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What's more depressing is this was completely predictable, totally avoidable, but half the country welcomed this wave of oppression with open arms.
by paulyy_y 2y ago
What's more depressing is this was completely predictable, totally avoidable, but half the country welcomed this wave of oppression with open arms.
- diggan 2y ago> but half the country welcomed this wave of oppression with open arms. And the other half? They seem to welcome this as well, but with crossed arms. Where are the protests? Seems most people end up writing upset messages on Twitter/Bluesky, but also seems there are no grassroots movements to actually protest the borderline coup that is happening?
- CalRobert 2y agoProtest doesn't do anything. I marched plenty and it accomplished nothing except letting like-minded people blow off a bit of steam and feel like something we did mattered. If anything it was just a distraction.
- 9283409232 2y agoThe answer is a general strike. This will never happen in the US though.
- CalRobert 2y agoHard to strike when your boss can make you and your kid homeless. Housing precarity is a useful tool of control.
- 9283409232 2y agoAccording to this[0], they want around 4% of Americans to agree to a general strike. The problem is the people who are most capable of surviving a general strike are not the same group that has the most impact in a general strike. [0] https://generalstrikeus.com/ https://generalstrikeus.com/
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoWow. My grandfather is turning over in his grave. He suffered not only starvation and homelessness while striking against the coral companies of Pennsylvania, he was also beaten. If they have instilled this much cowardliness in you they have won. Imagine you’re kid looking at what you wrote twenty years from now and think of how he/she would think of you. Courageous or coward?
- CalRobert 2y agoI don't know. I am a coward I guess, I emigrated. I think my kids will be glad they didn't grow up in the US. Good for your grandfather though.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 2y agoYou are but so is most of America. And there will be no safe place to emigrate when there are wars everywhere.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoPeople don’t understand how remarkably easy it is to be homeless. Believe me because I was homeless for four years. The fear they have instilled in them is what’s keeping them cowards.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoFor reference https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?t=1422 https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?t=1422
- diggan 2y ago> Protest doesn't do anything. Most rights that workers have today have been earned through protesting (and sometimes the bloody consequence of protesting while the state is resisting wanted changes). Protests only "doesn't do anything" when you don't do it enough or give up. Maybe I'm too European to understand, but the "pacifist" approach of the US working class seems to not be working out great.
- CalRobert 2y agoProtest works when it’s backed by a threat. “Do what we want or we will remove you from power”. What we have now is “do what we want or we’ll be sad”. The pitchforks aren’t just for show!! And I’ve lived in Europe for over a decade now and frankly much of Europe is painfully naive about how much people in power care about protestors waving clever signs.
- diggan 2y ago> And I’ve lived in Europe for over a decade now and frankly much of Europe is painfully naive about how much people in power care about protestors waving clever signs. I guess the same goes the other way, Americans seems painfully unaware how effective the public's will can be, when you act together. But I think that's to be expected, the US is still relatively new and young, compared to other countries, so lessons others have learned still need to be learned by the Americans themselves. I guess this is what we're witnessing right now. I'd urge you to look up changes brought by protesting and riots, but I think we both know you're not interested in learning, since you already stated twice you think it's pointless.
- CalRobert 2y agoYour condescending and dismissive tone notwithstanding, I am curious to hear more about peaceful protests working when they weren't backed with an implicit threat of removing politicians from power. Ideally, of course, you have a functioning democracy, but I don't really think that describes much of the US at this point (the people who'd protest are mostly in blue states anyway where their votes, even if correctly tabulated, count less). Other examples might be Ghandi, who promoted nonviolence but really only got India's freedom when the British empire was in terminal decline, or the civil rights movement, which happened when the US was a much healthier democracy and swaying public opinion was enough to remove people through elections. You might cite the velvet revolution too, but that also was targeting an empire in decline. I argue that elections in the US _will not matter_ (Trump's cryptic comments about how Elon knows all about these voting machines and they won Pennsylvania thanks to him are telling....) and in that context protest doesn't do anything because the people in power have nothing to fear if they ignore the protestors.
- Spooky23 2y agoIt does. Hopefully people start taking to the streets when the economic calamity (temporary adjustments in Musk-speak) hits. People slowly figure it out. On HN 2-3 years ago, any critique of Elon would bring out the brigades of simps babbling about autistic genius. That’s mostly gone now.
- CalRobert 2y agoOK, people walk in the streets and wave signs, then go home. What happens next?
