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I think e.g. Europeans and Canadians are quite surprised. You don't seem to care.

by lysace 2y ago

alabastervlog 2y ago
- There have been protests, including some largish ones. As with things like labor action, they happen in the US but 99% of it doesn't get covered, you could think they don't happen at all unless you pay attention to fairly obscure media sources or happen to live near where they're going on, where local news might briefly mention it (after the fact). - Protesting hasn't accomplished anything in the US in 80 years (EDIT: Almost 60, LOL, usually I math wrong the other direction when calculating how long ago things were). As with letting our politicians tell obvious lies to interviewers with minimal push-back, not having effective protests is just... American, or at least has been for much of living memory. - Like 80% of the country's not paying any attention, they have zero idea how bad this already is and what's already teed up for the next month or two. Shit the people following this would never believe a person could have missed, they don't know about. - Civic knowledge is abysmal so a huge proportion of the population doesn't understand why stuff like normalizing open corruption (that one, we let slide in Trump's first term and the Democrats did nothing to draft laws to codify prior norms, when they had the chance, so that's... great) is extremely dangerous. Or that the President in fact does not legally have the power to do a bunch of the things he's doing, and that letting him get away with it anyway means the end of the rule of law and the beginning of authoritarianism. Like half of folks don't understand marginal tax rates and even more think foreign aid is some insane amount of our budget, like 20%. When it comes to our political system, I dunno about other countries, but Americans are, to be blunt, shockingly dumb. They don't know how things are supposed to be or where the guardrails are, so don't recognize how very far off-course we are.
- lysace 2y ago
  > including some largish ones The ones I heard of were around a few thousand at most. That is not large in this context.
bdangubic 2y ago
we do show our outrage on social media… americans have long been tamed and are no longer activists and small fraction that are have been reduced to ridicule “wokeness” sad state of affairs for sure…
- lysace 2y ago
  BLM turned into a massive IRL thing though?
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    no doubt... woman's marches were decent too back in '17... I think BLM-style protest can still prop up to protest things like police brutality etc but generally I think US public has been tamed, especially over the past decade. even our veterans, who fought for the freedoms and constitution and whatnot are sitting quietly while VA is being gutted and while they are losing jobs by the thousands (many vets went into public sector and became govies after their service)... and veterans are sitting put and letting all this shit happen you know where we are as a country...

I think e.g. Europeans and Canadians are quite surprised. You don't seem to care.

by lysace 2y ago

I think e.g. Europeans and Canadians are quite surprised. You don't seem to care.

- There have been protests, including some largish ones. As with things like labor action, they happen in the US but 99% of it doesn't get covered, you could think they don't happen at all unless you pay attention to fairly obscure media sources or happen to live near where they're going on, where local news might briefly mention it (after the fact). - Protesting hasn't accomplished anything in the US in 80 years (EDIT: Almost 60, LOL, usually I math wrong the other direction when calculating how long ago things were). As with letting our politicians tell obvious lies to interviewers with minimal push-back, not having effective protests is just... American, or at least has been for much of living memory. - Like 80% of the country's not paying any attention, they have zero idea how bad this already is and what's already teed up for the next month or two. Shit the people following this would never believe a person could have missed, they don't know about. - Civic knowledge is abysmal so a huge proportion of the population doesn't understand why stuff like normalizing open corruption (that one, we let slide in Trump's first term and the Democrats did nothing to draft laws to codify prior norms, when they had the chance, so that's... great) is extremely dangerous. Or that the President in fact does not legally have the power to do a bunch of the things he's doing, and that letting him get away with it anyway means the end of the rule of law and the beginning of authoritarianism. Like half of folks don't understand marginal tax rates and even more think foreign aid is some insane amount of our budget, like 20%. When it comes to our political system, I dunno about other countries, but Americans are, to be blunt, shockingly dumb. They don't know how things are supposed to be or where the guardrails are, so don't recognize how very far off-course we are.

lysace 2y ago
> including some largish ones The ones I heard of were around a few thousand at most. That is not large in this context.

bdangubic 2y ago

we do show our outrage on social media… americans have long been tamed and are no longer activists and small fraction that are have been reduced to ridicule “wokeness” sad state of affairs for sure…

lysace 2y ago
BLM turned into a massive IRL thing though?
- bdangubic 2y ago
  no doubt... woman's marches were decent too back in '17... I think BLM-style protest can still prop up to protest things like police brutality etc but generally I think US public has been tamed, especially over the past decade. even our veterans, who fought for the freedoms and constitution and whatnot are sitting quietly while VA is being gutted and while they are losing jobs by the thousands (many vets went into public sector and became govies after their service)... and veterans are sitting put and letting all this shit happen you know where we are as a country...