corporations are buying up swathes of housing to rent out to people at the highest rates they can get away with, while building new housing is expensive, often tied up in red tape, and rarely accessible to the average person as a result. Zoning in many places also locks people into specifically low density single-family homes, which are one of the most expensive and inefficient ways of building housing, making it harder for people to find starter homes and also making people dependent on cars, another expense that tends to put people in debt, worsen dependency on oil due to cars mostly being internal combustion and electric cars being more expensive, worsen public health for similar reasons (making healthcare access even more important, making people even more dependent on their jobs) and something which makes life even harder for folks who have a disability which makes driving impossible or requires expensive vehicle modifications.
Our food system is a mess. Many people live in food deserts where reliable access to fresh produce requires transportation long distances, and local options are mostly shelf-stable ultra-processed foods which do not fill most people’s nutritional needs on their own. These foods are profitable for large corporations which use their influence to affect public health policy to keep people dependent on these foods, prevent regulation of potentially harmful ingredients, and bury studies that show the harms of these foods. Cooking at home takes time, energy, and access to affordable ingredients that people in food deserts working three jobs to keep the lights on often just do not have.
Public schools have often experienced funding cuts leading to staffing cuts leading to school lunch being prepared using limited fresh ingredients (particularly fruits and non-starchy vegetables), ultra-processed foods and minimum labor, often by third parties due to the lack of on-site kitchens, making it hard for schools to afford to change this if they want to. This may be the only meal a day kids from impoverished families get. If their parents have any problems with the paperwork for free school lunch and fall into lunch debt, these meals may be taken away from their child and replaced with a sunflower seed butter sandwich. The federal school lunch program heavily pushes dairy as well, so good luck to lactose intolerant kids, who might get a carton of soy milk instead but probably not. (Lactose intolerance rates are higher in African-American, Native American and Latine populations, of course.)
Public schools are frequently under-funded, and are funded primarily by property taxes for the school district, meaning that public schools in areas where people are already disproportionately impacted by poverty are going to have lower funds, contributing to lower quality school meals, fewer resources, fewer teachers with larger classes, and generally as a result less effective education. Private and charter schools may come in, but of course may charge for the education of their students (making it inaccessible to many), and often have substantially fewer regulations and anti-discrimination rules, allowing them to wield their power to effect desired agendas. Many are specifically religious and will teach their students according to the specific religious interpretation of those running it. Do they choose to interpret the Bible as forbidding same-sex relationships and identifying as anything but the gender you were assigned at birth? Fucking sucks for you, queer students!
And speaking of people pushing their preferred reading of their preferred religion from a position of power, we have lost huge amounts of third places, such that for many people, their only real available third place for in-person socialization is their local church. Don’t share a religion with most of your neighbors? Sucks to be you. Differ in interpretation of a shared religious text from your local church? Sucks to be you. These churches have an outsized influence on local communities, and in many rural and predominantly white places in the US, they are pushing a specific version of white Christian Nationalism passed down from the top by influential rich folks who subscribe to those beliefs. And because of the gutting of social safety nets, a lot of local churches or religious organizations are the main option for seeking assistance with things. Trans? Muslim? Good luck with your local Salvation Army and their discriminatory policies.
I could go on long enough to write a damn book. Social media created by billionaires, optimized to be addictive and lock people in to their services even as they enshittify, have become one of the few other options for socializing, and are constantly pushing misinformation that serves a fascist Christian white nationalist agenda. Journalistic sources both local and national are being bought up by billionaires turning the reported news to their own agenda. Public funding for scientific research is being cut, leading to scientists relying on private grants to continue their research, allowing – surprise surprise – billionaires to exert outsized influence on who gets to practice science and what they research. Municipalities are collapsing under the financial weight of inordinately expensive car-centric infrastructure that they cannot afford, leading to them cutting more services and municipalities with predominantly impoverished residents especially struggling.
I barely even touched on the ways that sexism, racism, ableism, anti-queer discrimination, xenophobia and our broken migration system (broken in the sense that under-resourcing of immigration courts and absurd laws make it a long and difficult process for migrants to obtain legal residency and citizenship, leading to many migrants being left without documents and thus vulnerable to exploitation and further targeting by ICE) amplify these things and make them worse, nor how they divide people and make working class solidarity more difficult, nor how Imperialism and the Imperial boomerang affect things, nor our police system that actively incentives officers to act in harmful ways and prevents accountability, nor a million other things because everything is just too damn much. I literally forgot to even mention the US making war on Iran! Oh, the Epstein files! Voter suppression and gerrymandering!! Gun violence!!!
So frankly, it is a Goddamn miracle that despite all of this, people are organizing. It is a testament to the resiliency and endurance of humanity that Minnesota is organizing against ICE. It is beautiful that people are organizing national strikes, and that the numbers are slowly growing. It is heroic that people are forming mutual aid groups and building local power and building food and housing security.