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoA general strike. Boycotts, etc. Protests get the word out and create comrades.
- CalRobert 2y agoThis is true - the ability to meet new people and coordinate is a big plus.
- Spooky23 2y agoHow long will they have a home? Starting a trade war has consequences. That mortgage of yours is pegged to 10 year treasury rates. Bend the demand curve for foreign investors seeking safety in US government debt and stuff happens, like real estate bubbles deflating. What happens when foreign investors start dumping loans for vacant NYC buildings on the market because of their governments restrictions? Look at the the classic Bogglehead investment - VTI. 30% of that portfolio is 10 companies, half of which are extremely vulnerable to foreign action. What happens to Apple stock when there’s a 30% tariff on iPhones? You have reckless idiots turning knobs and people are going to get hurt. Then they get angry. LARPing right wing morons love to talk revolutions on their podcasts, they may get their wish.
- Applejinx 2y agoThat's not how that works. The situation is set up to attempt to produce 'wild crazy radicals' who can be acted against super-aggressively. Failing to run about throwing rocks is a refusal to provide the guilty parties with exoneration for their acts. In effect, 'grassroots movements' directed by adversaries is what got us here, and is overwhelmingly unlikely to get us out.
- fn-mote 2y ago> 'grassroots movements' directed by adversaries is what got us here This is too pessimistic. Consider successful grass-roots movements: civil rights and maybe anti-war (Vietnam). > and is overwhelmingly unlikely to get us out. In the sense that nothing is likely to get us out? Sure. At some point you need to stand up for what you believe is right, though.
- brainlet 2y agoI've been monitoring online discussions with some interest and the complete lack of self reflection in left-leaning US population is interesting. People who were writing very nasty things about Russians too scared to destroy their lives by protesting against a brutal dictatorship not that long ago now sit on their asses and do nothing, because "what can we do?". Maybe at least some of them now understand what it's like. My sincere sympathies in any case, we understand you very well.
- kiba 2y agoI voted in the November election. I called my representatives. My plan invited me to a protest over immigrants getting deported.That isn't nothing, but I have very little power on a federal level. The next step is getting involved in local politics and the community, but I am simultaneously moving and live far away. I can talk to people about it, but the difficult part is not talking but getting people to truly listen. So yes, ordinary people are limited in their power and capacity even if these adds up.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fabian2k 2y agoThis is moving very fast, and the sheer amount of chaos they're creating is successfully stymieing the potential responses. The important initial challenges here are the legal ones. And there are already some temporary decisions that should stop some of the blocks on funds. Now comes the part where we see if the administration abides by those legal decisions or not, and how the final legal decisions here turn out once these cases inevitably land in front of the Supreme Court. At the point where the administration ignores the courts and laws and continues on with their illegal impoundment, that's the point where you have to protest.
- NickC25 2y agoThe administration doesn't need to ignore the courts - the courts have building for decades to get to this point, where the unitary executive gets to do whatever they please and the courts exist solely to rubber-stamp the executive's actions. He was declared immune for all actions he and he alone declares as official. He will die in office, in his mid 90s. Democracy has been cancelled.
- bmitc 2y agoWhat do you propose? The only way to change is either voting, money, or violence. I'm generally lost as what to do.
- lazide 2y agoVoting - already happened. Money - the folks doing this already have a ton of money, and used it in large part to get to this point. Violence - necessary for change, but against who exactly? anyone trying to be violent against the folks running this will be disavowed by 90% of the rest of the population, and galvanize an outsized violent crackdown against anyone and everyone who even somewhat looks like them. It’s going to have to get a lot worse before there is appetite to do the things that will actually make it better. people aren’t bleeding enough yet.
- bmitc 2y agoThat's kind of my point. We're heading directly into Nazi, USSR, and CCP territory and gotta ride this out until another election (if we even have one), someone with money cares (they don't), or we're all ready for violence (it's all the idiots who have guns).
- lazide 2y agoThe issue here is all the ‘opposition’ will do anything but actually fight - or allow anyone else to fight - or allow anyone else to violate the law. So anyone actually trying to fight back will be destroyed by their own side. Where the folks doing this, won’t be.
- ebcode 2y agowould you participate in a general strike?
- rexpop 2y agoUh, what ever happened to Civil Disobedience? Direct Action? Nonviolent Action? There are at least as many ways to respond to repression as there are avenues of repression: https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/ https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/
- trymas 2y agoThey’re just salivating for anyone to protest. Any protest will be a pretext to use violent power, start some marshal law and move ten steps closer of totalitarianism.
- dpflug 2y agoWe've done the protest thing. In the past decade, millions of people have protested, repeatedly, trying to change parts of this trajectory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra... A bunch of Americans have been taught that protests only "count" if they don't inconvenience anyone. Laws have been changed to make effective protest impossible. It's legal to ram protesters with your car in Florida, for instance. The cops use force to suppress protests and the media tells everyone your protest was invalid because it broke the law. If we press the point more aggressively, we'll probably start another civil war. The right holds Rittenhouse up as a hero, and that's not an isolated thing. For decades, average, rank-and-file GOP voters have made jokes and jabs about shooting liberals. It used to be a few tasteless blowhards, but it's commonplace now. See also comments from Kevin Roberts about how the "second American Revolution" will be "bloodless if the left allows it." There are resistance movements extant and forming, but it's a wicked problem. The size and population of the US requires more resources and participants to make an impact. The speed at which the situation is changing makes it hard to find purchase to do so.
- zikduruqe 2y ago> Where are the protests? It is quickly being organized for 2/5/2025 at each state capital. https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/ https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/
- ModernMech 2y agoYou misread. A lot of us have been warning about this and fighting against it for 10+ years. We have protested, and voted, and passed laws, and conducted investigations, argued in court, impeached him twice, and defended against a legislative coup, and a literal insurrection - every legal, constitutional, and peaceful method was exercised at the federal and state levels. But at the end of the day a lot of people didn’t listen and voted for this direction instead. So the people who protested and tried everything for a decade are done. Now we are just waiting for the 70 million people who still support this direction to finally burn themselves on the stove and discover it is in fact hot, just like we’ve been saying. The next protests have to be Republicans and Democrats or there’s no point.
- duxup 2y agoSCOTUS also decided that the POTUS is above the law. I think that emboldened them a great deal.
- ocschwar 2y agoRoberts will go down in history as a worse Justice than Taney for this.
- pupppet 2y agoAnd this half of the country that gets their news from exactly one news source will either never hear about these events or see them repackaged as wins.
- ajross 2y agoTo be fair, media consumption is broad and even in the deepest red retirement communities of Darkest Appalachia, no one subsists only on Fox. In fact there is an active community of very Trumpy libertarians on this very website who pop up in the handful of political threads that make the front page. They seem to be silent here, one hopes maybe they've been given pause.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> no one subsists only on Fox Well, yeah. There’s OAN and Newsmax and the evangelical Christian radio stations when Fox gets too liberal for them.
- ceejayoz 2y ago“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.“
- plagiarist 2y agoThe modern paraphrasing could use price of eggs but otherwise have the same structure.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoHilarious that only after the past two weeks do some of you care about grocery prices.
- agumonkey 2y agoI'd add that this playbook is running in many parts of the world. Rich people buying medias to shift the average to the right influencing the masses to stop thinking.
- sAggymEllenZ 2y ago[dead]
- dylan604 2y agoCan we please stop this bit of misinformation? Trump: 77,168,458 votes (49.9%) https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RESULTS/zjpqnemxwvx/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RESULTS/zjpqne... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/president-results https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/president-re... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/... More people voted for Trump, but it wasn't half the country. There were a lot of people that did not vote at all. The most accurate would be to say that nearly half of the votes cast went for Trump. That is not half the country
- TiredOfLife 2y agoThose that can vote, but don't, don't count.
- dylan604 2y agowhat an ignorant comment. you can be upset that voter turn out is low, but to say people don't count is just knee jerk reaction that does not engage the people that didn't vote into positive conversations about voting in future elections. you are now part of the problem
- treve 2y agoIt's accurate to say more than half let this happen. You can include the people that didn't vote.
- dylan604 2y agoI hear people say this in various forms. No vote is still a vote kind of concept. If anything it was the 1.6% of votes that went to other candidates that could be seen as a spoiler. You'd have to say that all of that 1.6% would have gone to Harris for it to have been a spoiler though, and I doubt that's the case.
- undersuit 2y agoNot half the country, depending on how you reason about it it's about a 1/3 or 2/3. Just a smidge more than 50% of voters did not vote for Trump. And numerically more than either Trump or Kamala voters, 36% of the US populace didn't vote in 2024.