I won’t say there aren’t a lot of American people who suck. People voted Trump in, twice, and many of his voters are actively celebrating his cruelty, while the remainder are like “oh, I didn’t like the cruelty, but I thought he would be good for the economy,” which, okay, “I’m only overlooking The Horrors because money!” isn’t much of an excuse. A lot of working class Trump voters have been shaped by webs of disinformation and targeted manipulation that make them vote against their own interests, and I have a sliver of sympathy for that, but actively choosing to support or ignore the horrors being inflicted upon the vulnerable by this government is simply bad. They are choosing to do bad things.
So yeah, some of the American people do suck. But it’s not most of us. Our society is broken, and it’s going to take incredible work to fix it. So I don’t see “the weakness of the American society has led to this” as a damnation of our people nor a downplaying of what so many are doing to fix it; I see it as a descriptor of the problem, in hopes of helping realize the solution.
Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk. Support your local mutual aid network. Start a garden. Advocate for housing reform in your community. Do something so that you know you are a part of the solution, and do not try to do everything, because you will burn out and this can only be fixed by rebuilding our society as a group, not a single individual fixing everything.
Also, if anyone knows how to do a “read more” block, please tell me? I’m using Voyager and don’t see it built in, and the Markdown implementation for collapsed text blocks varies across every implementation I’ve seen.
TL;DR
K, noted
The warehouse fire thing is just a case of Apophenia. The one toilet paper warehouse arson caused people to go looking for local news reports of warehouse fires and - because they happen all the time - they found them. That doesn’t mean they’re connected or that there’s a wave of arsons vis à vis resistance against corporations. There has been no actual uptick in warehouse fires.
And distrust of one another! Don’t forget that important motivation
It’s not that the system is bad, although it’s not robust enough, it’s that it was totally taken over, and no system can survive that. Congress isn’t inactive and complicit, it is, as well as all the other branches, under complete control of the same group of people it was supposed to keep in check, and that happened as a consequence of decades of direct political action.
People felt victim of apathysation and surrendered control of their country to grifters and frauds. That happens sometimes. Better luck next time.It’s the failure of the managers of the Democratic party to elicit even the weakest of resistance that gets me above all else.
The fascists and racists are clear about who they are. Democrats and the ruling “NPR” liberal class lie to you that they are some kind of ally simply because they expect you to vote for their proffered member of the management class.
Definitely. In fact I believe many of them in high positions are secretly alright with much of what Trump and the Republicans have been up to. This resistance from our supposed representation is a joke. They’ve been out of touch with the working class and in the pockets of the elites for way too long, completely compromised.
fraid so. tv and electronics in general have led to a society of couch potatoes only suitable for mashing and smothering in butter and chives
Is that actually true?
Or is it a scapegoat to disguise the impact of over policing and the massive incarnation rate?
the “over policing” could’ve been a nonissue if there had been sufficient resistance and proper accompanying legislation to curb it and enact better training programs for cadets. scapegoats can be named to anything one chooses depending on which side one sympathizes with, but for my own part i see no scapegoating beyond that thst the executive branch has instituted
the “over policing” could’ve been a nonissue if there had been sufficient resistance
That’s tired horseshit.
Stop him? American society created him.
Not really sure how to fix this.
Yeah the analysis has to start with the fact that a majority of American voters chose this.
Not really sure how to fix this.
By uncreating him?
That leaves the process for creating another one intact.
True. Does send out a warning though, but the effects would be short lived (and his next in line would have to follow suit).
Could we say that technically Australia created him? Rupert Murdoch is the devil.
Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian citizenship.
Since 1985, he’s 100% US. He’s all yours.
He’s also not some kind of mind-controlling supervillain. He was saying things that the people were happy to latch onto and wanted to believe.
Fucken oath! American capitalism allowed him to build the massive media empire that he has now. Couldn’t have done it from here.
Hey, we’re not solely to blame. He cut his teeth in the UK media market - they deserve some of the blame too.
As the UK always does…
They just point at Jimmy Saville’s grave and hand you a copy of 1984
A cause, not creation. Trump is our collective shadow, as it were. That thought where you want to say “Fuck the Rules” and do whatever you think is best, damn the consequences, is where Trump comes from.
- The war with Iran? Iran has been pestering the US for some time. So why not just kill those guys and be done with it?
- Europe keeps talking back and disrespecting your authority. So why not teach them a lesson by increasing prices on their stuff?
- Maduro thinks he can fuck with the US as much as he wants. Let’s see if he still feels that way in an American prison!
- The people whining in Minnesota must have been put up to this by the Radical Left or something. A good hit to the head will calm them down!
Iran has been pestering the US for some time.
How so?
Ousting the Shah, preventing the US from furthering their interests; selling Shahed drones to Russia for use in Ukraine; being in China’s sphere of influence.
I wouldn’t consider that pestering the US, more like looking after their own interests wich, sure, might not align with US ideology. OTOH…
